# Fooling with Mother Nature



## KenOC

Couchie said:


> We assume our purpose is found in self-perpetuation. But it could be that humanity's purpose is merely as a warning to an alien or a future intelligent race that arises out of our ashes.


Continued from the "worst generation" thread: The UN has completed an 1800-page study of human impact on the environment and it's not a happy picture. The *BBC reports* on a 40-page summary that was released today:

- One million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction. This is approximately 25% of species in most animal and plant groups studied.
- Natural ecosystems have declined by 47% on average, relative to their earliest estimated states.
- The global biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%. Indicators of vertebrate abundance have declined rapidly since 1970.
- 33% of fish stocks are harvested at unsustainable levels.
- Land use is the major driver of the biodiversity collapse, with 70% of agriculture related to meat production.
- Between 1980 and 2000, 100 million hectares of tropical forest were lost, mainly from cattle ranching in South America and palm oil plantations in South East Asia. 
- Only 13% of wetlands present in 1700 were still in existence in the year 2000. 
- Soil degradation has reduced the productivity of 23% of the land surface of the Earth. 
- Plastic pollution has increased ten-fold since 1980. 
- Every year 300-400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes are dumped into the waters of the world.

So where do you plan to sit this one out?


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## CnC Bartok

*
So where do you plan to sit this one out?*

Behind the wheel of my 2-litre diesel.

Being vaguely serious for a moment, Ken, we are being bombarded with doom and gloom. Too much to take in, and yet I feel I live in a cleaner, healthier world than the one I grew up in. If everyone stuck to one environmental issue to care about, we'd be able to get something done, but not if we're drowned in it.


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## DaveM

^^^Then, the one to get fired up about is the 400+ ppm carbon in our atmosphere.


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## KenOC

DaveM said:


> ^^^Then, the one to get fired up about is the 400+ ppm carbon in our atmosphere.


The UN report ranks global warming as the third greatest impact, behind changes in land use and direct exploitation of species. This is impact on biodiversity of course; there are certainly other kinds of impact to consider.


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## Strange Magic

Maybe now, someone will pay attention. Leaving aside Malthus, humankind's future began to be seriously discussed with the 1954 publication of Harrison Brown's _The Challenge of Man's Future_, a book praised by Albert Einstein. Science and some courageous scientists have increasingly warned our populations and leaders of the coming catastrophe, but a cadre of ideologues and Panglossian economists have repeatedly told everybody that those crazy scientists were all part of a Socialist Plot to keep people from being happy. And nobody likes a wet blanket. My favorite response is from those who wonder if saving the planet will be "too expensive". Yeah, probably.


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## tdc

I remember an article on the cover of Time Magazine in 1977 warning us that scientists are claiming that we are heading into another ice age. Now the story has changed to global warming, meanwhile it has been unseasonably cool around these parts and apparently the ice sheets on Greenland in places have increased by 50 meters. 

That said I'm all for reducing pollution, how about ideas like organic farming, using hemp instead of trees for paper, and releasing technologies that have been suppressed for decades because they will cost the oil cartel too much in profits? 

Making the rich richer by creating a carbon tax, sounds like just another retarded idea, in a long line of retarded ideas.


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## KenOC

This reminds me of John Brunner's 1968 sci-fi novel _Stand on Zanzibar_. He figured (correctly as it turned out) that the earth would have about 7 billion people in 2010. That many people would fit in an area the size of Zanzibar, standing up of course.

From the previous thread, mostly for TDC:

"Humans account for about 36 percent of the biomass of all mammals. Domesticated livestock, mostly cows and pigs, account for 60 percent, and wild mammals for only 4 percent. The same holds true for birds. The biomass of poultry is about three times higher than that of wild birds."

"A huge amount of evidence exists to show that the overall biomass on land has been massively reduced over the past 3,000 years and increasingly evidence is coming to light in respect of the loss of biomass in the oceans. Loss of biomass on land may well be as great as 50%, loss of biomass in the seas could be as high as 80%."

This is based on a study published by the US National Academy of the Sciences.


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## Strange Magic

Some Statistics: 1940 (my birth year) v. 2018:

1940: world population 2.3 billions; atmospheric CO2 310 ppm. (pre-industrial was 280 ppm)

2018: world population 7.6 billions; atmospheric CO2 410 ppm.


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## Strange Magic

Don Marquis was the creator in 1916 of the characters of Archy the cockroach and Mehitabel the cat. Archy would type messages to Marquis at night by jumping onto the various typewriter keys, but he could not simultaneously push Shift and another key at the same time. So his messages were all in lower case and without punctuation, as below. This was one of Archy's most serious reports to Marquis, and shows that environmental concerns were being thought about almost 100 years ago.

what the ants are saying

By Don Marquis, in “The Life and Times of Archy and Mehitabel", 1927

dear boss i was talking with an ant
the other day
and he handed me a lot of
gossip which ants the world around
are chewing over among themselves

i pass it on to you
in the hope that you may relay it to other
human beings and hurt their feelings with it
no insect likes human beings
and if you think you can see why
the only reason i tolerate you is because
you seem less human to me than most of them
here is what the ants are saying

it wont be long now it wont be long
man is making deserts of the earth
it wont be long now
before man will have used it up
so that nothing but ants
and centipedes and scorpions
can find a living on it
man has oppressed us for a million years
but he goes on steadily
cutting the ground from under
his own feet making deserts deserts deserts

we ants remember
and have it all recorded
in our tribal lore
when gobi was a paradise
swarming with men and rich
in human prosperity
it is a desert now and the home
of scorpions ants and centipedes

what man calls civilization
always results in deserts
man is never on the square
he uses up the fat and greenery of the earth
each generation wastes a little more
of the future with greed and lust for riches

north africa was once a garden spot
and then came carthage and rome
and despoiled the storehouse
and now you have sahara
sahara ants and centipedes

toltecs and aztecs had a mighty
civilization on this continent
but they robbed the soil and wasted nature
and now you have deserts scorpions ants and centipedes
and the deserts of the near east
followed egypt and babylon and assyria
and persia and rome and the turk
the ant is the inheritor of tamerlane
and the scorpion succeeds the caesars

america was once a paradise
of timberland and stream
but it is dying because of the greed
and money lust of a thousand little kings
who slashed the timber all to hell
and would not be controlled
and changed the climate
and stole the rainfall from posterity
and it wont be long now
it wont be long
till everything is desert
from the alleghenies to the rockies
the deserts are coming
the deserts are spreading
the springs and streams are drying up
one day the mississippi itself
will be a bed of sand
ants and scorpions and centipedes
shall inherit the earth

men talk of money and industry
of hard times and recoveries
of finance and economics
but the ants wait and the scorpions wait
for while men talk they are making deserts all the time
getting the world ready for the conquering ant
drought and erosion and desert
because men cannot learn

rainfall passing off in flood and freshet
and carrying good soil with it
because there are no longer forests
to withhold the water in the
billion meticulations of the roots

it wont be long now It won’t be long
till earth is barren as the moon
and sapless as a mumbled bone

dear boss i relay this information
without any fear that humanity
will take warning and reform

archy


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## Pat Fairlea

KenOC said:


> This reminds me of John Brunner's 1968 sci-fi novel _Stand on Zanzibar_. He figured (correctly as it turned out) that the earth would have about 7 billion people in 2010. That many people would fit in an area the size of Zanzibar, standing up of course.
> 
> From the previous thread, mostly for TDC:
> 
> "Humans account for about 36 percent of the biomass of all mammals. Domesticated livestock, mostly cows and pigs, account for 60 percent, and wild mammals for only 4 percent. The same holds true for birds. The biomass of poultry is about three times higher than that of wild birds."
> 
> "A huge amount of evidence exists to show that the overall biomass on land has been massively reduced over the past 3,000 years and increasingly evidence is coming to light in respect of the loss of biomass in the oceans. Loss of biomass on land may well be as great as 50%, loss of biomass in the seas could be as high as 80%."
> 
> This is based on a study published by the US National Academy of the Sciences.


Brunner's 'Stand on Zanzibar' is a staggeringly prescient piece of work, not least for his prediction (albeit using different terms) of smart phones and the internet. And an athletic, black, young, Chicago-lawyer US President. All in a novel first published in 1968.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Don Marquis was the creator in 1916 of the characters of Archy the cockroach and Mehitabel the cat. Archy would type messages to Marquis at night by jumping onto the various typewriter keys, but he could not simultaneously push Shift and another key at the same time. So his messages were all in lower case and without punctuation, as below. This was one of Archy's most serious reports to Marquis, and shows that environmental concerns were being thought about almost 100 years ago.
> 
> what the ants are saying
> 
> By Don Marquis, in "The Life and Times of Archy and Mehitabel", 1927
> 
> dear boss i was talking with an ant
> the other day
> and he handed me a lot of
> gossip which ants the world around
> are chewing over among themselves
> 
> i pass it on to you
> in the hope that you may relay it to other
> human beings and hurt their feelings with it
> no insect likes human beings
> and if you think you can see why
> the only reason i tolerate you is because
> you seem less human to me than most of them
> here is what the ants are saying
> 
> it wont be long now it wont be long
> man is making deserts of the earth
> it wont be long now
> before man will have used it up
> so that nothing but ants
> and centipedes and scorpions
> can find a living on it
> man has oppressed us for a million years
> but he goes on steadily
> cutting the ground from under
> his own feet making deserts deserts deserts
> 
> we ants remember
> and have it all recorded
> in our tribal lore
> when gobi was a paradise
> swarming with men and rich
> in human prosperity
> it is a desert now and the home
> of scorpions ants and centipedes
> 
> what man calls civilization
> always results in deserts
> man is never on the square
> he uses up the fat and greenery of the earth
> each generation wastes a little more
> of the future with greed and lust for riches
> 
> north africa was once a garden spot
> and then came carthage and rome
> and despoiled the storehouse
> and now you have sahara
> sahara ants and centipedes
> 
> toltecs and aztecs had a mighty
> civilization on this continent
> but they robbed the soil and wasted nature
> and now you have deserts scorpions ants and centipedes
> and the deserts of the near east
> followed egypt and babylon and assyria
> and persia and rome and the turk
> the ant is the inheritor of tamerlane
> and the scorpion succeeds the caesars
> 
> america was once a paradise
> of timberland and stream
> but it is dying because of the greed
> and money lust of a thousand little kings
> who slashed the timber all to hell
> and would not be controlled
> and changed the climate
> and stole the rainfall from posterity
> and it wont be long now
> it wont be long
> till everything is desert
> from the alleghenies to the rockies
> the deserts are coming
> the deserts are spreading
> the springs and streams are drying up
> one day the mississippi itself
> will be a bed of sand
> ants and scorpions and centipedes
> shall inherit the earth
> 
> men talk of money and industry
> of hard times and recoveries
> of finance and economics
> but the ants wait and the scorpions wait
> for while men talk they are making deserts all the time
> getting the world ready for the conquering ant
> drought and erosion and desert
> because men cannot learn
> 
> rainfall passing off in flood and freshet
> and carrying good soil with it
> because there are no longer forests
> to withhold the water in the
> billion meticulations of the roots
> 
> it wont be long now It won't be long
> till earth is barren as the moon
> and sapless as a mumbled bone
> 
> dear boss i relay this information
> without any fear that humanity
> will take warning and reform
> 
> archy


Mankind created the Gobi desert? I thought it was created by the Tibetan Plateau blocking precipitation coming from the Indian Ocean. And the Romans and Carthaginians created the Sahara? I don't know that I would think of this as a serious consideration of man's impact on the environment.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Mankind created the Gobi desert? I thought it was created by the Tibetan Plateau blocking precipitation coming from the Indian Ocean. And the Romans and Carthaginians created the Sahara? I don't know that I would think of this as a serious consideration of man's impact on the environment.


Ever and always the literalist. Don Marquis was a humorist and satirist who received much of his material from a fictional cockroach. Marquis was not a historian or an ecologist, but he was concerned--as prescient, thinking people sometimes are--with the way things were going, even in the 'teens and twenties. Perhaps he had Shelley's _Ozymandias_ in mind when he passed on Archy's news from the ants.

Here's Wikipedia on the Gobi recently:

"The Gobi Desert is expanding at an alarming rate, in a process known as desertification. The expansion is particularly rapid on the southern edge into China, which has seen 3,600 km2 (1,390 sq mi) of grassland overtaken every year by the Gobi Desert. Dust storms, which used to occur regularly in China, have increased in frequency in the past 20 years, mainly due to desertification. They have caused further damage to China's agriculture economy....

The expansion of the Gobi is attributed mostly to human activities, notably deforestation, overgrazing, and depletion of water resources. China has tried various plans to slow the expansion of the desert, which have met with some small degree of success, but no major effects."

Maybe Archy had a crystal ball.


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## starthrower

Feeling as though the world is cleaner and healthier doesn't make it so. And as far as addressing one problem at a time even if we had time doesn't seem to be happening. Take plastic for example. Very little is being done about it. Thousands of products are still packaged in plastic that goes right in the garbage after unpacking. What's being done in the US to improve public transport and reduce the number of personal vehicles on the road? Not much as far as I've been reading. Meat consumption is another huge problem and I don't see this changing anytime soon. And the millions of fast food outlets consuming and discarding once used paper and plastic utensils is another ridiculous waste that is not being addressed.

And there is the very important issue of the dwindling supply of uncontaminated fresh water. When I get reading in to the industrial waste, toxic coal sludge, and fracking issues here in the Eastern part of the country it gets very depressing. This combined with the current administration in Washington that is enabling more environmental destruction doesn't paint a sunny picture for the future. There'll be no sitting this one out unless you're dead or extremely lucky.


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## Guest

It also has the feel of adolescent-level analysis of everything being the fault of mankind.


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## starthrower

DrMike said:


> It also has the feel of adolescent-level analysis of everything being the fault of mankind.


Nobody said everything. But the destruction of tropical forests, water/air pollution on a worldwide scale, along with the toxic waste problem is a result of mankind.


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> It also has the feel of adolescent-level analysis of everything being the fault of mankind.


The UN report referenced in the OP lays all the impacts listed there to human activity. Are there exceptions?


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## Jacck

CnC Bartok said:


> *
> So where do you plan to sit this one out?*
> 
> Behind the wheel of my 2-litre diesel.
> 
> Being vaguely serious for a moment, Ken, we are being bombarded with doom and gloom. Too much to take in, and yet I feel I live in a cleaner, healthier world than the one I grew up in. If everyone stuck to one environmental issue to care about, we'd be able to get something done, but not if we're drowned in it.


no doubt that England is cleaner now than what it was during the Industrial revolution in the 19th century with all coal industry, when the coal smoke was mixing with London fog to create smog. The problem is that much of the pollution has been moved to other countries that serve production and manufacturing lands. The blood coltan for your cell phone is harvested in Congo, the oil for you candies is harvested in Indonesia etc.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> It also has the feel of adolescent-level analysis of everything being the fault of mankind.


Here is the adult mind of Albert Einstein commenting on geochemist Harrison Brown's _The Challenge of Man's Future_, previously referenced:

"We may well be grateful to Harrison Brown for this book on the condition of mankind as it appears to an erudite, clear-sighted, critically appraising scientist...The latest phase of technical-scientific progress, with its fantastic increase of population, has created a situation fraught with problems of hitherto unknown dimensions...This objective book has high value."


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## Guest

starthrower said:


> Nobody said everything. But the destruction of tropical forests, water/air pollution on a worldwide scale, along with the toxic waste problem is a result of mankind.


Talking about the cockroach.


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## Larkenfield

DrMike said:


> It also has the feel of adolescent-level analysis of everything being the fault of mankind.


Most problems are the fault of mankind despite whatever is happening with the sun and the rest of the solar system. Look at the devastating effects of discarded plastics in the ocean that are killing sea mammals. Who dumped them there? The fish after a thirsty day? Vacation cruise ships are dumping their waste. Look at the unbreathable air in China. Who created it? People. Look at the continuing devastation of the vital rain forests in South America. Who created it? Mankind. So there's definite indications of selfish, immature, and adolescent behavior in the human race. We may have already reached the point of no return with more species dying every year. The source of the devastation is mankind. I do not believe that any of these situations have been exaggerated and it's a matter of whether mankind has a conscience or not to change its own behavior and not drag every other species down with it and the quality of life on the rest of the planet. Such a beautiful planet!

https://www.rte.ie/news/enviroment/2019/0506/1047749-un-environment/


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## Meyerbeer Smith

Strange Magic said:


> what the ants are saying
> 
> it wont be long now it wont be long
> it wont be long now
> and it wont be long now
> it wont be long


First there were the ants ... and then the Beatles.

Climate change, global warming, and human stupidity / short-sightedness are problems; of course they are. But we're aware of these problems - and we will solve them. By March this year, we'd cured HIV; turned carbon dioxide back into coal; and were cleaning up the ocean. Chinese astronauts had grown seed on the moon. NASA says the world is greener than it was 20 years ago, largely thanks to India and China.

Over the last couple of years: A huge desert solar initiative to make Africa a renewables power-house. Scientists think we're five years away from harnessing almost unlimited power from nuclear fusion. We can turn plastic waste into green energy (cold plasma pyrolysis). Finnish scientists have turned electricity into food; it could end world hunger. Renewables energy, not coal or gas, is the future.

We have science and human ingenuity - and they ******* rock.

"Homo sapiens," a wise man once remarked. "What an inventive, invincible species. It's only a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenceless bipeds. They've survived flood, famine and plague. They've survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life. Ready to outsit eternity. They're indomitable. Indomitable."

This was, of course, shortly before they were devoured by giant space wasps.


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## Strange Magic

Good old fusion power! At any given year in the past 30-40-50 years we have been told that clean, inexhaustible fusion power is "30 years away". I am delighted that it is now 5 years away. Let's agree to revisit fusion right here in 2024. But certainly renewable energy is key to weaning the globe from oxidizing the buried carbon that has taken hundreds of millions of years to accumulate but only a few centuries to release. I'd appreciate some references we can examine on the Finns turning electricity into food; also the conversion of carbon dioxide into coal. Seeds on the moon--not sure how that fits in. The big problem, of course, is stabilizing and then reversing global human populations so that we remain well within Earth's carrying capacity, and striving meanwhile to retain as many of our non-human fellow passengers/species on our increasingly soiled planet so that they can also live out their destinies. Our grandkids will appreciate that.


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## KenOC

Unfortunately, infinite growth is built into our economic and social DNA. If our government doesn’t make that GDP grow smartly, wham! We turn the scoundrels out of office and find somebody who can.

Two words are commonly used for a lack of growth: recession and depression.


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> Unfortunately, infinite growth is built into our economic and social DNA. If our government doesn't make that GDP grow smartly, wham! We turn the scoundrels out of office and find somebody who can.
> 
> Two words are commonly used for a lack of growth: recession and depression.


Very true. Two words that are commonly used for a lack of growth and even shrinkage in treatment of cancers are: remission and cure. Cancer is one of the several metaphors/analogies that are most often evoked by clear-eyed observers of our current condition in an endlessly growing population and materials use/pollution cycle.


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## starthrower

The fossil fuel driven economy has created a new milestone this month surpassing 413.52 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere. And yes it varies slightly throughout the year with higher readings in spring, but it's up a hundred ppm since 1960.


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## Guest

Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!


Love these one-liners! But what do they mean? Anyone have a clue?


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## Guest

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.


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## Guest

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with thousands of social and cultural elites flying around the world in private Jets to environmental conferences to lecture the rest of us on saving the planet from our grocery bags and straws.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> It also has the feel of adolescent-level analysis of everything being the fault of mankind.





DrMike said:


> Talking about the cockroach.





DrMike said:


> Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!





DrMike said:


> This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with thousands of social and cultural elites flying around the world in private Jets to environmental conferences to lecture the rest of us on saving the planet from our grocery bags and straws.


sancta simplicitas


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## Strange Magic

How about the governmental and scientific "elites"? How are they supposed to get to environmental conferences; walk on the water? We see that Mike Pompeo, no friend of the environment, has made sure that the longstanding Arctic protection treaty has been scuttled--I guess he walked on the water to that conference--by killing language saying that Global Warming was a bad thing. He thinks it's a Good Thing for the Arctic--all that nasty cold and ice! Now shipping, probably mostly tankers, will be able to cruise regularly through the Northwest Passage as the Arctic ice melts away. Such puerility!

Here's the Mike Pompeo/Trump answer to Arctic warming:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48185793


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## Guest

Teleconferencing? Or Videoconferencing? That is about as carbon neutral as it gets. Would save a lot of money too, not having to put all the governmental officials and all their retinue up in fancy hotels (nothing low-brow) paid for with tax dollars, and healthy per diems to go eat better than the average person on the taxpayers' dimes.

At any rate, I spoke of the societal and cultural elites - the Al Gores and Leo Dicaprios and every other non-expert who thinks they have something important to say on the matter, but only end up filling the atmosphere with more carbon and hot air. I doubt I will contribute as much carbon to the environment in my entire life as either of these two do in a single year.


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## philoctetes

Well if you like bitcoin you are no friend to mother nature... if you like the Fed (and stock market) you are no friend to the poor. What to do?


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## Guest

I imagine I will continue to do much as I have done my entire life.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> Teleconferencing? Or Videoconferencing? That is about as carbon neutral as it gets. Would save a lot of money too, not having to put all the governmental officials and all their retinue up in fancy hotels (nothing low-brow) paid for with tax dollars, and healthy per diems to go eat better than the average person on the taxpayers' dimes.
> 
> At any rate, I spoke of the societal and cultural elites - the Al Gores and Leo Dicaprios and every other non-expert who thinks they have something important to say on the matter, but only end up filling the atmosphere with more carbon and hot air. I doubt I will contribute as much carbon to the environment in my entire life as either of these two do in a single year.


so what solutions to the problems are you proposing? 
https://www.dw.com/en/five-of-the-worlds-biggest-environmental-problems/a-35915705
you don't seem to even recognize the problems. Even if we admit that global warming is controversial and nobody know how severe threat it is, the other problems are undeniable - massive deforestation, overpopulation, biodiversity loss, plastics pollution 



. We produced all this plastic pollution in just 60 years and all you are capable of is making jokes about plastic straws. .


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## Guest

I want to live in a nuclear energy nirvana. Replace all coal-burning power plants with nuclear power plants. 
Apart from that:
Ban all oil production. Carpet the landscape with windmills and solar panels (what effect, I wonder, will that have on biodiversity?). Banish all plastics. All people will work until the age of 60, will retire for 5 years, and then, at the age of 65, report to centers where they will be turned into soylent green to feed the rest of us. Allow couples only one child, and institute forced abortions for all violations of the one child rule. Everybody will be issued a water reclamation suit, that will recycle all their bodily fluids, and this will be their primary source of drinking water. All humanity will be forced into ultra dense urban zones, depopulating all other regions and allowing it to return to nature. All personal automobiles other than bicycles will be eliminated. Everybody will be issued one set of recycled aluminum eating utensils at birth. There will be no paper or plastic items. Diets will be restricted to what Michelle Obama decides based on her backyard garden.
And we'll all live happily every after.

Or we'll just continue with progress and come up with better, cleaner ways to do things.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> I want to live in a nuclear energy nirvana. Replace all coal-burning power plants with nuclear power plants.
> Apart from that:
> Ban all oil production. Carpet the landscape with windmills and solar panels (what effect, I wonder, will that have on biodiversity?). Banish all plastics. All people will work until the age of 60, will retire for 5 years, and then, at the age of 65, report to centers where they will be turned into soylent green to feed the rest of us. Allow couples only one child, and institute forced abortions for all violations of the one child rule. Everybody will be issued a water reclamation suit, that will recycle all their bodily fluids, and this will be their primary source of drinking water. All humanity will be forced into ultra dense urban zones, depopulating all other regions and allowing it to return to nature. All personal automobiles other than bicycles will be eliminated. Everybody will be issued one set of recycled aluminum eating utensils at birth. There will be no paper or plastic items. Diets will be restricted to what Michelle Obama decides based on her backyard garden.
> And we'll all live happily every after.
> 
> Or we'll just continue with progress and come up with better, cleaner ways to do things.


or maybe supplementing people like you with iodine, so that the deficiency does not cause these severe neurodevelopmental issues.


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## Guest

There are no people like me. There is only me.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> I imagine I will continue to do much as I have done my entire life.


Don't Worry! Be Happy! Let the grandkids worry.

The quickest, easiest way to deal with a worrisome problem is to deny it exists.


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## Guest

Isn't that the way all life has proceeded? We are already bankrupting them with all the social programs we want for ourselves - why not let them solve all our other problems as well? Why do they only have to pay for our healthcare and retirement? Why not our plastics?


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> Isn't that the way all life has proceeded? We are already bankrupting them with all the social programs we want for ourselves - why not let them solve all our other problems as well? Why do they only have to pay for our healthcare and retirement? Why not our plastics?


Some truth there! "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." -Alexis De Tocqueville, ca 1830

But Congress is even cleverer than Alexis figured. It bribes the public with the still-unearned wealth of the public's own children and grandchildren.


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## Guest

The children of the WWI generation figured out how to solve the problems left behind by their parents. The children and grandchildren of the WWII generation finally figured out how to end the Cold War left to them. And while the children of the Sexual Revolution left us with new problems to overcome (HIV/AIDS, in particular), we have come a long way in treating that, although we are not quite there yet. The point is that every generation ends up, to some extent, cleaning up the problems of previous ones, in addition to dealing with their own. Humans always leave behind problems they couldn't solve or didn't get around to. It will always be that way, because, more often than not, we simply don't have the tools available to accomplish what we wish to accomplish. The technology may not yet exist, and what tools we have are inadequate to the task. But there are not a lot of problems that ultimately last for multiple generations. Some do, to be sure. Some may always be with us. But thus far, no dystopian stories ever written have come to fruition. Some have come close.


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## eugeneonagain

The most mind-boggling thing is when folk are warned of impending problems and they keep on doing exactly the same things that are causing them or scuppering attempts to fix them because they think the 'solutions' are all a leftist plot to undermine 'Murica.


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## Guest

eugeneonagain said:


> The most mind-boggling thing is when folk are warned of impending problems and they keep on doing exactly the same things that are causing them or scuppering attempts to fix them because they think the 'solutions' are all a leftist plot to undermine 'Murica.


Like people who still think socialism is a viable system?


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## philoctetes

A lot of people think GMOs are a solution. What side of that fence is the "correct" one, I dare ask the wise.


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## SixFootScowl

There has been climate change ever since the flood (about 4300 years ago). Our current and quite small warming trend is well within the normal fluctuations that have been going on since then. The sun's activity has a significant effect on our climate. The main greenhouse gas is water vapor. There is no cause for alarm.


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## senza sordino

tdc said:


> I remember an article on the cover of Time Magazine in 1977 warning us that scientists are claiming that we are heading into another ice age. Now the story has changed to global warming, meanwhile it has been unseasonably cool around these parts and apparently the ice sheets on Greenland in places have increased by 50 meters.


Only a small number of scientific papers in the 1970s predicted global cooling, the overwhelming majority of papers predicted global warming. And there haven't been any scientific papers since the late 70s predicting cooling.



DrMike said:


> Like people who still think socialism is a viable system?


Public education, public health care, unemployment insurance, old age pension, paid family leave and public roads all seem to be working here. Yet I admit, governments do nothing to mitigate global warming, most ideas and innovation come from private industry.

I worry about the future. I think global warming is our biggest threat. And we can't seem to do anything about it. We can't even do the simple things, such as sort our recycling, eat less meat and take public transit occasionally. I have no optimism for the future. I can see us collectively racing toward 800 ppm of CO2 by the end of the century.

The human race will survive, but civilization and nature will be unrecognizable once we pass through the bottle neck of ecological crunch.


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## Guest

This "wise" one is all for them. They are nearly as phenomenal as vaccines in terms of improving human health, bringing crops to regions where farming was previously unsustainable.


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## KenOC

Al Gore saw our situation coming a quarter century ago with his book _Earth in the Balance_. He recognized that populations were growing quickly in parts of the world that were relatively poor and consumed little. These new large populations would demand better lives, which would mean more consumption of food and other materials and, especially, more energy.

The combination of large populations and vastly increased demands on the world's natural systems would likely push the globe past the tipping point. All this seems much closer and clearer today than it did back in 1992. How can these people be denied by the wealthier countries, whose inhabitants already live the lives that others aspire to?

As I remember, Gore didn't have a ready answer except to somehow buy them off. But even God doesn't have that kind of money.


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## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> This "wise" one is all for them. They are nearly as phenomenal as vaccines in terms of improving human health, bringing crops to regions where farming was previously unsustainable.


They are controversial in a similar way as vaccines. Both have considerable risk/benefit issues, even more with GMOs, since they don't represent any kind of protection form disease. Perhaps famine, yes, but are the risks to "mother nature" worth it? I have my doubts unless we can just move to another planet like getting another job.

Dinosaurs are coming to a laboratory somewhere soon. I saw the movie and it wasn't pretty.


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## mmsbls

senza sordino said:


> ...
> Yet I admit, governments do nothing to mitigate global warming, most ideas and innovation come from private industry.


I believe that so far governments have not done enough, but I wouldn't say they do nothing. Without enormous government funding of battery research and government policies (carbon tax, mandates, cap and trade, etc.), the cost and energy density of batteries (specifically lithium ion) would be nowhere near present values, and thus, commercialization of battery electric vehicles would be impossible. Because of these improvements, many expect battery electric vehicles to dominate sales by the 2030 - 2040 timeframe. The technological innovations come from industry, national labs, and universities.



senza sordino said:


> I worry about the future. I think global warming is our biggest threat. And we can't seem to do anything about it. We can't even do the simple things, such as sort our recycling, eat less meat and take public transit occasionally. I have no optimism for the future. I can see us collectively racing toward 800 ppm of CO2 by the end of the century.


Let me inject some optimism into the mix here. Shell, the largest oil and gas company in the world, has a business plan of being carbon free by 2050. Essentially all of their revenue will come from production of renewable electricity and hydrogen.

We work closely with many oil and gas companies as well as auto and truck manufacturers. All of these companies clearly believe that zero-emission vehicles are the future, and all are working toward that end developing battery electric and fuel cell vehicles, installing hydrogen fueling stations, and decarbonizing energy pathways. The real questions are how fast must we move toward a zero or near zero carbon target, and what are the best paths to that target? There are a large number of people within governments, universities, national labs, non-profits, and industry working hard to understand these paths over the next 10 to 30 year timeframes.

I used to be rather pessimistic, but I'm slowly becoming more optimistic as I see the movement from this array of actors. I'm not sure we will completely mitigate climate change, but I think we have a reasonable chance of significantly reducing projected negative effects.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> This "wise" one is all for them. They are nearly as phenomenal as vaccines in terms of improving human health, bringing crops to regions where farming was previously unsustainable.


It took me awhile to discover what "them" referred to. I agree. One of the most amazing studies I've seen involved over 100 billion animals. The meta-analysis looked at animals fed both before and after the introduction of GE feed. They concluded:



> These field data sets, representing over 100 billion animals following the introduction of GE crops, did not reveal unfavorable or perturbed trends in livestock health and productivity.


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## Luchesi

It's still quaint to hear folks who don't know what the planetary circulations are doing (and couldn't read a chart to find out for themselves) saying they haven't detected anything to worry about.


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## Luchesi

Fritz Kobus said:


> There has been climate change ever since the flood (about 4300 years ago). Our current and quite small warming trend is well within the normal fluctuations that have been going on since then. The sun's activity has a significant effect on our climate. The main greenhouse gas is water vapor. There is no cause for alarm.


I think the Sun being closest to Earth in January has 10 times greater warming effect than the most intense solar activity has ever had.

Water vapor is in hydrostatic equilibrium. Greenhouse gas emissions go up.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> The children of the WWI generation figured out how to solve the problems left behind by their parents.


The result? World War II



> The children and grandchildren of the WWII generation finally figured out how to end the Cold War left to them.


The result of World War II was the Cold War; after that was fixed, the result was Vladimir Putin and Jihadist Islam.



> The point is that every generation ends up, to some extent, cleaning up the problems of previous ones, in addition to dealing with their own. Humans always leave behind problems they couldn't solve or didn't get around to.


The problem left behind now, unprecedented in either human or planetary history, is a monster global population, now of almost 8 billions, crowding out almost all other species and filling almost all of Earth's environments, while threatening to double in size.



> It will always be that way, because, more often than not, we simply don't have the tools available to accomplish what we wish to accomplish. The technology may not yet exist, and what tools we have are inadequate to the task.


We do actually have the tools because we have the necessary knowledge of the problem. But employing the tools presents such challenges to people's everyday thinking and to powerful ideologies that block rational thought, that, as we witness here in this thread, we have denial and paralysis.



> But there are not a lot of problems that ultimately last for multiple generations.


But this is one of them and it's a biggie!



> Some do, to be sure. Some may always be with us. But thus far, no dystopian stories ever written have come to fruition. Some have come close.


Actually, many dystopian stories have come to fruition (the Irish potato famine; the great Bengali and Ukrainian famines; the recurring famines in Africa). True, these have been "local", only involving millions, and could have been either prevented or mitigated. But they weren't--that's the point. What we are witnessing today is "the dance of the dream-led masses down the dark mountain". Look for an uptick in dystopian stories, even if we finally begin to act on a massive scale to reverse the assault on the biosphere.


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## SixFootScowl

Luchesi said:


> I think the Sun being closest to Earth in January has 10 times greater warming effect than the most intense solar activity has ever had.
> 
> Water vapor is in hydrostatic equilibrium. Greenhouse gas emissions go up.


Unlike solar flares, the earth's distance from the sun averages out over the course of a year.

Yes, but water vapor is a huge component of greenhouse gas. CO2 is fractional to that. And we are talking fractional increase of this fractional greenhouse gas, or a negligible increase relative to all greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.


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## Guest

Global poverty is the lowest it's ever been in spite of the current population. Less people are starving, in spite of the population growth. But by all means, let's continue to foster this zealous, unshakeable faith in Malthus, Ehrlich, and Hardin in spite of all data to the contrary.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.


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## Luchesi

Fritz Kobus said:


> Unlike solar flares, the earth's distance from the sun averages out over the course of a year.
> 
> Yes, but water vapor is a huge component of greenhouse gas. CO2 is fractional to that. And we are talking fractional increase of this fractional greenhouse gas, or a negligible increase relative to all greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.


Every sentence above is correct, and it's why change has been slight in terms of temperature. But the heating effect of the most intense solar activity we have records for is only about a tenth of the Sun's heating increase from apogee to perigee. I was surprised at this. It's counterintuitive.

Regional climates are changing, barely perceptibly, weather systems are getting slightly stronger, there have been consistent seasonal delays depending upon the sequences of the planetary waves at those times of the year. Some hurricanes are blown apart before they can form now, but when they do form they're slightly stronger.


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## Strange Magic

*Some Resources on the Problem*

Garrett Hardin, in his profound essay _The Tragedy of the Commons_, where he lays out for even the dullest mind the remorseless working of the Malthusian race between population growth and the Earth's ability to feed that cancerously growing population, quotes the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead on tragedy: "The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things." We are witnessing in miniature here in this thread that sort of tragedy: the refusal to acknowledge what now several generations of scientists have been warning us about--that our irreplaceable planet is in danger of a mass extinction event, human-caused, that may equal the great extinctions of past geological eras. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make blind."

Garrett Hardin's crucial essay:
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of_the_commons.pdf

Some others were not blind: In 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about Global Warming...
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-warned-the-oil-industry-about-global-warming

The National Academy of Sciences and Britain's Royal Society have opened their eyes (the evidence is too compelling to ignore):
http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf

NASA is awake, aware, and warning...
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

The National Institutes of Health sees the problem...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280423/

......The remorseless working of things. We can fix this. But minimizing the situation, or worse, ignoring it or repudiating it, will ensure that remorseless working.


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## Jacck

Fritz Kobus said:


> There has been climate change ever since the flood (about 4300 years ago). Our current and quite small warming trend is well within the normal fluctuations that have been going on since then. The sun's activity has a significant effect on our climate. The main greenhouse gas is water vapor. There is no cause for alarm.


the flood was 12 000 years ago, when a comet impact caused a mini ice age. The subsequent ice melting could have cause a flood, that became the basis of some summerian myths, and the jews borrowed these myths from mesopotamia
https://www.sciencealert.com/ancien...n-10-950-bc-and-changing-civilisation-forever


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Garrett Hardin, in his profound essay _The Tragedy of the Commons_, where he lays out for even the dullest mind the remorseless working of the Malthusian race between population growth and the Earth's ability to feed that cancerously growing population, quotes the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead on tragedy: "The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things." We are witnessing in miniature here in this thread that sort of tragedy: the refusal to acknowledge what now several generations of scientists have been warning us about--that our irreplaceable planet is in danger of a mass extinction event, human-caused, that may equal the great extinctions of past geological eras. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make blind."
> 
> Garrett Hardin's crucial essay:
> http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of_the_commons.pdf
> 
> Some others were not blind: In 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about Global Warming...
> https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-warned-the-oil-industry-about-global-warming
> 
> The National Academy of Sciences and Britain's Royal Society have opened their eyes (the evidence is too compelling to ignore):
> http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf
> 
> NASA is awake, aware, and warning...
> https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
> 
> The National Institutes of Health sees the problem...
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280423/
> 
> ......The remorseless working of things. We can fix this. But minimizing the situation, or worse, ignoring it or repudiating it, will ensure that remorseless working.


Good Lord, not Hardin again. His historical assumptions about commons usage were wrong. Humans are actually quite capable of managing consumption of common resources.

Malthus, Ehrlich, Hardin - they made predictions that sound and feel like they should be right. They appeal to small scale examples, and extrapolate out to planetary scales, and assume all things will always be equal. And their predictions continue to come and go, unrealized. Do you know what you call someone who repeatedly makes predictions that never materialize? Wrong. Ehrlich was wrong as well. When was that Population Bomb supposed to hit us? When were there supposed to be the massive famines? Neither of these people ever allowed for changing circumstances. According to them all, we should be in great global decline at this point, if not in a post population bomb hellscape of roving bands of survivors wandering the empty roads, scavenging for food or turning feral and cannibalistic. In fact the data is the opposite.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> Good Lord, not Hardin again. His historical assumptions about commons usage were wrong. Humans are actually quite capable of managing consumption of common resources.
> 
> Malthus, Ehrlich, Hardin - they made predictions that sound and feel like they should be right. They appeal to small scale examples, and extrapolate out to planetary scales, and assume all things will always be equal. And their predictions continue to come and go, unrealized. Do you know what you call someone who repeatedly makes predictions that never materialize? Wrong. Ehrlich was wrong as well. When was that Population Bomb supposed to hit us? When were there supposed to be the massive famines? Neither of these people ever allowed for changing circumstances. According to them all, we should be in great global decline at this point, if not in a post population bomb hellscape of roving bands of survivors wandering the empty roads, scavenging for food or turning feral and cannibalistic. In fact the data is the opposite.


nature obviously is in decline
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/landmark-analysis-documents-alarming-global-decline-nature
I hope you are not an actual doctor. That would be a real shame to our profession. Such a lack of basic logic and moronic opinions.


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## SixFootScowl

Jacck said:


> the flood was 12 000 years ago, when a comet impact caused a mini ice age. The subsequent ice melting could have cause a flood, that became the basis of some summerian myths, and the jews borrowed these myths from mesopotamia
> https://www.sciencealert.com/ancien...n-10-950-bc-and-changing-civilisation-forever


We obviously see things differently and the Bible does document the flood and gives enough information to locate it in the time frame of approximately 4300 years ago, with the creation of the earth and cosmos about 6000 years ago. The worldwide flood is the basis of all the flood stores around the world and it can be shown that the jews did not borrow from myths but documented the actual event (see *Chapter 9 of this book*). But that is a discussion for groups.


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## Guest

Setting aside Hardin's horrific suggestions to control population growth, this paragraph is probably the crux of his argument:


> Adding together the component
> partial utilities, the rational
> herdsman concludes that the only
> sensible course for him to pursue is
> to add another animal to his herd.
> And another, and another …But
> this is the conclusion reached by
> each and every rational herdsman
> sharing a commons. Therein is the
> tragedy. Each man is locked into a
> system that compels him to
> increase his herd without limit - in
> a world that is limited. Ruin is the
> destination toward which all men
> rush, each pursuing his own best
> interest in a society that believes in
> the freedom of the commons.
> Freedom in a commons brings ruin
> to all.


The problem is this is not a realistic scenario, and never has been. For as long as populations have been large enough for this "tragedy of the commons" to come to fruition, there is actually significant evidence of functioning methods to control the tragedy from occurring. It has not been as Hardin described - humans don't stumble into simple self-interest without any controlling influence, as Hardin suggests. This, perhaps, is why such apocalyptic predictions don't ever come to pass, or why they always seem to be just beyond the horizon.


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> nature obviously is in decline
> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/landmark-analysis-documents-alarming-global-decline-nature
> I hope you are not an actual doctor. That would be a real shame to our profession. Such a lack of basic logic and moronic opinions.


And there is the inevitable ad hominem.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> And there is the inevitable ad hominem.


I appologize, I should control myself better and not react in such a manner. But I find engaging in any discussion with people like you very frustrating, because your ideological bubble in impervious to any arguments or any facts. One could cite thousands of scientific studies supporting one's points of view, but it would not have any impact. You are completely unaware of the countless logical fallacies in your arguments.


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> I appologize, I should control myself better and not react in such a manner. But I find engaging in any discussion with people like you very frustrating, because your ideological bubble in impervious to any arguments or any facts. One could cite thousands of scientific studies supporting one's points of view, but it would not have any impact. You are completely unaware of the countless logical fallacies in your arguments.


Oh, well if I frustrate you, then by all means attack me. I must have missed that sub clause in the TOS.

My issue is not so much with the facts, but with the extrapolations and the policy proposals. They almost inevitably involve greater concentration of power within ever more centralized governments and increasing control over and loss of liberties. As I have repeatedly stated, the problems with the Malthusians and the neo-Malthusians has never been their logic, and their data is often perfectly accurate (except, as I have mentioned, with Hardin). The problem is their predictions of future conditions. Climate, resource scarcity, agricultural capacity, population ceilings, worldwide famines - time and again we find these predictions to be wrong, and virtually every time on the high side.


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## Guest

The problem here for the most part is as I have stated above. The data may very well be sound. And it is true that scientists do, in fact, make predictions based on the data. But while the data is what the data is, the interpretation is not. Truth in science is a treadmill. What is true today need not be true tomorrow. That isn't to say I am calling it false - it is as true as we can determine at the time. Scientific truths are true right up until the point they are no longer true. It is a pointless endeavor to go look back at once was considered true and laugh at how wrong they had it. They had it as right as they could at the time, given their knowledge of the situation and their technological capabilities of observation and experimentation. The whole thing with scientific truth is you have to be willing to throw it out the window once you get new, more reliable evidence that may say differently.

Which brings us to how this applies to this. My issue isn't with the data presented. My issue isn't with the predictions of Malthus and Ehrlich and Hardin. At the time of their predictions, they were dealing with the facts on hand, made their conclusions based on that, and made a prediction. For Malthus, at that time, agricultural output was only increasing arithmetically while population was increasing geometrically, and given that knowledge, it could be logically argued that humans would outpace food. But things changed in unforeseen ways. But here is the criticism not made by those of you who claim a fealty to science - you didn't change with the facts on the ground. Same with Ehrlich. His predictions were proven wrong. In virtually every other scientific field, that many wrong predictions would lead to less credibility, not more. The reason why Darwin's theory still persists is because so many predictions resulting from his work have borne out, lending it more credibility. But neo-Malthusian believers are dealing more in faith than actual science. Their actual predictions don't come true. So then they co-opt other not-predicted facts and retrofit them onto their model and say, "see, we were right all along, just not in the way we said we would be." That isn't science. That is ad hoc. Scientific testing allows for falsifiability. If you can't test for the possibility that something might be false, that is outside of science. And that is the problem with all of this - no matter how many times the Malthusian predictions are proven false, there are no consequences. It has reached the point where it can't be proven false, even though it repeatedly has. That is unscientific. 

I'm not going to argue with the data. I'm sure that surveys of biodiversity are as accurate as our current technology allows, and that diversity has gone down. I have no doubt about acreage of rainforest lost. I have no doubt about any of the actual data - I am just not as pessimistic as you all regarding what that means for the future, nor am I in agreement with the types of "drastic measures" that are proposed to mediate those predicted results. Show me how that is unscientific. I read papers all the time in my field where the data and methods are sound, and the evidence is clear, but I disagree with their interpretation of the results. I have presented my research in national science conferences, speaking back to back with another researcher who did very similar experiments, got very similar results, and we both completely disagreed on what they meant. And that happens all the time. And only time will tell which of the two of us was right (in one specific instance, turns out I was right, and the other guy's lab actually vindicated my point).

So don't come at me by attacking my knowledge of science. You don't know me or what I know. You aren't presenting scientific arguments here. You are citing somebody else's work and predictions, and I don't agree with those predictions, or with their preferred policies (I didn't realize being a climate scientist made you an expert in government policy as well).


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## Strange Magic

DrMike's thesis in a nutshell is quite simple and easy to grasp, and he has grasped it firmly. It states that if a predicted bad thing (or maybe even a predicted good thing) has not yet occurred, it never will occur. He has stated in this thread that we have sometimes come close to dystopian outcomes, but since we (in his view) have not yet experienced a dystopian outcome, we never, ever will. This is the source of his comfort. But his thesis is not scientific; it relies on magical thinking. Fritz Kobus' source of comfort lies elsewhere.

DrMike's critique of Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons--and he does excellently quote the core of Hardin's thesis for which I thank him--is that "there is actually significant evidence of functioning methods to control the tragedy from occurring". He refers to the work of a Panglossian economist who found some instances at some times and places where people so kept their populations in check and so managed their shared resource as to not destroy it (yet). But the fact that global populations have grown with cancer-like rapidity for the last few centuries so that scientists have begun sounding the alarms with increasing stridency calls into question the Hardin-doubters and threatens the short-focus complacency of the Don't Worry, Be Happy crowd. It's clear that their opposition to vigorous effort to acknowledge the crisis and deal with it stems from self-induced fear that someone's economic/social ox will be gored and Mad Scientists will take over everything.

DrMike states:


> My issue is not so much with the facts, but with the extrapolations and the policy proposals. They almost inevitably involve greater concentration of power within ever more centralized governments and increasing control over and loss of liberties. As I have repeatedly stated, the problems with the Malthusians and the neo-Malthusians has never been their logic, and their data is often perfectly accurate (except, as I have mentioned, with Hardin). The problem is their predictions of future conditions. Climate, resource scarcity, agricultural capacity, population ceilings, worldwide famines - time and again we find these predictions to be wrong, and virtually every time on the high side.


This is an astonishing admission. DrMike does not dispute either the facts or the logic; he just hates the conclusion--that sooner or later the chickens come home to roost. He hasn't seen or heard the chickens yet, while the vast majority of scientists in the relevant disciplines hear them clearly and getting closer. But he stuffs his fingers in his ears, just in case.


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## Strange Magic

> DrMike: "I'm not going to argue with the data. I'm sure that surveys of biodiversity are as accurate as our current technology allows, and that diversity has gone down. I have no doubt about acreage of rainforest lost. I have no doubt about any of the actual data - I am just not as pessimistic as you all regarding what that means for the future, nor am I in agreement with the types of "drastic measures" that are proposed to mediate those predicted results"


Just repeating to again confirm to myself that DrMike has no argument with the data. And he has told us that the logic is sound. He just thinks (hopes) everything will work out even if we don't try too hard to fix things through vigorous prudent action now. Maybe the population won't again double in the next few decades. Maybe technological fixes like "clean coal" or more nuclear fission power plants will help, or another Green Revolution in agriculture will happen along. Though these are not his ideas, we have seen here references to making food from electricity and turning carbon dioxide into coal, when what is needed is a vast range of new proposals for generating power and using materials, saving existing ecosystems, and beginning to roll back global populations through full women's emancipation, equality, and confidential control over their own fertility. It's going to be a quite a ride should we choose to save our only planet, but it will be worth it. At least I think so.


----------



## Guest

And for SM, the fact that these predictions haven't been fulfilled - very specific predictions with very specific timeframes - is, like so many conspiracy theories, only further proof of the inevitability of the claims. We are to believe that these prognosticators are so brilliant in every other possible way in their predictions - down to what exactly will happen - but please disregard the critical matter of the fact that they haven't actually happened when they said they would (in fact, with Malthus, we are several centuries off, thus far).

But let's assume for the sake of argument that the predictions are true. I have asked this of SM before, and am not sure he answered this to anybody's satisfaction. If population levels have surpassed the carrying capacity, then it stands to reason that the solution is to get them back down to sustainable levels. Now, Hardin insisted that this could only be accomplished by forced sterilization and leaving the dregs of society - and the world - to their fates. Hitler would have enjoyed him. SM has rejected that part of Hardin - thankfully! But his notion is to give women more rights in the Middle East and Africa, and then we will control the population. That sounds wonderful. Admirable. Women should have equal rights. Nobody can argue with that. So what is his timeframe for getting that done? Where would you say those regions without women's rights line up with Western European/American history? Are they right on the cusp of the suffragette movement, like we were ~100 years ago? Maybe a little further back than that? Do we actually have that much time? Tell me - in terms of his grand plan of universal global women's rights, and my "laissez faire" approach, which one of us will have gotten the population down to the sustainable level before the supposed ecological apocalypse is upon us?

Let's be realistic here - if your population predictions are correct, you would need something at least on the level of the combined death toll from the Holocaust, the Stalin purges, the Mao genocide, and the return of smallpox, as well as several rounds of black plague to get down to the levels they say are the carrying capacity - and SM thinks his logic is superior to mine because he has this pie in the sky dream of making the Middle East and Africa liberal paradises for women. If this prediction is correct, it seems to me there is not really much of anything we can do - save for praying that Thanos exists and that Marvel-created neo-Malthusian comes and snaps his fingers. 

If the neo-Malthusians are correct, we are dead already, we just don't know it. So for practical matters, that knowledge is useless. My model, though, allows for innovation to still shape our future. We can replace resources that become scarce with something new. Bottlenecks are not necessarily dead ends.


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## Strange Magic

I have never imposed or postulated a timeframe for the essential, necessary, and supremely just full emancipation of women and their full, confidential control over their fertility. I know that such an endeavor, in the face of massive cultural, social, economic, and especially religious opposition, and the massive dead weight and inertia of millennia, will take a long, long time to be realized. But free women with access to effective contraception are what has resulted in the stabilization and reduction of populations in the West. Such measures also sporadically begin to show their effect in some developing countries--the contrasting demographics of Thailand and the Philippines over the past decades show this clearly: they had equal populations not all that long ago, but Thailand's per capita wealth has grown as its birth rate has dropped, while the Philippines unhappily shows the opposite outcome.

No, it may prove even more difficult to emancipate fully the female half of the global population than to begin to arrest the non-population component of environmental degradation. But if we hope to ever have a viable, healthy planet, we need to begin the process of full female emancipation now!


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## Guest

But I've heard the earth only has 12 more years. Will you have women fully emancipated before then? Will the world still exist by the time women are fully emancipated, or will Ehrlich's long-predicted population bomb have gone off long before you have achieved your goal? That's your problem with Hardin - if you believe his predictions, then really only his drastic actions could stop the conclusions he predicted. Appeals to conscience, as he argued, won't do it. All you are proposing is shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic.


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## Guest

Hardin's own words regarding SM's method for controlling population growth:


> It is a mistake to think that we
> can control the breeding of mankind
> in the long run by an appeal to
> conscience.


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## Strange Magic

I actually have the capacity to differ from Garrett Hardin on the issue of the preferred way of retarding and reversing population growth, and have been consistently clear on the emancipation of women as both a proven and a humane way of dealing with the problem of continual population growth. The emancipation of women also has a profound moral and justice component. DrMike is, of course, silent on his solution, preferring to attack mine by attempting heroically but futilely to link me in lockstep with every utterance of Garrett Hardin. It's fun to see him try ; there is a growing hint of looking for something/anything to neutralize Hardin's diagnosis of the problem. For those interested, here are links to the Thailand/Philippines pairing:

https://opinion.inquirer.net/106791/divergent-twins-ph-thailand
https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/thailand.philippines/demographics


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## starthrower

From what I was reading, the population explosion in parts of the third world won't even begin to slow up until mid century. It's not just about women's rights and education, there's the correlation between high infant mortality rates and fertility. Access to medical care and other positive factors are reducing the mortality rate but it's going to take time for things to level off. So it looks like the situation will get worse before it gets better. We'll all be dead by then so good luck to the future!


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I actually have the capacity to differ from Garrett Hardin on the issue of the preferred way of retarding and reversing population growth, and have been consistently clear on the emancipation of women as both a proven and a humane way of dealing with the problem of continual population growth. The emancipation of women also has a profound moral and justice component. DrMike is, of course, silent on his solution, preferring to attack mine by attempting heroically but futilely to link me in lockstep with every utterance of Garrett Hardin. It's fun to see him try ; there is a growing hint of looking for something/anything to neutralize Hardin's diagnosis of the problem. For those interested, here are links to the Thailand/Philippines pairing:
> 
> https://opinion.inquirer.net/106791/divergent-twins-ph-thailand
> https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/thailand.philippines/demographics


You misread me. If the population crisis is as dire as you say, then there is not enough time for your solution. If there is enough time to implement your solution, then the population crisis is not as dire as you claim. So which is it? 
My point with Hardin was that if the population crisis is truly as dire as you say, then his solution and draconian measures are they only way to possibly stop it in such a short time, if not even worse, like I described.


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## Luchesi

Jacck said:


> the flood was 12 000 years ago, when a comet impact caused a mini ice age. The subsequent ice melting could have cause a flood, that became the basis of some summerian myths, and the jews borrowed these myths from mesopotamia
> https://www.sciencealert.com/ancien...n-10-950-bc-and-changing-civilisation-forever


The Noah's flood is scientifically impossible, so if people prefer morality stories about magical events then they can't be lifted up, because the impulse for 'believing' their OWN tradition's idiosyncratic and manipulative arguments is a primal response. Is it a conscious process?


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> You misread me. If the population crisis is as dire as you say, then there is not enough time for your solution. If there is enough time to implement your solution, then the population crisis is not as dire as you claim. So which is it?
> My point with Hardin was that if the population crisis is truly as dire as you say, then his solution and draconian measures are they only way to possibly stop it in such a short time, if not even worse, like I described.


I do not misread you. We both know exactly what I am saying and have said many times, in many places on TC. And you do not misread me though you feign confusion. There are no guarantees that the cancerous growth of population will be arrested and reversed in 12 years, or 20, or 50, or 100. My point is that, beyond both fear and hope, the sane and rational people of the world strive to their utmost to work for full female equality and autonomy, as we know it both works to stabilize and then reduce human populations, and the effort is morally required for its own sake


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## Guest

Progress and innovation, modernizing societies. The things I want. Those have had a greater impact throughout history on improving the lot of people, especially women. You think some UN led campaign can do it better? Doubtful.

Clearly the population apocalypse is not as dire as you claim. I suspect it is just fear mongering to get your preferred progressive policies passed.


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## SixFootScowl

Luchesi said:


> The Noah's flood is scientifically impossible, so if people prefer morality stories about magical events then they can't be lifted up, because the impulse for 'believing' their OWN tradition's idiosyncratic and manipulative arguments is a primal response. Is it a conscious process?


You need to read this book. The evidence fits a recent, world-wide, catastrophic flood.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Clearly the population apocalypse is not as dire as you claim. I suspect it is just fear mongering to get your preferred progressive policies passed.


Exposed at last! Yes, DrMike penetrates to the heart of the conspiracy. And it's a vast conspiracy of Socialist authoritarians who invented a population "problem" and linked it to AGW, habitat and species loss, and biosphere pollution in order to get "progressive policies" passed. It began with Malthus, added Harrison Brown and Albert Einstein, blossomed with Ehrlich and Hardin, and now has metastasized to include the world's scientific institutions and associations. This is a much more rational explanation than the one asserting that there is, in fact, a real crisis.


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## Guest

Foolish me, I thought Einstein was a physicist. Didn't realize he also had expertise in environmental science or ecology. The magical power of the Doctorate. By the way, can you provide us with a cheat sheet as to what aspects of Hardin we should fully believe and which we can mock derisively? You're the one who brings him into every one of these types of conversations.


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## Larkenfield

I see ecological challenges ahead! I know they mean well, but…






Gee, perhaps just maybe, quite possibly, just taking a wild guess, a shot in the dark, more education on the impact of Homo sapiens on our global environment is needed in schools, starting from the ground up in kindergarten, or better yet, prenatally in the womb. Everything in nature is connected and so are we. In the meantime, as the Yoda of Baseball once said: "When you come to the fork in the road, take it!"


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## KenOC

Early agricultural societies were universally built along rivers and were subject to periodic floods, some severe. China has its own flood legend, far different from the Sumerian/Jewish version. The land flooded due to too much rain. Floodwaters were drained by an emperor using standard civil engineering methods -- raising levees to contain the rivers and digging canals to drain the land. This was about 2000 BCE.

"The inundating waters seemed to assail the heavens, and in their extent embraced the hills and overtopped the great mounds, so that the people were bewildered and overwhelmed. I opened passages for the streams throughout the nine provinces and conducted them to the seas. I deepened the channels and conducted them to the streams." So saith the Great Yu. Lots more detail *here*.


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## Luchesi

Fritz Kobus said:


> You need to read this book. The evidence fits a recent, world-wide, catastrophic flood.


I'm glad that you can accept this feel-good worldview. I'm not able to. 
I'd like to be like a religious person. Because I assume it's our natural and comfortable state of living, and so it always seems self-defeating to me to rebel against so many hundreds of thousands of years.

And yet beyond that I actually think that for me, it would be disrespectful for me to so simplify a 'god's' creation.

I do believe in something beyond current human understanding. Science is showing us a glimpse of it. The per unit strength of Dark Energy and the strength of the Higgs field are a revelation for figuring out a glimpse of our true reality.


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## SixFootScowl

Larkenfield said:


> I see ecological challenges ahead! I know they mean well, but…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Gee, perhaps just maybe, quite possibly, just taking a wild guess, a shot in the dark, more education on the impact of Homo sapiens on our global environment is needed in school, starting from the ground up in kindergarten, or better yet, prenatally in the womb. Everything in nature is connected and so are we. In the meantime, as the Yoda of Baseball once said: "When you come to the fork in the road, take it!"


And these people vote!


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Foolish me, I thought Einstein was a physicist. Didn't realize he also had expertise in environmental science or ecology. The magical power of the Doctorate. By the way, can you provide us with a cheat sheet as to what aspects of Hardin we should fully believe and which we can mock derisively? You're the one who brings him into every one of these types of conversations.


No. No! Don't beat yourself up for failing to realize that Albert Einstein just may have been smarter than the average PhD and could read a well-researched generalist book written for an educated lay audience and understand it quickly and easily. I suspect I could also. Same with someone reading Hardin's _The Tragedy of the Commons_, were they possessed of even an average education. Such a person, even a PhD, would be able to puzzle out just what Hardin was saying, and form, like Einstein did with Brown's book, an opinion of the validity of Hardin's thesis, yet question aspects of Hardin's means for ameliorating the situation; means that he does not elaborate upon in the Tragedy. There, he writes only of the necessity (at some point) of renouncing the "freedom to breed". I have made clear my own alternate proposal.


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## Guest

So you have enough expertise to both decide where Hardin is and is not right, and to even correct him? But nobody else does? That is some hubris.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> So you have enough expertise to both decide where Hardin is and is not right, and to even correct him? But nobody else does? That is some hubris.


Who is saying that, exactly? I certainly claim the expertise; you do also--in fact, you led the way in "correcting" Hardin--not in most everyone's usual manner by offering alternatives, but in the DrMike manner--by saying, because Hardin's solution bothered you, his entire thesis was wrong (or is it correct now? With you one is never quite sure.). And, as usual, offering no alternatives.


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## Guest

You missed it again. I object to both his hypothesis and conclusion. But you only allow yourself to be able to correct him. You set yourself up as the sole arbiter of what he got right and what he got wrong. And I have offered numerous ideas for what I would like to see happen. You just ignore me because you like to pretend I haven't


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## Strange Magic

Doctor, I cannot help you .


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## Guest

By the way, lest anybody be mislead, Hardin's paper we keep discussing is not a scientific study. It is opinion, a think piece published in a science journal. There is no data presented in the paper for us to evaluate, no methodology for us to scrutinize. It is just him holding forth on what he believes.


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## Guest

That's a sophisticated way of saying you surrender


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## Guest

By the way, referring to me as stupid counts as an ad hominem attack even if you do it in German. That's two of you now. What is it with those on your side that can't help but hurling insults?


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## Guest

Oh, you don't leave it up? What is this the new strategy - throw an insult at me just long enough for me to see it, and then edit it before you get in trouble with the moderators, pretending you never said anything insulting? If you had apologized and then removed it, that would be one thing. But here you are subverting the TOS by gambling that there is no moderator on here right now.


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## Guest

Lest the mods are fooled by your quick edit to cover your butt, this is what SM had posted above before saying Doctor, I cannot help you.


> Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens


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## Strange Magic

Please, Doctor, you can do better than this. Everybody knows that Hardin's essay, published in the journal _Science_ and one of the most cited works of that journal, was an essay. Does that make it "wrong"? Or irrelevant? Let us together encourage people to read it themselves, for themselves. Malthus' key work was an essay also, as have been most of the major commentaries on human affairs that have affected the thoughts and lives of millions.

BTW I got rid of the German, but you keep getting away from discussing the larger subjects and instead are hyperfocused on how Hardin said what he did, somehow trying to find something with which discredit him (or me). Good luck with that. Let all read Hardin's "essay" and see what they think. Meanwhile, your comments on any of my other references--say, the Thailand/Philippines comparison? Carrying capacity? NASA and National Academy of Sciences and Royal Society and NIH statements? They're all "essays" too, but you likely haven't read them.


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## Strange Magic

Note: Let's now hyperfocus on Strange Magic--more relevant than the issues at hand. Love it!


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## Guest

I will focus on you because you feel the need to level an insult against me. For all interested, this is exactly what happens in the political groups. Luckily my advice send to be heeded and they are dying out again.


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## Guest

If you were confident in your position, insulting me would not have been necessary.


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## Strange Magic

Getting away from the Doctor's current obsession with me (though I should be flattered), here is an expanded statement from me on female equality and some reasons it has been difficult to achieve (this statement has not been cleared by the Saudi government):

Full Female Equality:
The evidence is clear to me that full female equality is the key to establishing a viable future for both humanity and the biosphere. Full female equality would involve women being completely in charge of their reproductive functions--universal access to contraception and, if needed, abortion (though complete and confidential access to contraception would largely eliminate abortion). It also involves women in positions of equal authority throughout societies. The result of full female equality would be both more rational, caring, and humane politics, and a stable, sustainable population, which is probably a tenth of today's world numbers. Religion's record regarding female equality is terrible, at best. I need not bore anyone with the dismal details, other than that most religions regard women as mere breedstock and servants, whose fate is best determined by the decisions of men.

The waning of religion has occurred simultaneously with the increasing emancipation of women in many of the countries of northwestern Europe. The result has been a stabilization of population and a rational approach to managing the environment, especially the use of energy and the use of land. Nowhere has perfection been achieved, but these countries can be regarded as successful experiments showing that it is possible to have a humane, viable society where religion is no longer an active opponent of a rational and egalitarian social structure. The tragedy will be the engulfing of these experiments by a tsunami of billions of people steeped in irrational ideologies and/or inflamed by religious zealotry and intent on repudiating science and on returning women to thralldom and to compulsory breeding. It probably will all end badly, and religion as the most "acceptable" form of intellectually confining ideology will shoulder much of the blame.


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## Guest

You can't have it both ways. We can't both be in an existential crisis where the population is already past caring capacity and the Apocalypse is nigh, and then purpose the incredibly slow solution of social change in countries and regions that, even in this modern age, are still highly resistant. We're not talking about regions on the cusp of this change - we're talking about places where girls will be thrust back into a burning building because they dared try to save their lives without first covering their heads. Places where women are still stoned to death for the crime of being raped. Places where people still think raping a virgin girl can cure them of HIV. I'd say we are, best case scenario, at least a century away from achieving your goals. Not that it isn't a worthy endeavor, but in terms of it as a working solution for averting the imminent demise of our planet, it is really rather wanting.

See, I did that without insulting you. Not that hard, if you really try.


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## Strange Magic

Yes, I can have it both ways. What I cannot fathom is your continual setting-up of nonsensical choices that I "must" make between two parallel lines of thought and action. I can simultaneously agitate for changes in every sort of existing policy, fully conscious that they will likely operate on different schedules/timeframes. Are you counseling that we not oppose the extremes of fundamentalist religions everywhere as they shackle and deform women? Again I say: Doctor, I cannot help you!


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## Guest

Your solution, then, to the population problem is not compatible with actually solving the problem in a timeframe that will make a difference. While the 12-year doomsday clock is ridiculous, a lot of the predictions speak in terms of the next century. Your solution won't get it done in that timeframe. That's like saying the Hoover Dam is about to burst - quick, let's go get our shovels! The notion is right - we should get to work. But the scale and timeframe of your solution - individuals with shovels - is unlikely to solve the problem before the disaster strikes.

If the population problem is dire, I'm sorry - your solution just isn't aggressive enough. Given how emotional you are on the subject (and how you tend to lash out at those who disagree with you), I would think you would be taking the solution a bit more seriously.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> By the way, lest anybody be mislead, Hardin's paper we keep discussing is not a scientific study. It is opinion, a think piece published in a science journal. There is no data presented in the paper for us to evaluate, no methodology for us to scrutinize. It is just him holding forth on what he believes.


and what are your right-wing dogmas about "infinite human invention"? Hard facts or beliefs by some right-wing ideologues? I know similar ideologies, for example the Austrian school of economics, and consider it pure religion. Economics is not even a science, since it does not use the scientific method. Cherry-picking selected incidents from history, cherry-picking "failed" predictions of ecologists and disregarding preditions tha actually came true, using straw man etc. to construct right-wing narratives.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Your solution, then, to the population problem is not compatible with actually solving the problem in a timeframe that will make a difference. While the 12-year doomsday clock is ridiculous, a lot of the predictions speak in terms of the next century. Your solution won't get it done in that timeframe. That's like saying the Hoover Dam is about to burst - quick, let's go get our shovels! The notion is right - we should get to work. But the scale and timeframe of your solution - individuals with shovels - is unlikely to solve the problem before the disaster strikes.
> 
> If the population problem is dire, I'm sorry - your solution just isn't aggressive enough. Given how emotional you are on the subject (and how you tend to lash out at those who disagree with you), I would think you would be taking the solution a bit more seriously.


Again I repeat: Doctor, I cannot help you! Yet I await your cogent solution (to anything).


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## Guest

Infinite human invention is "right-wing dogma?" In what way? The evidence is in my favor for human invention. Since the end of the 19th century, one might be excused for having massive optimism in the adaptability of man. In Western nations, we dropped infant mortality significantly. We eradicated smallpox and have very nearly eradicated polio, and have several other very effective vaccines. Diabetes is no longer an early death sentence (I have an insulin pump right now, strapped to my belt, that in many ways behaves like a pancreas). We went from not being able to fly at all to making a return trip to the moon. We can transplant numerous tissues from one person to another now, including hearts. Simple infections that used to kill people now can be treated with an antibiotic. We have gone from horses and trains to the internal combustion engine to all electric vehicles. My phone, which fits easily in my pocket, has more computing power than the technology that took us to the moon. We are feeding more people. The global poverty level has declined. 

That makes me a right-wing ideologue? Really? Are you a Luddite? Economics is not a science like biology of physics - it is a social science. What is your point there? Economics is not religion. 

You think I am cherry-picking "failed" predictions of ecologists? If I am, I am cherry picking their biggest predictions. I'm not picking obscure predictions. Ehrlich is most famous for his book "The Population Bomb." That catapulted him to fame. Malthus' prediction of population collapse due to geometric population growth tied to only arithmetic agricultural growth was one of his major assertions. Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons is his best known paper. Those are what I am referring to when I talk about "failed" predictions. That would be like saying I am cherry-picking Einstein's work by only referring to his famous Theory of Relativity. That may technically be true, but at least I am cherry-picking their most significant contributions to the field.

What straw men have I constructed? Allow me to address them. 

And at least I did not resort to hurling insults, for whatever other faults you find in me.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Again I repeat: Doctor, I cannot help you! Yet I await your cogent solution (to anything).


No, you can't. Nor do you seem to have a solution to help the planet.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> Infinite human invention is "right-wing dogma?" In what way? The evidence is in my favor for human invention. Since the end of the 19th century, one might be excused for having massive optimism in the adaptability of man. In Western nations, we dropped infant mortality significantly. We eradicated smallpox and have very nearly eradicated polio, and have several other very effective vaccines. Diabetes is no longer an early death sentence (I have an insulin pump right now, strapped to my belt, that in many ways behaves like a pancreas). We went from not being able to fly at all to making a return trip to the moon. We can transplant numerous tissues from one person to another now, including hearts. Simple infections that used to kill people now can be treated with an antibiotic. We have gone from horses and trains to the internal combustion engine to all electric vehicles. My phone, which fits easily in my pocket, has more computing power than the technology that took us to the moon. We are feeding more people. The global poverty level has declined.
> 
> That makes me a right-wing ideologue? Really? Are you a Luddite? Economics is not a science like biology of physics - it is a social science. What is your point there? Economics is not religion.
> 
> You think I am cherry-picking "failed" predictions of ecologists? If I am, I am cherry picking their biggest predictions. I'm not picking obscure predictions. Ehrlich is most famous for his book "The Population Bomb." That catapulted him to fame. Malthus' prediction of population collapse due to geometric population growth tied to only arithmetic agricultural growth was one of his major assertions. Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons is his best known paper. Those are what I am referring to when I talk about "failed" predictions. That would be like saying I am cherry-picking Einstein's work by only referring to his famous Theory of Relativity. That may technically be true, but at least I am cherry-picking their most significant contributions to the field.
> 
> What straw men have I constructed? Allow me to address them.
> 
> And at least I did not resort to hurling insults, for whatever other faults you find in me.


there is equal evidence for human stupidity, despite some technological progress, there have been 2 world wars and countless smaller wars, there are still dictatorships in many parts of the world, currently much of the western world is swept by toxic populism and there is cultural decline, there are still religious zealots and fanatics, terrorists etc. Despite all your optimism about "human invention", there has not been fundamental progress in energetics in the last 70 years, we are still largely dependent on fossil fuels, despite 70 years of promises that "nuclear fusion is just around the corner". There has not been a fundamental progress in physics since the 1970's. 
https://aeon.co/essays/has-progress-in-science-and-technology-come-to-a-halt

contrary to what you believe, that problems adressed by Hardin, Ehlrich etc. have not disappeared, or been solved etc. They might have got some details wrong, or might have been too alarmist, but the problems are still here. You are creating straw man out of these problems by concentrating on the details that they have got wrong, but are not adressing the essence of these arguments. 
https://populationmatters.org/the-f...MI7M2NiKSR4gIVgs13Ch28iwdyEAAYASAAEgKPlfD_BwE


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## Luchesi

Does everyone in here agree that Strange and the good doctor are an exemplary pairing for online debates about overpopulation? We can understand why they make the points they make.

Looking at it unemotionally, if we do fix the problems of overpopulation and the changes in the regional climates/ ecological balances - we will have accomplished something unprecedented. What are the chances? How much time do we have?

So, educate the women so that they can help us leave the planet. And then a man from a literalist religious tradition will think no that's not right. Women were given to men (and vice versa). And this planet was given to us and only an entity ‘better' than humans should rescue us(?). Furthermore, there's a 'divine' plan that we should follow, "As above so below.”. This dimorphism and subservience has served the species so well. It's no wonder that it has been selected for.. Just look at the survival successes and overpopulation! Are we smart enough to change it? Would it be right?

"Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature." 
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses


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## Jacck

Luchesi said:


> Looking at it unemotionally, if we do fix the problems of overpopulation and the changes in the regional climates/ ecological balances - we will have accomplished something unprecedented. What are the chances? How much time do we have?


to fix these problems would require a united action from all the major states in the world and that is never going to happen, especially not with the current horrible generation of short-sighted world politicians. The tragedy of the commons still applies to the oceans, because if one state stopped brutal methods of fishing, the other states would get ahead. The same with climate. If some states cripple their economy by implementing string carbon measures, other states would get ahead. If one state restricted its negative externalities, others would get ahead. So we are locked in a tragedy of the commons on a world scale.


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> there is equal evidence for human stupidity, despite some technological progress, there have been 2 world wars and countless smaller wars, there are still dictatorships in many parts of the world, currently much of the western world is swept by toxic populism and there is cultural decline, there are still religious zealots and fanatics, terrorists etc. Despite all your optimism about "human invention", there has not been fundamental progress in energetics in the last 70 years, we are still largely dependent on fossil fuels, despite 70 years of promises that "nuclear fusion is just around the corner". There has not been a fundamental progress in physics since the 1970's.
> https://aeon.co/essays/has-progress-in-science-and-technology-come-to-a-halt
> 
> contrary to what you believe, that problems adressed by Hardin, Ehlrich etc. have not disappeared, or been solved etc. They might have got some details wrong, or might have been too alarmist, but the problems are still here. You are creating straw man out of these problems by concentrating on the details that they have got wrong, but are not adressing the essence of these arguments.
> https://populationmatters.org/the-f...MI7M2NiKSR4gIVgs13Ch28iwdyEAAYASAAEgKPlfD_BwE


You are saying I am addressing details they got wrong. If they are their details, then that is not a straw man. And you call them minor details. Really? Massive human Extinction from the population bomb was merely a minor detail in Ehrlich's book?


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> You are saying I am addressing details they got wrong. If they are their details, then that is not a straw man. And you call them minor details. Really? Massive human Extinction from the population bomb was merely a minor detail in Ehrlich's book?


I don't know why you are so fixated on these old ecologists. I was not even alive in the 1960's, I am not familiar with the details of their work or of their preditions and do not really care. It is like criticising futurologists from the 1960's that they failed to predict the current world or technology. What I care about is the current world, the data that we can gather about the world, and the interpolation of the current measurable trends into the future. And the trends are: the population is still growing, many ecosystems are deteriorating, species are dissapearing, pollution is increasing, deforestation is continuing, oceans are becoming depleted etc. You can quantify these trends, plot them into a graph and extend the curves into the future. This situation is unsustainable long term. I am not as alarmist as Strange Magic, and neither am I as optimistic as you. There might come some technological breakthrough of clean fusion energy, or there might not. Nobody knows. But for some reason, many people find it very hard to admit "I do not know". There are a lot of unknowns, especially when global warming is concerned. It might be bad, or not, nobody really knows.


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> there is equal evidence for human stupidity, despite some technological progress, there have been 2 world wars and countless smaller wars, there are still dictatorships in many parts of the world, currently much of the western world is swept by toxic populism and there is cultural decline, there are still religious zealots and fanatics, terrorists etc. Despite all your optimism about "human invention", there has not been fundamental progress in energetics in the last 70 years, we are still largely dependent on fossil fuels, despite 70 years of promises that "nuclear fusion is just around the corner". There has not been a fundamental progress in physics since the 1970's.
> https://aeon.co/essays/has-progress-in-science-and-technology-come-to-a-halt
> 
> contrary to what you believe, that problems adressed by Hardin, Ehlrich etc. have not disappeared, or been solved etc. They might have got some details wrong, or might have been too alarmist, but the problems are still here. You are creating straw man out of these problems by concentrating on the details that they have got wrong, but are not adressing the essence of these arguments.
> https://populationmatters.org/the-f...MI7M2NiKSR4gIVgs13Ch28iwdyEAAYASAAEgKPlfD_BwE


Who is cherry-picking now? When you take history in total, the 20th century was actually less violent. Still dictatorships in parts of the world? More dictatorships fell in the 20th century than ever before. "Much of the western world is swept by toxic populism" - that is a very subjective statement you make. Please quantify that. We are still dependent on fossil fuels, but less so. Nuclear fusion may not be around the corner, but nuclear fission is here, and getting better all the time. No fundamental progress in physics since the 1970's? I found all these just in Wikipedia:


> 1980	Quantum Hall effect discovered
> 1980	Richard Feynman proposes quantum computing
> 1981	Theory of cosmic inflation
> Fractional quantum Hall effect discovered
> 1984	W and Z bosons directly observed
> 1984	First laboratory implementation of quantum cryptography
> 1993	Quantum teleportation of unknown states proposed
> 1994	shor's algorithm discovered, initiating the serious study of quantum computation.
> 1995	Top quark discovered
> 1995	Bose-Einstein condensation observed
> 1998	Accelerating universe discovered
> 1998	Atmospheric neutrino oscillation established
> 2000	Tau neutrino discovered
> 2012	Higgs Boson discovered
> 2014	First direct evidence of cosmic inflation
> 2015	Gravitational waves detected


You claim the major problems addressed by Hardin, Ehrlich, etc. have not disappeared - I would argue they have yet to appear, at least on any planet-threatening scale. You overestimate their claims and underestimate human achievement to advance your argument, rather than taking both at face value.


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> I don't know why you are so fixated on these old ecologists. I was not even alive in the 1960's, I am not familiar with the details of their work or of their preditions and do not really care. It is like criticising futurologists from the 1960's that they failed to predict the current world or technology. What I care about is the current world, the data that we can gather about the world, and the interpolation of the current measurable trends into the future. And the trends are: the population is still growing, many ecosystems are deteriorating, species are dissapearing, pollution is increasing, deforestation is continuing, oceans are becoming depleted etc. You can quantify these trends, plot them into a graph and extend the curves into the future. This situation is unsustainable long term. I am not as alarmist as Strange Magic, and neither am I as optimistic as you. There might come some technological breakthrough of clean fusion energy, or there might not. Nobody knows. But for some reason, many people find it very hard to admit "I do not know". There are a lot of unknowns, especially when global warming is concerned. It might be bad, or not, nobody really knows.


Why don't you ask SM why Hardin keeps getting dragged into these discussions.


----------



## Jacck

DrMike said:


> Who is cherry-picking now? When you take history in total, the 20th century was actually less violent.


it depends of how we define violent. Certainly more people were killed by wars and dictatorships in the 20th century than in any of the previous centuries.



> "Much of the western world is swept by toxic populism" - that is a very subjective statement you make. Please quantify that.


I do not know how you want to quantify this. I read this week in the news, that Trump told 10 000 lies. But Trump is not the only extremely populist politician, there are many others of a similar kind, relying on nationalism, hate, fearmongering.
https://institute.global/insight/renewing-centre/populists-power-around-world
the problem is the digital technology makes it easy to gather large quantities of data about the populations, and feed the people back with clever tailored propaganda. There are many companies such as the Cambridge Analytica who specialize in election manipulation campaigns.



> We are still dependent on fossil fuels, but less so. Nuclear fusion may not be around the corner, but nuclear fission is here, and getting better all the time. .


it can be used to generate electricity, but not to fuel cars, planes etc, because there has been no fundamental progress in accumulator technology



> No fundamental progress in physics since the 1970's? I found all these just in Wikipedia:.


most of the stuff in the wikipedia article is not fundamental. Quantum theory was born in the 1920-1930, QED was born in the 1950-1960 and 1960-1980 the Standard Model was discovered. All of those things above are just experimental confirmations of predictions that existed for decades - for example the Higgs boson, or gravitational waves.


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## Guest

The generation of electricity, though, is critical for renewable energy. The plans to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels currently revolves around using other sources to generate electricity, and using that electricity to power things instead of fossil fuels. If we are going to convert automobiles to electric, we are going to need more electricity. Those Teslas have to get electricity from somewhere. It would be nice to one day have cars powered by small "Mr. Fusion" fusion reactors that can be mounted on the back of Deloreans, but we ain't there yet.

I don't follow physics that much, so I can't speak as to how much or how little the field has progressed since the 1970s. But the notion of criticizing the field in this way as a measure of whether we are continuing to progress seems bizarre to me.

"Toxic" populism is a very subjective term. But populism comes and goes. Much of this populism you don't like is occurring in countries that freely elected their leaders. That there are more countries on this planet today with leaders popularly elected rather than some arbitrary method (usually involving force) is an absolute improvement. 

Cherry pick some categories and I'm sure you can paint a very dismal picture of our present and future. But the overwhelming majority of the evidence shows that mankind has undergone unprecedented progress in the last 100 years. Maybe we are still polluting the earth, but the advanced nations now have the technology to do something about it, and have. What's more, there is probably the ability, if not the will power, to help a lot of struggling nations to advance and progress to where they also switch from dirty technologies to cleaner ones. 

As the Beatles said, you've got to admit its getting better all the time.


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## Strange Magic

Doctor, your logorrhea is becoming concerning; you are beginning to pile Ossa upon Pelion in your zeal to bury us alive with verbiage. Again, I cannot help you.

The reason Garrett Hardin, and Malthus, and Paul Ehrlich keep popping up in these discussions, summoned forth by you as well as me, is because their insights, their writings, are as cogent today as they were in the 1960s. I cheerfully affirm that, like Peak Oil, their timing is/was off, perhaps by scores of years yet the core truth of their arguments remain--the earth's population must eventually cease growing because of lack of food and/or a poisoned environment. Or it can be halted by demonstrably efficacious long-term social changes begun now. Meanwhile, as the population continues to grow, we must say goodbye to much of the megafauna and the biological richness and diversity within which we evolved as a species. And we must say hello to the increasing introduction of unprecedented and novel materials and molecules into the environment. But as long as people Who Should As Scientists Know Better keep raving on in opposition to the facts (they say they don't dispute the facts) and the logic (they say they don't dispute the logic), it just makes the path to recovery that much thornier.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> The generation of electricity, though, is critical for renewable energy. The plans to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels currently revolves around using other sources to generate electricity, and using that electricity to power things instead of fossil fuels. If we are going to convert automobiles to electric, we are going to need more electricity. Those Teslas have to get electricity from somewhere. It would be nice to one day have cars powered by small "Mr. Fusion" fusion reactors that can be mounted on the back of Deloreans, but we ain't there yet..


I believe that biofuels or electric cars do currently more damage to the environment than simpy using oil. (the production and the disposal of the accumulators is probably not very "green"). Our major technological limit in the present is that we cannot store electric energy in an efficient manner.



> I don't follow physics that much, so I can't speak as to how much or how little the field has progressed since the 1970s. But the notion of criticizing the field in this way as a measure of whether we are continuing to progress seems bizarre to me.


the field is somewhat in a crisis and stagnation. There is especially some disappointment that the LHC has failed to confirm supersymmetry or string theory



> "Toxic" populism is a very subjective term. But populism comes and goes. Much of this populism you don't like is occurring in countries that freely elected their leaders. That there are more countries on this planet today with leaders popularly elected rather than some arbitrary method (usually involving force) is an absolute improvement.


the fact that these leaders get elected is a sign of moral crisis and decline. The people have forgotten the lessons of WW2 and what populist nationalism has caused.



> Cherry pick some categories and I'm sure you can paint a very dismal picture of our present and future. But the overwhelming majority of the evidence shows that mankind has undergone unprecedented progress in the last 100 years. Maybe we are still polluting the earth, but the advanced nations now have the technology to do something about it, and have. What's more, there is probably the ability, if not the will power, to help a lot of struggling nations to advance and progress to where they also switch from dirty technologies to cleaner ones.


yes, there has been unprecedented technological progress, which has brought with itself unprecedented global challanges, for which we are evolutionarily unprepared.


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## Strange Magic

Jacck, what are your thoughts about storing electricity using sophisticated flywheels safely buried underground? Another alternative is the well-established electrolysis of water, then the later recombination, either in fuel cells or through some other means. Electrolysis on a large scale also supplies hydrogen for use in automobile fuel cells, should that pose fewer dangers of exotic materials let loose in the environment.


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## KenOC

Jacck said:


> ...Certainly more people were killed by wars and dictatorships in the 20th century than in any of the previous centuries.


The Smithsonian identifies a strong counter-trend: _Globally, Deaths From War And Murder Are in Decline_

"…Likewise, the number of war deaths has also plummeted. In the 1950s, there were almost 250 deaths caused by war per million people. Now, there are less than 10 per million."

Which is to say, the current rate of war deaths is just four percent of what it was 60 years ago.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Doctor, your logorrhea is becoming concerning; you are beginning to pile Ossa upon Pelion in your zeal to bury us alive with verbiage. *Again, I cannot help you.*


Ah, the condescension. By all means, please stop trying to "help" me.


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## eugeneonagain

KenOC said:


> The Smithsonian identifies a strong counter-trend: _Globally, Deaths From War And Murder Are in Decline_
> 
> "…Likewise, the number of war deaths has also plummeted. In the 1950s, there were almost 250 deaths caused by war per million people. Now, there are less than 10 per million."
> 
> Which is to say, the current rate of war deaths is just four percent of what it was 60 years ago.


It's like a Darrell Huff special!


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## KenOC

eugeneonagain said:


> It's like a Darrell Huff special!


I suspect most here may be too young to catch that! In any event, if you have better numbers, please trot them out.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Ah, the condescension. By all means, please stop trying to "help" me.


Doctor, you cannot be helped! So I'll stop trying.


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## eugeneonagain

KenOC said:


> I suspect most here may be too young to catch that! In any event, if you have better numbers, please trot them out.


I'm not saying you're wrong; just that with statistics it can look 'better'.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Doctor, you cannot be helped! So I'll stop trying.


Ah,gee, thanks! What a keen guy you are! How you haven't been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize or the Albert Schweitzer Prize is beyond me. You are easily in at least the top 99% of nice, helpful people. And you certainly have a long history of existence on this forum.


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## Strange Magic

Geoengineering: An example of the cure being very likely worse than the disease. A faith in technology taken a bridge too far....

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48069663


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## KenOC

eugeneonagain said:


> I'm not saying you're wrong; just that with statistics it can look 'better'.


Well, I wouldn't suspect The Smithsonian of fudging their statistics, though I suppose it could happen. But people will always object to facts that contradict their existing world views (and ideologies).

For example, how many here are likely to believe that the rate of violent crime in the US has been cut in _half _within the last 30 years? 'S true! The rate peaked at 758.2 per 100,000 people in 1991, and dropped steadily to 361.1 by 2014. By 2016, the last year I have, it had gone back up a bit to 386.3. (Statistics from the Bureau of Justice.)


----------



## Guest

DrMike said:


> Ah,gee, thanks! What a keen guy you are! How you haven't been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize or the Albert Schweitzer Prize is beyond me. You are easily in at least the top 99% of nice, helpful people. *And you certainly have a long history of existence on this forum*.


Just a question, DrMike: are you the same poster that took issue with *Chritopher Hitchen's* _God Is Not Great_? I can't remember.


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## Guest

TalkingHead said:


> Just a question, DrMike: are you the same poster that took issue with *Chritopher Hitchen's* _God Is Not Great_? I can't remember.


I did, way back when. In general, I liked Hitchens a great deal, but this book was not good - he got a lot of simple, verifiable facts wrong. It was uncharacteristic of him - generally he was more meticulous. I didn't agree with his overall premise, either, but that point was obvious, so I only discussed my disappointment with the facts he got wrong.


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## Guest

Fair enough. Thanks for replying.


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## Guest

Can't remember if that was in the community area back when we could still discuss politics and religion there, or in the early days down in the groups after the ban went into effect.


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## eugeneonagain

DrMike said:


> I did, way back when. In general, I liked Hitchens a great deal, but this book was not good - he got a lot of simple, verifiable facts wrong. It was uncharacteristic of him - generally he was more meticulous. I didn't agree with his overall premise, either, but that point was obvious, so I only discussed my disappointment with the facts he got wrong.


Great book in general with a correct premise, but a bit sloppy because he was probably a bit drunk during the writing. A breath of fresh air though in the sense of just coming out and saying that religion is largely a menace. Pity old Hitch kicked the bucket, he was great at demolishing muddled thinkers.


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## Guest

eugeneonagain said:


> Great book in general with a correct premise, but a bit sloppy because he was probably a bit drunk during the writing. A breath of fresh air though in the sense of just coming out and saying that religion is largely a menace. Pity old Hitch kicked the bucket, he was great at demolishing muddled thinkers.


Seconded.
Greatly missed, would have loved his take on what's hapening since his death.


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## Guest

I'll forego taking up that topic as that would take this discussion into religion which is not allowed upstairs.


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## eugeneonagain

DrMike said:


> I'll forego taking up that topic as that would take this discussion into religion which is not allowed upstairs.


Well....it's discussion of a book. Do stop going on about what is and isn't 'allowed'. It just perpetuates the legitimated foolishness of banishing normal discussions to the sewer because some people can't handle them.


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## Guest

Well it is an odd direction to go down for a thread entitled "Fooling With Mother Nature."


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## starthrower

I've taken to following Daniel Dennett on YouTube since Hitch has departed. I also enjoy the British show The Big Questions hosted by Nicky Campbell. He moderates a panel discussion and debate on a different topic for each program. I haven't watched this one yet.


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## Larkenfield

Carbon dioxide levels are the highest in history; 84 degrees near the Arctic Ocean: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/05/14/it-was-degrees-near-arctic-ocean-this-weekend-carbon-dioxide-hit-its-highest-level-human-history/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f8b12d3edb52

"By themselves, these are just data points. But taken together with so many indicators of an altered atmosphere and rising temperatures, they blend into the unmistakable portrait of human-induced climate change."


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## Jacck

Larkenfield said:


> Carbon dioxide levels are the highest in history; 84 degrees near the Arctic Ocean: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/05/14/it-was-degrees-near-arctic-ocean-this-weekend-carbon-dioxide-hit-its-highest-level-human-history/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f8b12d3edb52
> 
> "By themselves, these are just data points. But taken together with so many indicators of an altered atmosphere and rising temperatures, they blend into the unmistakable portrait of human-induced climate change."


yes, but is it really a problem? Nobody knows. There is the question of climate sensitivity, ie how much does the CO2 warm the Earth? Over the last 100 years, the CO2 has risen about 100ppm, but the temperature rose just 0.5-1°C. And then there is the matter of causation. Because in geological history, the rise in CO2 followed the rise in temperature and not vice versa. It is imaginable that rise in temperature caused rise in the mass of biomass, which increased CO2 etc.


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## Strange Magic

Jacck said:


> yes, but is it really a problem? Nobody knows. There is the question of climate sensitivity, ie how much does the CO2 warm the Earth? Over the last 100 years, the CO2 has risen about 100ppm, but the temperature rose just 0.5-1°C. And then there is the matter of causation. Because in geological history, the rise in CO2 followed the rise in temperature and not vice versa. It is imaginable that rise in temperature caused rise in the mass of biomass, which increased CO2 etc.


As a general rule, biomass is a sink for CO2. Also, we must consider timeframes: the rapid introduction of large quantities of CO2 directly into the atmosphere by the oxidation of geologically long-sequestered carbon is novel and unique to recent human history. And when considering timeframes: it is possible to consider that, even if there were previous examples of somewhat rapid climate change while humans have existed, our species--and others--were either scattered in small geographically dispersed bands or, like the bison and wildebeest herds of yesteryear, both scattered and present in huge numbers, hence relatively able to adapt to (survive easily) climate change by migration, adaptation, and/or evolution. With up to (now), 8 billion people and soon to be 11 or 15 or more, and a world precariously dependent upon high-tech agriculture, including today's herds of human-dependent livestock, amid a rapidly degrading biosphere, the margin is very slender.

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/


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## Jacck

Strange Magic said:


> As a general rule, biomass is a sink for CO2. Also, we must consider timeframes: the rapid introduction of large quantities of CO2 directly into the atmosphere by the oxidation of geologically long-sequestered carbon is novel and unique to recent human history. And when considering timeframes: it is possible to consider that, even if there were previous examples of somewhat rapid climate change while humans have existed, our species--and others--were either scattered in small geographically dispersed bands or, like the bison and wildebeest herds of yesteryear, both scattered and present in huge numbers, hence relatively able to adapt to (survive easily) climate change by migration, adaptation, and/or evolution. With up to (now), 8 billion people and soon to be 11 or 15 or more, and a world precariously dependent upon high-tech agriculture, including today's herds of human-dependent livestock, amid a rapidly degrading biosphere, the margin is very slender.
> https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/


yes, but in the media, you sometimes read that the Earth will be 10°C warmer and scorched earth scenarios etc. But the increase of 100ppm led to an increase of just 0.9°C. And then you have negative feedbacks. Warmer temperature means more cloud formation, which blocks and reflects sunlight, which will decrease temperature etc. My own view of the situation is that there are a lot of unknows and uncertainty. I perceive the overpopulation, biodiversity loss, chemical and plastics pollution etc to be much more certain, concrete and less controversial threats.


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## Strange Magic

While past CO2-temperature interactions may have shown episodes when rising temperatures (presumably triggered by increased insolation) preceded rising atmospheric CO2 levels, we are in a unique situation today with the release into the biosphere/atmosphere of unprecedented amounts of CO2 within only a few centuries, hence the essentially simultaneous congruence of the CO2 and temperature curves in our time. Despite the proposed increase in cloud cover possibly reducing solar insolation now, there is the loss of Arctic albedo as the polar ice cover shrinks. As deforestation increases, there is further CO2 injected into the atmosphere both from the usual burning of the forest but also from the loss of photosynthesis. And we have increasing introduction of methane into the atmosphere from melting permafrost and cattle emissions. The increasing acidity of the oceans reduces the uptake of carbon into limestone and calcareous shell formation. The widespread manufacture of cement is increasingly being studied as a major CO2 source. Lots of positive feedback loops for further global warming.

Here is an interesting site: https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm


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## Jacck

Strange Magic said:


> While past CO2-temperature interactions may have shown episodes when rising temperatures (presumably triggered by increased insolation) preceded rising atmospheric CO2 levels, we are in a unique situation today with the release into the biosphere/atmosphere of unprecedented amounts of CO2 within only a few centuries, hence the essentially simultaneous congruence of the CO2 and temperature curved in our time. Despite the proposed increase in cloud cover possibly reducing solar insolation now, there is the loss of Arctic albedo as the polar ice cover shrinks. As deforestation increases, there is further CO2 injected into the atmosphere both from the usual burning of the forest but also from the loss of photosynthesis. And we have increasing introduction of methane into the atmosphere from melting permafrost and cattle emissions. The increasing acidity of the oceans reduces the uptake of carbon into limestone and calcareous shell formation. The widespread manufacture of cement is increasingly being studied as a major CO2 source. Lots of positive feedback loops for further global warming.
> 
> Here is an interesting site: https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm


the crucial question is what is the climate sensitivity? 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity
as even the IPCC itself show, they themselves don't have much clue "As estimated by the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), "there is high confidence that ECS is extremely unlikely less than 1°C and medium confidence that the ECS is likely between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C"
that is pretty inaccurate for a scientific report and then, I would really like to know, how they arrived at these estimates, but I have always been too lazy to delve into the research itself.


----------



## DaveM

Fooling with Mother Nature: Have been watching the HBO series Chernobyl which is apparently sticking to the real events as they happened. I’ve read a number of recent books on the origin of the universe -the premise that subsequent to the Big Bang it was the incredible heat that, over time, brought protons, neutrons and electrons together to form the various gases and elements- and it occurs to me that playing with fission is simply the reverse of that process and if it gets out of control, the consequences are far more consequential and frightening than the dropping of a single nuclear weapon.

Apparently, within a few days of the explosion of the radioactive core at Chernobyl, aside from the already devastating effects, water that was in storage tanks nearby was in danger of being superheated by the nearby burning core resulting in a thermal explosion that would have made a good slice of Europe uninhabitable for perhaps hundreds of years.


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## philoctetes

Jacck said:


> the crucial question is what is the climate sensitivity?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity
> as even the IPCC itself show, they themselves don't have much clue "As estimated by the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), "there is high confidence that ECS is extremely unlikely less than 1°C and medium confidence that the ECS is likely between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C"
> that is pretty inaccurate for a scientific report and then, I would really like to know, how they arrived at these estimates, but I have always been too lazy to delve into the research itself.


In math terms, what is the value of S = dT/d(CO2)? Call it sensitivity or capacitance, either will do. What is the possible estimation error E(S) for this value? Then we can talk about how uncertain or reliable our forecasts must really be. Citing a rising number of CO2 sources is not enough.

On the other hand, evidence of a more urgent chemical / plastic crisis in the environment seems to be ignored by those who ought to care more. A lot of ideas come to mind why that may be, however that would move my comments into the realm of speculation...


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## Guest

DaveM said:


> Fooling with Mother Nature: Have been watching the HBO series Chernobyl which is apparently sticking to the real events as they happened. I've read a number of recent books on the origin of the universe -the premise that subsequent to the Big Bang it was the incredible heat that, over time, brought protons, neutrons and electrons together to form the various gases and elements- and it occurs to me that playing with fission is simply the reverse of that process and if it gets out of control, the consequences are far more consequential and frightening than the dropping of a single nuclear weapon.
> 
> Apparently, within a few days of the explosion of the radioactive core at Chernobyl, aside from the already devastating effects, water that was in storage tanks nearby was in danger of being superheated by the nearby burning core resulting in a thermal explosion that would have made a good slice of Europe uninhabitable for perhaps hundreds of years.


The message I have taken from it is that nobody really knew what they were doing. And so much was being determined by political decisions.

In reality, what we know after the fact, is that with as bad as it was, it was remarkably small in impact. And we know so much more about nuclear reactors now. If you go back and read the sequence that led to the disaster, it was a whole series of poor decisions, and not at all inevitable. As I have said before, you can count the disasters from nuclear power (not weapons) on one hand, and the actual combined environmental and health impact has been less than from a single coal-powered plant. Nuclear power is simply a cleaner energy source.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> As I have said before, you can count the disasters from nuclear power (not weapons) on one hand, and the actual combined environmental and health impact has been less than from a single coal-powered plant. Nuclear power is simply a cleaner energy source.


I would be interested in the thinking that concludes that the combined effect upon environment and health of Chernobyl and Fukushima is less than that of a single coal-powered plant.

Coal-fired plants certainly should be and are headed for the scrap heap, and there may be a place for Dyson-Teller-TRIGA reactors to provide electric power for a brief period while the world converts over to wind/solar/tide/hydrothermal sources and simultaneously makes major strides in energy efficiency (and population stabilization and reduction). These specialized reactors would be located in ancient geologically stable subterranean sites; meanwhile, all the spent fuel sitting in pools and other storage at current fission reactor sites needs to be gathered up and properly sequestered in a similarly geologically stable site. We here in NJ are reminded of the wonders of nuclear fission as the state's largest utility, PSE&G, demands a yearly $300,000,000 to $500,000,000 ratepayer surcharge in order for them to keep open their remaining reactors. Imagine if that money and all future money proposed to be spent on fission reactors--of any kind--was spent on non-carbon, non-atomic energy sources!

https://www.philly.com/business/nuc...seg-shutdown-threat-300-million-20190418.html


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## Guest

There was one radiation-related death at Fukushima, and another ~40 non-fatal injuries related to radiation. For Chernobyl, the estimates are widely variable. For Chernobyl, there were 31-54 deaths directly from the disaster. For further deaths due to long-term effects, it varies widely. The study that the UN participated in puts the estimate at 4,000. Other groups go as high as 93,000, but how reliable their data is is questionable.

What other energy sources can promise the level of energy that atomic energy promises? Realistically. And so many of the alternative energy sources are not without downsides. The components that go into solar panels are not environmentally friendly, especially when they are taken out of use and disposed of. An enormous amount of water must be used to keep them clean for peak efficiency. And that is considering that the places where solar farms are most promising are in areas where water is not as abundant. Wind farms are limited to particular areas, as well, for efficiency. You can't just put them anywhere. And they have a detrimental impact on local wildlife. Hydroelectric is problematic as well, not the least of which being optimal locations for dams, and the impact that damming rivers will have on the environment.


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> ...The components that go into solar panels are not environmentally friendly, especially when they are taken out of use and disposed of. An enormous amount of water must be used to keep them clean for peak efficiency. And that is considering that the places where solar farms are most promising are in areas where water is not as abundant.


Also they have a useful life of only 25 to 30 years, and then have to be replaced. I'd be curious to see a lifecycle carbon accounting for mining and refining the materials used in the panels, construction, transport, installation, periodic cleaning, and disposal. I wonder if the carbon costs of a panel might not be greater than the carbon emissions avoided over the panel's life.


----------



## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> The Smithsonian identifies a strong counter-trend: _Globally, Deaths From War And Murder Are in Decline_
> 
> "…Likewise, the number of war deaths has also plummeted. In the 1950s, there were almost 250 deaths caused by war per million people. Now, there are less than 10 per million."
> 
> Which is to say, the current rate of war deaths is just four percent of what it was 60 years ago.


Yes, but isn't that proportional? There are more "per millions" now.


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> Also they have a useful life of only 25 to 30 years, and then have to be replaced. I'd be curious to see a lifecycle carbon accounting for mining and refining the materials used in the panels, construction, transport, installation, periodic cleaning, and disposal. I wonder if the carbon costs of a panel might not be greater than the carbon emissions avoided over the panel's life.


An excellent and strong additional argument for stabilizing and then reducing Earth's human population by at least one order of magnitude. The necessary extraction, processing, and disposal of vast quantities of toxic and volatile materials--many of them entirely new to the biosphere--will result in extraordinary increases in the toxic load placed upon the biosphere for which it must somehow compensate, if it is to continue to nurture life beyond bacteria. Stephen Jay Gould's final solace was that humankind could not possibly kill Earth's bacteria, and that bacteria would be the planet's Last Stand.


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## Guest

Jeez, not even Hitler or Stain or Mao dreamed of decimating the entire planet's population. That's cold.


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## Guest

At any rate, stabilizing and then decimating the population, assuming you plan on doing it in a humane manner, is going to take at least a couple of centuries, I'd guess. What are we supposed to do in the meantime?


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> At any rate, stabilizing and then decimating the population, assuming you plan on doing it in a humane manner, is going to take at least a couple of centuries, I'd guess. What are we supposed to do in the meantime?


vote for sensible politicians who place value on ecology


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## Guest

What will be the source of our energy, is the question. There is a cost to everything. The nice thing about nuclear, barring accidents ( of which there have been previous few) all the waste is contained in one spot. Nothing belched into the atmosphere. And it has a higher energy yield, to support the needs of modern economies.


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## KenOC

I fear that “decimate” means to kill one-tenth, not to leave one-tenth alive. In Roman times, decimation was a punishment for a legion that had shown, for instance, cowardice. The men were arrayed and counted off. Every tenth man was killed.

I’m afraid that stronger measures would be required to seriously reduce humanity’s impacts on the biosphere.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> What will be the source of our energy, is the question. There is a cost to everything. The nice thing about nuclear, barring accidents ( of which there have been previous few) all the waste is contained in one spot. Nothing belched into the atmosphere. And it has a higher energy yield, to support the needs of modern economies.


I agree that nuclear energy is the best way. If we run out of uranium, there is still enough thorium for several hundred years. Unfortunately, some misguided ecologists oppose nuclear energy. We have this problem with Austria. Czech Republic is producing a lot of nuclear energy, but the Austrians - our neighbours to the south - are constantly scared of nuclear disasters and organize protests. But they have the Alps, where they can generate a lot of hydroelectricity.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16359991


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## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> I fear that "decimate" means to kill one-tenth, not to leave one-tenth alive. In Roman times, decimation was a punishment for a legion that had shown, for instance, cowardice. The men were arrayed and counted off. Every tenth man was killed.
> 
> I'm afraid that stronger measures would be required to seriously reduce humanity's impacts on the biosphere.


This would be consistent with reducing by "one order of magnitude" as called for. Why is this to be more feared than reducing to 1/10? Your chances are better with the former.


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## philoctetes

I once read that 1/7 was the magic number for false alarms that are tolerable in warning systems where there is a payoff for cheating sentinels, as when one species warns another of a predator. So maybe we should use magnitudes of base 7 and septimate instead.


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## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> This would be consistent with reducing by "one order of magnitude" as called for. Why is this to be more feared than reducing to 1/10? Your chances are better with the former.


To reduce by "one order of magnitude" means to remove nine-tenths. Order of magnitude: "A class in a system of classification determined by size, each class being a number of times (usually ten) greater or smaller than the one before."


----------



## philoctetes

........................................................................................... [edit] Indeed, decimation as you define it would be multiplying by 9/10, not 1/10...


----------



## philoctetes

Alright, you are correct sir. But why do you "fear" decimation more than an order of magnitude. On this I am still confused.


----------



## KenOC

Merely a rhetorical device. Somebody said something I feared was mistaken. I fear neither decimation or even more wholesale destruction; either is likely to occur past my allotted time.​


----------



## philoctetes

OK. I also can't help but wonder how decimate came to be used as if it means some kind of wipe-out, 1/10 instead of 9/10. Just because it sounds worse than it is, perhaps. Meanings seem to change simply by common abuse.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> I fear that "decimate" means to kill one-tenth, not to leave one-tenth alive. In Roman times, decimation was a punishment for a legion that had shown, for instance, cowardice. The men were arrayed and counted off. Every tenth man was killed.
> 
> I'm afraid that stronger measures would be required to seriously reduce humanity's impacts on the biosphere.


Sorry, didn't mean to cause such confusion. I realize the difference between decimate and decrease by an order of magnitude. I was comparing that order of magnitude, unfavorably, with decimation, which alone would be horrific. Even Thanos thought that a mere 50% reduction would be sufficient.

At any rate, reducing by an order of magnitude would likely put us into a downward spiral that would likely lead to the end of our species. Countries have been set back significantly following major military conflicts that came nowhere near that much of a population reduction. I think society would completely collapse with a 90% culling, unless it were done over numerous centuries, if not at least a millennium. And the environmentalists don't think the planet has that long.

But I'm sure windmills and solar panels would be plenty sufficient for only a tenth of the current global population, especially after the complete social breakdown. Of course, the infrastructure would be gone, and we would probably then, of necessity, have to return to burning wood and coal for our energy.


----------



## Strange Magic

There has been an assertion above that one of the assumed virtues of fission power is that all the waste is in one spot. This is clearly false. The highly radioactive and toxic waste is at essentially all locations where there is a reactor.

To reduce, over time, through a reduced birthrate (as we are witnessing in many parts of the developed world) global populations by an order of magnitude is to have it fall to one-tenth of its current roughly 8 billions. This would likely have been the global population sometime in the 18th century. The reduced birthrate would, at least in great measure, be the result of full female equality and emancipation coupled with confidential access to effective contraception. If there are objections/opposition to full female emancipation and equality and to such access, let us know what such opposition might be.

A sad aspect of the nonsense spread almost everywhere on the subject of population is the hand-wringing among the short-sighted about the "need" for developed countries, including the USA, to step up their birthrates because there are too many oldsters and not enough young workers. An analogy is that we have a bus (metastatic global population growth) accelerating toward a brick wall (population to increase by 150%-200% in a few score years). Yet while some of the passengers are attempting to reduce speed and halt the bus, others are telling them No! Pedal to the Metal! This will not end well.


----------



## Strange Magic

The eagerness with which some have leapt to an inference of "decimation" of populations (mass murder, perhaps?) when the statement called for a reduction in population by an order of magnitude, is noted. Some choose to deliberately misread; others are unsure of what is stated and follow the leader of the crowd; some are willfully bloody-minded but choose to impute that to others.

It took roughly 250 years for global population to increase tenfold to present levels. It may take as much time to drop, or more, or less. But the best time to start is now, and we can always stop somewhere along the way if we see a healthy balance begin to be restored between our numbers and a vital, thriving biosphere.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> There has been an assertion above that one of the assumed virtues of fission power is that all the waste is in one spot. This is clearly false. The highly radioactive and toxic waste is at essentially all locations where there is a reactor.


Okay, I really didn't think this needed explaining. Obviously I meant that it is localized at each reactor. The point is that the waste does not, in the course of the functioning of the plant, go anywhere. No waste is released into the atmosphere, the water, the soil. It is carbon neutral. Yes, if there is an accident, there is the potential for it to get out. But given the ridiculously good track record, considering how long and extensively it has been used, the benefits far outweigh the risks. And you can generate far more energy with a far smaller footprint than any other renewable. Opposing nuclear energy is really illogical, anti-science.

And I'm not bothering with the Malthusian stuff again. At least you have finally put a number on how much time it will take to hit your proposed population levels. 250 years. You think you can get full female equality throughout Africa and the Middle East, and drop global birth rates enough to drop the current population by 90% in 250 years. You'll forgive me if I am bearish on that prospect.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> Also they have a useful life of only 25 to 30 years, and then have to be replaced. I'd be curious to see a lifecycle carbon accounting for mining and refining the materials used in the panels, construction, transport, installation, periodic cleaning, and disposal. I wonder if the carbon costs of a panel might not be greater than the carbon emissions avoided over the panel's life.


Here are links to a summary of the IPCC Lifecycle assessment of electricity generating sources and a link to the summary paper of the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

Median assessments of the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions show that renewable sources and nuclear are significantly lower than fossil fuel sources by factors of 10-50. Even fossil fuel sources coupled with carbon capture and sequestration are much higher.


----------



## Larkenfield

’Can solar panels be recycled? The short answer is yes. Silicon solar modules are primarily composed of glass, plastic, and aluminum: three materials that are recycled in mass quantities. This allows for the evaporation of small plastic components and allows the cells to be easier separated.’ A 20 to 30-year life-span actually sounds quite reasonable before they would have to be recycled and then replaced.


----------



## Strange Magic

mmsbls said:


> Here are links to a summary of the IPCC Lifecycle assessment of electricity generating sources and a link to the summary paper of the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.


Thanks for the link. Next, a link to the lifecycle assessment of fission reactors of various types and the release--controlled and/or catastrophic--of radioactive isotopes (as in Chernobyl)--will be interesting and helpful. Mining, storage, transport, operation, decommissioning. The Hanford experience may be instructive.


----------



## Guest

Why do you so desperately want to find some reason to write off nuclear energy? The evidence is plain to see. Why be a denier, when the life of our planet is on the line?


----------



## Guest

This link provides information about all serious nuclear power accidents, along with fatalities.
http://http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/appendices/safety-of-nuclear-power-reactors-appendix.aspx


----------



## philoctetes

It's odd that the same person who wants to prevent worldwide disasters also wants to cut the population by a factor of 10. One problem would seem to solve the other.


----------



## Jacck

I am going to watch Twelve Monkeys tonight


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> It's odd that the same person who wants to prevent worldwide disasters also wants to cut the population by a factor of 10. One problem would seem to solve the other.


Humans don't count as part of the biomass.


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> Here are links to a summary of the IPCC Lifecycle assessment of electricity generating sources and a link to the summary paper of the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.
> 
> Median assessments of the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions show that renewable sources and nuclear are significantly lower than fossil fuel sources by factors of 10-50. Even fossil fuel sources coupled with carbon capture and sequestration are much higher.


Many thanks. I'll check these out.


----------



## Open Book

Overpopulation certainly is the main driver of all our environmental problems. We have improved our survivability with technology so that now unlike other species we are out of balance with nature. We have taken ourselves out of nature. Nature does not cull our population as it does for nearly all other species. Good for us as individuals to have longer more comfortable lives, bad for the environment. Because we're infringing on the habitat of other species just because of our sheer numbers. Without the correct habitat, species can't raise the next generation and will die out.

Overpopulation is a topic governments don't seem to want to deal with because the quick way to curb it is by undemocratic means, like forceful one-child policies. Or war. The slow way is to raise everybody's standard of living to western levels since it seems to diminish family size. This is not even guaranteed since non-western people may reject our culture and since we don't seem to want to share our expertise, we are too competitive.

Some are confident that world population will top out, they usually mention a maximum of 20 billion, but I never hear explanations as to why it should stabilize.

Our policies also contribute to loss of species. Some species need very specific habitats and some entire habitat types are disappearing due to our activity. A certain sparrow needs a specific habitat by the seashore to nest and raise young, but every such habitat is built on and developed for human recreation and to make money for the developers. The species dies out because property ownership rights trump the right of species to survive, even endangered ones.


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## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> It's odd that the same person who wants to prevent worldwide disasters also wants to cut the population by a factor of 10. One problem would seem to solve the other.


Does the Greek Chorus have anything of substance for us beyond commentary from the wings? Tragedy or Comedy masks?


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Why do you so desperately want to find some reason to write off nuclear energy? The evidence is plain to see. Why be a denier, when the life of our planet is on the line?


I have three--or is it four?--times now proposed consideration of the Dyson-Teller-TRIGA reactor located in a geologically stable setting as a possible bridging technology if bringing sustainable and less dangerous energy sources online becomes delayed. Maybe I'll feel compelled to mention it again, and again, and again........


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> I have now three--or is it four?--times now proposed consideration of the Dyson-Teller-TRIGA reactor located in a geologically stable setting as a possible bridging technology if bringing sustainable and less dangerous energy sources online becomes delayed. Maybe I'll feel compelled to mention it again, and again, and again........


I suspect people are just a bit skittish right now. "Yes, of course we've considered every possible risk in siting the Fukushima reactors. I assure you that there's no possible natural calamity that could pose the slightest threat..."


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

In the 1980's we were all sh!tting ourselves at the threat of an imminent Nuclear winter.

Nowadays it's Global warming, for pitty's sake, is there no pleasing some people!


----------



## Guest

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> In the 1980's we were all sh!tting ourselves at the threat of an imminent Nuclear winter.
> 
> Nowadays it's Global warming, for pitty's sake, is there no pleasing some people!


Maybe a controlled nuclear winter? A mild nuclear calamity? It might both drop the population, like Strange Malthus wants, and drop the temperature! Win-win.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Maybe a controlled nuclear winter? A mild nuclear calamity? It might both drop the population, like Strange Malthus wants, and drop the temperature! Win-win.


Ah, a note of levity! Just what the thread needed. Seriously, there is nothing to worry about.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Ah, a note of levity! Just what the thread needed. Seriously, there is nothing to worry about.


Yeah, we've still got a good 250 years, give or take - assuming you have set in motion your grand plan to bring full female equality worldwide. If not, I'd get moving on that.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Yeah, we've still got a good 250 years, give or take - assuming you have set in motion your grand plan to bring full female equality worldwide. If not, I'd get moving on that.


It's something we all should get moving on, as I'm positive you agree. Or are you opposed?


----------



## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> It's something we all should get moving on, as I'm positive you agree. Or are you opposed?


This was sent to me in a quick email;

"A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology, and even traits like physiology and genetics."


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> It's something we all should get moving on, as I'm positive you agree. Or are you opposed?


I'm a conservative Christian - didn't you get the talking points that we are all for the oppression of women? 
In the words of a brilliant philosopher, "Whatever it is, I'm against it." 
I prefer finding the Infinity Stones and snapping the necessary number of people out of existence.


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> I'm a conservative Christian - didn't you get the talking points that we are all for the oppression of women?
> In the words of a brilliant philosopher, "Whatever it is, I'm against it."
> I prefer finding the Infinity Stones and snapping the necessary number of people out of existence.


I think a conservative Christian believes that everything will eventually be fixed by Jesus.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> I'm a conservative Christian - didn't you get the talking points that we are all for the oppression of women?
> In the words of a brilliant philosopher, "Whatever it is, I'm against it.".


Beneath the intended veneer of irony.........


----------



## Strange Magic

Luchesi said:


> This was sent to me in a quick email;
> 
> "A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology, and even traits like physiology and genetics."


There may also be a difference in a preference for either facts or "alternative" facts.


----------



## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> There may also be a difference in a preference for either facts or "alternative" facts.


Whether you're a person who thinks selfishness is a virtue and leads to good things, or you believe the opposite, I think you'll find your own alternative facts. That's what humans do.


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## Strange Magic

Luchesi said:


> Whether you're a person who thinks selfishness is a virtue and leads to good things, or you believe the opposite, I think you'll find your own alternative facts. That's what humans do.


You should end your wise little observations thusly: "That's what humans do, Grasshopper."


----------



## KenOC

Luchesi said:


> I think a conservative Christian believes that everything will eventually be fixed by Jesus.


This reminds me of Jim Inhofe, former chairman of the Senate Environment Committee. He was no believer in climate change. To quote Wiki:



> He said that, because "God's still up there", the "arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."


----------



## DaveM

^^^Which implies that here we have a universe with the combination of all sorts of random and organized events with black holes, nascent stars, dying stars, supernovas, forming planets etc. and yet some peoples’ vision of a God is one that decides to mess with Earth’s climate or that the same God is making sure to repair the climate that Man is messing with. Hmm.


----------



## Luchesi

DaveM said:


> ^^^Which implies that here we have a universe with the combination of all sorts of random and organized events with black holes, nascent stars, dying stars, supernovas, forming planets etc. and yet some peoples' vision of a God is one that decides to mess with Earth's climate or that the same God is making sure to repair the climate that Man is messing with. Hmm.


Some people will wave away evidence science has discovered, because the phenomena isn't described in their tradition's favorite book. Since it isn't mentioned some of our leaders feel that they have to guess about it, instead of asking scientists in the field. When I was young - such people would have been too embarrassed.


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## KenOC

Are we depressed yet? And we haven't even talked about ocean acidification! Check that one out if you want a good scare.


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## Guest

It sounds like a bunch of people doing their best approximation of what they think religious people believe, and failing pretty miserably.


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## Strange Magic

My observation is that religious people respond to environmental issues in a whole spectrum of ways, from the darkness and closure of Jim Imhofe's tiny mind, to certain young evangelicals
fighting to get their brethren to awaken:

http://nationswell.com/evangelicals-fight-climate-change/


----------



## SixFootScowl

Strange Magic said:


> My observation is that religious people respond to environmental issues *in a whole spectrum of ways*, from the darkness and closure of Jim Imhofe's tiny mind, to certain young evangelicals fighting to get their brethren to awaken:
> 
> http://nationswell.com/evangelicals-fight-climate-change/


What is a "religious person"? That category is very broad and can include atheists in so far they are "devoted to an acknowledged ultimate reality..." (Merriam-Webster online dictionary).


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## Strange Magic

Fritz Kobus said:


> What is a "religious person"? That category is very broad and can include atheists in so far they are "devoted to an acknowledged ultimate reality..." (Merriam-Webster online dictionary).


Not sure I get your point, Fritz. Is your observation different from mine, that some religious folks are very concerned also about AGW and other threats to the biosphere and our fellow creatures?


----------



## SixFootScowl

Strange Magic said:


> Not sure I get your point, Fritz. Is your observation different from mine, that some religious folks are very concerned also about AGW and other threats to the biosphere and our fellow creatures?


I don't know what is meant by "religious person." Even excluding the broader definition I linked above, there still are many, varied world religions. So I am not sure what religion has to do with it. I suspect that if religious people respond to environmental issues in a whole spectrum of ways, then so do non-religious people (whatever that may be), so perhaps religion has nothing to do with it. Or maybe we need to look at each separate religion and its major subdivisions.


----------



## Strange Magic

Fritz Kobus said:


> I don't know what is meant by "religious person." Even excluding the broader definition I linked above, there still are many, varied world religions. So I am not sure what religion has to do with it. I suspect that if religious people respond to environmental issues in a whole spectrum of ways, then so do non-religious people (whatever that may be), so perhaps religion has nothing to do with it. Or maybe we need to look at each separate religion and its major subdivisions.


Thank you; excellent point! I'll bet we could sort out easily the two ends of the belief spectrum: the literalist, fundamentalist, dogmatic mindset, and the uncertain, questioning people at the other end. And these would match up pretty well with what we've experienced certainly in US politics and around the globe. But we can look--and have looked--at this in detail in the Religious Views Group downstairs


----------



## philoctetes

I won't join a discussion that starts on false assumptions and labels, but keep trying, as we all learn from the mistakes of others.


----------



## philoctetes

"the uncertain, questioning people at the other end" those Hobbits who will save the world from Sauron


----------



## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> "the uncertain, questioning people at the other end" those Hobbits who will save the world from Sauron


The Greek Chorus continues to offer observations from the wings. Substance? Not so much.


----------



## Guest

My plan is to party hard, because soon we will either be destroyed by Cthulhu or the Sweet Meteor of Death (SMOD). Live it up while you can!


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> My plan is to party hard, because soon we will either be destroyed by Cthulhu or the Sweet Meteor of Death (SMOD). Live it up while you can!


It seems to me that we can manage that by ourselves without assistance.


----------



## Guest

I'm not sure what more is expected of me. I live modestly. My wife and I drive fuel efficient vehicles, as nice as we can afford. We have a modest house that we don't keep too cold in the summer or too hot in the winter. We aren't excessive meat eaters, and tend more towards poultry than beef. We have three children, one of which is adopted. In terms of our carbon footprint, is say we compare quite favorably to any ten loudmouth environmentalists always hogging the limelight.

We are given conflicting stories. On the one hand, we are constantly told, at any given time, that we are a decade or two away from the endgame. But on the other, I hear these multi-century projects proposed to save the planet. When did Malthusians say we would be done for? When did Ehrlich predict our population bomb would go off? When did Al Gore say the post ice caps would be gone by? What's the latest?

You'll forgive me if I take a bit of a light-hearted approach to all this hand-wringing and doomsday prophesying.


----------



## Strange Magic

Besides maintaining sustainable personal and family lifestyles and levels of consumption, we influence the present and future by voting and by advocacy. In order to do both intelligently as informed citizens, we need to educate ourselves about the state of the planet's health. As rational people, when we find the overwhelming balance of scientists in fields most closely linked to observation of persistent trends in biological diversity, population dynamics, climatology, and the geochemistry of atmospheres and oceans are united in their concern for the future, we should be concerned also. The world's major scientific organizations have published their fears and findings in a series of overview reports and position papers, all available on the Internet, and to which links have been established here on TC. 

Our willingness to thus educate ourselves will be reflected in how we vote on Election Day and for what we advocate when we interact with those around us. To the extent that we vote for ballot initiatives and/or for those representatives that strongly support our withdrawal from fossil fuel extraction and use, the rapid adoption of least-toxic renewable energy sources, the suppression of every sort of waste, the maximization of recycling, and the protection of ecosystems, we can affect our futures. Additionally, our voting in favor of full female emancipation and equality, for women's full and confidential control over their bodies and their reproductive functions, and their dignity and authenticity as full human beings, will also bring change (as it has already done). Similarly, our voting for a foreign policy that stresses our defense of democracy, environmental protection, and full female equality, will affect the future.

Along with voting intelligently and free from the shackling influence of economic and religious compulsions and ideologies, comes our advocacy to others of reliance upon science to properly identify our problems and upon an open-minded empiricism and pragmatism to attempt to solve them. Many of our local, state, and national legislatures and administrations are passing retrograde, head-in-the-sand, do-nothing, deny the problem, women-shackling legislation and installing ideologically warped, bigoted judges poorly regarded by their peers, with large majorities of people ignorant of what is going on, but supported by cadres of ideologically-driven zealots.

So there is room within our personal, individual lives for effecting positive change--or for trying to. Some choose to carefully, studiously ignore or contradict or repudiate what science is telling us. Some invoke powerful ideologies--religious, economic--to justify doing nothing or actively fighting for the status quo. Or they feign a weary fatigue, as befits their personal psychology. Not my style.


----------



## Guest

Yeah, that was a long-winded way of saying I should vote for Democrats. What major environmental legislation did they pass when last they controlled the White House, House, and Senate?


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Yeah, that was a long-winded way of saying I should vote for Democrats. What major environmental legislation did they pass when last they controlled the White House, House, and Senate?


You should vote your knowledge, your conscience, and your assessment of what will be best for your grandchildren. As to the usual Doctoral Rhetorical Question above--what did the Democrats do for us lately--we can turn to the Internet if we really are interested. We can also consider the two parties and their histories on environmental and women's rights issues over time and come to conclusions that reveal mostly stark differences but with rare interludes when ideology or the bizarre hero-worship of a Maximum Leader has not benighted the Party of the Right.

Just one link; find more....

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/top-pieces-environmental-legislation/story?id=11067662


----------



## SixFootScowl

Strange Magic said:


> So there is room within our personal, individual lives for effecting positive change--or for trying to. Some choose to carefully, studiously ignore or contradict or repudiate *what science is telling us*. Some invoke powerful ideologies--religious, economic--to justify doing nothing or actively fighting for the status quo. Or they feign a weary fatigue, as befits their personal psychology. Not my style.


Science tells us nothing about AGW; men do, and they are politically motivated to interpret the data as they please.


----------



## Strange Magic

Fritz Kobus said:


> Science tells us nothing about AGW; men do, and they are politically motivated to interpret the data as they please.


Fritz, we'll just let that stand as is. It is a mercifully brief, eloquent statement of a certain attitude toward science, and really cannot be effectively countered. What are your views on mass immunization/vaccination?

On the previous matter, the former Republican, now Trump, Party has given us, besides rollbacks of almost all Obama-era environmental protections, the examples of the disgraced Scott Pruitt of the EPA and Ryan Zinke of Interior, both driven from office as hopelessly unfit. You can look that up also.


----------



## Guest

Nope. Not the place. Take it down to the basement.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Nope. Not the place. Take it down to the basement.


Now you want to take it down to the basement!


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> I'm not sure what more is expected of me. I live modestly. My wife and I drive fuel efficient vehicles, as nice as we can afford. We have a modest house that we don't keep too cold in the summer or too hot in the winter. We aren't excessive meat eaters, and tend more towards poultry than beef. We have three children, one of which is adopted. In terms of our carbon footprint, is say we compare quite favorably to any ten loudmouth environmentalists always hogging the limelight.
> 
> We are given conflicting stories. On the one hand, we are constantly told, at any given time, that we are a decade or two away from the endgame. But on the other, I hear these multi-century projects proposed to save the planet. When did Malthusians say we would be done for? When did Ehrlich predict our population bomb would go off? When did Al Gore say the post ice caps would be gone by? What's the latest?
> 
> You'll forgive me if I take a bit of a light-hearted approach to all this hand-wringing and doomsday prophesying.


I would make two points. Individual actions will have very little effect on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It's true that everyone on earth could vastly change their lifestyle and decrease emissions significantly, but the probability of that happening is close to zero. The best approach to mitigating negative effects of climate change comes from societal actions (e.g. moving to renewable fuel production, electrification in transport, increasing renewable power production, etc.). To make a difference in those areas one can advocate various policies. There are policies that would reduce GHG emissions enormously.

My second point would be to rely on information from the scientific community rather than individuals even if those individuals are scientists. For some it may be difficult to distinguish whether a particular scientist is speaking "for the scientific community." If so, then read papers from scientific organizations. Einstein is often considered the greatest physicist to ever live (at least one of the top 2), but he was wrong on quantum theory (one of the most fundamental aspects of the physical world). The scientific community was not wrong on quantum theory.

I essentially tell people to ignore anyone on TV, articles in magazines, and acquaintances when trying to learn about climate change. They might give correct information, but there's a reasonable chance the information will be wrong or exaggerated.


----------



## Guest

I think the greater problem is not the science, or the agreement/disagreement with the science, but that the politicians look to it as a way to push unrelated policy proposals. Look at the Green New Deal - how much of that would have been realistic, or even had any significant impact on the environment? That's why it fails. So often, we are being told that we must surrender more and more freedoms, and lately to switch from capitalism to socialism, or the planet will die. And yes, it is framed in such absurd terms. I realize not by the scientists, but by politicians, who actually do have power to significantly impact our lives.


----------



## Guest

Let's face it - nobody even tries to start with things that would be acceptable to all. Like idiotic other political moves, they come out with these absurd all or nothing proposals. And the actual people pushing the policies reject aspects that might get more support. What environmentalist policy makers are pushing for more nuclear power among other renewable and clean energy sources? I haven't heard of them. They might exist - they certainly aren't speaking very loudly. You say that some of the loudest voices are not necessarily right - but the rest of the pack is in no hurry to point out that they are wrong and hurting their argument. On the contrary, they seem downright supportive, because that means more attention for them, and so often in science, more attention means more politicians want to funnel funding your way. So they don't feel the need to tell Al Gore and Leo Dicaprio to walk the walk.

I have a purely methodological question - this started out talking about biomass and biodiversity. How is that measured? Random sampling and extrapolation? How do you measure such things on a planetary scale? I understand in theory how you could look at things like deforestation - I imagine that could easily be determined by a few passes of satellites. But other lifeforms? How are we measuring these things? Assuming we are measuring everything from the smallest microbe (are we counting non-cellular organisms, such as viruses, as part of the biomass and biodiversity?) to the largest organism - how do you do this?


----------



## Strange Magic

I see that DrMike sidesteps entirely the focus on the overwhelming consensus within the scientific community--that does present a thorny obstacle--and instead suggests the community halt and do a top-to-bottom reassessment of its methodologies in counting and studying environmental/biosphere/population issues. That way we can again call into question well-established findings and worrying trends and stop whatever processes of remediation dead in their tracks. Maybe there aren't almost 8 billion people on Earth, and that number growing to 150-200% of its current value--let's rip the mask off the whole Mad Scientists' Plot to annoy and vex their fellows--anything to waste time and disrupt actual remediation. Again, ideology trumps science.


----------



## Guest

No. I am a scientist. In every scientific paper I read (original research, not reviews) they have a materials and methods section. My curiosity is wondering how you measure planetary biomass/biodiversity. But thanks for jumping to conclusions about my motives. If you have any experience in science, you will know that methodological questions are very common. Like I said, I could imagine that you could use satellite images to measure forestation. But measuring biomass/biodiversity seems a lot harder to do. Is it a direct measurement? An extrapolation? An indirect measurement? In studying immune responses, I use all three. I use flow cytometry to directly assess different lymphocyte populations. I use the indirect measurement of viral clearance to measure the effectiveness of immune responses. I extrapolate total lymphocyte population sizes based on tissue sampling. I am wondering how they measure these things.

Maybe you shouldn't assume you know everybody's motivations as much as you do.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Strange Magic said:


> ... *the overwhelming consensus within the scientific community*...


Consensus is not science, especially when it is a fabricated consensus:



> There is no consensus on man-made global warming. There are in fact hundreds of scientists at the very least, amongst them some of the most distinguished in their field, who are sceptical about the theory. Some of them, such as the meteorologist Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, have testified to the outright fraud and intimidation used to support the climate change scam. Some have been subjected to professional ostracism, loss of grant funding, vilification and even death threats because they have stood up for scientific evidence against the gross perversion of science involved in what is probably the most intellectually corrupt episode in scientific history. Such wholesale intimidation means that without a shadow of a doubt many more scientists are climate change sceptics than are registered in public debate.


See above quote by Melanie Phillips' in Global Warming and the Totalitarian Scientific Inquisition

More from the author of that quote, Melanie Phillips: 
Science Is Turning Back To The Dark Ages


----------



## Luchesi

mmsbls said:


> I would make two points. Individual actions will have very little effect on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It's true that everyone on earth could vastly change their lifestyle and decrease emissions significantly, but the probability of that happening is close to zero. The best approach to mitigating negative effects of climate change comes from societal actions (e.g. moving to renewable fuel production, electrification in transport, increasing renewable power production, etc.). To make a difference in those areas one can advocate various policies. There are policies that would reduce GHG emissions enormously.
> 
> My second point would be to rely on information from the scientific community rather than individuals even if those individuals are scientists. For some it may be difficult to distinguish whether a particular scientist is speaking "for the scientific community." If so, then read papers from scientific organizations. Einstein is often considered the greatest physicist to ever live (at least one of the top 2), but he was wrong on quantum theory (one of the most fundamental aspects of the physical world). The scientific community was not wrong on quantum theory.
> 
> I essentially tell people to ignore anyone on TV, articles in magazines, and acquaintances when trying to learn about climate change. They might give correct information, but there's a reasonable chance the information will be wrong or exaggerated.


"I essentially tell people to ignore anyone on TV, articles in magazines, and acquaintances when trying to learn about climate change. They might give correct information, but there's a reasonable chance the information will be wrong or exaggerated"

That's good. Imagine asking people to decide upon how to treat a group with cancer? (as opposed to treating the planet's health in the specific area of climate change) What are the latest research breakthroughs in the field of oncology? Are the laypersons up-to-date? lol Have they even taken a course in oncology?

How much do people in here know about what forms and sustains regional climates? Can they then stretch the expertise to the whole planet of global circulations?

How much do you mmsbls personally know about what forms and sustains regional climates? That's a much simpler question than whether you should be a warmist or a denialist about the much bigger picture. You don't learn about this in high school.. But I get the impression that people generally think that it's a lot simpler question than some technical, life and death medical decision.


----------



## Taggart

Please avoid politics and stick to the OP.

Some political and off-topic posts have been removed.


----------



## Strange Magic

> DrMike: "I have a purely methodological question - this started out talking about biomass and biodiversity. How is that measured? Random sampling and extrapolation? How do you measure such things on a planetary scale? I understand in theory how you could look at things like deforestation - I imagine that could easily be determined by a few passes of satellites. But other lifeforms? How are we measuring these things? Assuming we are measuring everything from the smallest microbe (are we counting non-cellular organisms, such as viruses, as part of the biomass and biodiversity?) to the largest organism - how do you do this?"


DrMike's innocent question is not one that will get an answer from me, KenOC, mmsbls, or anyone else here on TC, as he must know. He can get answers (if he is really interested in getting the answers) by reading the papers himself and determining what the methodologies were. TC is not a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. To imply that it is, or ought to be, is to seek rhetorical advantage only, while appearing to be the open-minded investigator interested only in getting to the truth or exposing corruption in the scientific community. I will await, though, his researches.


----------



## Strange Magic

I again supply the Wikipedia entry on Melanie Phillips, so that her expertise on climate issues may be judged:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Phillips


----------



## Guest

On the contrary, there is a wealth of knowledge around here. I thought it highly likely that somebody might know something of how these things are measured. As I mentioned before, I don't have a problem with the data - or how it is collected - so much as what people propose to do with the data. But I get that you have some grudge against me. 

For anybody else out there, not wanting to pick a fight with me, I am genuinely interested, if you happen to know. My guess is that they have certain populations that they regularly count and extrapolate from there. Some would obviously be harder to track than others, I would assume. I could go read the papers, but science is highly specialized, and so often, if it isn't your particular field, the technical jargon can be daunting - and so, like mmsbls providing more of a layman's description of the energy field, I thought we might have someone with specialized training in this area that could provide a summary like he does. In the same way that I would do so if someone asked an immunology question.

I'm not looking for an argument here - in spite of what some people with chips on their shoulders might think.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I again supply the Wikipedia entry on Melanie Phillips, so that her expertise on climate issues may be judged:
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Phillips


argumentum ad verecundiam


----------



## Jacck

DrMike said:


> On the contrary, there is a wealth of knowledge around here. I thought it highly likely that somebody might know something of how these things are measured. As I mentioned before, I don't have a problem with the data - or how it is collected - so much as what people propose to do with the data. But I get that you have some grudge against me.
> 
> For anybody else out there, not wanting to pick a fight with me, I am genuinely interested, if you happen to know. My guess is that they have certain populations that they regularly count and extrapolate from there. Some would obviously be harder to track than others, I would assume. I could go read the papers, but science is highly specialized, and so often, if it isn't your particular field, the technical jargon can be daunting - and so, like mmsbls providing more of a layman's description of the energy field, I thought we might have someone with specialized training in this area that could provide a summary like he does. In the same way that I would do so if someone asked an immunology question.
> 
> I'm not looking for an argument here - in spite of what some people with chips on their shoulders might think.


it is very easy to use google to find something
http://chao.stat.nthu.edu.tw/wordpress/paper/97.pdf
of course it is difficult to estimate these things, because we always need to extrapolate from some sample measurements performed in nature. It is similar to political polls, where they ask a couple of hundred people and based on their answers extrapolate the prediction to the whole population. So they go to some locality, and count the number of species there and extrapolate. 
or you can read a concrete paper and study the Material and Methods section
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5646769/pdf/pone.0185809.pdf


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> argumentum ad verecundiam


It is better to know something of a quoted sources' background and areas of expertise than nothing at all. This is common sense, and also good science. Melanie Phillips is clearly an entire package of closely-related positions, including on alleged links between autism and vaccination. Fascinating!


----------



## mmsbls

Luchesi: I'm not sure I understand the overall point you are making here so I'll answer your questions, but I may be missing something. In general I agree completely with what you say. The average person has essentially no understanding of technical details of climate change. They do not understand the science, they have not read many (or any) papers, they do not do research on aspects of climate change, they do not attend climate change conferences to hear the discussions, and they do not participate in discussions with climate change experts.

The problem people have when confronted with climate change issues is whom to believe. That's true with just about any science - cosmology, evolution, high temperature superconductivity, or dielectric materials. Unless you know several experts personally, you must rely on choosing the best sources for information. Unfortunately most people don't know how to select expert sources so they must rely on more general sources they trust - e.g. Fox News, MSNBC, The Chicago Tribune, or maybe Facebook.



Luchesi said:


> That's good. Imagine asking people to decide upon how to treat a group with cancer? (as opposed to treating the planet's health in the specific area of climate change) What are the latest research breakthroughs in the field of oncology? Are the laypersons up-to-date? lol Have they even taken a course in oncology?
> 
> How much do people in here know about what forms and sustains regional climates? Can they then stretch the expertise to the whole planet of global circulations?


Laypeople would be hopelessly out of their league dealing with either cancer treatments or climate change issues.



Luchesi said:


> How much do you mmsbls personally know about what forms and sustains regional climates? That's a much simpler question than whether you should be a warmist or a denialist about the much bigger picture. You don't learn about this in high school.. But I get the impression that people generally think that it's a lot simpler question than some technical, life and death medical decision.


I agree that many people somehow believe they are knowledgeable about very technical science issues. Those who have studied a science extensively know how remarkably complex many issues are and how difficult it is to gain knowledge about that subject. I know a very modest amount about the physics of climate change. I am without question not an expert. I am an expert on climate change mitigation in the on-road vehicle sector.

I have read a modest number of climate change papers. I have read much of the IPCC technical reports. I regularly read blog posts in RealClimate.org, and I have spoken with climate change researchers. That all makes me more knowledgeable than most, but I am not an expert. People could read reports from the US National Academy of Sciences (e.g. this summary with the Royal Society), statements from the American Meteorological Society , or if they are ambitious the recent IPCC Summary for Policymakers 
.


----------



## Luchesi

mmsbls said:


> Luchesi: I'm not sure I understand the overall point you are making here so I'll answer your questions, but I may be missing something. In general I agree completely with what you say. The average person has essentially no understanding of technical details of climate change. They do not understand the science, they have not read many (or any) papers, they do not do research on aspects of climate change, they do not attend climate change conferences to hear the discussions, and they do not participate in discussions with climate change experts.
> 
> The problem people have when confronted with climate change issues is whom to believe. That's true with just about any science - cosmology, evolution, high temperature superconductivity, or dielectric materials. Unless you know several experts personally, you must rely on choosing the best sources for information. Unfortunately most people don't know how to select expert sources so they must rely on more general sources they trust - e.g. Fox News, MSNBC, The Chicago Tribune, or maybe Facebook.
> 
> Laypeople would be hopelessly out of their league dealing with either cancer treatments or climate change issues.
> 
> I agree that many people somehow believe they are knowledgeable about very technical science issues. Those who have studied a science extensively know how remarkably complex many issues are and how difficult it is to gain knowledge about that subject. I know a very modest amount about the physics of climate change. I am without question not an expert. I am an expert on climate change mitigation in the on-road vehicle sector.
> 
> I have read a modest number of climate change papers. I have read much of the IPCC technical reports. I regularly read blog posts in RealClimate.org, and I have spoken with climate change researchers. That all makes me more knowledgeable than most, but I am not an expert. People could read reports from the US National Academy of Sciences (e.g. this summary with the Royal Society), statements from the American Meteorological Society , or if they are ambitious the recent IPCC Summary for Policymakers
> .


"I have read a modest number of climate change papers. I have read much of the IPCC technical reports. I regularly read blog posts in RealClimate.org, and I have spoken with climate change researchers. That all makes me more knowledgeable than most, but I am not an expert."

Really? So then you obviously know what I've been following for 50 years of my life.

Do I see climate change? Not until 2011.


----------



## mmsbls

Luchesi said:


> Really? So then you obviously know what I've been following for 50 years of my life.
> 
> Do I see climate change? Not until 2011.


I'm sorry but I think I'm not following your last two posts. I can't tell if you are agreeing with me, disagreeing with me, or posting on completely different topics.


----------



## Luchesi

mmsbls said:


> I'm sorry but I think I'm not following your last two posts. I can't tell if you are agreeing with me, disagreeing with me, or posting on completely different topics.


You sound defensive.

I'm agreeing with you. You've read the papers. You know what I've been following for 50 years of my life.

Now the question is after all this time do I see climate change? I saw it back in 2011 and we here at the lab have been trying to follow what's happened since to the Rossby wave patterns in each of the four seasons. It's difficult. It's a wave pattern and there's a lot of noise.

I brief physicists. Many of them are deniers, which has surprised me.


----------



## mmsbls

Luchesi said:


> You sound defensive.
> 
> I'm agreeing with you. You've read the papers. You know what I've been following for 50 years of my life.
> 
> Now the question is after all this time do I see climate change? I saw it back in 2011 and we here at the lab have been trying to follow what's happened since to the Rossby wave patterns in each of the four seasons. It's difficult. It's a wave pattern and there's a lot of noise.
> 
> I brief physicists. Many of them are deniers, which has surprised me.


That would surprise me as well, and it's a bit disconcerting. I've never personally met a scientist who was not generally in agreement with the IPCC results, but you've probably talked about the issue with more scientists from a wider background.


----------



## Jacck

Luchesi said:


> You sound defensive.
> 
> I'm agreeing with you. You've read the papers. You know what I've been following for 50 years of my life.
> 
> Now the question is after all this time do I see climate change? I saw it back in 2011 and we here at the lab have been trying to follow what's happened since to the Rossby wave patterns in each of the four seasons. It's difficult. It's a wave pattern and there's a lot of noise.
> 
> *I brief physicists. Many of them are deniers, which has surprised me*.


that does not surprise me. Physicist can actually look at the data and see that the media hysteria is exaggerated. In the last 150 years, it got only 0.9° warmer. And if the climate sensitivity is 2°C, it means that if we increase CO2 from 400ppm to 800ppm, it will get only 2°C warmer. For example in this recent study, they estimated the climate sensitivity to be only about 1.5°C
https://niclewis.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/lewis_and_curry_jcli-d-17-0667_accepted.pdf

The draconian measures that they implement to fight this climate change might be worse for nature than doing nothing. I personally think that the plastics pollution, rainforest deforestation, habitat loss, overpopulation might be bigger problems than the warming.


----------



## Strange Magic

mmsbls said:


> That would surprise me as well, and it's a bit disconcerting. I've never personally met a scientist who was not generally in agreement with the IPCC results, but you've probably talked about the issue with more scientists from a wider background.


I am a little surprised also, but it may be that physicists--all things considered--deal with simpler systems, and those less directly associated in the mind with the health of the biosphere. Meteorology; climatology; geochemistry of oceans, soils, atmospheres; biological structure and processes--all certainly have physics components but are rather more densely interwoven with inherent complexities. Just a notion......


----------



## mmsbls

Jacck said:


> that does not surprise me. Physicist can actually look at the data and see that the media hysteria is exaggerated. In the last 150 years, it got only 0.9° warmer. And if the climate sensitivity is 2°C, it means that if we increase CO2 from 400ppm to 800ppm, it will get only 2°C warmer. For example in this recent study, they estimated the climate sensitivity to be only about 1.5°C
> https://niclewis.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/lewis_and_curry_jcli-d-17-0667_accepted.pdf


You and I are not climate scientists. As such, we are not qualified to assess technical papers such as the Lewis and Curry one. In that paper they raise their median estimate of the ECS to 1.76 °C allowing for time-varying climate feedbacks. I thought climate scientists all believe feedbacks are time-varying. They also state that, "Using a simple rather than a complex climate model also has the important advantage of transparency and reproducibility." However, here is a comment from a blog post on RealClimate.org:



> The common thread in his (i.e. Lewis) criticisms is that these results are based on behaviour seen in models. However, these models are much more complex and better validated than the 1-D energy balance model used in these constraints, so the more correct view is that the simplistic assumptions needed in his approach don't seem to work in more sophisticated set-ups, and thus are unlikely to be valid in the real world.


From other RealClimate.org blogs I believe that Lewis and Curry are outside the norm in climate sensitivity estimates. I don't feel confident understanding all the myriad subtle climate factors and how they influence climate sensitivity. I choose to generally follow the climate science community and accept their collective assessments.


----------



## Guest

As for the physicists - it doesn't surprise me, but I wouldn't have predicted it, either. Their field may have some overlap with climate science, but I don't know how much.

I am not surprised, though, because it is science. I think the strength of the "consensus" has more to do with the politics of the field. I think there might be a lot of hidden skepticism that people are too scared to voice for fear of where that might lead, professionally and in terms of employment. In my field, at least, while certain broad concepts benefit from general consensus, the more you drill into the details, the more skepticism arises. Go to any talk in my field at a major conference, and the standard question usually is somewhere along the lines of, "Very nice talk. I was wondering whether you considered X in your analysis?" Or, "That is an interesting finding, but one thing you might want to consider is Y." 

The more complex the system, the more the Knowledge Problem comes into play. And we are talking about a planetary system, with so many factors playing one role or another. Frankly, I'm surprised just how much "consensus" there actually is. And quite honestly, I'd like to see far fewer non-scientists on the panels that put out the scientific data. Politicians and scientists are not necessarily working towards the same goal. Conversely, I'd like to see less scientists on the policy proposal side, for the same reason.


----------



## Kivimees

DrMike said:


> On the contrary, there is a wealth of knowledge around here. I thought it highly likely that somebody might know something of how these things are measured. As I mentioned before, I don't have a problem with the data - or how it is collected - so much as what people propose to do with the data. But I get that you have some grudge against me.
> 
> For anybody else out there, not wanting to pick a fight with me, I am genuinely interested, if you happen to know. My guess is that they have certain populations that they regularly count and extrapolate from there. Some would obviously be harder to track than others, I would assume. I could go read the papers, but science is highly specialized, and so often, if it isn't your particular field, the technical jargon can be daunting - and so, like mmsbls providing more of a layman's description of the energy field, I thought we might have someone with specialized training in this area that could provide a summary like he does. In the same way that I would do so if someone asked an immunology question.
> 
> I'm not looking for an argument here - in spite of what some people with chips on their shoulders might think.


And your point is well taken. In fact, ecologists argue amongst themselves what exactly 'biodiversity' entails and how to measure it. There is no 'correct' way to measure it, and there is no 'correct' way to interpret what any particular measure means.


----------



## Open Book

Jacck said:


> that does not surprise me. Physicist can actually look at the data and see that the media hysteria is exaggerated. In the last 150 years, it got only 0.9° warmer. And if the climate sensitivity is 2°C, it means that if we increase CO2 from 400ppm to 800ppm, it will get only 2°C warmer. For example in this recent study, they estimated the climate sensitivity to be only about 1.5°C
> https://niclewis.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/lewis_and_curry_jcli-d-17-0667_accepted.pdf
> 
> The draconian measures that they implement to fight this climate change might be worse for nature than doing nothing. I personally think that the plastics pollution, rainforest deforestation, habitat loss, overpopulation might be bigger problems than the warming.


Scientists are learning that climate change contributes to species extinction as surely as habitat loss does. It changes habitats. A warming drier climate supports different plants than a cooler wetter one. The animals that rely on these plants become geographicaly misaligned, they have to migrate north or south to obtain the same food.

Advantages are afforded to some species that they never had before and this throws balances out of whack. For example, ticks used to be merely a nuisance for moose, now they are deadly. With warmer weather the ticks proliferate and the moose must deal with many, many more of them. So many that blood loss weakens them and fur loss from scratching kills them through hypothermia. Ticks are dependent on moose but have become a threat to their existence.


----------



## Strange Magic

Kivimees said:


> And your point is well taken. In fact, ecologists argue amongst themselves what exactly 'biodiversity' entails and how to measure it. There is no 'correct' way to measure it, and there is no 'correct' way to interpret what any particular measure means.


It is a commonplace that scientists argue the finer points of their field among themselves. Yet the consensus, and the strength of the consensus, concerning AGW remains. It is real, and the likelihood that it reflects a genuine worry among scientists that things will not turn out well is high. There are dark hints that the consensus is imposed through a regime of fear, and simultaneously surprise expressed that the consensus is as strong as it is, edging some into conspiracy theory--a hallmark trait of contentious assertions as DrMark knows too well from his own field of immunology. He and we are wise to denounce conspiracy theories both within the fields we know and the ones with which we are far less familiar. That is why I share, with mmsbls and so many others, a regard for the findings of the NAS and the Royal Society, NASA, NOAA, dozens and dozens of specialist societies and associations, and the UN.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> It is a commonplace that scientists argue the finer points of their field among themselves. Yet the consensus, and the strength of the consensus, concerning AGW remains. It is real, and the likelihood that it reflects a genuine worry among scientists that things will not turn out well is high. There are dark hints that the consensus is imposed through a regime of fear, and simultaneously surprise expressed that the consensus is as strong as it is, edging some into conspiracy theory--a hallmark trait of contentious assertions as DrMark knows too well from his own field of immunology. He and we are wise to denounce conspiracy theories both within the fields we know and the ones with which we are far less familiar. That is why I share, with mmsbls and so many others, a regard for the findings of the NAS and the Royal Society, NASA, NOAA, dozens and dozens of specialist societies and associations, and the UN.


Under normal circumstances this would be true. But how many fields of scientific research are quite so politicized as environmental science? There are other factors at play here, externalities that would not play as big of a role in other fields. It has to be having some kind of an impact - consensus can be both good and stifling.

At any rate, as you continue to ignore, my point is that, while the data may be convincing, it doesn't follow that the proposed methods for dealing with it are. There is broad scientific consensus on the safety and efficacy of vaccines. There is, however, not necessarily broad scientific consensus as to the best way to design new vaccines. While some vaccination strategies have worked well for some diseases, they don't with others.

And the scientific consensus does not also follow your Malthusian ideas, which you keep trying to throw in there and give them credibility because you package them with those aspects that do garner broad consensus. Nor are your solutions also part of that same package of scientific consensus - or the solutions of other politicians who see this as a way of enacting broad sweeping political change. Too many see this as a ripe opportunity to grab more power for centralized government, greater central planning for "saving the planet."


----------



## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> I am a little surprised also, but it may be that physicists--all things considered--deal with simpler systems, and those less directly associated in the mind with the health of the biosphere. Meteorology; climatology; geochemistry of oceans, soils, atmospheres; biological structure and processes--all certainly have physics components but are rather more densely interwoven with inherent complexities. Just a notion......


"..physicists--all things considered--deal with simpler systems, and those less directly associated in the mind with the health of the biosphere."

That's right. With the little bit of time I have in briefings (sometimes we have more time but my boss gets perturbed) I usually just point out that in the last few decades the planetary wave number has gone from 6 to 8 down to 5 to 7 waves. It hasn't returned to 6 to 8 waves. This is something they can research on their own and follow. Imagine how much increased energy is required to change this global pattern.


----------



## philoctetes

Open Book said:


> Scientists are learning that climate change contributes to species extinction as surely as habitat loss does. It changes habitats. A warming drier climate supports different plants than a cooler wetter one. The animals that rely on these plants become geographicaly misaligned, they have to migrate north or south to obtain the same food.
> 
> Advantages are afforded to some species that they never had before and this throws balances out of whack. For example, ticks used to be merely a nuisance for moose, now they are deadly. With warmer weather the ticks proliferate and the moose must deal with many, many more of them. So many that blood loss weakens them and fur loss from scratching kills them through hypothermia. Ticks are dependent on moose but have become a threat to their existence.


This continues the theme of the significance of "sensitivities". A doubling of CO2 may cause a "small" rise in temp of less than a degree, which may not seem like much, but to be sure we have to understand the sensitivity of an ecology's stability to temp changes. And that may be the hardest to understand at all, we have no "ensembles" of ecologies to test, no past records that are reliable enough. etc... like predicting what the weather is going to be on a certain date a hundred years from now...

Now "they" move on to bashing physicists (who understand these concepts no worse than anybody else) to support various claims, I'll stay out of the way and just laugh...


----------



## Strange Magic

> DrMike: "And the scientific consensus does not also follow your Malthusian ideas, which you keep trying to throw in there and give them credibility because you package them with those aspects that do garner broad consensus. Nor are your solutions also part of that same package of scientific consensus - or the solutions of other politicians who see this as a way of enacting broad sweeping political change. Too many see this as a ripe opportunity to grab more power for centralized government, greater central planning for "saving the planet."


Your assertion about grabbing power for centralized government and central planning is directly applicable to those who, in the minds of vaccination nay-sayers, are seeking to control and dominate their rights as parents. You appear, in all your postings on science, to be trapped within your own area of familiarity and the consensus you find there that somehow agrees with your direct exposure to your field. Yet everybody else's consensus with a political or economic component (like vaccination, but not vaccination) must be endlessly chewed over, in hopes that any action forward will be be strangled in the cradle.

It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which a large majority of knowledgeable environmental scientists are not gravely concerned about runaway population growth--it's just that the era of Panglossian nonsense from non-scientists (mostly economists with plenty of axes to grind) shut down the 1960s focus on population. The growing alarm over AGW also for a while has overshadowed concern over population, but the powerful multiplying factor of monster populations on AGW and all other threats to the biosphere is causing a reawakening of uneasiness over population growth, as witness the number of papers on Earth's carrying capacity and humankind's growing dominance over total biomass. It is clear to me that there is a consensus forming on the dangers of metastatic population growth.

But my interest here is not to move only in lockstep with any consensus but to continue to hammer away at concerns and ideas of my own, hence my emphasis on women's rights and freedoms, which engage a host of other issues like politics, sociology, and religion, as well as being a path away from the population catastrophe ahead.


----------



## Strange Magic

> The Greek Chorus, aka Philoctetes: "I'll stay out of the way and just laugh..."


You have my full support.


----------



## philoctetes

If I see Panglossian one more time I'm throwing a volume of Voltaire at a schoolteacher


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> *It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which a large majority of knowledgeable environmental scientists are not gravely concerned about runaway population growth*--it's just that the era of Panglossian nonsense from non-scientists (mostly economists with plenty of axes to grind) shut down the 1960s focus on population. The growing alarm over AGW also for a while has overshadowed concern over population, but the powerful multiplying factor of monster populations on AGW and all other threats to the biosphere is causing a reawakening of uneasiness over population growth, as witness the number of papers on Earth's carrying capacity and humankind's growing dominance over total biomass. It is clear to me that there is a consensus forming on the dangers of metastatic population growth.


What you can or can't imagine does not constitute an actual consensus. Whether interest in Malthusianism is on an uptick or not is also not evidence of consensus. You are trying to package those things together to add weight to your Malthusian ideas - borrowed consensus?

And now you are throwing out conspiracy theories over why Malthusian ideas and Ehrlich fell out of favor - non-scientists shut down the 1960s focus on population!!!! It could also be that failed predictions had as much, or more, to do with those ideas falling out of favor. Oh, that's right - he wasn't wrong, his predicted consequences are just around the corner!!!


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> I am not surprised, though, because it is science. I think the strength of the "consensus" has more to do with the politics of the field. I think there might be a lot of hidden skepticism that people are too scared to voice for fear of where that might lead, professionally and in terms of employment.


I'm not sure, but my discussions with climate scientists generally show the opposite. Most are more concerned than what the IPCC reports might suggest. As I understand, the IPCC reports are consensus reports in that they require agreement by all or a large number of authors, and therefore, they tend to be conservative. Interestingly, the projections for warming have been going up from report to report because more data has made the more conservative assessments less supportable.

If others have specific reasons to believe climate scientists are too scared to voice their disagreements, please let me know.



DrMike said:


> In my field, at least, while certain broad concepts benefit from general consensus, the more you drill into the details, the more skepticism arises. Go to any talk in my field at a major conference, and the standard question usually is somewhere along the lines of, "Very nice talk. I was wondering whether you considered X in your analysis?" Or, "That is an interesting finding, but one thing you might want to consider is Y."


I would agree that your observations are likely to be true in all fields. Still there is the consensus of warming ranges, sea level rise ranges, and other broad effects, and then there are the many details that presumably have small effects on the major conclusions.



DrMike said:


> And quite honestly, I'd like to see far fewer non-scientists on the panels that put out the scientific data. Politicians and scientists are not necessarily working towards the same goal. Conversely, I'd like to see less scientists on the policy proposal side, for the same reason.


To my knowledge there are no non-scientists putting out scientific data. I assume you believe that technical data in journals is published by scientists alone. I believe the IPCC technical reports are authored by scientists using technical data from journals or other research. Certainly the scientists I know involved in those reports have always given me the impression that they work with other scientists to produce the reports. Are you referring to other panels putting out data? There may be some situations where non-scientists have been involved, but I would be somewhat surprised.

I work very closely with the people that create and enact California policy on climate change. Many of these people are working closely with the Chinese government to create China's policies. The group of people I consider policy researchers generally have technical degrees often coupled with some policy related or possibly economics degree. They have worked in policy circles for years to decades. They talk with technical researchers such as myself trying to understand issues related to climate change science, climate change impacts, and climate change mitigation. They talk with economists with expertise on, say, transportation policy. They frequently talk with politicians. They make proposals based on all the information they have. The driving goal is what the climate change community (of scientists) tells them. The policies are suggested to agencies such as the California Air Resources Board responsible for California's air quality and climate change emissions. Those agencies vote on the policies based on regulation from the US EPA and the California government and from arguments from the policy researchers.

I'm not sure I could suggest a better group of people to create the policies.


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## Open Book

Any small gains we make in energy efficiency are going to be offset by subsequent population growth.

If we have big technological breakthroughs in energy efficiency we may make real progress, but there are no guarantees that we will have such breakthroughs. Just because we might have had them in the past...

If we merely whittle away at inefficiencies in existing technologies for small gains, population growth will always reverse those gains if we do nothing about it.


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## philoctetes

Open Book said:


> Any small gains we make in energy efficiency are going to be offset by subsequent population growth.
> 
> If we have big technological breakthroughs in energy efficiency we may make real progress, but there are no guarantees that we will have such breakthroughs. Just because we might have had them in the past...
> 
> If we merely whittle away at inefficiencies in existing technologies for small gains, population growth will always reverse those gains if we do nothing about it.


Another element dPi/dPj (the growth impact of one population i on another j) in the matrix chain of sensitivities, and I think it may be the most significant when the denominator dPj is for j=human.

Just look at how we deliberately exterminate all the Pi's to make room for more Phuman. or we force migration on species (including ourselves) to places where they can't survive. It's the intent to kill that outweighs other elements in the matrix.

So I agree that decreasing Phuman is the best way to solve the problem. Perhaps this can happen by some natural negative feedback mechanism. Once we're "decimated" the earth might recover in a short time. I can't support any kind of deliberate population control that isn't a global effort and we're a long ways from that. So for a backup plan we need to figure out how to live somewhere else before the technophobes destroy our chances to do that.

Our addiction to large-grid electricity bothers me a lot. Our insistence on using roads we can't sustain bothers me a lot. These are just some of those inefficiencies that aren't going to change without completely new models of energy and transportation. And those who control those things now aren't willing to change fast enough.

Battery powered cars are not the answer. Autonomous vehicles are not the answer. Many beneficial technologies have been stonewalled and delayed until they make a profit which is too late. Ergonomics duelling with economics. 5G, bitcoin and AI are some of our newest ways of killing the planet. Yet these are all being thrust upon as as if they will make all the difference and save the world when they will actually make humans weak and stupid. True visionaries must see further ahead.


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## Strange Magic

> Philoctetes: "So I agree that decreasing Phuman is the best way to solve the problem. Perhaps this can happen by some natural negative feedback mechanism. Once we're "decimated" the earth might recover in a short time. I can't support any kind of deliberate population control that isn't a global effort and we're a long ways from that. So for a backup plan we need to figure out how to live somewhere else before the technophobes destroy our chances to do that."


The only "natural" negative feedback mechanism that is both humane and shown to work is the one I have outlined here and in Groups probably at least a dozen times now: full control by women over their bodies coupled with full equality and emancipation. Among the factors reducing family size would be the reduction in continual breeding in order to have (more) male children. A side benefit would be the reduction of an artificial increase in the male/female ratio as is the case in India and was in China. The press for full female equality must and should be a global effort. As we know, there are powerful forces abroad and right here in the USA opposing such efforts--they must be defeated.

Regarding escape to another place (planet, or satellites or whatever), no technology will provide the solution. That's something the physicists are sure of.

Regarding the Doctor's assertion that I am ascribing the loss of public interest in and exposure to the population crisis to "conspiracies", I assure him that conspiracies are further from my thinking, always, than I judge from his. People just moved on, though the return is inevitable.


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## philoctetes

I think it's naive to believe that "full control by women over their bodies" in any single country, especially the US where abortions are already common, will make a significant difference around the world. Infanticide is already practiced in less civilized regions. It's naive to think that such a policy can spread worldwide by consensus on a Darwinian planet or that those who adopt it independently are somehow smarter or more humane. Tribes recover from war and disasters by having babies, not by going extinct voluntarily.

I see references to the Handmaid's Tale a lot in the recent protests. I read the book when published and these protesters are missing the point, even Atwood hinted the same after Trump's election. An extreme policy like yours (infanticide) would eventually lead to a future like the Handmaid's Tale...

"Regarding escape to another place (planet, or satellites or whatever), no technology will provide the solution. That's something the physicists are sure of."

You realize this is just asking me to be naive too...


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## Strange Magic

^^^^Could you please show me where I endorsed infanticide? It has escaped my attention. Otherwise, your imputation to me of supporting infanticide is a vicious libel.

Belaboring the obvious: can we expect much more of this? Equality for women is a goal that is worth pursuing everywhere, always, by everyone. The fact that it will be very difficult should not deter us. Please, offer more original material!



> Philoctetes: " So for a backup plan we need to figure out how to live somewhere else before the technophobes destroy our chances to do that..."


Somebody posted the above and ascribed it to you....


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## mmsbls

philoctetes said:


> Our addiction to large-grid electricity bothers me a lot. Our insistence on using roads we can't sustain bothers me a lot. These are just some of those inefficiencies that aren't going to change without completely new models of energy and transportation. And those who control those things now aren't willing to change fast enough.


Do you think there are alternatives to large-grid electricity and our current system of roads that could replace what we have in a roughly cost effective, technologically feasible manner by 2050?



philoctetes said:


> Battery powered cars are not the answer. Autonomous vehicles are not the answer. Many beneficial technologies have been stonewalled and delayed until they make a profit which is too late.


I agree that Battery powered cars and autonomous vehicles are not the answer to many questions. What question are you referring to? Could you give some examples of beneficial technologies that have been stonewalled?


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## Jacck

even in muslim countries birth rates are falling (dispite russian trolls trying to convince European voters that muslims will outbreed us and overtake europe)
https://www.newenglishreview.org/Ibn_Warraq/Demographics:_Why_Islamic_Societies_are_Dying/
in India, the same trend
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news...pidly-says-national-health-profile-2018-60921
the only continent will high birth rates is Africa
global human population will probably peak at some 11 billions and then start falling and never recover again


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## Luchesi

Open Book said:


> Any small gains we make in energy efficiency are going to be offset by subsequent population growth.
> 
> If we have big technological breakthroughs in energy efficiency we may make real progress, but there are no guarantees that we will have such breakthroughs. Just because we might have had them in the past...
> 
> If we merely whittle away at inefficiencies in existing technologies for small gains, population growth will always reverse those gains if we do nothing about it.


I agree. I believe we should invest heavily in carbon sequestration technologies. Right now it's a long shot, but in a century or two it should be cooking right along. It seems less dangerous than the geo-engineering solutions.


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## philoctetes

You're the one who knows the experts as I recall. If you're asking me these questions, I assume I must be "over the target" in some way... but I'm not paid for this and Silicon Valley is three hours away, even further in my past, and even outta my mind on the good days...

Do I "think" there are alternatives? I think we need to get transportation off the ground, literally. I don't know how but when that happens maybe the autonomous / AI technology would have a chance to succeed. As it is, an AI vehicle in today's road conditions is a death trap.

We are now very dependent on solutions which are vulnerable to hacking. Strong cybersecurity is extremely important for robustness. Quantum computing will shake up the landscape for solutions, algorithms, and security in a big way. Maybe I am overestimating the impact but I see little attention to this. 

Our information technology is part of our energy problem, but it's also part of our solution pool. Optimization and tradeoff analysis was not an issue a hundred years ago, now it's a very important part of analyzing the options if we actually know what they are. 

But I see many applications of AI and technology that don't encourage me on the future ones. This is the inherent problem with technology since Archimedes applied his tricks for military purposes. Gawd knows what's going on in that Tesla dude's brain, but like his car's namesake he's not afraid to try anything apparently.

Bitcoin is a good example of the grid problem. Server farms that run algorithms non-stop that simply "mine" crypto. It's advocates want this power-hungry beast to become the norm for the economic future. It trades off a Fed-dependent economy for a crime-dependent one that sucks up power equivalent to small cities. So maybe the distribution problem is hard but it's a no-brainer to decide how it should be used efficiently. Just ban bitcoin as we know it and throw that "proof of work" crap in the trash. We need a solution that doesn't require so much power delivered away from the user, to some server farm in Nevada for simply keeping the books.

Garbage, correlated to population and technology, is the other problem, and it's not getting enough attention because we keep going further down that rabbit hole no matter what we do. All the different ways that we have purchased our music over our lifetimes is a good example of this. if it comes to us from a server somewhere every time we play it, is that more efficient than buying it once in material form and having it n the shelf? Too many calculation I haven't done, have you?

What is cost-effective? Businessmen are taught how to choose projects by their rate of return. Or is it a proposal that beats out the others in a bidding war for government funds? Or one that has better solutions but breaks the allocation? 

So I have to dodge your question obviously because I don't have the winning proposal drafted yet. In fact I missed the request for submission so I'm really behind the curve. but the above is what comes off the top of my head...


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## Strange Magic

Jacck said:


> global human population will probably peak at some 11 billions and then start falling and never recover again


You are right about populations falling after whatever peak and not recovering. The question will be whether the fall is the result of enlightened policies or of a decreasing ability of the biosphere to support the swollen numbers--a carrying capacity question.


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## Strange Magic

> Philoctetes, the serpent-bitten Greek with the diseased foot, abandoned by his companions: " An extreme policy like yours (infanticide) would eventually lead to a future like the Handmaid's Tale..."


After posting this libel, you are morally obligated to identify where and when I endorsed infanticide as a public policy to reduce populations. If you cannot, I await your recantation of this canard.


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## Larkenfield

Uncontrolled population growth is of course one factor. But so is lifestyle and our relationship to the environment. I do not see this planet healing itself with the continuing amount of pollution and toxic chemicals being deposited on land and in the oceans and air, though some gains may have been made. That’s something that should be doable regardless of the size of the population, and such omissions have been associated with climate change. But it has to be promoted and be within the consciousness of human beings. That’s not being done enough. One could go weeks or months without hearing a serious message about it where the impact on the environment is valued more and understood deeply. The only thing that’s going to solve the population problem is probably a plague because sex is free and people will continue to have it as much for recreation as procreation, but who wants to suggest that as the solution to the inevitable long-term growth of population? It would be a different planet if whatever we produced and its byproducts were biodegradable. If it’s not biodegradable then maybe we don’t need it. More thought needs to go in that direction to see what’s possible.


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## philoctetes

Strange Magic said:


> After posting this libel, you are morally obligated to identify where and when I endorsed infanticide as a public policy to reduce populations. If you cannot, I await your recantation of this canard.


Why don't you just say what you really believe, rather than shrouding it in virtue signals? How you do implement your birth control solution, this "complete control for women over their bodies" when there are really two bodies involved and abortions are already legal if performed early enough. make it clear what you mean by this so you won;t be misjudged.

Many people are pushing for infanticide right now as they aren't satisfied with current abortion law and you sound like one of those people. Isn't it ironic and karmic, that you would yelp when someone says something inaccurate about yourself, making a strawman out of you for once? Also, consider reciprocating the same consideration that I have given you up to now, as I've watched you play strawman games with everybody on this forum, trying to fit what doesn't fit to anybody who has a different perspective. But now you squeal unfair. libel, yada yada...

So I'll recant when you supplement your denial with a clarification - deal? How do you implement your "full body control" solution for women and can you prove it will even be effective. I know the answer to the latter and it's not in your favor.

And put your veiled insult where the sun does not shine. *******.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> You are right about populations falling after whatever peak and not recovering. The question will be whether the fall is the result of enlightened policies or of a decreasing ability of the biosphere to support the swollen numbers--a carrying capacity question.


Or neither of those - it may just settle at a lower level naturally. I think you look at it far too simplistically.
You start with your conclusion and fit the data to it. That isn't how science works.


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## philoctetes

Enlightened policies always have holes in them, and are made to be cheated. Live and learn!


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## KenOC

Infanticide has been mentioned. Infanticide is alive and well in the United States, if we consider abortion to be simply infanticide prior to birth. The effect on population is the same in either case.

Abortions in the US peaked in 1982 at 1.3 million, or 35 for every 100 live births. In 2015, the latest year available, there were 638,000 abortions, or 19 for every 100 live births. These numbers, from the CDC, are “light” due to incomplete reporting. California is one of several states that do not report abortions to the CDC.

I think we have to consider that, given improved imaging and genetic analysis, more and more abortions will target fetuses considered undesirable due to deformations, propensity for disease, and so forth. Eugenics for the masses!


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## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> Why don't you just say what you really believe, rather than shrouding it in virtue signals? How you do implement your birth control solution, this "complete control for women over their bodies" when there are really two bodies involved and abortions are already legal if performed early enough. make it clear what you mean by this so you won;t be misjudged.
> 
> Many people are pushing for infanticide right now as they aren't satisfied with current abortion law and you sound like one of those people. Isn't it ironic and karmic, that you would yelp when someone says something inaccurate about yourself, making a strawman out of you for once? Also, consider reciprocating the same consideration that I have given you up to now, as I've watched you play strawman games with everybody on this forum, trying to fit what doesn't fit to anybody who has a different perspective. But now you squeal unfair. libel, yada yada...
> 
> So I'll recant when you supplement your denial with a clarification - deal? How do you implement your "full body control" solution for women and can you prove it will even be effective. I know the answer to the latter and it's not in your favor.
> 
> And put your veiled insult where the sun does not shine. *******.


I am not "many people". My posts and thoughts are mine. My views on abortion just happen to be in agreement with at least 48% of Americans who hold that such decisions are exclusively to be between a woman and her doctor. My views on abortion are fully explored in the Groups, and nowhere do I endorse infanticide as public policy to control populations. But you know this but are too ********, **** and **** to admit you are not only wrong but vicious. Bad move, wise guy.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Or neither of those - it may just settle at a lower level naturally. I think you look at it far too simplistically.
> You start with your conclusion and fit the data to it. That isn't how science works.


The drop in the birth rates is attributed to more widespread use of contraception. If that's an example of "settling at a lower level naturally" then I'm all for "naturally". With or without the support of men, if the figures are real and hold, women may be seizing more and more control over their lives and bodies. Our friends Erdogan, the religious fascists who rule Iran, the new authoritarian ruling Hungary, and many other strongmen are trying to get their people to increase their birthrates in what will be a race to the bottom. I offered the divergent examples of the Philippines and Thailand as evidence of the effectiveness of lowering birthrates upon national prosperity--as usual, no comment from the Peanut Gallery.


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## Strange Magic

Jacck said:


> even in muslim countries birth rates are falling (dispite russian trolls trying to convince European voters that muslims will outbreed us and overtake europe)
> https://www.newenglishreview.org/Ibn_Warraq/Demographics:_Why_Islamic_Societies_are_Dying/
> in India, the same trend
> https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news...pidly-says-national-health-profile-2018-60921
> the only continent will high birth rates is Africa


I do hope this holds up. Part of the problem is the large number of young and very young people forming big percentages of these populations and who are or will be entering their procreative years. Much depends upon whether effective contraception is widely available and widely accepted, especially as there is a growing countermovement by authoritarians to encourage larger families/higher birthrates.


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## Open Book

Jacck said:


> even in muslim countries birth rates are falling (dispite russian trolls trying to convince European voters that muslims will outbreed us and overtake europe)
> https://www.newenglishreview.org/Ibn_Warraq/Demographics:_Why_Islamic_Societies_are_Dying/
> in India, the same trend
> https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news...pidly-says-national-health-profile-2018-60921
> the only continent will high birth rates is Africa
> global human population will probably peak at some 11 billions and then start falling and never recover again


Why should world population peak at 11 billion? What's going to limit it?

Interesting article about Africa. Some African leaders are starting to consider the benefits of reducing birth rates.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/africa-s-population-will-soar-dangerously-unless-women-are-more-empowered/?redirect=1


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## Guest

This thread has gone off the rails. Just sitting back to see what gets pruned. And whether it gets shut down.


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## philoctetes

Don't lose your sleep.


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## Guest

I think any rational person should fear any governmental effort to limit birth rates. It may start benign, but when the desired effect is not forthcoming, things go downhill quickly.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> I think any rational person should fear any governmental effort to limit birth rates. It may start benign, but when the desired effect is not forthcoming, things go downhill quickly.


By dispensing contraceptives and information about contraceptives and family planning? Crazy idea! Things can go downhill quickly when governments (usually authoritarian, as today) seek to increase birthrates so they can win some kind of breeding war with their neighbors. India versus China....and the winner is....


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> This thread has gone off the rails. Just sitting back to see what gets pruned. And whether it gets shut down.


If it does, you can thank(?) the gutless, witless Greek chorus.


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## philoctetes

How so, dear Magic Man?

"I offered the divergent examples of the Philippines and Thailand as evidence of the effectiveness of lowering birthrates upon national prosperity--as usual, no comment from the Peanut Gallery. "

Because being an American forcing indigenous people of other nations to comply with your ideas on reproduction has something unsavory about it. Did you ever stop to think they don't want your influence? 

It's hard enough to get these countries to comply with any of our standards, you name it, so we're just going to stop them from having babies. That'l show em. Then they can immigrate to America where they can show us their gratitude by having babies like crazy.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> By dispensing contraceptives and information about contraceptives and family planning? Crazy idea! Things can go downhill quickly when governments (usually authoritarian, as today) seek to increase birthrates so they can win some kind of breeding war with their neighbors. India versus China....and the winner is....


I think China was worse under their one child policy.


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## mmsbls

This is an interesting thread. Please don't spoil others' enjoyment by posting personal comments that could get the thread closed. There's plenty of content to comment on rather than each other.


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## philoctetes

"Things can go downhill quickly when governments (usually authoritarian, as today) seek to increase birthrates" 

And the alternative:

Things can go downhill quickly when governments (usually authoritarian, as today) seek to decrease birthrates.

Depends on what hill you you want to climb I guess. Do women actually choose to use contraceptives when given "full control over their bodies"? My sense tells me there is a significant % that don't, in California. Maybe it's a generational thing, or an income class thing. Maybe it's having the backup of abortion available, and I never opposed that. I oppose the push for abortion up to birth which I consider infanticide. If SM doesn't support that then I was mistaken, but he needs to be less angry about it and be courteous enough to clarify. It's not my fault he can't tone himself down.

Anyway, the point is that women using contraceptives under government mandate, IF that is what anybody is proposing, is not equivalent to giving women "complete control over their bodies" and this virtue signal is still a virtue signal. To me the phrase suggests no restrictions on abortion up to birth, and again that is not my fault, it's a very obvious interpretation from any informed view.


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## Strange Magic

Some posters, believing themselves "contributors" to the discussion, rely upon their guesses, suspicions, notions, feelings, "maybes", their own definitions of terms, far more than others do here. They perch on the sidelines like carrion birds--offering smart-a$$ "critiques" of the clearly-enunciated views of others, yet offering nothing substantive of their own; neither carefully-thought-through arguments nor checkable authority, but instead quick junk opinions, and libel. They know who they are. Maybe I need to be more angry about it. Maybe others do also.


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## Strange Magic

> The Greek Chorus, aka Philoctetes: "I'll stay out of the way and just laugh..."


You have my full support.


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## philoctetes

I did not use the term before, but I will now, some people must be careful their language should not resort to so-called "dog whistles" if they want to be taken seriously or not misunderstood. I have criticized this kind of meta-language in politics and will continue to do so. Be accurate, use terms that describe your position accurately if you can.

Good advice for a happy holiday weekend? I hope so. People are now being arrested for dog whistling...

And yes, "dog whistle" is meta-language as well, but it's well-known and politically neutral.


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## Luchesi

mmsbls said:


> This is an interesting thread. Please don't spoil others' enjoyment by posting personal comments that could get the thread closed. There's plenty of content to comment on rather than each other.


I just don't know why you would close a thread when you have the power to delete any post that you think is so troublesome. Scorched earth policy.

Maybe mods have the lingering belief that they can teach good behavior as if we're children. But that surely is not how teaching is done anyway. You don't punish everyone.


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## Open Book

One of my posts was removed for being "too political". All I said was that neither major political party in the U.S. does justice to the environment. At least that was my major point, it did get more specific about the parties and their policies.

This issue is so inherently political, I thought that was weird.


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## Strange Magic

Three things the US government could do to further the emancipation and equality of women and to ensure they have access to the full spectrum of reproductive health information and means currently legal in the USA:

A) Pass the Equal Rights Amendment...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment

B) Rescind the International Gag Rule prohibiting victims of rape as a result of war having access to information and means currently legal in the USA...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48028773

C) Ensure that the Domestic Gag Rule is either never allowed to be implemented or is overturned or withdrawn...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli.../abortion-planned-parenthood-gag-rule-title-x


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Some posters, believing themselves "contributors" to the discussion, rely upon their guesses, suspicions, notions, feelings, "maybes", their own definitions of terms, far more than others do here. They perch on the sidelines like carrion birds--offering smart-a$$ "critiques" of the clearly-enunciated views of others, yet offering nothing substantive of their own; neither carefully-thought-through arguments nor checkable authority, but instead quick junk opinions, and libel. They know who they are. Maybe I need to be more angry about it. Maybe others do also.


Luckily we have these things called moderators who get to decide who can and can't comment. And people are free to decide for themselves which posts they find compelling without curating from those who are hardly impartial on the matter.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Three things the US government could do to further the emancipation and equality of women and to ensure they have access to the full spectrum of reproductive health information and means currently legal in the USA:
> 
> A) Pass the Equal Rights Amendment...
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment
> 
> B) Rescind the International Gag Rule prohibiting victims of rape as a result of war having access to information and means currently legal in the USA...
> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48028773
> 
> C) Ensure that the Domestic Gag Rule is either never allowed to be implemented or is overturned or withdrawn...
> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli.../abortion-planned-parenthood-gag-rule-title-x


Why? The birth rate is already falling in the US without these controversial measures. You want to push controversial things - guaranteeing years of fighting with nothing happening - when your hopes for goals are already being achieved without them. Again, using a supposed catastrophe to push preferred policies.

Most people on here seem to agree that most of the major population growth is happening elsewhere. What are your concrete plans there?


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Why? The birth rate is already falling in the US without these controversial measures. You want to push controversial things - guaranteeing years of fighting with nothing happening - when your hopes for goals are already being achieved without them. Again, using a supposed catastrophe to push preferred policies.
> 
> Most people on here seem to agree that most of the major population growth is happening elsewhere. What are your concrete plans there?


I take it from your response that you are opposed to the three suggestions. Other than your zeal for fission reactors, what indeed are your concrete plans...for anything?


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## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> Why? You want to push controversial things - guaranteeing years of fighting with nothing happening - when your hopes for goals are already being achieved without them.... Again, using a supposed catastrophe to push preferred policies.... Most people on here seem to agree that most of the major population growth is happening elsewhere.


I'm not typically into labels but when I am... I call this, perhaps naively, a form of Trotskyism. Low-hanging targets (your neighbor's fruit) for useless revolutions. The media crank out this stuff to sell advertising and push divisive agendas. So much fighting for very little gain.

^^^^ Note how the point is avoided and replaced with distortion and ad hominems...


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Luckily we have these things called moderators who get to decide who can and can't comment. And people are free to decide for themselves which posts they find compelling without curating from those who are hardly impartial on the matter.


Thank you. I had no idea....


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## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> I'm not typically into labels but when I am... I call this, perhaps naively, a form of Trotskyism. Low-hanging targets (your neighbor's fruit) for useless revolutions. The media crank out this stuff to sell advertising and push divisive agendas.
> 
> ^^^^ Note how the point is avoided and replaced with distortion and ad hominems...


Note again and always how substance-content-free these contributions are. Never the topics at hand. It is cynicism-signaling; wise observer on the margins signaling. And not just here.


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## philoctetes

Indeed, not just here. O my gawd now they know.

- The Wise Observer


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## Strange Magic

Substantive contributions from one of the more active posters on this thread:

The poster is *against:*
large-grid electricity
unsustainable roads 
battery-powered cars
autonomous vehicles
5G
Bitcoin 
AI

The poster is *for:*
getting transportation off the ground, literally 
strong cybersecurity 
quantum computing


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## philoctetes

Someone needs to be moderated, but I know it won't happen.

Unless it's me.


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## Strange Magic

Just trying to get the thread back onto substance......


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## philoctetes

No you're trying to make a strawman out of me. I admit my mistakes, why do you keep repeating yours?

Amazes me the mods let you do this over and over... and then tell us not to do it... and then you do it again, ad nauseum...


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I take it from your response that you are opposed to the three suggestions. Other than your zeal for fission reactors, what indeed are your concrete plans...for anything?


I am opposed to any measures that work to expand abortions.
Use human nature. More fuel and energy efficient technology - who wouldn't want to save on their fuel and power bills? I like the idea of electric cars if they are affordable and cheaper over time. 
As for birth rates, get the government out. No tax breaks for kids, if that is your goal. You want a kid? Fine. You don't get benefits for having one. Do it if you want to, but the government isn't here to reward or punish for such decisions.
If solar and wind do what they claim, and can help, I'm fine with it. But I don't believe you can eliminate fossil fuel energy and just replace it with such pipe dreams.

What you fall to see, though, with countries like Hungary incentivizing births, is that they aren't some part of a global whole. They are a country facing a demographic crisis. Most Western Nations have massive welfare programs that rely on a workforce paying in to fund the programs. When your workforce drops below a certain level, how are you supposed to pay for things? You are looking at the population issue from a global perspective. Leaders of countries don't have that luxury. A country with a birth rate higher than necessary for the workforce required to sustain it can afford to see a reduction in their birth rates. A country without cannot. You can't just look at the entire planet as one but average of the whole.

Let birth rates settle where they will naturally settle. You cannot plan things on these levels. Central planning is something I thought we had clearly shown to us is disastrous. Think of whale fishing by the USSR. They devastated the global whale population because they were killing based on what some central committee set as a quota, rather than allowing the market to decide, and many ended up rotting on shore, unused, while the captains were praised for meeting their quotas. I believe that life, and birth rates, are an example of emergence, where the end result cannot be predicted from any of the individual factors, and is an area ripe for catastrophe due to the law of unintended consequences.


----------



## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> No you're trying to make a strawman out of me. I admit my mistakes, why do you keep repeating yours?
> 
> Amazes me the mods let you do this over and over...


Why not turn away from your constant recycling of complaints about process and style and attitude and the sins of the moderators, and instead bring us a fresh new perspective: critique, proposals, something, anything about our relationship to the environmental crisis and how to address it? We'll all feel fresher if not necessarily wiser.


----------



## philoctetes

Strange Magic said:


> Why not turn away from your constant recycling of complaints about process and style and attitude and the sins of the moderators, and instead bring us a fresh new perspective: critique, proposals, something, anything about our relationship to the environmental crisis and how to address it? We'll all feel fresher if not necessarily wiser.


Why not practice some self-discipline so that your comments are more effective and encourage more participation.. I can't speak for others like you can but I think I'm not the only one who would like that. As it is you simply exhibit a crude habit of upmanship.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike, thank you for your post #300. You actually engaged, and offered responses that others can look at and agree or disagree with. I agree with some of your ideas and clearly disagree with others. And we can discuss those. This is what the thread should continue to be about.


----------



## philoctetes

Strange Magic said:


> DrMike, thank you for your post #300. You actually engaged, and offered responses that others can look at and agree or disagree with. I agree with some of your ideas and clearly disagree with others. And we can discuss those. This is what the thread should continue to be about.


You realize we're working as a tag team, doncha? :devil:

Need a translation? It was necessary to get you to post concrete items, not wishy-washy slogans, so that the discussion could have substance. Guess who got you do to that?

- The Wise Observer


----------



## philoctetes

Don't let anybody triangulate you!

- The Wise Observer


----------



## Jacck

Freeman Dyson on the Global Warming Hysteria April, 2015





if you know anything about physics, then you know that Freeman Dyson is a big name. He is 95 years old.


----------



## Guest

Birth rates are clearly governed by a great many factors, and, as I said, are an example of emergence, rather than resultance. It isn't simply the sum total of all the factors. We know some of the factors. Cultural norms. Availability and acceptance of contraception. Median age when women start to have children. Improvement of healthcare/decrease in infant mortality. Nutrition. Exposure to teratogens. Economic factors. 

To think that we can come up with some factor for manipulating birth rates to where we want them is a pipe dream. As much as we are caught up in how smart we are, history is littered with tragedies brought about by mankind thinking he could manipulate emergent orders. The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions.

This is my issue with environmental policy. I'm all for common sense measures to clean things were we can, and developed countries have come a long way. But the radical proposals have a high chance of significantly disrupting human lives while their predicted effects on the environment are purely speculative.

Government policy can't perfect man. Or the planet. Think of cigarettes. Taxes on cigarettes are ridiculously high - a sin tax, targeted at manipulating human behavior. And yet smokers would still smoke multiple packs a day. What did change things? Fear of death. And introduction of new technologies, like vaping.


----------



## philoctetes

Dyson has a rep for being a bit radical... the Dyson sphere, which I consider a valid idea that can be improved... or adapted, as Larry Niven did fictitiously in Ringworld...

In this video he sounds like the Maynard Keynes of climate change analysis - we need more variables and their "marginal" derivatives... aka sensitivities...

His comments on geo-engineering remind me of my own comments, during the CA fires, on responsible tree farming. California has a mind for green CO2 control but it's backfired a bit with diseases and dry conditions. CA is not like a rain forest except on the coast. Drive through central Oregon and it's a different picture, plenty of trees but less tinder. Finally, we have that mentality spread down here as there is a lot of tinder cutting going on now in residential areas.

Of course, one of the drawbacks of cutting tinder is habitat disruption, and this is something I care about as well. Another example of how opposing policies should be moderated to optimize the outcome, not an easy task and not something you want to assign to a partisan political process.

Then there are the wildfires in the national forest, which we must maintain, protecting the wilderness, but fires have probably been over-controlled and should be allowed to burn naturally but those forests also contain valuable man-made structures that require fire protection - a conflict of interest for fire management. These COIs are rather plentiful with our natural resources and make policy quite complicated.


----------



## Strange Magic

Jacck said:


> Freeman Dyson on the Global Warming Hysteria April, 2015
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> if you know anything about physics, then you know that Freeman Dyson is a big name. He is 95 years old.


I know ol' Freeman well. He is not always right. Maybe we should build a Dyson Sphere around the sun.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Jacck said:


> Freeman Dyson on the Global Warming Hysteria April, 2015
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> if you know anything about physics, then you know that Freeman Dyson is a big name. He is 95 years old.


Now there is a man with enough common sense for a multitude. He pretty much sums up how I feel about the whole thing. I like how he labels the AGW Catastrophy Alarmists as a religion. An accurate assessment in my opinion.


----------



## KenOC

One sign we're getting a bit crowded here on earth - a typical crowd at the summit of Mt. Everest. Seven climbers have died on the mountain in the last week, some because they couldn't force their ways back down through the jam after reaching the summit. Running out of oxygen, losing body heat, and exhaustion took their toll.


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese




----------



## haydnguy

Here is my problem with the abortion issue.

1) It was made a political issue especially by the evangelical far right who tried to use it to blame those that didn't vote like they did that somehow those people were responsible for murder.

2). Anti-abortion rulings/bills affect the poor disproportionally. If I'm a multi-millionaire and my little Suzie gets pregnant I'm going to take her to whatever country necessary to get an abortion and no one will ever know.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> One sign we're getting a bit crowded here on earth - a typical crowd at the summit of Mt. Everest. Seven climbers have died on the mountain in the last week, some because they couldn't force their ways back down through the jam after reaching the summit. Running out of oxygen, losing body heat, and exhaustion took their toll.


Not really. There is only a short window each year for making the climb. The government sets the number of people who can climb.


----------



## Guest

haydnguy said:


> Here is my problem with the abortion issue.
> 
> 1) It was made a political issue especially by the evangelical far right who tried to use it to blame those that didn't vote like they did that somehow those people were responsible for murder.
> 
> 2). Anti-abortion rulings/bills affect the poor disproportionally. If I'm a multi-millionaire and my little Suzie gets pregnant I'm going to take her to whatever country necessary to get an abortion and no one will ever know.


Hardly. It was made political when the Supreme Court took the decision out of people's hands. It is a moral issue that politicians latch onto. I'm sorry, but as a pro-life person, your characterization of our position is in no way based in reality.


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> Not really. There is only a short window each year for making the climb. The government sets the number of people who can climb.


According to the BBC report, the jam is indeed typical.
----------------------------------
Is it normal to see such long queues near the summit? Yes - according to guides, this happens quite often during the climbing season.

"It's normally that crowded," says Mingma Sherpa, chairman of Seven Summits Treks, adding that climbers sometimes queue between 20 minutes, and 1.5 hours, in order to reach the summit.

It often depends on how long the window for suitable climbing weather is - because mountaineers need to avoid fierce jet streams that would hinder them. "If there's one week [of safe weather], then the summit isn't crowded. But sometimes, when there's only a window of two or three days, it gets very crowded" as all the climbers try to reach the summit at the same time, Mingma Sherpa tells the BBC.


----------



## Larkenfield

China's boom in electric cars: https://qz.com/1517557/five-things-to-know-about-chinas-electric-car-boom/

I consider this a step in the right direction considering the dismal air quality from factory and fuel emissions in some of the major Chinese cities.


----------



## Larkenfield

KenOC said:


> One sign we're getting a bit crowded here on earth - a typical crowd at the summit of Mt. Everest. Seven climbers have died on the mountain in the last week, some because they couldn't force their ways back down through the jam after reaching the summit. Running out of oxygen, losing body heat, and exhaustion took their toll.


 Well, who's issuing the permits to climb under such precarious circumstances on Everest? They might want to reconsider their policy or start a new one, under such unsafe conditions. Then perhaps it would also be wise to consider the wisdom of the climbers to scale Everest under such unsafe conditions when there's no easy retreat or exit. The crowding in this photo is so incredible that it almost looks like it's been Photoshopped.


----------



## philoctetes

Nobody can be nanny to someone who wants to climb Everest. Just try it.

I've peaked Whitney, one of the Sisters, the Divide in Wyoming, and lost count of all the high passes on the way. Of course that's nothing but I can't imagine doing what those people are doing, each climber needs at least one sherpa for assistance. Seems like more tension than it's worth. To get to a peak that's littered with debris and corpses - ugh...


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> Hardly. It was made political when the Supreme Court took the decision out of people's hands. It is a moral issue that politicians latch onto. I'm sorry, but as a pro-life person, your characterization of our position is in no way based in reality.


It's sometimes forgotten that the real issue isn't the morality of abortion, but who has the power to regulate it. Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion was a matter left to the individual states, precisely as prescribed in the 10th Amendment. After all, the Constitution gives the federal government no overt authority to regulate reproductive matters.

But in deciding Roe, "the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a fundamental 'right to privacy' that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose whether or not to have an abortion."(Wiki)

That seems to me (and others) a bit of mental gymnastics designed to give the federal government powers it does not clearly have. Here are two comments from constitutional authorities:

"In a 1973 article in the Yale Law Journal, the American legal scholar John Hart Ely criticized Roe as a decision that 'is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.' The American constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe had similar thoughts: 'One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.' " (Wiki again)

If Roe is overturned, it is likely the reasoning will have nothing to do with any moral judgments, only that the original decision was defective in its logic and that the authority to regulate abortions lies just where it used to be, with the states.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> It's sometimes forgotten that the real issue isn't the morality of abortion, but who has the power to regulate it. Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion was a matter left to the individual states, precisely as prescribed in the 10th Amendment. After all, the Constitution gives the federal government no overt authority to regulate reproductive matters.
> 
> But in deciding Roe, "the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a fundamental 'right to privacy' that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose whether or not to have an abortion."(Wiki)
> 
> That seems to me (and others) a bit of mental gymnastics designed to give the federal government powers it does not clearly have. Here are two comments from constitutional authorities:
> 
> "In a 1973 article in the Yale Law Journal, the American legal scholar John Hart Ely criticized Roe as a decision that 'is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.' The American constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe had similar thoughts: 'One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.' " (Wiki again)
> 
> If Roe is overturned, it is likely the reasoning will have nothing to do with any moral judgments, only that the original decision was defective in its logic and that the authority to regulate abortions lies just where it used to be, with the states.


Exactly. What most people, on both sides of the issue, don't realize is that overturning Roe doesn't necessarily mean abortion will become illegal. Each state can decide for itself. And in all likelihood, most will allow it to some extent. Only a few will likely ban it outright. But it will be a better outcome, with the people having had their say, rather than a few lifetime appointments in the judiciary legislating.


----------



## KenOC

Larkenfield said:


> Well, who's issuing the permits to climb under such precarious circumstances on Everest? They might want to consider their policy or start a new one, under such unsafe conditions. Then perhaps it would also be wise to consider the wisdom of the climbers to scale Everest under such unsafe conditions when there's no easy retreat or exit. The photo is so incredible it almost looks like it's been Photoshopped.


The problem is mainly on the Nepal side, since China has wisely cut back the number of permits it grants. This year Nepal issued 381 permits at $11,000 each. That means probably 600-700 people trying to summit, including the Sherpas.

The permit money is obviously valuable to Nepal's treasury, and the other fees paid by climbers, plus their purchases, are important to the Sherpa communities. The problem exists because weather often limits opportunities to summit to only a few days. Thus the jams at the top.


----------



## mmsbls

Luchesi said:


> I just don't know why you would close a thread when you have the power to delete any post that you think is so troublesome. Scorched earth policy.


Closing threads is often a difficult decision. The rationale comes from years of observing interactions on TC and hearing from dozens of members. Basically we close threads when we feel posts are causing excessive antagonism between members and likely deterring others from engaging in discussions. Closing of threads is a practical solution that seems to be relatively effective where deleting posts is less so. We would like to reopen closed threads when we feel tempers have lessened, but sometimes we feel particular threads are hopelessly out of control.



Luchesi said:


> Maybe mods have the lingering belief that they can teach good behavior as if we're children. But that surely is not how teaching is done anyway. You don't punish everyone.


Mods certainly do not believe they can or should teach behavior to members. Period.


----------



## Larkenfield

Ultimately, as the population keeps growing globally, it will eventually be thinned out by nature or cataclysm, as it’s happened in the past through epidemics and other such calamities. It can be argued that overcrowding increases the risk of viruses and disease. But the death of millions is not a pleasant thought to consider and I wouldn’t want it to happen to my family.


----------



## mmsbls

Jacck said:


> Freeman Dyson on the Global Warming Hysteria April, 2015
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> if you know anything about physics, then you know that Freeman Dyson is a big name. He is 95 years old.


Freeman Dyson was a big name in physics but not so much in climate science. Einstein was a much bigger name in physics and got quantum physics wrong. If one of the greatest scientists of all time could be wrong in a critical area of his field, why would anyone believe a view from a single person in an area where they are not expert?

I look to the expert community in areas of science. There will always be some who are not convinced, but I don't see how it's wise to not follow consensus views in important matters. If 9 out of 10 doctors with experience in a certain field of medicine told me I needed a medical procedure to extend my life, I would not listen to an economist's views on the matter (even if they were a Nobel Prize winner).


----------



## Open Book

Those Everest climbers in such close proximity are at least benefiting by sharing body heat.


----------



## Larkenfield

I see a mother and her baby stroller at the top of that Mt Everest picture taking a selfie.


----------



## Larkenfield

How climate change could affect these cities by 2050: 
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/30/18117953/climate-change-maps-cities-2050


----------



## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> One sign we're getting a bit crowded here on earth - a typical crowd at the summit of Mt. Everest. Seven climbers have died on the mountain in the last week, some because they couldn't force their ways back down through the jam after reaching the summit. Running out of oxygen, losing body heat, and exhaustion took their toll.


Would think someone is going to fall off to the side with a crowd like that. Can't be real. But I'll take a nice quiet mountain such as Mt. Elbert in central Colorado. Climbed up that one a couple of times and nobody else was there. Awesome view and relatively easy climb from 10,000 where I parked to 14,440.

Once read a book about a guy who climbed Everest with no supplemental oxygen.


----------



## KenOC

NYT has more news from Mt. Everest, 8 hours ago:

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Three more people died Thursday on Mount Everest, as crowds of climbers added to the dangers of attempting to scale the world’s highest peak.

The three died just days after a widely circulated photo showed a long line of climbers extending along a narrow ridge, waiting to reach the 29,029-foot summit and its expansive view of the Himalayas.

...Expedition operators said the crowding was a result of a record number of permits issued by Nepal and a period of clear weather, which led several groups to push for the summit at once.

…One of the Indian climbers, Nihal Bagwan, died on Thursday evening after reaching the summit in the morning, said Keshav Poudel, managing director of Peak Promotion, the operation that organized Mr. Bagwan’s attempt. The large number of climbers contributed to his death, Mr. Poudel said.

“The climber was stuck in traffic some four to five hours and died of exhaustion,” he said, adding that Sherpa guides had provided water and tried to save him.


----------



## philoctetes

They ascend to reach heaven and find hell instead. Sad.


----------



## philoctetes

"Einstein was a much bigger name in physics and got quantum physics wrong"

Well he was the one credited for quantizing blackbaody radiation so he got something right. I imagine he felt a bit like Stephen Hawking about the Schroedinger's Cat stuff. Ironically the EPR paradox is named after him cause he disputed it.

Few people "get" QM philosophically which Einstein was trying to do. But the calculations, as one of my profs sarcastically said, are so easy an engineer can do them.

But I agree that Dyson's is not the only word I would take on the matter. He's a bit superficial and hand-wavy about it all.


----------



## Larkenfield

KenOC said:


> NYT has more news from Mt. Everest, 8 hours ago:
> 
> KATHMANDU, Nepal - Three more people died Thursday on Mount Everest, as crowds of climbers added to the dangers of attempting to scale the world's highest peak.
> 
> The three died just days after a widely circulated photo showed a long line of climbers extending along a narrow ridge, waiting to reach the 29,029-foot summit and its expansive view of the Himalayas.
> 
> ...Expedition operators said the crowding was a result of a record number of permits issued by Nepal and a period of clear weather, which led several groups to push for the summit at once.
> 
> …One of the Indian climbers, Nihal Bagwan, died on Thursday evening after reaching the summit in the morning, said Keshav Poudel, managing director of Peak Promotion, the operation that organized Mr. Bagwan's attempt. The large number of climbers contributed to his death, Mr. Poudel said.
> 
> "The climber was stuck in traffic some four to five hours and died of exhaustion," he said, adding that Sherpa guides had provided water and tried to save him.


 Translation: Officials were likely greedy for the large amount of money that selling a large number of permits would bring... and I can easily imagine that they are still selling more permits regardless of the recent tragic deaths. So much for public safety and concern in Nepal.


----------



## Luchesi

Jacck said:


> Freeman Dyson on the Global Warming Hysteria April, 2015
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> if you know anything about physics, then you know that Freeman Dyson is a big name. He is 95 years old.


He doesn't talk like anybody in the geophysical lab that I work in. He sounds so out of touch. He says a lot of irrelevant things and wants to talk about plants and he doesn't see evil people in the field. What speaks volumes is what he doesn't talk about. The relationship between stratospheric events and the troposphere. Rossby wave theory and how we can see wave patterns actually changing over the decades. Does he not know anything about these relevant concepts?.

When did he learn about climate? 60 years ago? What did we know 60 years ago? Arguments from "authorities" from disparate fields is very dangerous in any scientific field, and in any case he's not an authority on climate. That's obvious and he doesn't claim to be.. He sounds like he wants to give us homespun common sense.

added - what he said about axions and where they came from and how they help us understand dark matter impressed me very much in another interview. He should stick to physics.


----------



## Open Book

Does anybody see any way we can reduce the amount of plastic we use? I don't see many options as far as its use to package and protect food. I don't think in the First World that we are going to start dragging our reusable containers to markets and apportioning loose food like rice and cereal for ourselves. It's unsanitary. I cringe already when I see how some people handle the produce.

If we can't reduce, how can we recycle more plastic? The vast majority from food packaging gets put in the trash. The plastic bag bans only affect a minute percentage of the plastic we use.


----------



## philoctetes

Larkenfield said:


> How climate change could affect these cities by 2050:
> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/30/18117953/climate-change-maps-cities-2050


I watched the activity in Tornado Alley on Tuesday... I used to live there... here at home I get a break this year from Memorial Day visitors thanks to March-like weather in May... these events raise GCC alarms but I've seen them happen before... just like the wildfires in CA, they are not a new thing... but I wonder about the "management"...

I've seen videos of extreme weather around the globe on Twitter accounts that carry this stuff - one gets the impression that the global atmosphere is so loaded with water vapor that it just wants to weep everywhere constantly... yet only two years ago the fear was all about endless drought...

And just yesterday I was admiring the beautiful clouds over the river... they made few appearances during the 5-year drought, but we could see plenty of those damn criss-crossing contrails in the sky, causing bizarre refractory effects, halos, crooked rainbows, and according to some, respiratory complications... and this is a source of endless conspiracy theories about their intention which I have never been able to resolve.

It's bad enough around here that wineries pollute the river and bring drunks to the roads. Yesterday I got so bored I drove to Geyserville and got tailgated by everybody in a rush to get to the casino... better to stay home... the BnB industry is ruining towns like mine and cities like San Francisco... one wonders why companies like Google and Uber want to invest in places that will be hit first when the oceans rise...

So again, how we manage our environment is somewhat troublesome to me. What are the goals and why are we told to do things by commercial and political powers that don't follow their own advice? What are they really trying to do? PG&E comes to mind, their contradictions are mind-boggling, escaping responsibility through bankruptcy, opening the door for their next mistake...


----------



## Kivimees

Jacck said:


> Freeman Dyson on the Global Warming Hysteria April, 2015
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> if you know anything about physics, then you know that Freeman Dyson is a big name. He is 95 years old.


More importantly, Freeman Dyson's father was a classical composer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dyson_(composer)


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

philoctetes said:


> It's bad enough around here that wineries pollute the river and bring drunks to the roads. Yesterday I got so bored I drove to Geyserville and got tailgated by everybody in a rush to get to the casino... better to stay home... the BnB industry is ruining towns like mine and cities like San Francisco... one wonders why companies like Google and Uber want to invest in places that will be hit first when the oceans rise...
> 
> .


Makes you wonder if they truly believe that the sea levels will rise that much. If they believe and still build there they must be stupid.


----------



## philoctetes

Yes, "land grabs" come in many forms, such as Hmong pot farmers running Siskiyou county citizens out of their homes, while Sacramento looks the other way and other counties tighten up their cultivation laws so that your neighbor gets heavily prosecuted for a second violation. The fact that California can't even legalize week without making things worse than before is absolutely typical of how things work in this state now.

San Francisco is definitely going through a land grab. Everything in California costs too much and is driving people with modest incomes and ambitions to move elsewhere. Homes lost to fires and floods result in lives destroyed as people can not afford to recover in their own communities. FEMA is maxxed out and refusing to provide assistance by raising the bar for qualification. Residents of Paradise are held back from rebuilding due to an endangered frog in the area. Developers with money move into Santa Rosa and rebuild with full support of local agencies. My dentist committed suicide after his house burned in October 2017. None of those companies taking over SF and SV make a product you can use for anything, nothing that could be called an asset, it's all vaporware and their market values are astronomical. It really is enough to make one paranoid and wonder what is going on. 

The only relief would be from that old devil Howard Jarvis. The sad part is that education has suffered in this state since his bill was passed, as expected, but it may not be for that reason as we have lotteries now for those funds. Again, policy decisions usually choose between a rock and a hard place.

But yes, a lot of politics and commercial competition is about taking land away from someone by exploiting their vulnerabilities, not always legally, and often under the radar of Captain Obvious.


----------



## haydnguy

KenOC said:


> It's sometimes forgotten that the real issue isn't the morality of abortion, but who has the power to regulate it. Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion was a matter left to the individual states, precisely as prescribed in the 10th Amendment. After all, the Constitution gives the federal government no overt authority to regulate reproductive matters.
> 
> But in deciding Roe, "the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a fundamental 'right to privacy' that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose whether or not to have an abortion."(Wiki)
> 
> That seems to me (and others) a bit of mental gymnastics designed to give the federal government powers it does not clearly have. Here are two comments from constitutional authorities:
> 
> "In a 1973 article in the Yale Law Journal, the American legal scholar John Hart Ely criticized Roe as a decision that 'is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.' The American constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe had similar thoughts: 'One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.' " (Wiki again)
> 
> If Roe is overturned, it is likely the reasoning will have nothing to do with any moral judgments, only that the original decision was defective in its logic and that the authority to regulate abortions lies just where it used to be, with the states.


But even so, conservatives lean toward "states rights". It's purely political. That's why the moral majority (Pat Robertson) has tried to take the court all these years.


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> Does anybody see any way we can reduce the amount of plastic we use? I don't see many options as far as its use to package and protect food. I don't think in the First World that we are going to start dragging our reusable containers to markets and apportioning loose food like rice and cereal for ourselves. It's unsanitary. I cringe already when I see how some people handle the produce.
> 
> If we can't reduce, how can we recycle more plastic? The vast majority from food packaging gets put in the trash. The plastic bag bans only affect a minute percentage of the plastic we use.


Just a couple of days ago I saw a story about the discovery of the "holy grail of plastics," a truly biodegradable and reusable plastic. However I seem to remember seeing other similar stories over the years, so I'm not holding my breath on this one.

California just made it illegal to give a customer a plastic straw in slow-food restaurants, unless it is specifically asked for. Yeah, that'll do a lot of good!


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> Just a couple of days ago I saw a story about the discovery of the "holy grail of plastics," a truly biodegradable and reusable plastic. However I seem to remember seeing other similar stories over the years, so I'm not holding my breath on this one.
> 
> California just made it illegal to give a customer a plastic straw in slow-food restaurants, unless it is specifically asked for. Yeah, that'll do a lot of good!


I was first skeptical about straw bans but it's possible we underestimate their contribution to the micro-plastic problem. Feeding the world produces a lot of the waste and removing straw dispensers from every coffee shop, pizzaria, and burger joint should make an impact. My biggest complaint is clamshell food packaging which is getting harder to avoid all the time and I hear of nobody demanding a ban on that. I'm still guilty of buying long term food items in plastic and freezing food in plastic bags 

And I'm not at all happy with Amazon's method of packaging lately, all plastic all the time, obviously cost-efficient for them but not at all conscientious. So buying CDs (and books) is like the 80s again, when stores putt them in clamshell packages! It took a lot of protesting to get rid of those!!!


----------



## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> ...Feeding the world produces a lot of the waste and removing straw dispensers from every coffee shop, pizzaria, and burger joint should make an impact.


The plastic straw law doesn't apply to fast food restaurants! Only to full-service sit-down restaurants. And they can have straw dispensers if they like. However, it is illegal to physically deliver a one-use plastic straw to a dining customer without a specific request.

What's silly about this is that the straw in that margarita you order in the restaurant will simply end up in the restaurant's trash and be buried in a landfill. It's the fast-food straws that litter the beaches and wash out into the ocean. So, as usual, the politicians pretend to do something useful but actually accomplish nothing.


----------



## mmsbls

According to phys.org there are roughly 0.5 - 8 billion straws (2000 tons) on coastlines around the world, That is minuscule compared to the amount of plastic deposited in the oceans or shorelines _every year_ (9 million tons/year).


----------



## philoctetes

Good stat. But it's possible that straws present the highest immediate risk to critters simply by choking. After all they have something tasty inside them after usage and they look like grass stems.

I'm just making this up by imagination, not research, but sometimes that's what I do...


----------



## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> Good stat. But it's possible that straws present the highest immediate risk to critters simply by choking. After all they have something tasty inside them after usage and they look like grass stems.
> 
> I'm just making this up by imagination, not research, but sometimes that's what I do...


In doing a little research, it seems that plastic straws _do _pose a risk to life in the ocean and on its shores. Further, straws are among the most numerous plastic objects in the litter, though not consequential by weight.

​BTW, the plastic straw law does not apply to any restaurant where you order at a counter. The law specifies restaurants where you are seated and your order is taken at the table, and your food is then brought to you. So environmentally, it should have no perceivable impact at all. A waste of time.


----------



## Larkenfield

Well, it begs the question of how straws get into the ocean in the first place and they obviously don’t walk there on their own power. They need a little human help from those who are indiscriminately dumping them into the ocean, including cruise ships who have been known to dump their trash and refuge there. With every problem, with every environmental problem, look for a human being behind it, or human behavior, and start there with the understanding of the impact of certain actions and the obvious solution to the problem. It’s also significant that most restaurants do not recycle their trash because it’s too inconvenient and it ends up where it doesn’t belong.


----------



## KenOC

Larkenfield said:


> Well, it begs the question of how straws get into the ocean in the first place and they obviously don't walk there on their own power. They need a little human help from those who are indiscriminately dumping into the ocean, including cruise ships who have been known to dump their trash and refuge into the sea. With every problem, with every environmental problem, look for a human being behind it, or human behavior, and start there with the understanding of the impact of certain actions and the obvious solution to the problem. It's also significant that most most restaurants do not recycle their trash and it ends up where it shouldn't be.


I assume (with justification I think) that in the US at least most plastic straws are coastal discards from people eating fast food, which of course the new CA law doesn't touch. Around these parts, restaurants all have dumpsters that are regularly picked up and the trash buried in landfills. Any restaurant violating solid waste laws wouldn't be long for this world. I can't remember the last time I read about a case of illegal dumping of restaurant waste here.

Cruise ships are a problem, of course, but they aren't affected by the new law either.​


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> In doing a little research, it seems that plastic straws _do _pose a risk to life in the ocean and on its shores. Further, straws are among the most numerous plastic objects in the litter, though not consequential by weight.
> 
> ​BTW, the plastic straw law does not apply to any restaurant where you order at a counter. The law specifies restaurants where you are seated and your order is taken at the table, and your food is then brought to you. So environmentally, it should have no perceivable impact at all. A waste of time.


Thanks Ken, thinking it out even more, the straw ban has other merits - in practicality, they never get recycled like other plastics, they go straight into garbage and I imagine often straight into the water system, and yes, a pound of straws can affect maybe dozens of critters. Also, those stats come from "around the world"...

This keeps coming up and here it is again, what standards do we go by, who are we trying to change, and what can we control or not control? Straws are not reproductive rights and taking them away is only an inconvenience, not an act of oppression. If the ban keeps California rivers and beaches a bit cleaner and removes a threat to California wildlife then why should we care that China, or even Texas, isn't doing the same, we should do what we can do locally anyway. I know globally it may be nothing but this is why I would be OK with trade wars if they would have environmental advantages, but instead we capitulate to other industrial countries for the economic advantage and keep a lot of global pollution out of American view.

Compared to some other California policies, e.g. what I call punishment taxes, it's probably not so bad.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Speaking of plastic, I noticed some years ago that the caps on bottled water were made much smaller. They used to be nearly 1/2-inch tall but now are closer to 1/4-inch, if that. Probably was done to save plastic.


----------



## Larkenfield

KenOC said:


> I assume (with justification I think) that in the US at least most plastic straws are coastal discards from people eating fast food, which of course the new CA law doesn't touch. Around these parts, restaurants all have dumpsters that are regularly picked up and the trash buried in landfills. Any restaurant violating solid waste laws wouldn't be long for this world. I can't remember the last time I read about a case of illegal dumping of restaurant waste here.
> 
> Cruise ships are a problem, of course, but they aren't affected by the new law either.​


That's good to know in California. Unfortunately, the enforcement of laws related to dumping and recycling are more lax in Arizona.


----------



## philoctetes

Well, I'd be in favor of extending the ban to fast food chains because a lot of their waste doesn't stay in the restaurant. The slow-food places it does. So that's more than backwards, and Ken is right it's not so effective.

But my skepticism about straw bans has significantly reversed they first became an issue.


----------



## KenOC

One thing I’ve noticed in my exploration of fast-food restaurants: Many or even most use zero dishes or utensils requiring washing. Everything you’re served is disposable. I assume this saves the cost of owning dishwashing machinery, and possibly avoids a whole set of food safety laws.

But edible (or quasi-edible) food aside, every meal generates a pile of waste: cardboard, Styrofoam, and plastic. Over a day, a single McDonald’s must generate hundreds of pounds of waste, whether left on-site or dumped elsewhere.

The issue isn’t really straws, but an economic costing system that encourages the generation of vast amounts of non-biodegradable waste, much of which enters the biosystem in unwanted ways. There seems no appetite to confront this issue. Plastic straws? You gotta be kidding!


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> One thing I've noticed in my exploration of fast-food restaurants: Many or even most use zero dishes or utensils requiring washing. Everything you're served is disposable. I assume this saves the cost of owning dishwashing machinery, and possibly avoids a whole set of food safety laws.
> 
> But edible (or quasi-edible) food aside, every meal generates a pile of waste: cardboard, Styrofoam, and plastic. Over a day, a single McDonald's must generate hundreds of pounds of waste, whether left on-site or dumped elsewhere.
> 
> The issue isn't really straws, but an economic costing system that encourages the generation of vast amounts of non-biodegradable waste, much of which enters the biosystem in unwanted ways. There seems no appetite to confront this issue. Plastic straws? You gotta be kidding!


You just expressed my reason for my original skepticism on the straw ban. I'm sticking with my 180. It's all bad...

I also hate styrofoam and those worms they pack stuff in, totally unusable once unpacked. I think we got swindled on the paper v plastic trade-off decades ago when THEY realized plastic was cheaper but told US we were saving trees. Bye bye forest industry hello more petro. Look what that did for us now.


----------



## Larkenfield

KenOC said:


> One thing I've noticed in my exploration of fast-food restaurants: Many or even most use zero dishes or utensils requiring washing. Everything you're served is disposable. I assume this saves the cost of owning dishwashing machinery, and possibly avoids a whole set of food safety laws.
> 
> But edible (or quasi-edible) food aside, every meal generates a pile of waste: cardboard, Styrofoam, and plastic. Over a day, a single McDonald's must generate hundreds of pounds of waste, whether left on-site or dumped elsewhere.
> 
> The issue isn't really straws, but an economic costing system that encourages the generation of vast amounts of non-biodegradable waste, much of which enters the biosystem in unwanted ways. There seems no appetite to confront this issue. Plastic straws? You gotta be kidding!


Bravo! So true. Many of the fast food restaurants have the lowest consciousness with regard to the disposal of their waste and recycling and there's an incredible amount of waste from their voluminous number of customers that is never processed. This is the issue that I was trying to bring up when mentioning restaurants in a previous post. The volume of trash has to be in the range of millions of metric tons per day because of their great popularity, and yet apparently little or nothing is done about it because of the profits involved. I have noticed this with a local Wendy's and Subway restaurant. This is what I'm talking about: they are not conscious about the disposal of waste, including their plastics and disposable paper products.


----------



## Jacck

*Getting crude oil back out of plastic*




The Austrian company OMV has alegedly a way how to convert plastics to oil
_"OMV's innovative ReOil technology is set to help ensure that plastic production is no longer a cul-de-sac that ends in waste incineration. This will facilitate an intelligent and sustainable circular economy for plastics"_


----------



## KenOC

Maybe this thread needs some good news. The famous clarity of Lake Tahoe's water, which has suffered in recent years, improved nicely in 2018. A white disk could be seen when lowered to a depth of 71 feet, much better than 2017's 60 feet.

Still a ways to go, of course. Fifty years ago the disk could be seen at 100 feet.


----------



## mmsbls

Air pollution is an externality caused in large part by human activity (e.g. vehicle, power plant, industrial emissions). The US EPA has studied the effect of the Clean Air Act and estimates large air quality gains from enormously cost effect regulation. From 1970 - 1990 the EPA estimates direct mean savings of $22.4 trillion dollars compared to costs of $523 billion - a benefits to costs ratio of 42. The EPA did a follow up study for the period 1990 - 2020 estimating a mean benefits to costs ratio of greater than 30.

Parrish et. al. looked at air quality improvement in Los Angeles. The 1-hour and 8-hour concentrations for ozone and the 24-hour PM concentrations have decreased markedly. There were over 100 stage 1 ozone episodes every year in the 1970s, but none have been observed in the past decade.

There is still progress to be made in lowering the negative effects of air pollution, but governments in the US and other countries are continuing to enact regulation to reduce the harmful effects of various pollutants.


----------



## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> Maybe this thread needs some good news. The famous clarity of Lake Tahoe's water, which has suffered in recent years, improved nicely in 2018. A white disk could be seen when lowered to a depth of 71 feet, much better than 2017's 60 feet.
> 
> Still a ways to go, of course. Fifty years ago the disk could be seen at 100 feet.


I can't read the linked article, They don't like me and the site blanked out on me. I think they want me to give them money. Nonetheless, there are other sources of info on the web. The current increase was expected because of the mild winter. Secchi disk readings have to be cautiously interpreted in light of many factors including water chemistry and seasons. Or did they just use a white disk? I think the secchi disk is divided into quadrants alternating in black and white.


----------



## philoctetes

I imagine this clarity has a rather complex cyclic nature to it, short-term and long-term, and this winter will probably be a pretty sharp stimulus in one way or other, probably murkier, but a good flush is probably healthy. 

I'm guessing clarity has a lot to do with temperature, contaminants from Tahoe City and Southshore, and algae which correlates with those two factors.

...how many fudge words do you see above?


----------



## Open Book

Larkenfield said:


> Bravo! So true. Many of the fast food restaurants have the lowest consciousness with regard to the disposal of their waste and recycling and there's an incredible amount of waste from their voluminous number of customers that is never processed. This is the issue that I was trying to bring up when mentioning restaurants in a previous post. The volume of trash has to be in the range of millions of metric tons per day because of their great popularity, and yet apparently little or nothing is done about it because of the profits involved. I have noticed this with a local Wendy's and Subway restaurant. This is what I'm talking about: they are not conscious about the disposal of waste, including their plastics and disposable paper products.


You would think Starbucks, which is newer and hip and and trying to look socially conscious, would be better than other fast food places. But they don't seem to recycle either, unless their recyclables are separated from the trash later.

When I buy fish in a certain supermarket it is triple bagged in one layer of paper and two of plastic. Unnecessary. I look at that and think I should wash and recycle the plastic bags, but I never bother.

The danger of straws to wildlife, which I never thought of, reminds me of the plastic binding that keeps a six-pack of soda cans or juice bottles together. That is dangerous to wildlife, too as they can get their heads or bodies caught in the loops that encircle the bottle necks. There's a photo of a turtle with a wasp waist because it grew in size but its middle was constricted by the binding. I snip those open before throwing them out because I can't bear the thought.


----------



## KenOC

Fritz Kobus said:


> I can't read the linked article, They don't like me and the site blanked out on me. I think they want me to give them money. Nonetheless, there are other sources of info on the web. The current increase was expected because of the mild winter. Secchi disk readings have to be cautiously interpreted in light of many factors including water chemistry and seasons. Or did they just use a white disk? I think the secchi disk is divided into quadrants alternating in black and white.


Yes, mild (previous) winter and less silt washing into the lake is given as the reason. The article describes the disk as a ten-inch white disk.

BTW the site locked me out also. I opened a new InPrivate window (in Edge) and it opened fine.


----------



## Luchesi

Chem trails are killing the honeybees.

No.

The ignorant city ordinances about weed control are killing them.


----------



## KenOC

Back to Mt Everest. An interesting NY Times article that looks at the problems of regulating the traffic on Everest.
----------------------------------------------------------
NEW DELHI - Ed Dohring, a doctor from Arizona, had dreamed his whole life of reaching the top of Mount Everest. But when he summited a few days ago, he was shocked by what he saw.

Climbers were pushing and shoving to take selfies. The flat part of the summit, which he estimated at about the size of two Ping-Pong tables, was packed with 15 or 20 people. To get up there, he had to wait hours in a line, chest to chest, one puffy jacket after the next, on an icy, rocky ridge with a several-thousand foot drop.

He even had to step around the body of a woman who had just died.


----------



## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> Back to Mt Everest. An interesting NY Times article that looks at the problems of regulating the traffic on Everest.
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> NEW DELHI - Ed Dohring, a doctor from Arizona, had dreamed his whole life of reaching the top of Mount Everest. But when he summited a few days ago, he was shocked by what he saw.
> 
> Climbers were pushing and shoving to take selfies. The flat part of the summit, which he estimated at about the size of two Ping-Pong tables, was packed with 15 or 20 people. To get up there, he had to wait hours in a line, chest to chest, one puffy jacket after the next, on an icy, rocky ridge with a several-thousand foot drop.
> 
> He even had to step around the body of a woman who had just died.


With such crowds climbing Everest seems to have lost some of its specialness. Perhaps folks should go the other way to the bottom of the Mariana Trench?


----------



## Jacck

KenOC said:


> Back to Mt Everest. An interesting NY Times article that looks at the problems of regulating the traffic on Everest.
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> NEW DELHI - Ed Dohring, a doctor from Arizona, had dreamed his whole life of reaching the top of Mount Everest. But when he summited a few days ago, he was shocked by what he saw.
> 
> Climbers were pushing and shoving to take selfies. The flat part of the summit, which he estimated at about the size of two Ping-Pong tables, was packed with 15 or 20 people. To get up there, he had to wait hours in a line, chest to chest, one puffy jacket after the next, on an icy, rocky ridge with a several-thousand foot drop.
> 
> He even had to step around the body of a woman who had just died.


it won't be long until the Chinese build a road leading to the summit. They are trying to colonize Nepal and push India out of it. 
I remember the anticlimatic feeling that I got, when after 6 hours of exhausting climb we climed the Mount Washington (New Hampshire) and found a parking lot with Mc Donalds at the summit


----------



## philoctetes

A look at this summer's grocery list... higher food prices coming soon... and a news source that I often find more useful than the usual MSM, NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc

Crop-tastrophe In The Midwest - Latest USDA Progress Report Signals Nightmare Scenario

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-27/crop-tastrophe-midwest-latest-usda-crop-progress-report-signals-nightmare-scenario


----------



## paulbest

KenOC said:


> Continued from the "worst generation" thread: The UN has completed an 1800-page study of human impact on the environment and it's not a happy picture. The *BBC reports* on a 40-page summary that was released today:
> 
> - One million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction. This is approximately 25% of species in most animal and plant groups studied.
> - Natural ecosystems have declined by 47% on average, relative to their earliest estimated states.
> - The global biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%. Indicators of vertebrate abundance have declined rapidly since 1970.
> - 33% of fish stocks are harvested at unsustainable levels.
> - Land use is the major driver of the biodiversity collapse, with 70% of agriculture related to meat production.
> - Between 1980 and 2000, 100 million hectares of tropical forest were lost, mainly from cattle ranching in South America and palm oil plantations in South East Asia.
> - Only 13% of wetlands present in 1700 were still in existence in the year 2000.
> - Soil degradation has reduced the productivity of 23% of the land surface of the Earth.
> - Plastic pollution has increased ten-fold since 1980.
> - Every year 300-400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes are dumped into the waters of the world.
> 
> So where do you plan to sit this one out?


My ancestor, said in 1860,,,*Will not be long before mankind burns up the atmosphere with his industry,,,*,,how did he know about GW long long before anyone even knew about GW???
Why?
Because he was America's greatest thinker/genius.
That's why.
The planet is doomed to destruct.


----------



## Guest

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.


----------



## Strange Magic

Losing insects: Who Needs Them?






https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ng-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Losing insects: Who Needs Them?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ng-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature


Clearly they have not been to the South.


----------



## KenOC

We should feel so proud! So why am I worried?
----------------------------------------
It's official: human beings have created a new geological epoch, known as the 'anthropocene', or the 'age of man'.

Scientists at the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) voted to recognise the term this week. The researchers will submit a formal proposal by 2021 to the International Commission on Stratigraphy.

The epoch will start in the mid-twentieth century, when the use of agricultural chemicals and atomic bombs left an indelible mark on our planet.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/world-now-entered-age-man-scientists-declare-174959379.html


----------



## Larkenfield

KenOC said:


> We should feel so proud! So why am I worried?
> ----------------------------------------
> It's official: human beings have created a new geological epoch, known as the 'anthropocene', or the 'age of man'.
> 
> Scientists at the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) voted to recognise the term this week. The researchers will submit a formal proposal by 2021 to the International Commission on Stratigraphy.
> 
> The epoch will start in the mid-twentieth century, when the use of agricultural chemicals and atomic bombs left an indelible mark on our planet.
> 
> https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/world-now-entered-age-man-scientists-declare-174959379.html


 I would have measured the beginning of the Age of Man starting about 200 hundred years ago at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Whatever gains have been made in matters of convenience, the environmental self-destruction that has taken place within that short period of time is truly staggering. Only 200 years out of millions to virtually ruin a beautiful planet and make it less and less inhabitable. All the oil that's been pumped out of the ground, the noxious factories, the poisonous gas emissions polluting the atmosphere, the extinction of countless species. It's breathtaking in its unprecedented, wanton, and shortsighted devastation by the species Homo sapien.


----------



## KenOC

Larkenfield said:


> I would have measured the beginning of the Age of Man starting about 200 hundred years ago at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Whatever gains have been made in matters of convenience, the environmental self-destruction that has taken place within that short period of time is truly staggering. Only 200 years out of millions to virtually ruin a beautiful planet and make it less and less inhabitable. All the oil that's been pumped out of the ground, the noxious factories, the poisonous gas emissions polluting the atmosphere, the extinction of countless species. It's breathtaking in its unprecedented, wanton, and shortsighted devastation by the species Homo sapien.


Ah, but it's given us the iPhone! :lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Guest

Good Lord, but you all are a cheery bunch, aren't you? Go take some Prozac or something.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Good Lord, but you all are a cheery bunch, aren't you? Go take some Prozac or something.


"Don't Worry! Be Happy!"


----------



## philoctetes

Out doctor is years behind on his practice. So last century. He should be recommending CBDs. I accept no disagreements on this.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/14/magazine/cbd-cannabis-cure.html


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Good Lord, but you all are a cheery bunch, aren't you? Go take some Prozac or something.


Do you think it might be a generational difference in the way posters see things?

I'm trying to remember how I felt about these issues when I was pushing 50, and what I would've said.. I was studying plant succession computer modeling and I remember trying to dwell on the vast expanses that were still in their natural condition.


----------



## Luchesi

philoctetes said:


> Out doctor is years behind on his practice. So last century. He should be recommending CBDs. I accept no disagreements on this.
> 
> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/14/magazine/cbd-cannabis-cure.html


I take a little bit of CBD at least every other day. I tell myself it's natural, right? It does seem to be changing my body and my outlook. It's a very slight change and that's all that I would want!

I didn't realize until I got here that older people seem to be much more preoccupied with their aches and pains and their mental outlooks (fear of dementia).

And I could be imagining it all..


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> I take a little bit of CBD at least every other day. I tell myself it's natural, right? It does seem to be changing my body and my outlook. It's a very slight change and that's all that I would want!
> 
> I didn't realize until I got here that older people seem to be much more preoccupied with their aches and pains and their mental outlooks (fear of dementia).
> 
> And I could be imagining it all..


I've always been amused by the notion that "natural" means safe. Viruses are natural. Bacteria is natural. Castor beans are natural - yet they contain ricin, which can kill a person. Snake venom is very much natural. This is a myth the "organic" industry has peddled to boost their sales.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> "Don't Worry! Be Happy!"


The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Worldwide famine! Population bomb! Sterilize the undesirables!


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> I've always been amused by the notion that "natural" means safe. Viruses are natural. Bacteria is natural. Castor beans are natural - yet they contain ricin, which can kill a person. Snake venom is very much natural. This is a myth the "organic" industry has peddled to boost their sales.


I'm glad you're not my doctor. That's a terrible response.


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> I'm glad you're not my doctor. That's a terrible response.


Unless you'd like me to dissect you and analyze your immune responses to various infections, no, I wouldn't recommend coming to me to treat your ailments, given that I am a Ph.D. not an M.D. But the notion of "organic" and "natural" being necessarily good is a bogus claim.


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> Unless you'd like me to dissect you and analyze your immune responses to various infections, no, I wouldn't recommend coming to me to treat your ailments, given that I am a Ph.D. not an M.D. But the notion of "organic" and "natural" being necessarily good is a bogus claim.


I did not see any such claims, and you still avoid the actual topic which was CBDs. The Dr on your screen-name is worthless to me if you're going to rhetorically create a strawman out of the CBD question. Anybody with a high school degree can do that. It's obvious you did not read the article, since it's the NYT I can hardly blame you for that 

Maybe the CBD topic belongs on another thread. But the point is that your replies are often too shallow, as you mock everybody on this thread this morning. Whatever our opinions are, some of us take the topics more seriously.


----------



## Strange Magic

Modern Agriculture: Induced Desiccation via Massive Herbicide Application--It's What's for Dinner!

http://nautil.us/issue/66/clockwork/herbicide-is-whats-for-dinner


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> I did not see any such claims, and you still avoid the actual topic which was CBDs. The Dr on your screen-name is worthless to me if you're going to rhetorically create a strawman out of the CBD question. Anybody with a high school degree can do that.
> 
> Maybe the CBD topic belongs on another thread. But the point is that your replies are often too shallow, as you mock everybody on this thread this morning. Whatever our opinions are, some of us take the topics more seriously.


:lol:
Are you actually serious here? You - criticizing me - for unserious and shallow comments on threads?
First of all - I didn't respond to your CBD post. Go back and look - I was responding to Luchesi. There's a really easy way of determining that - you see, I actually quoted his post in my response, and not yours. I said nothing about CBD - of which I have zero opinion because I have not looked into it at all, and it has nothing to do with my work. I commented on the specific statement "I tell myself its natural, right?" I made a comment that simply accepting something as being beneficial because it is "natural" is a fallacy. You somehow think this means I am arguing against CBD. No. You can't find any evidence to that point because I never made any such claim - I oppose the general notion of "natural" = good. Evaluate each and every thing on its own merits.

The Dr on my screen-name is worthless to you because you don't know me just like the I don't believe you were a hero from the Trojan War. This line of argument seems ridiculous. I have never claimed to have a medical expertise.

Philoctetes has chosen today to be serious, and so therefore we must all follow suit? Is that what I'm hearing? Need I quote back to you your back and forths with Strange Magic where you have made some pretty unserious posts in threads that others took seriously?


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Modern Agriculture: Induced Desiccation via Massive Herbicide Application--It's What's for Dinner!
> 
> http://nautil.us/issue/66/clockwork/herbicide-is-whats-for-dinner


Exactly why we should use more GMOs that have been specifically genetically engineered to be more resistant to weeds and insects, negating the need for the use of as much herbicides and insecticides.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Strange Magic said:


> Modern Agriculture: Induced Desiccation via Massive Herbicide Application--It's What's for Dinner!
> 
> http://nautil.us/issue/66/clockwork/herbicide-is-whats-for-dinner


That is a big reason why I try to eat food labeled organic, though the companies can even find ways around that.

Oh, by the way, I really like CBD!


----------



## philoctetes

Luchesi said:


> I take a little bit of CBD at least every other day. I tell myself it's natural, right? It does seem to be changing my body and my outlook. It's a very slight change and that's all that I would want!
> 
> I didn't realize until I got here that older people seem to be much more preoccupied with their aches and pains and their mental outlooks (fear of dementia).
> 
> And I could be imagining it all..


I've been kind of naive about the CBD / THC ratiometrics until the recent boom. The smart money in my ag community is now promoting the CBD side, a reversal to ratios which were bred out by the industry to boost the THC side.

The nerve sheathing effect was once considered a bad thing, and maybe we don't understand it completely yet, but current attitudes are more wiling to to research rather than villainize.

Mike's not wrong to scoff but he's doing it for the wrong reasons. Quality-control type fraud is too common.


----------



## Room2201974

Strange Magic said:


> Modern Agriculture: Induced Desiccation via Massive Herbicide Application--It's What's for Dinner!
> 
> http://nautil.us/issue/66/clockwork/herbicide-is-whats-for-dinner


Yes, but supper would have never been ready had we sprayed Genesis with Roundup.


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> :lol:
> Are you actually serious here? You - criticizing me - for unserious and shallow comments on threads?
> First of all - I didn't respond to your CBD post. Go back and look - I was responding to Luchesi. There's a really easy way of determining that - you see, I actually quoted his post in my response, and not yours. I said nothing about CBD - of which I have zero opinion because I have not looked into it at all, and it has nothing to do with my work. I commented on the specific statement "I tell myself its natural, right?" I made a comment that simply accepting something as being beneficial because it is "natural" is a fallacy. You somehow think this means I am arguing against CBD. No. You can't find any evidence to that point because I never made any such claim - I oppose the general notion of "natural" = good. Evaluate each and every thing on its own merits.
> 
> The Dr on my screen-name is worthless to you because you don't know me just like the I don't believe you were a hero from the Trojan War. This line of argument seems ridiculous. I have never claimed to have a medical expertise.
> 
> Philoctetes has chosen today to be serious, and so therefore we must all follow suit? Is that what I'm hearing? Need I quote back to you your back and forths with Strange Magic where you have made some pretty unserious posts in threads that others took seriously?


You came barging in here ridiculing everybody for simply posting on appropriate topics. Your point about natural v safe was of a similar nature. YOU take some Prozac if the thread bothers you so much.


----------



## Guest

My catharsis comes from seeing you now becoming the thread scold after your previous postings in other threads. I'm sorry, is this thread restricted to those who agree with you?


----------



## philoctetes

Post what you like, and I will too. Deal with it.


----------



## Guest

Moses descending from Sinai, folks!


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Exactly why we should use more GMOs that have been specifically genetically engineered to be more resistant to weeds and insects, negating the need for the use of as much herbicides and insecticides.


Perhaps, as is his custom, the Doctor did not read the linked article. The massive use of herbicides in this instance is not to kill weeds and insects; it is to massively, suddenly, completely kill the crop itself so that it all desiccates at once, to be harvested by gigantic machines as efficiently as possible.


----------



## philoctetes

Nope just ol Philo limping around the island...

Just saw Edge of Tomorrow last night, talk about beating the odds...


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> Moses descending from Sinai, folks!


You were the one offering tablets, as I recall...


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> You were the one offering tablets, as I recall...


Yes, but you were having none of it, preferring instead to bow down to your CBD-laced golden calf.


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> Yes, but you were having none of it, preferring instead to bow down to your CBD-laced golden calf.


brownies are better... pasta not a bad way to go either...

if you read the article about glyphosphates... and think bacteria are bad, you'll love how roundup can kill the ones in your gut...

once I saw it was in Saskatchewan, I thought about all the water up there, not just in resistance to dryness, but as a medium for toxic transport...


----------



## Guest

Scientists have found glyphosphate to be safe to humans.


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> Modern Agriculture: Induced Desiccation via Massive Herbicide Application--It's What's for Dinner!
> 
> http://nautil.us/issue/66/clockwork/herbicide-is-whats-for-dinner


That's a very scary article. It's not at all sensationalized, which makes it even more scary.


----------



## Guest

Why is it scary? Is it an innate revulsion to the notion of chemicals being used in farming? Does the fact that independent testing has found it safe for human play any factor at all? This is - as the article points out - a necessity with modern farming to harvest sufficient food to feed the population without losing much of the crop.


----------



## KenOC

Along the same lines:

Government May Restrict Use of Genetically Modified Farmers


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> Scientists have found glyphosphate to be safe to humans.


Glyphosphate good, CBD bad.

If someone forced you to choose between a thimble of CBD oil and a thimble of Roundup, which would you take?


----------



## Jacck

I certainly do worry about modern agriculture 
Chemical Industrial Agriculture is Unsustainable. Here's why
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-03-27/chemical-industrial-farming-unsustainable-heres/


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> Glyphosphate good, CBD bad.
> 
> If someone forced you to choose between a thimble of CBD oil and a thimble of Roundup, which would you take?


What an absurd question. 
Again - where have I said CBD was bad? I have no use for either, so I wouldn't take either. I already take plenty of medications for my diabetes. I take insulin to control my blood sugar. But I don't take it when I don't need it.

Please show me where I said CBD was bad? You keep peddling that lie - show me where I said it was bad or quit spreading that misrepresentation.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Why is it scary? Is it an innate revulsion to the notion of chemicals being used in farming? Does the fact that independent testing has found it safe for human play any factor at all? This is - as the article points out - a necessity with modern farming to harvest sufficient food to feed the population without losing much of the crop.


The Wikipedia entry on glyphosate is quite exhaustive. The carcinogenicity of glyphosate remains an open question, with the usual issues of the degree to which Monsanto has been completely transparent in its dealings with independent researchers and its handling of the literature. Billions of $ are at stake, after all. The greater question is to what extent novel molecules such as glyphosate can be added to the environment before harmful side effects become apparent? Of course we are now, due to massive population growth, in a position where some will argue we cannot stop applying these novel molecules, rare earth elements, toxic metals, etc. to the biosphere without triggering food shortages or the disruption in the flow of electronic gadgetry to the masses. But, nothing to really worry about!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> I certainly do worry about modern agriculture
> Chemical Industrial Agriculture is Unsustainable. Here's why
> https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-03-27/chemical-industrial-farming-unsustainable-heres/


I am unfamiliar with Alice Friedemann - what is her background?


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> What an absurd question.
> Again - where have I said CBD was bad? I have no use for either, so I wouldn't take either. I already take plenty of medications for my diabetes. I take insulin to control my blood sugar. But I don't take it when I don't need it.
> 
> Please show me where I said CBD was bad? You keep peddling that lie - show me where I said it was bad or quit spreading that misrepresentation.


Which would you take? It's not an absurd question. Unless you answer it then I can assume what I want. But now your insulin is more important to discuss. How do you like them prices?

All you do is make sarcastic comments on every topic then deny that you believe the things they suggest. Something expected even less from a PhD than an MD... at least own what you say.

I mean, what kind of reaction are you expecting. You're not as funny as you think maybe.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> The Wikipedia entry on glyphosate is quite exhaustive. The carcinogenicity of glyphosate remains an open question, with the usual issues of the degree to which Monsanto has been completely transparent in its dealings with independent researchers and its handling of the literature. Billions of $ are at stake, after all. The greater question is to what extent novel molecules such as glyphosate can be added to the environment before harmful side effects become apparent? Of course we are now, due to massive population growth, in a position where some will argue we cannot stop applying these novel molecules, rare earth elements, toxic metals, etc. to the biosphere without triggering food shortages or the disruption in the flow of electronic gadgetry to the masses. But, nothing to really worry about!
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate


Hey - you might want to re-read this paragraph, especially the second word quoted:


> The *consensus* among national pesticide regulatory agencies and scientific organizations is that labeled uses of glyphosate have demonstrated no evidence of human carcinogenicity.[93] The Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR),[94] the European Commission, the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority[95] and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment[96] have concluded that there is no evidence that glyphosate poses a carcinogenic or genotoxic risk to humans. The EPA has classified glyphosate as "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans."[97][98] One international scientific organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), affiliated with the WHO, has made claims of carcinogenicity in research reviews; in 2015 the IARC declared glyphosate "probably carcinogenic."[99]


Scientific consensus here. Just saying.


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> Which would you take? It's not an absurd question. Unless you answer it then I can assume what I want.
> 
> All you do is make sarcastic comments on every topic then deny that you believe the things they suggest. Something expected even less from a PhD than an MD...
> 
> I mean, what kind of reaction are you expecting. You're not as funny as you think maybe.


No assumption is needed - either I said CBD was bad, or I didn't. I haven't edited any of my posts - go back and quote for me the one where I say it is bad. You don't need to assume anything, and you are lying to say so, because I have already told you my exact position on CBD.

You aren't making assumptions - you are, in fact, lying about what I have said about CBD. I am agnostic about CBD, because thus far it has not had any impact on my life.

Your question was a stupid one. Why would I want to take anything that I don't need? It is elementary school level gotcha.

I'm not expecting any kind of reaction. React any way you feel - just quit lying about me.


----------



## philoctetes

Got a thimble of roundup waiting for ya here.... did you not say it was safe? That's not a lie.

"I have already told you my exact position on CBD."

I missed that. Was it when you were saying natural stuff may not be safe? Or somewhere else some other time that you expect me to look up?

Does everybody here remember everything that everybody else posted all through history? I get this expectation a lot and if you all can do i then you're better than I am.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Hey - you might want to re-read this paragraph, especially the second word quoted:
> 
> Scientific consensus here. Just saying.


I read that one paragraph. Plus I read all the other paragraphs. Did you? I repeat: the carcinogenicity of glyphosate remains in dispute. The question also remains as to how much of these novel molecules can we/should we introduce into the environment over the years, the decades, as world populations soar? Is the carcinogenicity of glyphosate the only thing in question? It is not, as the Nautilus article makes clear.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I read that one paragraph. Plus I read all the other paragraphs. Did you? I repeat: the carcinogenicity of glyphosate remains in dispute. The question also remains as to how much of these novel molecules can we/should we introduce into the environment over the years, the decades, as world populations soar? Is the carcinogenicity of glyphosate the only thing in question? It is not, as the Nautilus article makes clear.


Got it - so if the consensus on global warming is that it is real, and caused by man, but one study (not really a study, just a search through other studies) says otherwise, you will remain skeptical?


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> Got a thimble of roundup waiting for ya here.... did you not say it was safe? That's not a lie.
> 
> "I have already told you my exact position on CBD."
> 
> I missed that. Was it when you were saying natural stuff may not be safe? Or somewhere else some other time that you expect me to look up?


Here you go, from post 383:


> But the notion of "organic" and "natural" being necessarily good is a bogus claim.


See how hard that was?

And here, from 3 posts later, post 386:


> I said nothing about CBD - of which I have zero opinion because I have not looked into it at all, and it has nothing to do with my work. I commented on the specific statement "I tell myself its natural, right?" I made a comment that simply accepting something as being beneficial because it is "natural" is a fallacy. You somehow think this means I am arguing against CBD. No. You can't find any evidence to that point because I never made any such claim - I oppose the general notion of "natural" = good. Evaluate each and every thing on its own merits.


If you aren't going to take the time to be certain about what you think I said, the onus is on you to do due diligence to support your claim. You lied about me.


----------



## philoctetes

Well just put me on ignore if you don't like being challenged to clarify your ambiguous, evasive, sarcastic comments. Nobody lied about you. Get over yourself.

You said roundup is safe and that is still under dispute. Now take you roundup like a good doctor.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Got it - so if the consensus on global warming is that it is real, and caused by man, but one study (not really a study, just a search through other studies) says otherwise, you will remain skeptical?


Is the carcinogenicity of glyphosate (when used as directed; how about if misused?) the only issue? It is not, as the Nautilus article makes clear and as I have also remarked.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I read that one paragraph. Plus I read all the other paragraphs. Did you? I repeat: the carcinogenicity of glyphosate remains in dispute. The question also remains as to how much of these novel molecules can we/should we introduce into the environment over the years, the decades, as world populations soar? Is the carcinogenicity of glyphosate the only thing in question? It is not, as the Nautilus article makes clear.


You specifically stated:


> The carcinogenicity of glyphosate remains an open question


But it really isn't, as the paragraph, from the section entitled "Cancer." That's like saying that, because there are some dissenting papers out there, AGW remains an open question - which you have told me, time and time again, it is not.


----------



## philoctetes

He hasn't read the article and he just keeps marching out strawmen and accusations to avoid discussing it.

These things are not up for opinion bargaining. AGW and glyphosphates are not chips that we play cards with. They are separate issues and they can't be solved or even analyzed by negotiating one for another. That's so.... Clintonian... global policy mindset...


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> Well just put me on ignore if you don't like being challenged to clarify your ambiguous, evasive, sarcastic comments. Nobody lied about you. Get over yourself.
> 
> You said roundup is safe and that is still under dispute. Now take you roundup like a good doctor.


So you are doubling down on your lies, even when I quote the relevant posts for you? I just want to make sure everybody sees that clearly. Did you take some CBD before starting your posts today? Wikipedia states the following side effects:


> Safety studies of cannabidiol showed it is well-tolerated, but may cause tiredness, diarrhea, or changes in appetite as common adverse effects.


Might you need to go lay down for a while?


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> He hasn't read the article and he just keeps marching out strawmen and accusations to avoid discussing it.
> 
> These things are not up for opinion bargaining. AGW and glyphosphates are not chips that we play cards with. They are separate issues and they can't be solved or even analyzed by negotiating one for another. That's so.... Clintonian... global policy mindset...


They don't mention irritability as one of the side effects for CBD - but perhaps you could be a case study?


----------



## philoctetes

OK everybody see that clearly? Then we're done, right?


----------



## Guest

You tell me - you initiated this whole thing today. Do you need me to find proof of that as well for you, or are you good?


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> They don't mention irritability as one of the side effects for CBD - but perhaps you could be a case study?


Actually, it's the opposite, so you missed my comments on ratiometrics. You want me to call that a lie just because you missed it? Look at the things you're saying about me that have nothing to do with what's been posted. People are trying to inform you and all you do is ridicule, attack and play politics with your vague counter-opinions, that are nothing but "let's be skeptical". Sure, but at least know what you're being skeptical about.


----------



## Strange Magic

> From Wikipedia: "In March 2015, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic in humans" (category 2A) based on epidemiological studies, animal studies, and in vitro studies. In contrast, the European Food Safety Authority concluded in November 2015 that "the substance is unlikely to be genotoxic (i.e. damaging to DNA) or to pose a carcinogenic threat to humans", later clarifying that while carcinogenic glyphosate-containing formulations may exist, studies "that look solely at the active substance glyphosate do not show this effect." The WHO and FAO Joint committee on pesticide residues issued a report in 2016 stating the use of glyphosate formulations does not necessarily constitute a health risk, and giving admissible daily maximum intake limits (one milligram/kg of body weight per day) for chronic toxicity. The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) classified glyphosate as causing serious eye damage and toxic to aquatic life, but did not find evidence implicating it as a carcinogen, a mutagen, toxic to reproduction, nor toxic to specific organs."


It is clear that there is disagreement on the carcinogenicity and also other aspects of toxicity of glyphosate. I read entire articles, so your cherry-picking to "prove" a point is not without risk of being unmasked. Glyphosate may prove to be a weak carcinogen--who knows what further research will show? But the Nautilus article reveals a present and future agricultural methodology that some (me) feel needs analysis: vast industrial engines subduing the Earth, consuming prairies and forests, to feed the billions.


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> You tell me - you initiated this whole thing today. Do you need me to find proof of that as well for you, or are you good?


You were responding only to luchesi, and I had no place to butt in, right?

But actually she was responding to me. So you were butting in. Is that how I started it?

I have nothing to defend. Let's get back on track, shall we?


----------



## KenOC

Cancer is not the only consideration when judging the safety of novel chemicals. For instance, there seems to be some concern over glyphosate’s effect on gut bacteria of humans (and likely other mammals I suppose). Also, most of us know the Monarch butterfly population has cratered, part of the worrying decline in total insect biomass in recent years. Here’s what Wiki has to say:

“A number of conservationists attribute the disappearance of milkweed species to agricultural practices in the Midwest, where genetically modified seeds are bred to resist herbicides that eliminate milkweed nearby. Growers eliminate milkweed that previously grew between the rows of food crops. Corn and soybeans are resistant to the effect of the herbicide glyphosate. The increased use of these crop strains is correlated with the decline in monarch populations between 1999 and 2010. Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas, said the Midwest milkweed habitat ‘is virtually gone’ with 120–150 million acres lost.”


----------



## Strange Magic

Palm oil plantations: Another vast example of agribusiness consuming the Earth's forests......

https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/forests/deforestation_fronts/deforestation_in_borneo_and_sumatra/

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/stop-deforestation/drivers-of-deforestation-2016-palm-oil#


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> You were responding only to luchesi, and I had no place to butt in, right?
> 
> But actually she was responding to me. So you were butting in. Is that how I started it?
> 
> I have nothing to defend. Let's get back on track, shall we?


I said no such thing. This is an open forum - anybody can chime in. I made a comment, and you made your comment about CBD instead of Prozac - which I ignored. Luchesi commented on CBD, and implying natural = good. I responded to that - at which point you impugned me, criticizing the "Dr" in my name on here. Remember that? And then I tried to be good-natured about it, joking about you not wanting me handling your health unless you were in need of a dissection and analysis of your existing immunity. You then took it to the next level. Now you cry foul, after lying about what I said with regards to CBD. It is all there for you to go back to review.

This pattern looks familiar to other threads I have seen you in.


----------



## philoctetes

These rainforests are vital and we know that fragmentation is an extinction factor. This is where a global resource policy would be beneficial if allocation and exploitation was optimized... instead it's based on global marketing of nationalized economic assets and needs...


----------



## Guest

It's based on supply and demand. Stalin tried a top down control of agriculture on a small scale, where a central authority determined allocation. You can read about how well that worked. You cannot have a global policy because it simply wouldn't work. Too many different factors, too many different polities, too many different interests, too many different resources.


----------



## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> These rainforests are vital and we know that fragmentation is an extinction factor. This is where a global resource policy would be beneficial if allocation and exploitation was optimized... instead it's based on global marketing of nationalized economic assets and needs...


I fear there may be no solution if the population keeps growing. We may see pressures to reduce standards of living and to adopt a more "fair" distribution of wealth, but at pretty much a subsistence level. Even that will only stave off the inevitable.


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> I said no such thing. This is an open forum - anybody can chime in. I made a comment, and you made your comment about CBD instead of Prozac - which I ignored. Luchesi commented on CBD, and implying natural = good. I responded to that - at which point you impugned me, criticizing the "Dr" in my name on here. Remember that? And then I tried to be good-natured about it, joking about you not wanting me handling your health unless you were in need of a dissection and analysis of your existing immunity. You then took it to the next level. Now you cry foul, after lying about what I said with regards to CBD. It is all there for you to go back to review.
> 
> This pattern looks familiar to other threads I have seen you in.


Your reply to luchesi re: natural v safe was where you made remarks about safety v natural, vague remarks, that in the context of CBD, suggested they were unsafe... So what? You are welcome to clarify yourself but you don't have to call me a liar. Get over it. If you see a pattern then you can do what you want about it.

You're not getting any apologies today, Mike. It's just another bad day on the forum after three pretty good days without all this garbage. Holiday is over and Elton John is back.


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> It's based on supply and demand. Stalin tried a top down control of agriculture on a small scale, where a central authority determined allocation. You can read about how well that worked. You cannot have a global policy because it simply wouldn't work. Too many different factors, too many different polities, too many different interests, too many different resources.


As an AI algorithm designer, I'm not especially intimidated by large numbers of variables... this is not even a real-time application...it only seeks a static equilibrium as a solution... not as hard as predicting the weather a month away.. we train environmental engineers to learn these things, thousands of them, use geological models, etc...

Dyson also complained about all the variables not being considered in the climate models. That's not the same as saying that they we can't do that.


----------



## Open Book

There are those who say we population alarmists don't have to worry because the science of agriculture will always be able to keep up with and feed the earth's growing population.

Doesn't sound like modern agricultural practices are without dangers. We are finding that they are doing all kinds of harm, starting with the antibiotic tolerance of super bacteria and fungi.


----------



## Jacck

DrMike said:


> It's based on supply and demand. Stalin tried a top down control of agriculture on a small scale, where a central authority determined allocation. You can read about how well that worked. You cannot have a global policy because it simply wouldn't work. Too many different factors, too many different polities, too many different interests, too many different resources.


today you have huge companies such as Monsanto with their fingers spread all over the planet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto


----------



## KenOC

Jacck said:


> today you have huge companies such as Monsanto with their fingers spread all over the planet
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto


In post 403, the genetically modified farmer is wearing a Monsanto tanktop…


----------



## Jacck

Forget geopolitics, water scarcity shapes up as the biggest threat to China's rise
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-23/china-water-crisis-threatens-growth/10434116

this is probably the reason why they care for Tibet and Himalayas nowadays - as a source of water from the Himalayan glaciers. They plan to steal the water from the Indians.

China's planning a 1,000km tunnel to divert water away from one of India's largest rivers
https://qz.com/india/1114843/chinas...000km-tunnel-to-divert-water-away-from-tibet/

The China-India rivalry is causing an ecological disaster in the Himalayas
https://qz.com/india/1307728/the-ch...sing-an-ecological-disaster-in-the-himalayas/

this could be some war in the future between China and India for water resources
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/t...na-india-not-unthinkable-would-be-total-26238


----------



## KenOC

That could be very bad. Groundwater is severely depleted in much of India already due to overpumping. A recent BBC article was a long read about an outright epidemic of farmer suicides as their wells failed.

River water is already spoken for. Even without China taking India’s water, things are getting quite grim in much of the country. Lots of info if you search on "india groundwater depletion".


----------



## Open Book

Countries rich in water could make a killing on the market. Like Canada, other circumpolar countries.


----------



## Guest

Why environmentalists make such good movie villains.


----------



## Strange Magic

^^^^Can anybody open the link? Maybe only DrMike knows the combination.


----------



## Larkenfield

Strange Magic said:


> ^^^^Can anybody open the link? Maybe only DrMike knows the combination.


 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/03/environmentalists-make-good-movie-villains-because-they-want-make-your-real-life-worse/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3f3b6a02d418

"Thanos, the villain (and protagonist, really) of the $2 billion-grossing megahit, "Avengers: Infinity War," was basically an omni-powered Paul Ehrlich. Whereas the comic book version of Thanos sought to kill half of the universe in order to prove his love for an anthropomorphized Death, the film version was driven insane by his home planet's self-immolation after a series of resource wars. Determined to eliminate suffering over food and land, over clean water and clean air, Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet not to create an abundance of each but to kill half of all living things."

Really? Thanos is like an "omni-powered Paul Ehrlich?" Really? But perhaps it's not impossible there could be "resource wars" on our own planet.


----------



## Guest

Don't know why the link isn't working, but Larkenfield found the right article.


----------



## Larkenfield

If the link doesn’t work, search for the article using the title and you can always find it.


----------



## Larkenfield

Don't fool w/Mother Nature:


----------



## haydnguy

We're having record breaking flooding here. We have plenty of water! :tiphat:


----------



## philoctetes

Found this at Costco today and picked up a copy - Cadillac Desert was due for an update...


----------



## Guest

I found this book to be very informative:


----------



## Strange Magic

Rupert Darwall: Yet another economist holds forth on Climate Change. Economists: you gotta love 'em--they're experts on everything......


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> I found this book to be very informative:


I read a bit of the beginning (on Amazon) and a bit about the book. Is it a history of the politics of global warming?


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Rupert Darwall: Yet another economist holds forth on Climate Change. Economists: you gotta love 'em--they're experts on everything......


You read the book? He actually guess more into the history of the climate change movement.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I read a bit of the beginning (on Amazon) and a bit about the book. Is it a history of the politics of global warming?


Yes, not so much about climate change.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> they're experts on everything......


Projecting, are we?


----------



## philoctetes

That's why there's an all-news magazine called the Economist.


----------



## Strange Magic

Some info about Rupert Darwall. Under Publications, it is noted that there are no examples of Darwall publishing any science papers on climate change in peer-reviewed journals. He is a longtime AGW denier funded by the usual sources, keeps the same company, and plays the game well.

https://www.desmogblog.com/rupert-darwall


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Some info about Rupert Darwall. Under Publications, it is noted that there are no examples of Darwall publishing any science papers on climate change in peer-reviewed journals. He is a longtime AGW denier funded by the usual sources, keeps the same company, and plays the game well.
> 
> https://www.desmogblog.com/rupert-darwall


Defaulting to an ad hominem attack?


----------



## Guest

His personal beliefs aside, Darwall is an Economist and an historian. He has written a book about the history of the environmentalist movement, and how it has been Incorporated into political debate, and what kinda of things go into public policy on the issue. What - you can't stand a critical look at that history? Not only the science, but the political spin must be controlled by your side? Must be a weak argument on your part indeed if it can't weather any criticism.


----------



## Jacck

DrMike said:


> His personal beliefs aside, Darwall is an Economist and an historian. He has written a book about the history of the environmentalist movement, and how it has been Incorporated into political debate, and what kinda of things go into public policy on the issue. What - you can't stand a critical look at that history? Not only the science, but the political spin must be controlled by your side? Must be a weak argument on your part indeed if it can't weather any criticism.


these guys are pure ideologues. I doubt that his book is in any way objective. He first makes a conclusion (that environmentalism is bad) and then goes to supply "evidence" by narrating his one-sided version of history. Many of them were paid by oil companies or by Russia


----------



## Guest

Wow. Not only is there no dissent allowed on the science, apparently also the history can only come from your side? And considering none of you had heard of Darwall before I posted the book, you all now are quite the experts on him. Is this the same level of due diligence you give to every bit of climate news fed to you?


----------



## Jacck

DrMike said:


> Wow. Not only is there no dissent allowed on the science, apparently also the history can only come from your side? And considering none of you had heard of Darwall before I posted the book, you all now are quite the experts on him. Is this the same level of due diligence you give to every bit of climate news fed to you?


dissent however much you want, but do not expect that anyone must take you seriously or even dedicate his time to debunking your nonsense. Economist is not a qualification I take seriously. It is like a historian writing a book about the harm of vaccinations.


----------



## Guest

You all do realize climate science and climate politics are not one and the same? For example, climate science recognizes that the developing world, India and China are just as critical to climate change as the industrialized world. But climate politics exempts them from much of the requirements. Climate science is furthered by scientific studies. Climate politics gets big boosts from tripe like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> dissent however much you want, but do not expect that anyone must take you seriously or even dedicate his time to debunking your nonsense. Economist is not a qualification I take seriously. It is like a historian writing a book about the harm of vaccinations.


But an historian could write a book about the history of vaccines. Darwall didn't write a book about the science, but about the history of the modern environmentalist movement. As an historian, I would think that falls within his skill set.


----------



## Jacck

DrMike said:


> But an historian could write a book about the history of vaccines. Darwall didn't write a book about the science, but about the history of the modern environmentalist movement. As an historian, I would think that falls within his skill set.


does the book contain any information about climate sceptics being paid by oil companies? 
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...nge-denier-willie-soon-funded-energy-industry
https://www.campaigncc.org/climate_change/sceptics/funders
if it does not, it is lacking in objectivity and hence credibiity, because it is presenting just one side of the story


----------



## Guest

Look, I get it, you are only interested in things that confirm your biases. As a Christian, I read a criticism by a well known atheist, Christopher Hitchens, and I came through it fine. I know you think that funding means a person can't be objective. If that is true, does that mean I can't trust any scientific studies funded by organizations who officially support the idea of AGW, because they are hopelessly biased? I suspect you know nothing about Darwall beyond that link Strange Magic gave you, but suddenly you know you can't trust him? Like I said - is this the same level of scrutiny you give to climate claims that support your biases?


----------



## Guest

Here is an article in Forbes about how the environmentalist movement wants energy prices to go up, which is why so many of them oppose nuclear energy. And this guy was called a "Hero of the Environment" by Time.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/27/we-shouldnt-be-surprised-renewables-make-energy-expensive-since-thats-always-been-the-greens-goal/amp/?__twitter_impression=true


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## Strange Magic

Rupert Dalwall: if you look dispassionately at his past, his writings, his allies and friends and paymasters, the publications and groups that are willing to publish his nonsense, you very quickly find he is yet another fighter for human freedom in the face of the vast conspiracy of Nazi- and Socialist-inspired and controlled mad climate scientists who want to enslave humankind with their fake stories about some sort of "climate change" nonsense. One of his closest allies is the charlatan "economist" Stephen Moore, who had to withdraw his name from consideration as a possible Federal Reserve Board member when the groundswell of real economists and business leaders against him caused even GOP loyalists to shun him. I urge everyone interested to actually read Dalwall's stuff; it's ripe.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Here is an article in Forbes about how the environmentalist movement wants energy prices to go up, which is why so many of them oppose nuclear energy. And this guy was called a "Hero of the Environment" by Time.
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/27/we-shouldnt-be-surprised-renewables-make-energy-expensive-since-thats-always-been-the-greens-goal/amp/?__twitter_impression=true


Indeed, a powerful argument for population stabilization and eventual reduction. Earth's surface may soon be covered with solar panels, wind turbines, vast waste dumps, toxic waste sites, enormous hyper-mechanized and chemicalized agribusiness plantations, open-pit mines and waste ponds, livestock compounds where the creatures never see the light of day, and gargantuan megalopolises of scores of millions and billions. I preferred Trantor, because there were dozens of other planets supplying it with food and materials.


----------



## Guest

On the contrary, the article makes the point that higher yield energy, like nuclear, is better long-term for the environment, because it requires less land, provides more energy, and allows for greater centralization of populations, allowing more land to be reclaimed. This is also associated with lower birth rates. Industrialized farming also leads to higher crop yields on less land, again allowing for more land to be reclaimed. Organic farming has much lower yields and thus requires much more land to achieve the same amount of crops. Solar and wind are much more energy dilute, and thus more land is required for energy production. Nuclear reactors also last longer, so you don't have to rebuild as often. Older reactors were believed to be good for 40 years, but with new technology, that has been doubled. In contrast, solar panels and wind turbines have to be replaced much earlier. This means more waste from them, including the hazardous components from solar panels, and the current policy is to send that waste to poor developing countries.
Read the article - it isn't an attack on global warming, rather a criticism of the obsession over wind and solar while rejecting nuclear. In places that are aggressively implementing wind and solar power, energy prices are rising by 50% or more, while these renewables have replaced less than 20% of the energy supply.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Rupert Dalwall: if you look dispassionately at his past, his writings, his allies and friends and paymasters, the publications and groups that are willing to publish his nonsense, you very quickly find he is yet another fighter for human freedom in the face of the vast conspiracy of Nazi- and Socialist-inspired and controlled mad climate scientists who want to enslave humankind with their fake stories about some sort of "climate change" nonsense. One of his closest allies is the charlatan "economist" Stephen Moore, who had to withdraw his name from consideration as a possible Federal Reserve Board member when the groundswell of real economists and business leaders against him caused even GOP loyalists to shun him. I urge everyone interested to actually read Dalwall's stuff; it's ripe.


They have both written for the Wall Street Journal - of course they are colleagues.

What writings of Darwall's have you read that you would recommend people start with?


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> They have both written for the Wall Street Journal - of course they are colleagues.
> 
> What writings of Darwall's have you read that you would recommend people start with?


I'd recommend starting with this insightful interview with The Conservative Woman, just to get the flavor of Darwall's thought:

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk...-darwall-sinister-forces-behind-green-agenda/

Another interview, also straight from Darwall himself:

https://www.encounterbooks.com/features/rupert-darwall-totalitarian-roots-environmentalism/

Interested parties can read further: the Internet is a rich source of material by and about Rupert Darwall.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I'd recommend starting with this insightful interview with The Conservative Woman, just to get the flavor of Darwall's thought:
> 
> https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk...-darwall-sinister-forces-behind-green-agenda/
> 
> Another interview:
> 
> https://www.encounterbooks.com/features/rupert-darwall-totalitarian-roots-environmentalism/


I agree, people should read that interview. Excellent recommendation. I suspect they will go in with preconceived biases, not very open-minded, but at least they will read it. I would recommend something written directly by him, though, not just a quick interview.

Might I suggest this article from January in National Review? Be sure and get you garlic and crucifix out before opening a link to that publication!
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/01/europe-bogus-clean-energy-schemes-european-union-coal/


----------



## Strange Magic

The National Review article is like the proverbial curate's egg: parts of it are excellent. I share Darwall's opposition to growing and burning biomass for energy--it represents a futile dead end in dealing with environmental problems, as does digging up yet more carbon from underground, especially in the form of filthy "clean" coal, Athabascan tar sands, and the like. The rest of his screed is standard NR fare; we know it of old.

I do prefer the interviews with Darwall. They give a direct look into his mind and the things that seize his imagination and interest without the filter of editing or further reflection.


----------



## philoctetes

DrMike said:


> Might I suggest this article from January in National Review? Be sure and get you garlic and crucifix out before opening a link to that publication!
> https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/01/europe-bogus-clean-energy-schemes-european-union-coal/


This is a good critique of how it goes wrong. It also shows that you can't lump "environmentalists" together. The government / commercial side does not represent the core movement, which is almost extinct thanks to grift. I've been unhappy about this for decades, which is why I don't throw my hat in the ring with anything that even resembles a con. Even the popularity of the Sierra Club was not such a good thing, despite all intentions by the likes of Muir and Brower. Taking large groups to the wilderness to save the wilderness eventually backfires - people just keep encroaching in more numbers. Best to just keep your favorite trails a secret.


----------



## Open Book

philoctetes said:


> This is a good critique of how it goes wrong. It also shows that you can't lump "environmentalists" together. The government / commercial side does not represent the core movement, which is almost extinct thanks to grift. I've been unhappy about this for decades, which is why I don't throw my hat in the ring with anything that even resembles a con. Even the popularity of the Sierra Club was not such a good thing, despite all intentions by the likes of Muir and Brower. Taking large groups to the wilderness to save the wilderness eventually backfires - people just keep encroaching in more numbers. Best to just keep your favorite trails a secret.


Groups like the Sierra club want to increase the numbers of people who sympathize with environmental causes so that environmentalism will gain believers and political clout. They think the best way to do this is by exposing as many new people as possible to the pleasures of the outdoors, people who may have had little exposure before, like urban dwellers.

You are right that this may not be what is best for the environment when urban dwellers decide to become rural dwellers and build new houses on virgin land.


----------



## philoctetes

There's more to it the more you look. I worked with a similar river conservation group, one that still retains core values. But at least a third of our guests were just there for the action and these activities netted a loss. When you consider all the vehicle mileage, garbage, and other impacts it's hard to see a benefit.

Ideological drift rhymes with grift and that's a problem too. There's often bad news on all sides, which is why I rarely take sides.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-30/only-10-us-shale-drillers-have-positive-cash-flow


----------



## Strange Magic

Open Book said:


> Groups like the Sierra club want to increase the numbers of people who sympathize with environmental causes so that environmentalism will gain believers and political clout. They think the best way to do this is by exposing as many new people as possible to the pleasures of the outdoors, people who may have had little exposure before, like urban dwellers.
> 
> You are right that this may not be what is best for the environment when urban dwellers decide to become rural dwellers and build new houses on virgin land.


Again, this hearkens back to the central core problem: too many people. AGW is just one consequence--though a big one--of Too Many People, as are the vast majority of our other threats to the biosphere. Plastics pollution, other sorts of pollution, deforestation, loss of species and biodiversity, accumulating waste, novel molecules and large quantities of toxic metals introduced into the environment, etc. etc.: all byproducts of our failure to control our numbers. I proposed returning our numbers, through time and through ensuring full female equality combined with effective, confidential contraception, to roughly the levels of 1750, about one-tenth of today's almost 8 billions. When one considers those alive then whom we admire today--their works, their words, their actions, their legacy--and combine that with modern yet rational technology (medicine, resources, agriculture) in a world restored and teeming with wildlife, the prospect of a world population of, say, 800 millions seems a veritable paradise.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Again, this hearkens back to the central core problem: too many people. AGW is just one consequence--though a big one--of Too Many People, as are the vast majority of our other threats to the biosphere. Plastics pollution, other sorts of pollution, deforestation, loss of species and biodiversity, accumulating waste, novel molecules and large quantities of toxic metals introduced into the environment, etc. etc.: all byproducts of our failure to control our numbers. I proposed returning our numbers, through time and through ensuring full female equality combined with effective, confidential contraception, to roughly the levels of 1750, about one-tenth of today's almost 8 billions. When one considers those alive then whom we admire today--their works, their words, their actions, their legacy--and combine that with modern yet rational technology (medicine, resources, agriculture) in a world restored and teeming with wildlife, the prospect of a world population of, say, 800 millions seems a veritable paradise.


This is quite possibly the most bizarre thing I have ever read from you. Seriously?


----------



## Bwv 1080

The whole idea of 'wilderness' is a colonialist myth, there are very few ecosystems that have not been managed by humans over the past several thousand years. Europeans thought much of North America was a pristine wilderness because by the time they got to the interior of the Continent, the native inhabitants had largely been wiped out by the European diseases which traveled much faster than actual Europeans. Even much of the Amazon rain forest was managed by its inhabitants.

Today we get the World Wildlife Fund supporting death squads to evict people from land they have lived on for millennia

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/05/24/colonialist-land-grab-happening-right-now-congo


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> This is quite possibly the most bizarre thing I have ever read from you. Seriously?


Yeah, it's like telling the captain of the Titanic to return to port. Hey, I paid a lot for this ticket!


----------



## Open Book

DrMike said:


> This is quite possibly the most bizarre thing I have ever read from you. Seriously?


What's bizarre, the 800 million figure or the idea that overpopulation is the root cause of our problems?

Is it not obvious that if there were a small number of people in the world, they could pollute with impunity, move on to other locations, and begin all over again? Even with current technology and lifestyle a small number wouldn't have much of an effect.


----------



## philoctetes

The myth of wilderness as a myth is another bizarre output of the urban media leading the march to destruction...

I saw a similar article recently on "frontier" as myth. The idea was to disqualify anybody who had any thoughts of living off the grid etc... just another component of Agenda 21 propoganda...


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Yeah, it's like telling the captain of the Titanic to return to port. Hey, I paid a lot for this ticket!


No, it's like saying we should reduce the population by 90% because hey, weren't there some really cool people around back in 1750? By the way, those people wouldn't have supported his female equality initiative. The modern economy freed up women and made it possible for them to assert their rights, not some Rousseau-inspired return to nature.


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> What's bizarre, the 800 million figure or the idea that overpopulation is the root cause of our problems?
> 
> Is it not obvious that if there were a small number of people in the world, they could pollute with impunity, move on to other locations, and begin all over again? Even with current technology and lifestyle a small number wouldn't have much of an effect.


Who decides which 10% gets to survive?


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## Open Book

DrMike said:


> Who decides which 10% gets to survive?


Who's saying we should achieve population reduction by killing people off?

Birth control to reduce overpopulation has been discussed. Incentives for birth control could include taxation on the number of children one has. Not a tax break, but a tax.


----------



## Guest

Look, assuming SM is right, and the survival of this planet is dependent on 90% fewer people - his plan to implement full female equality as the means to achieve that culling is not realistic in any kind of a timeframe that would save the planet, if the situation is as dire as you all believe. Even genocidal dictators and virulent disease have never achieved that level of population depletion. There is only one conceivable way to drop the population by 90% in time to save the planet - the concerted, planetary wide slaughter of people. If you have another realistic way that will save the planet, let's hear it. 

And which of you will be lining up to volunteer to be culled to save the planet?


----------



## Luchesi

These are pipedreams. Thinking about reducing the population without stepping upon the rights of anyone, and reducing it fast enough to rescue us from our mostly man-made problems..

Another pipedream is tomorrow magnanimous aliens will appear and lift us to plenty of beautiful planets in nearby star systems.


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> Who's saying we should achieve population reduction by killing people off?
> 
> Birth control to reduce overpopulation has been discussed. Incentives for birth control could include taxation on the number of children one has. Not a tax break, but a tax.


And what will be next, state-mandated abortions?


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Yeah, it's like telling the captain of the Titanic to return to port. Hey, I paid a lot for this ticket!


By the way, even the Titanic sinking only killed 68% of those on board. So by this logic, more people will survive climate disaster than SM's global culling.


----------



## Open Book

Bwv 1080 said:


> The whole idea of 'wilderness' is a colonialist myth, there are very few ecosystems that have not been managed by humans over the past several thousand years. Europeans thought much of North America was a pristine wilderness because by the time they got to the interior of the Continent, the native inhabitants had largely been wiped out by the European diseases which traveled much faster than actual Europeans. Even much of the Amazon rain forest was managed by its inhabitants.
> 
> Today we get the World Wildlife Fund supporting death squads to evict people from land they have lived on for millennia
> 
> https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/05/24/colonialist-land-grab-happening-right-now-congo


I just skimmed this article so far, but I see a fallacy already. That just because people have been hunter-gatherers for centuries without doing harm to the environment means they can continue to live this way without doing harm.

In the past hunter gatherers probably had much smaller numbers and less impact. If the ones today have access to medicine and are living longer (good for them if they are) their larger numbers could have a much greater negative impact on the environment with this kind of lifestyle. Hunting and gathering for food is not an efficient lifestyle for large populations. That's why agriculture was developed.

WWF is dealing with desperate situations regarding rare species and it might be that moving a people who are putting pressure on the environment is one of their few options.


----------



## Open Book

DrMike said:


> And what will be next, state-mandated abortions?


Why not try other incentives and see what happens?


----------



## Guest

You know what happens when you restrict how many children you can have? People cheat sometimes, which then means you have to punish people with the law for doing something natural - all life reproduces. Or you get demographic imbalances - in most places where they try to restrict births, parents prefer boys. 

I can think of no more frightening effort than coercive birth restrictions. We used to call it eugenics. Whenever it had been done, horrible consequences have resulted.


----------



## Open Book

DrMike said:


> You know what happens when you restrict how many children you can have? People cheat sometimes, which then means you have to punish people with the law for doing something natural - all life reproduces. Or you get demographic imbalances - in most places where they try to restrict births, parents prefer boys.
> 
> I can think of no more frightening effort than coercive birth restrictions. We used to call it eugenics. Whenever it had been done, horrible consequences have resulted.


Then tax boy children twice as much.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> This is quite possibly the most bizarre thing I have ever read from you. Seriously?


I should be amazed by the hysteria that a simple notion such as Too Many People induces in some, even in PhDs. But I am not. Another idea is Not Enough People--this has been put forward by a number of crisis-deniers who tell us that if we had twice as many people, there would be twice as many willing pairs of hands to get things done, twice as many brilliant brains to make the rosy future even rosier. I propose a humane, intelligent, rational though long-term approach to dealing with the fundamental problem of overpopulation, and the reaction-not the proposal--is profoundly bizarre. I offer the fact that in the 18th century great things were thought of and done with "only" eight-hundred-million people, yet some in their desparation to willfully misunderstand and to broadcast their misunderstanding, choose to tell others that I propose we don three-cornered hats and powdered wigs and return body and soul to the 18th century. Actually, my chief critics know exactly what I am talking about; they can only refute it by feigning to misunderstand it.

As the Wise understand, I urge us as a species to not only tackle directly the crises we face--AGW, pollution, waste disposal, energy sourcing, etc., but also simultaneously recognize the threat that further increase in global populations represents, but acknowledge it and begin to deal with it through the demonstrable method--and righteous cause--of full female autonomy and equality.

Now let's see how they will misinterpret that!


----------



## Strange Magic

From DrMike's post, #300 in this thread:



> "As for birth rates, get the government out. No tax breaks for kids, if that is your goal. You want a kid? Fine. You don't get benefits for having one. Do it if you want to, but the government isn't here to reward or punish for such decisions."


Shall we all now attack this as a bizarre idea? This sounds like almost as crazy and subversive an idea as full female emancipation, equality, and confidential access to effective contraception. Maybe even more bizarre.


----------



## philoctetes

As if misinterpretation was the intention of the author... calling it out before it happens... granting self-immunity for outrageous proposals... there are better ways to spend the day...


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> From DrMike's post, #300 in this thread:
> 
> Shall we all now attack this as a bizarre idea? This sounds like almost as crazy and subversive an idea as full female emancipation, equality, and confidential access to effective contraception. Maybe even more bizarre.


I'm not trying to eliminate 90% of the global population.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I should be amazed by the hysteria that a simple notion such as Too Many People induces in some, even in PhDs. But I am not. Another idea is Not Enough People--this has been put forward by a number of crisis-deniers who tell us that if we had twice as many people, there would be twice as many willing pairs of hands to get things done, twice as many brilliant brains to make the rosy future even rosier. I propose a humane, intelligent, rational though long-term approach to dealing with the fundamental problem of overpopulation, and the reaction-not the proposal--is profoundly bizarre. I offer the fact that in the 18th century great things were thought of and done with "only" eight-hundred-million people, yet some in their desparation to willfully misunderstand and to broadcast their misunderstanding, choose to tell others that I propose we don three-cornered hats and powdered wigs and return body and soul to the 18th century. Actually, my chief critics know exactly what I am talking about; they can only refute it by feigning to misunderstand it.
> 
> As the Wise understand, I urge us as a species to not only tackle directly the crises we face--AGW, pollution, waste disposal, energy sourcing, etc., but also simultaneously recognize the threat that further increase in global populations represents, but acknowledge it and begin to deal with it through the demonstrable method--and righteous cause--of full female autonomy and equality.
> 
> Now let's see how they will misinterpret that!


I think you underestimate just how much a critical population level - more than we had in 1750 - was necessary for the remarkable amount of progress we experienced post 1750. A global population of 800 million - what we had in 1750 - spread out over the entire planet, would not be very dense. Tax revenues would be low. You know what, among other things, taxes fund? Scientific research. You think we would expand our scientific knowledge at the same rate now with only 10% of the population? Any idea how much it costs to conduct scientific research? So much of our modern world simply couldn't function with 90% fewer people. I know you might see that as a good thing, but I believe that advancements are products of their time and circumstances, and you can't replicate them with different parameters. Look at Europe, with lower birthrates than the U.S. and higher welfare spending - they are nowhere near the level of scientific funding of the U.S. And they are industrialized nations.

Unless you want not only lower population but regression to a more agrarian society?


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> I'm not trying to eliminate 90% of the global population.


Is your notion of eliminating tax breaks and credits for children more bizarre, less bizarre, or equally bizarre as the idea of full female equality and confidential access to effective contraception? Also, is any loss of population through decreased, voluntary female birth rate reduction tolerable to you? If so, how much?


----------



## Strange Magic

Simple mathematics tells us that the marginal demand for goods and services would be reduced by 90%. Common sense tells us that people would not be uniformly spread throughout the globe. Reason tells us that 800,000,000 people is a lot of people and would easily be able to fill every conceivable need for manpower, brains, resources, financing, whatever. It represents more than twice the population of the essentially self-sufficient USA.

Your thesis then, carried to its conclusion, is that population can and should continue to grow, as Julian Simon, charlatan "economist", asserted, without limit. Then Nirvana becomes increasingly possible.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Is your notion of eliminating tax breaks and credits for children more bizarre, less bizarre, or equally bizarre as the idea of full female equality and confidential access to effective contraception? Also, is any loss of population through decreased, voluntary female birth rate reduction tolerable to you? If so, how much?


No amount of coerced birth rate reduction is tolerable to me. Birth rates left to themselves will settle at whatever level they will. Human manipulation of those rates will have dire consequences.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> No amount of coerced birth rate reduction is tolerable to me. Birth rates left to themselves will settle at whatever level they will. Human manipulation of those rates will have dire consequences.


How many ways and times can we both decry coerced birth rate reduction? Who here in this thread--name them!--is calling for compelling women to not have children? I am growing concerned at your need to state that this view that nobody here holds is anathema to you. Straw men--armies of them--on the march. We can burn them for fuel.


----------



## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> As if misinterpretation was the intention of the author... calling it out before it happens... granting self-immunity for outrageous proposals... there are better ways to spend the day...


Someday these chthonian, sphynx-like, portentous utterances will be deciphered and all will understand what they mean......


----------



## KenOC

Even dog breeders have to be licensed here. But you can have as many kids as you want without even passing elementary tests like you need to drive a car.


----------



## philoctetes

Strange Magic said:


> Someday these chthonian, sphynx-like, portentous utterances will be deciphered and all will understand what they mean......


Call Diffie and Hellman locksmiths today!


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Even dog breeders have to be licensed here. But you can have as many kids as you want without even passing elementary tests like you need to drive a car.


So now we are cool with regulating what two people do in the privacy of their bedroom? If that's the case, I've got some abortion restriction ideas.

Is watch it - that sounds a lot like the beginning statements of eugenics proponents. Right before they propose sterilizing the undesirables.


----------



## KenOC

If eugenics bothers you, we can assign the limited number of baby licenses using a lottery method. But still, you've gotta pass the tests to enter the lottery!

BTW we practice eugenics every time we abort an "undesirable" fetus, or we select sperm for assisted pregnancies based on the donor's self-descriptions (often fake) that the doctor provides. I would argue we practice eugenics every time we select a mate we think is most likely to contribute valuable characteristics to our offspring, or is capable of providing for our offspring through puberty.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> If eugenics bothers you, we can assign the limited number of baby licenses using a lottery method. But still, you've gotta pass the tests to enter the lottery!
> 
> BTW we practice eugenics every time we abort an "undesirable" fetus, or we select sperm for assisted pregnancies based on the donor's self-descriptions (often fake) that the doctor provides. I would argue we practice eugenics every time we select a mate we think is most likely to contribute valuable characteristics to our offspring, or is capable of providing for our offspring through puberty.


Only if you completely bend the definition of eugenics.

You all really know how to sell the idea of helping the environment. Doomsayers talking about mandatory population reduction, government control of how many babies you can have, cutting 90% of the population by some indeterminate date - still waiting to hear whether we will have hit the climate catastrophe deadline before then. I guess it really doesn't matter - we will all have been killed by plastic straws long before then.


----------



## Guest

I'm for developing alternate energy supplies, provided they can actually meet or energy needs without forcing us back to pre-industrial conditions. I think anybody who proposes doing this without including nuclear energy is nothing more than an unscientific demagogue who really only pretends to believe the science.

I am for conserving as much as possible. I support farming practices that allow for greater crop yields on less land, so we can reclaim land. I don't support strategies to artificially manipulate birth rates. I don't buy the Malthusian and Ehrlichian arguments. Populations will reach natural equilibrium points just fine on their own. We are already seeing them level off.

100 years ago nobody could have predicted where we are today, in terms of environment or technology. Likewise, I reject the notion that anybody today can accurately predict where we will be 100 years from now. We work now in realistic terms to make life better. Perhaps 100 years from now we will look back on internal combustion engines in the same way we now look back on horse powered transportation and the environmental problems of horse manure piling up in cities. That is the way progress usually works. 

Mankind likes to worry about perceived apocalypses just over the horizon. Maybe we will see some massive reduction of diversity for a while. Oddly enough, it wouldn't be the first time in the history of this planet that such has occurred. Imagine if the dinosaurs had enough intelligence to perceive the impending doom that was to befall the planet and wipe most of them out. It seems that the desire to keep the planet at some predetermined stasis is unrealistic.


----------



## Strange Magic

> DrMike: "Mankind likes to worry about perceived apocalypses just over the horizon. Maybe we will see some massive reduction of diversity for a while. Oddly enough, it wouldn't be the first time in the history of this planet that such has occurred. Imagine if the dinosaurs had enough intelligence to perceive the impending doom that was to befall the planet and wipe most of them out. It seems that the desire to keep the planet at some predetermined stasis is unrealistic".


Actually, the vast majority never worry about apocalypses just over the horizon, or haven't worried. It's only just a few, really. The fact that there are more now, including much of the scientific community, should give us some concern. And there is no "maybe" about the ongoing loss of non-human biological mass or diversity--it's happening right now. The origin of the cataclysm that wiped out the dinosaurs was likely extrinsic to Earth and it also wiped out vast swathes of organisms, just like today, but unlike 65 million years ago, Homo sapiens is the agent of mass extinction and as sapient beings, we should know and do better. The planet does not stay in stasis, but heretofore the changes have been slow enough or modest enough or geographically limited enough so that migration and/or evolution could cope with them. Here's another truly bizarre idea for cynics to chew on: were we given dominion over the Earth and its creatures so we could royally screw it up?


----------



## SixFootScowl

Strange Magic said:


> *Actually, the vast majority never worry about apocalypses just over the horizon, or haven't worried. It's only just a few, really.* The fact that there are more now, including much of the scientific community, should give us some concern. And there is no "maybe" about the ongoing loss of non-human biological mass or diversity--it's happening right now. The origin of the cataclysm that wiped out the dinosaurs was likely extrinsic to Earth and it also wiped out vast swathes of organisms, just like today, but unlike 65 million years ago, Homo sapiens is the agent of mass extinction and as sapient beings, we should know and do better. The planet does not stay in stasis, but heretofore the changes have been slow enough or modest enough or geographically limited enough so that migration and/or evolution could cope with them. Here's another truly bizarre idea for cynics to chew on: were we given dominion over the Earth and its creatures so we could royally screw it up?


The apocalypse just over the horizon is this and you should worry:


> But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. 2 Peter 3:10


----------



## Luchesi

Fritz Kobus said:


> The apocalypse just over the horizon is this and you should worry:


I think you know a lot more about the "heavens" than anyone in the first and second centuries.


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## Strange Magic

Fritz Kobus said:


> The apocalypse just over the horizon is this and you should worry:


And I am worried. Sounds like global warming on steroids. I knew it was foretold in the Bible, along with everything else.


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## KenOC

"...and the catfish had two balls, and one ball was the sun, and the other the moon..." (Firesign Theatre)

Ah, I see you are a sailor.


----------



## Room2201974

KenOC said:


> "...and the catfish had two balls, and one ball was the sun, and the other the moon..." (Firesign Theatre)
> 
> Ah, I see you are a sailor.


I think we're all bozos in this thread!


----------



## Jacck

Tanzania's plastic bags ban part of a growing trend across Africa
https://www.icis.com/explore/resour...ags-ban-part-of-a-growing-trend-across-africa

the biggest plastic polluters are the bottled waters and companies such as Coca Cola
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...w-biggest-plastic-menace-for-waterways-report


----------



## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> And I am worried. Sounds like global warming on steroids. I knew it was foretold in the Bible, along with everything else.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

Here's a list of claims about the coming end the world. And it's a long one.

At the bottom there are the claims about the far distant future from science.

New measurements of Dark Energy now point away from the Big Rip scenario wherein the universe gets torn apart. There's just not enough per unit strength in the repulsion.


----------



## Jacck

Luchesi said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
> 
> Here's a list of claims about the coming end the world. And it's a long one.
> 
> At the bottom there are the claims about the far distant future from science.
> 
> New measurements of Dark Energy now point away from the Big Rip scenario wherein the universe gets torn apart. There's just not enough per unit strength in the repulsion.


it is worse. There is a dark flow in the universe, which pulls whole galaxy clusters to some mysterious point beyond the visible universe
http://www.cosmosup.com/dark-flow-from-other-universe-engulfing-galaxy-clusters/
maybe we find ourselves inside the urinary bladder of God, and he is starting to pee, which creates the flow of galaxies.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Luchesi said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
> 
> Here's a list of claims about the coming end the world. And it's a long one.


That shows the folly of men who refuse to listen: Mark 13: 31-31 says, "Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. * But of that day and that hour knoweth no man*, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father."


----------



## Luchesi

Fritz Kobus said:


> That shows the folly of men who refuse to listen: Mark 13: 31-31 says, "Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. * But of that day and that hour knoweth no man*, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father."


I wonder who Christians think wrote the Gospel of Mark.

How does a heaven pass away? Aren't there people in that heaven?


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> I wonder who Christians think wrote the Gospel of Mark.
> 
> How does a heaven pass away? Aren't there people in that heaven?


You are misreading that scripture. It isn't saying heaven will pass away. It is hyperbole to stress the point that God's word is eternal and won't pass away - heaven and Earth will pass away before His word does.


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> You are misreading that scripture. It isn't saying heaven will pass away. It is hyperbole to stress the point that God's word is eternal and won't pass away - heaven and Earth will pass away before His word does.


The kingdom of God will come some day. We can't know when.

The Earth will end in fire (quite sure, and now there's talk of even Mars being engulfed by old Sol). This universe will end in ice (unless we don't understand some very powerful factors).


----------



## Luchesi

Jacck said:


> it is worse. There is a dark flow in the universe, which pulls whole galaxy clusters to some mysterious point beyond the visible universe
> http://www.cosmosup.com/dark-flow-from-other-universe-engulfing-galaxy-clusters/
> maybe we find ourselves inside the urinary bladder of God, and he is starting to pee, which creates the flow of galaxies.


Because our Virgo Supercluster is in the way, we can't easily see what's going on between Coma Berenices and the huge Shapley Supercluster behind the Great Attractor -- which is behind the M83 direction in Hydra for backyard astronomers like me. The mass of an adjacent universe would explain it. Or it might merely be that huge anomaly of large clusters beyond 200 million lys in that direction.

In any case we're being pulled in that direction at 2 million mph. Boston to NYC and back again every second of our lives! Amazing! Did you feel it?


----------



## Jacck

Luchesi said:


> Because our Virgo Supercluster is in the way, we can't easily see what's going on between Coma Berenices and the huge Shapley Supercluster behind the Great Attractor -- which is behind the M83 direction in Hydra for backyard astronomers like me. The mass of an adjacent universe would explain it. Or it might merely be that huge anomaly of large clusters beyond 200 million lys in that direction.
> 
> In any case we're being pulled in that direction at 2 million mph. Boston to NYC and back again every second of our lives! Amazing! Did you feel it?


it is not clear, if this dark flow is even real. A later study refuted the previous results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_flow
_In 2013, data from the Planck space telescope showed no evidence of "dark flow" on that sort of scale, discounting the claims of evidence for either gravitational effects reaching beyond the visible universe or existence of a multiverse.[5] However, in 2015 Kashlinsky et al claim to have found support for its existence using both Planck and WMAP data.[6]_


----------



## Guest

I suspect it may all be the early indications that the Vogons are on their way to destroy Earth to make way for an intergalactic bypass. Grab your towels.


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## Open Book

Does anybody here simply not care about loss of species? If African elephants and rhinos go completely extinct, are there people who would be completely unmoved? Because who needs wild elephants and rhinos anyway. Can't eat them or play fetch with them. Will we still make stuffed tigers for little kids to play with once tigers go extinct, and will we try to explain to the kid what a tiger was and what happened to them? 

I'm not going to chastise anyone for feeling that way, I think this kind of apathy is a widespread and explains those who downplay rather than deplore the current state of nature.

Our survival depends more upon nature than some of us realize. When insects start disappearing, the bottom of the food chain, it's time to worry. But regardless of human dependency I feel as though we shouldn't be allowing anything to go extinct. They should be preserved for their own sake. It's an almost religious feeling. Some Christian evangelicals value every species because each one is God's creation and to lose any one would be an affront to God. I get that. How dare we.


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> Our survival depends more upon nature more than some of us realize. When insects start disappearing, the bottom of the food chain, it's time to worry...


_More than 75 percent decrease in total flying insect biomass over 27 years_

The study covered "protected areas" throughout Germany, so the researchers don't really know what is causing the rapid decline.


----------



## KenOC

The new California anti-straw law: We had breakfast at a local chain diner, and straws were supplied as always with both water and soft drinks. I asked about that, and the waitress said, “We just give people straws like always, nobody’s complained.”

A couple of days later we had lunch at a local BBQ place, maybe a bit more upscale. We ordered margaritas, blended with salt, and no straws came. We asked the waiter, who immediately brought straws. He said, “We can’t bring straws unasked, and we can’t even offer them. That’s the way the new law works.”

Go figure.


----------



## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> The new California anti-straw law: We had breakfast at a local chain diner, and straws were supplied as always with both water and soft drinks. I asked about that, and the waitress said, "We just give people straws like always, nobody's complained."
> 
> A couple of days later we had lunch at a local BBQ place, maybe a bit more upscale. We ordered margaritas, blended with salt, and no straws came. We asked the waiter, who immediately brought straws. He said, "We can't bring straws unasked, and* we can't even offer them*. That's the way the new law works."
> 
> Go figure.


That's going WAY too far!


----------



## philoctetes

Maybe it's not that so many people exist, it's just that they won't (or can't) stay home where they have responsibilities they'd rather avoid.

The Atlantic: Too Many People Want to Travel

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/crowds-tourists-are-ruining-popular-destinations/590767/

Six months ago every community was making vows to get proactive with fire prevention. What a joke. I've busted my tail for weeks cutting back growth on my property, but see few others doing the same. I go to the post office yesterday and see the counter piled with hold requests from those going on vacation. Some tweaker started a spot fire just last night near a friend's house.

Meanwhile I see someone posting NPR commentary and just have to laugh. What do they know? That kind of information offers listeners a false excuse to drop their guard and call off the alarms.. Unless the growth is cut back it will eventually become dry fuel, whether this year or next year, it's inevitable.


----------



## Guest

At the risk of getting all kinds of hate, are you guys really this gripped with fear, or is this just a symptom of Internet anonymity? It is possible to both believe there is a problem and not obsess at this level about it.


----------



## Open Book

DrMike said:


> At the risk of getting all kinds of hate, are you guys really this gripped with fear, or is this just a symptom of Internet anonymity? It is possible to both believe there is a problem and not obsess at this level about it.


There is a serious problem which will have serious consequences, and nothing is being done about it. We're fiddling while Rome burns. That justifies fear.

If you feel there isn't a problem, as you seem to believe, then yeah, go blithely about your business. No worries!


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> At the risk of getting all kinds of hate, are you guys really this gripped with fear, or is this just a symptom of Internet anonymity? It is possible to both believe there is a problem and not obsess at this level about it.


I've always generally assumed that the level of "fear" exhibited by liberals on issues such as climate change, pollution, and population increase is roughly the same as the level of "fear" exhibited by conservatives on issues such as gay rights, abortion, and reductions in military funding. For a wide variety of reasons, these and similar issues elicit powerful reactions from a subset of each community.

Personally, I would rather see a more reasoned approach to policy. One huge problem is that it's incredibly difficult to fully understand some of these issues without being an expert in the field. One question I always wish to ask those from the other side is, "If you believed that my concerns were generally true, what would you propose?" So a conservative could ask me, "If you felt that potential military aggression from other nation states were one of the US's main problems, what would you be willing to spend on the military?" Or "If you believed that abortion were murder, should it be legal?"

In the particular case of climate change, I'm consumed by finding solutions because it's my job. I'm not fearful but rather focused on finding answers. Perhaps it's somewhat similar to when I played basketball or football. Fans were anxious at critical situations in games, but I was simply focused on doing my job so I was much less anxious.


----------



## mmsbls

Open Book said:


> There is a serious problem which will have serious consequences, and nothing is being done about it. We're fiddling while Rome burns. That justifies fear.


I can't accurately speak about other issues, but in climate change mitigation there are quite significant actions being taken. The actions of national governments are dwarfed by actions at the local level and, more importantly, by industry. The question is whether these actions will produce enough change to meet our climate change goals.


----------



## Open Book

mmsbls said:


> I can't accurately speak about other issues, but in climate change mitigation there are quite significant actions being taken. The actions of national governments are dwarfed by actions at the local level and, more importantly, by industry. The question is whether these actions will produce enough change to meet our climate change goals.


In my opinion, this problem can't be solved until the overpopulation issue is solved.
Any gains made in efficiency will be rolled back by the fact that there will be more and more people contributing to the problem.


----------



## Strange Magic

Open Book said:


> In my opinion, this problem can't be solved until the overpopulation issue is solved.
> Any gains made in efficiency will be rolled back by the fact that there will be more and more people contributing to the problem.


What is needed is a recognition by governmental institutions, the other major societal influences (religions, educational institutions, the media, corporations), and the general populations of countries, that stabilizing and reducing global populations is as critical as controlling AGW and will take equal if not greater time and dedication. But both AGW mitigation through technology and conservation and population limitation should be attempted simultaneously. So far the media in general remain stupefyingly silent on the part population plays in our increasing environmental concerns.


----------



## mmsbls

Open Book said:


> In my opinion, this problem can't be solved until the overpopulation issue is solved.
> Any gains made in efficiency will be rolled back by the fact that there will be more and more people contributing to the problem.


Obviously, lower population will help, but it's not strictly required.

Consider trucks in California, USA. Vehicle efficiencies could rise by roughly a factor of 2 by 2050 while vehicle miles traveled are expected to rise about 40% (based on increases in population and other factors). Roughly similar numbers are expected for both cars and trucks in the US as a whole. So one could expect that fuel use would be reduced by maybe 30% or so. Now 30% is nowhere near enough to meet climate change goals so if we relied solely on efficiency increases, we'd be out of luck.

The main way we expect to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) is through reductions in what's called the carbon intensity (CI) of fuels. Gasoline and diesel fuel have rather high CIs (amount of carbon released for a given amount of fuel energy). Fuels such as electricity and hydrogen can have vastly lower CIs. In fact the CI of electricity made from renewable sources can be very close to zero. Our models show potential reductions of greenhouse gases of 80% in 2050 by substituting new fuels and vehicle technologies (electricity in electric vehicles and hydrogen in fuel cell vehicles) by 2050. 
Similar reductions in GHGs in other sectors are expected through similar fuel substitutions. In fact both California in 2045 and Shell Energy in 2050 have a goal of reaching carbon neutrality (zero GHG emissions). I won't say that goal is easy to achieve, but it's clearly possible.

So, yes, things would be easier with lowered population, and we should strive to reduce population in a reasonable manner. But there maybe other ways to achieve various goals in climate change and other issues.


----------



## KenOC

Unfortunately, the apparent reductions in biomasses and biological diversity seem to have nothing to do with our usual bete noirs of global warming and sea-level rise. See the OP here and many other posts as well. I have an uncomfortable feeling that the quality of our lives will suffer far sooner due to other factors.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese

We should listen to more Polka I think, Oh and less Opera


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> I've always generally assumed that the level of "fear" exhibited by liberals on issues such as climate change, pollution, and population increase...


It's a shame that today we identify a person's overall political outlook by their views on a single issue or related set of issues. Unfortunately, it's also a reasonable thing to do because people more and more absorb the beliefs, however absurd, of the tribe they cleave to.

As for myself, I am very concerned about environmental issues. But I'm certainly no liberal, at least as the term is used today. I may be old, but I'm not addled! :lol:

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today."


----------



## Luchesi

mmsbls said:


> Obviously, lower population will help, but it's not strictly required.
> 
> Consider trucks in California, USA. Vehicle efficiencies could rise by roughly a factor of 2 by 2050 while vehicle miles traveled are expected to rise about 40% (based on increases in population and other factors). Roughly similar numbers are expected for both cars and trucks in the US as a whole. So one could expect that fuel use would be reduced by maybe 30% or so. Now 30% is nowhere near enough to meet climate change goals so if we relied solely on efficiency increases, we'd be out of luck.
> 
> The main way we expect to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) is through reductions in what's called the carbon intensity (CI) of fuels. Gasoline and diesel fuel have rather high CIs (amount of carbon released for a given amount of fuel energy). Fuels such as electricity and hydrogen can have vastly lower CIs. In fact the CI of electricity made from renewable sources can be very close to zero. Our models show potential reductions of greenhouse gases of 80% in 2050 by substituting new fuels and vehicle technologies (electricity in electric vehicles and hydrogen in fuel cell vehicles) by 2050.
> Similar reductions in GHGs in other sectors are expected through similar fuel substitutions. In fact both California in 2045 and Shell Energy in 2050 have a goal of reaching carbon neutrality (zero GHG emissions). I won't say that goal is easy to achieve, but it's clearly possible.
> 
> So, yes, things would be easier with lowered population, and we should strive to reduce population in a reasonable manner. But there maybe other ways to achieve various goals in climate change and other issues.


I'd rather not have the opposite problem either. One and a half to 2 degrees cooling per century? A thicker part of the interstellar dust cloud (pushed toward us by an ancient supernova in Loop I) is coming our way.


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## Bwv 1080

hydrogen is not a fuel, its a form of energy storage typically requiring the burning of natural gas to create.


----------



## Guest

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> We should listen to more Polka I think, Oh and less Opera


Less Opera is always a good idea.


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## Strange Magic

Bwv 1080 said:


> hydrogen is not a fuel, its a form of energy storage typically requiring the burning of natural gas to create.


Hydrogen is certainly a fuel. It is most cleanly extracted from water via electrolysis, thus separating the water molecule into its hydrogen and oxygen components.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> Hydrogen is certainly a fuel. It is most cleanly extracted from water via electrolysis, thus separating the water molecule into its hydrogen and oxygen components.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel


I believe that separation of hydrogen and oxygen from water via electrolysis requires prodigious amounts of electric energy. I am, as always, subject to correction.

Anyway, BWV 1080 is correct: "Elemental hydrogen from solar, biological, or electrical sources requires more energy to make than is obtained by burning it, so in these cases hydrogen functions as an energy carrier, like a battery."


----------



## mmsbls

Hydrogen is a fuel because, similar to other fuels such as gasoline, natural gas, and diesel, when oxidized it releases energy. The difference between hydrogen and most other fuels is that hydrogen molecules don't exist naturally on earth. We must create hydrogen fuel. Fuels such as oil or natural gas have already been created through lengthy chemical processes fueled by the sun's energy. 

All fuels require more energy to create than they release when oxidized. The real issues with fuels are how much they cost, how easily can they be used, and what adverse effects result from their use. All fuels have some advantages and some disadvantages. One particularly nice feature of hydrogen is that it can be used to store the energy produced from wind turbines or solar cells more cheaply and efficiently than most other forms.


----------



## Strange Magic

mmsbls is of course correct in his above post. We for years have heard that solar power, wind turbines, wave energy capture systems, etc, produce electricity only intermittently and that this presents a major stumbling block to their widespread adoption: what are we to do at night "when the sun don't shine"? Yet safe, simple, proven technologies exist to to store electrical power via its conversion _in situ_ to other forms of energy, to be then reconverted back. Electrolysis is one of these established technologies; flywheels are another. Both can be situated in those numerous locations where abundant sunshine or wind is near water. And flywheel storage can be sited anywhere.


----------



## SixFootScowl

mmsbls said:


> Hydrogen is a fuel because, similar to other fuels such as gasoline, natural gas, and diesel, when oxidized it releases energy. The difference between hydrogen and most other fuels is that hydrogen molecules don't exist naturally on earth. We must create hydrogen fuel. Fuels such as oil or natural gas have already been created through lengthy chemical processes fueled by the sun's energy.
> 
> All fuels require more energy to create than they release when oxidized. *The real issues with fuels are how much they cost, how easily can they be used, and what adverse effects result from their use.* All fuels have some advantages and some disadvantages. One particularly nice feature of hydrogen is that it can be used to store the energy produced from wind turbines or solar cells more cheaply and efficiently than most other forms.


Here is *an interesting site on hydrogen fuel*. Also see their discussion of *hydrogen and the Hindenburg*.

Note: While I understand the context of fuel in this discussion, in the broadest usage, many things are fuel including woody debris on the forest floor that "fuels" forest fires.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Strange Magic said:


> Hydrogen is certainly a fuel. It is most cleanly extracted from water via electrolysis, thus separating the water molecule into its hydrogen and oxygen components.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel


Yes, electrolysis consumes more energy than is stored in the Hydrogen, so it is a form of energy storage, not a fuel in itself. Although in theory electrolysis could be done with renewables, it typically is done with energy from fossil fuels. Either way, there is a net energy loss creating Hydrogen. H is only comparable to battery technologies, not to direct sources of energy production like solar or fossil fuels.


----------



## Jacck

The Zeller-Nikolov climate discovery may turn the world upside down.
https://www.opednews.com/articles/T...-Gore_Biofuels_Climate-Change-181228-572.html

and here the paper itself
New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-ac...-an-Empirical-Planetary-Temperature-Model.pdf
(the paper is likely nonsense)

I always wanted to read the original Arrhenius papers, since I heard that they are really good. But I should have done it after a course of thermodynamics, when all those enthalpies, entropies, Gibbs energies etc still made sense to me


----------



## Luchesi

Jacck said:


> The Zeller-Nikolov climate discovery may turn the world upside down.
> https://www.opednews.com/articles/T...-Gore_Biofuels_Climate-Change-181228-572.html
> 
> and here the paper itself
> New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model
> https://www.omicsonline.org/open-ac...-an-Empirical-Planetary-Temperature-Model.pdf
> (the paper is likely nonsense)
> 
> I always wanted to read the original Arrhenius papers, since I heard that they are really good. But I should have done it after a course of thermodynamics, when all those enthalpies, entropies, Gibbs energies etc still made sense to me


It's a physicist and his boss, a meteorologist from the Forest Service. Both types of 'experts' on climatology often hope that they can reverse views on climate change. They felt that they had to reverse the letters in their names to get their paper accepted.

It's an interesting math attempt to simplify things. As a quick approximation it will be useful in the future for astrobiology.


----------



## Strange Magic

Bwv 1080 said:


> Yes, electrolysis consumes more energy than is stored in the Hydrogen, so it is a form of energy storage, not a fuel in itself. Although in theory electrolysis could be done with renewables, it typically is done with energy from fossil fuels. Either way, there is a net energy loss creating Hydrogen. H is only comparable to battery technologies, not to direct sources of energy production like solar or fossil fuels.


In what sense is hydrogen not a fuel? It is consumed as a fuel in fuel cells, rocket engines, etc. by combining with oxygen to release water vapor. It is a fuel as carbon is a fuel.


----------



## Jacck

Luchesi said:


> It's a physicist and his boss, a meteorologist from the Forest Service. Both types of 'experts' on climatology often hope that they can reverse views on climate change. They felt that they had to reverse the letters in their names to get their paper accepted.
> 
> It's an interesting math attempt to simplify things. As a quick approximation it will be useful in the future for astrobiology.


even if it is wrong, it is much more fun finding the actual arguments why it is wrong, then arguing about politics of climate change. Here is a debunking of the paper
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpr...e-alone-does-not-define-surface-temperatures/


----------



## Bwv 1080

Strange Magic said:


> In what sense is hydrogen not a fuel? It is consumed as a fuel in fuel cells, rocket engines, etc. by combining with oxygen to release water vapor. It is a fuel as carbon is a fuel.


I mean as a primary energy source, of course its a fuel in that regard. The point is that, unlike fossil fuels, which are stored solar energy, H has to be created using some other source of energy. But you cant directly compare Hydrogen to say, solar or natural gas, as any energy produced by hydrogen is a net loss to produce


----------



## Jacck

Strange Magic said:


> In what sense is hydrogen not a fuel? It is consumed as a fuel in fuel cells, rocket engines, etc. by combining with oxygen to release water vapor. It is a fuel as carbon is a fuel.


more importantly, it is a fuel for the sun


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## Strange Magic

Jacck said:


> more importantly, it is a fuel for the sun


Touché. In that sense, hydrogen is the primordial Überfuel of solar systems everywhere.


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## Bwv 1080

Yes, human energy consumption is ultimately 100% fusion powered


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## Guest

But is it really? Or is it just a battery for energy released by subatomic particles, which energy transfer is extremely inefficient?


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## KenOC

More novel chemicals in our environment: Leaked FDA study finds milk, meat, produce contaminated with 'forever chemicals'

These chemicals are perfluorinated alkylated substances or PFASs.


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## Jacck

maybe its not so bad with the insects
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48580182


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> maybe its not so bad with the insects
> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48580182


I bet there are probably some effective pesticides that could have prevented that.


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## KenOC

Jacck said:


> maybe its not so bad with the insects
> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48580182


Near the bottom: "Northern Italy is also battling a plague of brown marmorated stink bugs." On balance, I'll take the locusts.


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## Open Book

New England has had an increase in the number of stink bugs, too. Somehow they get inside my house, though they are not minute - a shield-shaped 1/2 to 3/4 inch sized insect. I never had to deal with them until about 3 years ago. I hear some species are native and some have been introduced from other parts of the world. They are aptly named when disturbed, I found out.


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## Open Book

DrMike said:


> I bet there are probably some effective pesticides that could have prevented that.


DrMike, most of us have an instinctive aversion to insects, but would you be at all sorrowful if every last African elephant disappeared from the world?


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> DrMike, most of us have an instinctive aversion to insects, but would you be at all sorrowful if every last African elephant disappeared from the world?


Survival of the fittest is what I say. If they can't cut it, oh well. Is that the response you were thinking I would give?


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## mmsbls

The UK will soon vote on committing to net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. California has that target by 2054. Shell Energy has the same target by 2050. There's a significant amount of movement by both governments and industry towards very aggressive reductions in GHGs. These targets are much more aggressive than former targets of 80% reductions by 2050.


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## Open Book

DrMike said:


> Survival of the fittest is what I say. If they can't cut it, oh well. Is that the response you were thinking I would give?


Yes, that was what I was expecting.

There aren't many other species that can "cut it" against us humans. Many things, if we want them gone, they have no chance against us, they'll be gone. Except cockroaches, mice, germs, viruses...especially if we do away with most of the things that naturally keep them in check...they'll become stronger and more numerous than ever. Survival of the fittest.


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## Guest

Ah, you didn't detect my tongue planted firmly in my cheek.


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## Tikoo Tuba

High energy consumption on demand is unrealistic . We have an old farm windmill with various attachments . When it's blowing good it's - Ma , let's wash the clothes ! be Amish or die

or nuke yourself anyway

vote for peace


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Ah, you didn't detect my tongue planted firmly in my cheek.


I didn't detect it either. The elephants sacrificed themselves so we could all have that brighter future that's just around the corner.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I didn't detect it either..


That's a shocker.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> That's a shocker.


Is it? Tell us what you really believe.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Is it? Tell us what you really believe.


That you will never miss an opportunity to disparage me.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> That you will never miss an opportunity to disparage me.


Easily assumed Martyrdom can be a form of virtue-signaling.


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## Guest

I claim no martyr status, as your words hardly have the ability to wound. I just note you rarely pass up an opportunity to misinterpret or malign me. Fewer things on this forum are more certain.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> I claim no martyr status, as your words hardly have the ability to wound. I just note you rarely pass up an opportunity to misinterpret or malign me. Fewer things on this forum are more certain.


What are today's examples of you being misinterpreted or maligned? I will affirm that it is often difficult to tease out your actual views on any number of subjects--one must first pierce the membrane of ambiguity.



> DrMike: "Survival of the fittest is what I say. If they can't cut it, oh well. Is that the response you were thinking I would give?"


What, for example, do you mean to say here?


----------



## Guest

Here - I'll give you some practice. You can consider this statement and let me know whether you think I'm being serious or facetious:
I think all the climate hyperventalists should be tossed into a volcano and put out of their misery.

Just as a side note, you are free to co-opt that idea as part of your strategy to reduce the global population by 90%. Call it leading by example.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> What, for example, do you mean to say here?


Okay - I'll lead you by the nose here. What, in your entire experience of encounters with me here, whether in the normal forum, or down in the groups, would ever lead you to believe that I am that hardcore of a Darwinist? A normal person could discern those are aberrant ideas for me in seconds - therefore I'll give you an hour or so.


----------



## Guest

Great new article in National Review by George Will on the constant scarcity predictions:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/predictions-resource-exhaustion-excuse-government-intervention/

My favorite line comes from the very last paragraph:


> Many people who want to stampede a panicked public into expanding government's micromanagement of everything have forgotten Gregg Easterbrook's "Law of Doomsaying": Predict catastrophe no later than ten years hence but no sooner than five years away - soon enough to terrify people but distant enough that they will not remember that you were wrong.


----------



## Luchesi

We're warming 30 times faster than during the Permian. In the microfossil layers the warming was apparently 15 degrees C in 80,000 years.

Between 5 or 6 degrees of warming….   Although warming on this scale lies within the IPCC’s officially endorsed range of 21st-century possibilities, climate models have little to say about it, echoing Dante “the Sixth Circle of Hell”. To see the most recent climatic lookalike, we have to turn the geological clock back between 144m and 65m years, to the Cretaceous, which ended with the extinction of the dinosaurs. There was an even closer fit at the end of the Permian, 251m years ago, when global temperatures rose by – yes – six degrees, and 95% of species were wiped out.   That episode was the worst ever endured by life on Earth, the closest the planet has come to ending up a dead and desolate rock in space.” On land, the only winners were fungi that flourished on dying trees and shrubs. At sea there were only losers. Warm water is a killer. Less oxygen can dissolve, so conditions become stagnant and anoxic. Oxygen-breathing water-dwellers – all the higher forms of life from plankton to sharks – face suffocation. Warm water also expands, and sea levels rose by 20 metres.” The resulting “super-hurricanes” hitting the coasts would have triggered flash floods that no living thing could have survived.   There are aspects of the so-called “end-Permian extinction” that are unlikely to recur – most importantly, the vast volcanic eruption in Siberia that spread magma hundreds of metres thick over an area bigger than western Europe and shot billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. That is small comfort, however, for beneath the oceans, another monster stirred – the same that would bring a devastating end to the Palaeocene nearly 200m years later, and that still lies in wait today. Methane hydrate.   What happens when warming water releases pent-up gas from the sea bed: First, a small disturbance drives a gas-saturated parcel of water upwards. As it rises, bubbles begin to appear, as dissolved gas fizzles out with reducing pressure – just as a bottle of lemonade overflows if the top is taken off too quickly. These bubbles make the parcel of water still more buoyant, accelerating its rise through the water. As it surges upwards, reaching explosive force, it drags surrounding water up with it. At the surface, water is shot hundreds of metres into the air as the released gas blasts into the atmosphere. Shockwaves propagate outwards in all directions, triggering more eruptions nearby.   The eruption is more than just another positive feedback in the quickening process of global warming. Unlike CO2, methane is flammable. Even in air-methane concentrations as low as 5%, the mixture could ignite from lightning or some other spark and send fireballs tearing across the sky. The effect would be much like that of the fuel-air explosives used by the US and Russian armies – so-called “vacuum bombs” that ignite fuel droplets above a target. According to the CIA, those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringes are likely to suffer many internal injuries, including burst eardrums, severe concussion, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness.” Such tactical weapons, however, are squibs when set against methane-air clouds from oceanic eruptions. Scientists calculate that they could “destroy terrestrial life almost entirely (251m years ago, only one large land animal, the pig-like lystrosaurus, survived). It has been estimated that a large eruption in future could release energy equivalent to 108 megatonnes of TNT – 100,000 times more than the world’s entire stockpile of nuclear weapons. It is not too difficult to imagine the ultimate nightmare, with oceanic methane eruptions near large population centres wiping out billions of people – perhaps in days. Imagine a ‘fuel-air explosive’ fireball racing towards a city – London, say, or Tokyo – the blast wave spreading out from the explosive centre with the speed and force of an atomic bomb. Buildings are flattened, people are incinerated where they stand, or left blind and deaf by the force of the explosion. Mix Hiroshima with post-Katrina New Orleans to get some idea of what such a catastrophe might look like: burnt survivors battling over food, wandering far and wide from empty cities.   Then would come hydrogen sulphide from the stagnant oceans. “It would be a silent killer: imagine the scene at Bhopal following the Union Carbide gas release in 1984, replayed first at coastal settlements, then continental interiors across the world. At the same time, as the ozone layer came under assault, we would feel the sun’s rays burning into our skin, and the first cell mutations would be triggering outbreaks of cancer among anyone who survived. Dante’s hell was a place of judgment, where humanity was for ever punished for its sins. With all the remaining forests burning, and the corpses of people, livestock and wildlife piling up in every continent, the six-degree world would be a harsh penalty indeed for the mundane crime of burning fossil energy.


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> We're warming 30 times faster than during the Permian. In the microfossil layers the warming was apparently 15 degrees C in 80,000 years.
> 
> Between 5 or 6 degrees of warming….   Although warming on this scale lies within the IPCC's officially endorsed range of 21st-century possibilities, climate models have little to say about it, echoing Dante "the Sixth Circle of Hell". To see the most recent climatic lookalike, we have to turn the geological clock back between 144m and 65m years, to the Cretaceous, which ended with the extinction of the dinosaurs. There was an even closer fit at the end of the Permian, 251m years ago, when global temperatures rose by - yes - six degrees, and 95% of species were wiped out.   That episode was the worst ever endured by life on Earth, the closest the planet has come to ending up a dead and desolate rock in space." On land, the only winners were fungi that flourished on dying trees and shrubs. At sea there were only losers. Warm water is a killer. Less oxygen can dissolve, so conditions become stagnant and anoxic. Oxygen-breathing water-dwellers - all the higher forms of life from plankton to sharks - face suffocation. Warm water also expands, and sea levels rose by 20 metres." The resulting "super-hurricanes" hitting the coasts would have triggered flash floods that no living thing could have survived.   There are aspects of the so-called "end-Permian extinction" that are unlikely to recur - most importantly, the vast volcanic eruption in Siberia that spread magma hundreds of metres thick over an area bigger than western Europe and shot billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. That is small comfort, however, for beneath the oceans, another monster stirred - the same that would bring a devastating end to the Palaeocene nearly 200m years later, and that still lies in wait today. Methane hydrate.   What happens when warming water releases pent-up gas from the sea bed: First, a small disturbance drives a gas-saturated parcel of water upwards. As it rises, bubbles begin to appear, as dissolved gas fizzles out with reducing pressure - just as a bottle of lemonade overflows if the top is taken off too quickly. These bubbles make the parcel of water still more buoyant, accelerating its rise through the water. As it surges upwards, reaching explosive force, it drags surrounding water up with it. At the surface, water is shot hundreds of metres into the air as the released gas blasts into the atmosphere. Shockwaves propagate outwards in all directions, triggering more eruptions nearby.   The eruption is more than just another positive feedback in the quickening process of global warming. Unlike CO2, methane is flammable. Even in air-methane concentrations as low as 5%, the mixture could ignite from lightning or some other spark and send fireballs tearing across the sky. The effect would be much like that of the fuel-air explosives used by the US and Russian armies - so-called "vacuum bombs" that ignite fuel droplets above a target. According to the CIA, those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringes are likely to suffer many internal injuries, including burst eardrums, severe concussion, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness." Such tactical weapons, however, are squibs when set against methane-air clouds from oceanic eruptions. Scientists calculate that they could "destroy terrestrial life almost entirely (251m years ago, only one large land animal, the pig-like lystrosaurus, survived). It has been estimated that a large eruption in future could release energy equivalent to 108 megatonnes of TNT - 100,000 times more than the world's entire stockpile of nuclear weapons. It is not too difficult to imagine the ultimate nightmare, with oceanic methane eruptions near large population centres wiping out billions of people - perhaps in days. Imagine a 'fuel-air explosive' fireball racing towards a city - London, say, or Tokyo - the blast wave spreading out from the explosive centre with the speed and force of an atomic bomb. Buildings are flattened, people are incinerated where they stand, or left blind and deaf by the force of the explosion. Mix Hiroshima with post-Katrina New Orleans to get some idea of what such a catastrophe might look like: burnt survivors battling over food, wandering far and wide from empty cities.   Then would come hydrogen sulphide from the stagnant oceans. "It would be a silent killer: imagine the scene at Bhopal following the Union Carbide gas release in 1984, replayed first at coastal settlements, then continental interiors across the world. At the same time, as the ozone layer came under assault, we would feel the sun's rays burning into our skin, and the first cell mutations would be triggering outbreaks of cancer among anyone who survived. Dante's hell was a place of judgment, where humanity was for ever punished for its sins. With all the remaining forests burning, and the corpses of people, livestock and wildlife piling up in every continent, the six-degree world would be a harsh penalty indeed for the mundane crime of burning fossil energy.


Are you composing the screenplay for the latest Roland Emmerich disaster flick? I'm sorry - these doomsday, absolutely worst possible imagination of the absolute worst of scientific predictions - can you please point out which experts are predicting all of these scenarios occurring?


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Okay - I'll lead you by the nose here. What, in your entire experience of encounters with me here, whether in the normal forum, or down in the groups, would ever lead you to believe that I am that hardcore of a Darwinist? A normal person could discern those are aberrant ideas for me in seconds - therefore I'll give you an hour or so.


Why not just tell us whether you are a Darwinist and how hardcore you are? Try this as a template for effective communication: Say what you mean. Mean what you say.

On George Will: I honor him, Bill Kristol, David Brooks for repudiating Trump and Trumpism; I appreciate Will's quitting the "Republican" Party to become an Independent who will vote Democratic; he can be occasionally right. But he's wrong when he asserts, as do you, that because something bad--predicted by a consensus of the relevant science community--has yet to be fully realized, it's never going to happen. What kind of bizarre logic is that?!? Your kind.


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## Guest

Continuing to believe predictions decades past their dates - what kind of bizarre logic is that?


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Why not just tell us whether you are a Darwinist and how hardcore you are? Try this as a template for effective communication: Say what you mean. Mean what you say.
> 
> On George Will: I honor him, Bill Kristol, David Brooks for repudiating Trump and Trumpism; I appreciate Will's quitting the "Republican" Party to become an Independent who will vote Democratic; he can be occasionally right. But he's wrong when he asserts, as do you, that because something bad--predicted by a consensus of the relevant science community--has yet to be fully realized, it's never going to happen. What kind of bizarre logic is that?!? Your kind.


Apparently you needed two hours, not the hour I thought you might.


----------



## KenOC

Luchesi said:


> ...It has been estimated that a large eruption in future could release energy equivalent to 108 megatonnes of TNT - 100,000 times more than the world's entire stockpile of nuclear weapons.


A howler like that doesn't inspire much confidence in the rest of the imagined scenario.


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## Guest

We are half a century past Ehrlich's predicted population bomb. That is one hell of a margin of error. What other fields would such an error lead to people still believing the prediction? In fact, it isn't even an error of 50 years, because we are currently heading in the opposite direction of his predicted millions of death by starvation. We now feed more people with less land. You ridicule my faith in technology, but in contrast to your faith in doomsday predictions, my faith has actually born fruit. Previous resources predicted to run out and cripple civilization are no longer a factor, either because new technology has resulted in the discovery of vast new supplies, or because new technology has made them obsolete - just for example, the 98% drop in global Mercury demand that Will cites.

Your experts need to come up with new models. And if their climate models are as our in their predictive capacity as their ability to predict resource scarcity and population-wide mass starvation, I really don't have anything to fear.


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## Bwv 1080

108 megatons is not 100K times the world stockpile. The first Hydrogen Bomb had a yield of 10 megatons, the Soviets once detonated a 50 megaton bomb


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## Guest

SM - is there a length of time, beyond which if they have not come to pass, you will finally denounce the predictions of Ehrlich and Hardin?


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## Strange Magic

George Will's cited NR article comfortably deals with those issues that best suit his argument: those raw materials, metals, fossil fuels for which substitutions have been made or new (obviously temporary) sources have been found. Thus (lightly) armed, and as himself a lightweight thinker, he can embrace the nonsense of marginal economists like the late charlatan Julian Simon, Lomborg, and others typical of Cato Institute thinking and widen his attack upon the scientific consensus warning of trouble ahead. We note that Will does carefully avoid talk of AGW and its concomitant issues of environmental drags on maintaining food production for a 150 to 200% increase in global population, on environmental degradation in general, and the separate problems of introducing novel materials into the biosphere. But by referring to Simon on population growth--"always beneficial", "people are the ultimate resource"--Will seems to endorse Simon's notion that Earth's population could increase without limit and that thus Earth's carrying capacity is also unlimited; truly an insane idea. Will, as a dabbler out of his field but easily attracted to the shiny sophistries of the Cato Institute, thus takes a small, peripheral, partial vindication of his thesis that doomsayers are wrong and uses it (or others seek to use it) as proof that when scientists predict that bad things loom ahead, they must always be wrong. The boy sometimes does cry 'Wolf!", but the point of the tale is that the wolf does come.

Meanwhile: Don't Worry; Be Happy!


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## Guest

In the Simon-Ehrlich wager, Simon allowed Ehrlich to select the resources over which they would wager. You deride Simon, but I would point out one major flaw in this - Simon won, using the terms that Ehrlich chose.


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## Guest

Will you ever criticize Ehrlich with the same vehemence as you do Simon? Simon has already been proven right. 50 years on, Ehrlich is still wrong.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Will you ever criticize Ehrlich with the same vehemence as you do Simon? Simon has already been proven right. 50 years on, Ehrlich is still wrong.


Paul Ehrlich remains a great scientist with a stirling reputation. Julian Simon, despite his "triumph" of winning his wager with Ehrlich, remains always a charlatan, marginal even within the dubious economics community. Can the Earth truly support an infinite number of people? What do you think? It's one thing to be wrong in timing. It's quite another to be an idiot.


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## Bwv 1080

Strange Magic said:


> We note that Will does carefully avoid talk of AGW and its concomitant issues of environmental drags on maintaining food production for a 150 to 200% increase in global population


Global population will most likely peak at around 9-10 billion sometime mid-century, so less than a 40% increase with most of that growth occurring in Africa


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## Strange Magic

Bwv 1080 said:


> Global population will most likely peak at around 9-10 billion sometime mid-century, so less than a 40% increase with most of that growth occurring in Africa


Different usages. When I speak of 150-200% increases in global populations, I refer to the larger future populations as being at 150%/1.5X or 200%/2X today's numbers. And the predictions do vary.

Those interested in learning more of the careers and reputations of Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon are encouraged to read their respective Wikipedia entries. Not that anyone cares, but the list of awards and honors each received is instructive.


----------



## Jacck

this looks quite convincing
Highest Solar Activity In 4000 Years Just Ended…Cooling Begins In 2025
https://notrickszone.com/2017/01/12...4000-years-just-ended-cooling-begins-in-2025/
https://principia-scientific.org/modern-solar-grand-maximum-ends-little-ice-age-cooling-coming/

I have to admit that the standard warming curves and their correlations with CO2 do not look too convincing to me. There was almost no warming in the last 20 years, despite the fact that we pump much more CO2 into the atmosphere.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Can the Earth truly support an infinite number of people? What do you think? It's one thing to be wrong in timing. It's quite another to be an idiot.


That really is a stupid question. No - the earth cannot support an infinite number of people. Who is saying that it will? Are you happy with that straw man you have constructed? The earth will reach an equilibrium. We are already seeing population growth slow - we are not heading to an "infinite" number of people - whatever that is. But clearly the earth can quite easily sustain much more people than you think or than Ehrlich or Hardin or Malthus thought. Need proof? We currently are. There - I have my proof, and Simon won his wager. My side seems to be doing better than yours. But go on with your proclamations that you all are geniuses while the facts on the ground are simply idiotic. Who should we believe - you or our lying eyes?

So will you ever acknowledge a threshold, beyond which you will finally admit Ehrlich and Hardin would be wrong? If the hypothesis is not falsifiable, it isn't an hypothesis, and it isn't science. Good to see you've finally come back to faith - just not in religion.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Strange Magic said:


> Different usages. When I speak of 150-200% increases in global populations, I refer to the larger future populations as being at 150%/1.5X or 200%/2X today's numbers. And the predictions do vary.


That is not how percentages are used in written English, a 100% increase means a doubling, not no change. Either way, its wrong - a peak of 10 billion is 1.35x today's 7.4 billion population


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Will, as a dabbler out of his field but easily attracted to the shiny sophistries of the Cato Institute, thus takes a small, peripheral, partial vindication of his thesis that doomsayers are wrong and uses it (or others seek to use it) as proof that when scientists predict that bad things loom ahead, they must always be wrong.


Totally misrepresenting what I and others have said. I have never said Ehrlich is always wrong, or must needs always be wrong. And you know full well I am not saying that. I am saying that, in his Population Bomb prediction, and in his scarcity wager, he was wrong. He predicted millions dying of starvation from famine in the 1970s - that didn't happen. 50 years later than that prediction (nearly 6 decades since he made his prediction) it still didn't happen. Exactly how long do we need to hold our breath here. And, rather than being close, but not quite there, he was nowhere close. Not only did it not happen in the 70s, like he predicted, but we have in fact developed the ability to feed even more since his predictions.

He doesn't have to be wrong. It just so happens - based on the actual evidence, which you have yet to refute - that he is wrong. Show me the data that shows that he was right. Did millions die of starvation in the 1970s due to food shortages, as he predicted? Has it happened yet? Show me the evidence that he was right, or even close to it. You can't - that's why you just resort to attacks on Simon - who won the wager on Ehrlich's terms. In terms of predictions that were far off, this ranks up there with claiming the MMR vaccine causes autism.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> That really is a stupid question. No - the earth cannot support an infinite number of people. Who is saying that it will? Are you happy with that straw man you have constructed? The earth will reach an equilibrium. We are already seeing population growth slow - we are not heading to an "infinite" number of people - whatever that is. But clearly the earth can quite easily sustain much more people than you think or than Ehrlich or Hardin or Malthus thought. Need proof? We currently are. There - I have my proof, and Simon won his wager. My side seems to be doing better than yours. But go on with your proclamations that you all are geniuses while the facts on the ground are simply idiotic. Who should we believe - you or our lying eyes?
> 
> So will you ever acknowledge a threshold, beyond which you will finally admit Ehrlich and Hardin would be wrong? If the hypothesis is not falsifiable, it isn't an hypothesis, and it isn't science. Good to see you've finally come back to faith - just not in religion.





> Julian Simon, Ace Charlatan "Economist" and Snake-Oil Saleman: "We now have in our hands-really, in our libraries-the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next seven billion years."


"The State of Humanity: Steadily Improving". Cato Institute Policy Report, www.cato.org, September/October 1995.

You gotta love this stuff!


----------



## Strange Magic

Bwv 1080 said:


> That is not how percentages are used in written English, a 100% increase means a doubling, not no change. Either way, its wrong - a peak of 10 billion is 1.35x today's 7.4 billion population


Thank you. I will use the different formulation in future. However, regarding peak numbers to come, authorities vary, as you know, as to when and how many. Assuming we agree on 10 billions, that is indeed increasing today's numbers by 35%, roughly another 2.6 billions, or more than the entire population of the world when I was born. Elephants, Rhinos, Tigers, Orangs, Move Over and Make Room for More People!


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> "The State of Humanity: Steadily Improving". Cato Institute Policy Report, www.cato.org, September/October 1995.
> 
> You gotta love this stuff!


Right back at you.
Dr. Paul Ehrlich, in The Population Bomb (1968): (emphasis mine, hyperbole his)


> The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. *At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate*...


----------



## Strange Magic

Jacck said:


> this looks quite convincing
> Highest Solar Activity In 4000 Years Just Ended…Cooling Begins In 2025
> https://notrickszone.com/2017/01/12...4000-years-just-ended-cooling-begins-in-2025/
> https://principia-scientific.org/modern-solar-grand-maximum-ends-little-ice-age-cooling-coming/


It is amazing just how many Internet sites there are whose sole aim and goal is to repudiate the findings of the major scientific associations that there is Global Warming and that humans are contributing to it by exhuming the accumulated carbon of hundreds of millions of years and pumping it into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate within a few centuries. Perhaps we will be shown evidence proving AGW wrong on a continuing basis here in this thread, quoting "source" after "source".


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Right back at you.
> Dr. Paul Ehrlich, in The Population Bomb (1968): (emphasis mine, hyperbole his)


I affirm, as did Ehrlich, that his timing was wrong. But his thesis, like Malthus', is correct: humankind must continue to increase its ability to feed its burgeoning billions or suffer mass starvation. AGW is making this quite uncertain. Some offer a thesis is that if you miss the timing for a prediction of future peril, that itself is irrefutable proof that the specific threat will never be realized. This gives them peace of mind, and it is clear they badly need it. A child may be soothed by this sophistry.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I affirm, as did Ehrlich, that his timing was wrong. But his thesis, like Malthus', is correct: humankind must continue to increase its ability to feed its burgeoning billions or suffer mass starvation. AGW is making this quite uncertain. Some offer a thesis is that if you miss the timing for a prediction of future peril, that itself is irrefutable proof that the specific threat will never be realized. This gives them peace of mind, and it is clear they badly need it. A child may be soothed by this sophistry.


Oh, he is not nearly as humble as you claim he is. When it didn't happen in the 70s, he went back and edited it to say the disaster would come in the 70s or 80s. Tell me - how wealthy did his false prediction make him? That seems to be a pattern. How wealthy has climate change alarmism made Al Gore?


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Oh, he is not nearly as humble as you claim he is. When it didn't happen in the 70s, he went back and edited it to say the disaster would come in the 70s or 80s. Tell me - how wealthy did his false prediction make him? That seems to be a pattern. How wealthy has climate change alarmism made Al Gore?


Ahhhh, a new stick with which to attack the entire concepts of AGW, global population mega-growth, species loss, environmental pollution, forest and coral reef loss, increased hurricane and cyclone and flooding and tornado frequency, and even loss of fishing stocks--It's all a scheme by Paul Ehrlich and Al Gore to make money. They've used their illicit billions to bribe and con NASA, NOAA, the Royal Society, The National Academy of Sciences, and dozens of other scientific bodies into compliant belief. Now we have heard it all. Talk about intellectual bankruptcy, the above quote represents its crowning nadir.


----------



## mmsbls

Jacck said:


> this looks quite convincing
> Highest Solar Activity In 4000 Years Just Ended…Cooling Begins In 2025
> https://notrickszone.com/2017/01/12...4000-years-just-ended-cooling-begins-in-2025/
> https://principia-scientific.org/modern-solar-grand-maximum-ends-little-ice-age-cooling-coming/
> 
> I have to admit that the standard warming curves and their correlations with CO2 do not look too convincing to me. There was almost no warming in the last 20 years, despite the fact that we pump much more CO2 into the atmosphere.


This link shows how solar activity and global mean temperatures show little correlation since the significant rise in temperatures (roughly last 50 years). The solar activity has actually gone down very slightly over that period. More importantly solar activity does not explain the significant drop in stratospheric temperatures while climate models do account for this change.

The anomalous year of 1998 can fool someone into thinking the rise is not very large from then on, but every fit I've seen of tropospheric temperature rise shows a fairly consistent rate of increase after 1980 or so. Also sea level has risen consistently since well before 2000.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Ahhhh, a new stick with which to attack the entire concepts of AGW, global population mega-growth, species loss, environmental pollution, forest and coral reef loss, increased hurricane and cyclone and flooding and tornado frequency, and even loss of fishing stocks--It's all a scheme by Paul Ehrlich and Al Gore to make money. They've used their illicit billions to bribe and con NASA, NOAA, the Royal Society, The National Academy of Sciences, and dozens of other scientific bodies into compliant belief. Now we have heard it all. Talk about intellectual bankruptcy, the above quote represents its crowning nadir.


Again, another straw man. To my knowledge, NASA, NOAA, the Royal Society, and the NAS were not party of his Population Bomb hoax. I believe the Sierra Club was, though, and I'm happy to lump them in with his bomb scare hoax.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Again, another straw man. To my knowledge, NASA, NOAA, the Royal Society, and the NAS were not party of his Population Bomb hoax. I believe the Sierra Club was, though, and I'm happy to lump them in with his bomb scare hoax.


I think it's clear that Ehrlich was wrong. His rationale was reasonable but ultimately wrong. But do you honestly believe it was a hoax?


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I think it's clear that Ehrlich was wrong. His rationale was reasonable but ultimately wrong. But do you honestly believe it was a hoax?


Honestly? If it were a mistake, he would have been more up front about it. He hasn't really been. He has admitted some minor errors, but never fully admitted he was wrong. But you honestly believe that predicting such massive, widespread death in such a short time didn't have a bit of snake oil salesmen to it? He might have believed in the basic premise, but I absolutely believe he knew he was exaggerating the scale, or the timeframe, or both. And if he could be dishonest in a book that he still happily sells, what else is there that needs greater scrutiny? That's usually what happens with any other scientist who is caught in dishonesty.

You say he was ultimately wrong. He doesn't see it that way.


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## KenOC

We might want to think not only about survival but about the quality of life that will prevail as the world grows more crowded. I remember very well when I first became aware of the idea of “population,” at a very young age. I was astonished to hear that there were two billion people in the world, which seemed like quite a lot. In my own country, the US, there were about 150 million.

Now, of course, world population has grown more than three-fold, while my own country’s population has doubled (and a bit more). The differences in the landsape are obvious. Areas where we used to drive through the countryside are now covered by housing developments and shopping centers. Former wilderness areas and mountain trails, where you could reliably escape society and find yourself quite alone, are now well-peopled by hikers, campers, and sportsmen. Not all of this is solely due to increased population, of course. There are other factors in play as well. But still…

I remember traveling by car on a vacation from Portland OR to the Grand Canyon. Two memories stand out. First, we had to stop by the roadside for a good long time because the windshield was entirely covered by Monarch butterflies, which were common then in huge migrating swarms. Second, the view across the canyon was entirely clear, unobscured by the “blue air” that is now a daily feature there. Both these things are unlikely to be experienced today.

Man can, of course, survive. Just look at the mega-cities with populations up to 40 million people, with their favelas and slums where millions live in almost unthinkable teeming squalor. Yet live they do, and reproduce as well. Will this be the future for more and more of us as the years pass?


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## Guest

Anecdotes are just that. By virtually every measure, the standard of living of mankind has improved in your lifetime. There are environmental improvements as well. I don't hold with this unspoken notion that man himself is a pollutant. You all seem to only focus on negatives. You want to see us permanently Frozen in some perceived idyllic Paradise that existed at sometime in the past, pre-industrial revolution.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Again, another straw man. To my knowledge, NASA, NOAA, the Royal Society, and the NAS were not party of his Population Bomb hoax. I believe the Sierra Club was, though, and I'm happy to lump them in with his bomb scare hoax.


I believe we now have the full measure of the opposition to Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, and the vast preponderance of the serious science community when concerns are raised over The Challenge of Man's Future, to repeat the title of Harrison Brown's distinguished 1954 classic. It is all a gigantic hoax, involving thousands, and executed by Ehrlich (handling the myth that global populations are growing dangerously large) and Gore (either inventing the AGW hoax or, as Donald Trump asserts, borrowing it ready-made from the Chinese). A gigantic hoax, in order to make the pair wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Who will be cast as the villains in this soon-to-be-made film? Who as the righteous soul ripping off the masks? I think we know.......


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## Strange Magic

This from the website Shmoop and their thumbnail analysis of Doctor Pangloss, from Voltaire's Candide:

https://www.shmoop.com/candide/dr-pangloss.html



> "If you're feeling blue, call up Dr. Pangloss. He won't give you years of therapy-nope, nothing invasive for this good doctor. Instead, he'll tell you about his cure-all philosophy... which basically boils down to "don't worry, be happy."
> 
> Yeah. Dude's a quack.
> 
> Dr. Pangloss and his philosophy are the principal focus of Voltaire's biting satire. As Candide's tutor and mentor, Dr. P teaches that in this, the best of all possible worlds, everything happens out of absolute necessity and everything happens for the best... even during a volcano:
> 
> "For," said he, "all that is for the best. If there is a volcano at Lisbon it cannot be elsewhere. It is impossible that things should be other than they are; for everything is right." (5.14)"


Anyone we know?


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## Strange Magic

mmsbls said:


> I think it's clear that Ehrlich was wrong. His rationale was reasonable but ultimately wrong. But do you honestly believe it was a hoax?


Ehrlich's timing was wrong. His rationale, along with Malthus and Hardin, is impeccable, and the danger now is exacerbated and enhanced by AGW and the environmental degradation that are both cause and effect interacting with metastatic population growth. If I predict that an asteroid will strike Earth in 2035, and it doesn't happen, does this mean that no asteroid will ever strike the Earth? I think not, and the premonitory signs of environmental/population future dangers are better established than those for a near-term asteroid impact.


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## Guest

So if I predict the Nets win the NBA championship in 2020, and they end up winning in 2070, does that mean I was right all along, just my timing was off?


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> So if I predict the Nets win the NBA championship in 2020, and they end up winning in 2070, does that mean I was right all along, just my timing was off?


Does the Nets losing in 2020 mean they will never win the NBA championship? By your logic, it means just that.


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## Guest

So basically SM is arguing that neo-Malthusianism is unfalsifiable. They get an infinite amount of time for their predictions to come true. When they don't happen as they describe, well, they aren't wrong, they just have the timing wrong. 50 years and counting wrong. That's one hell of a margin of error. It could happen two millennia from now, or two hundred millennia from now, and Ehrlich's far distant descendant will declare his ancestor vindicated. Pathetic. That isn't scientific, however loosely you define the term.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Does the Nets losing in 2020 mean they will never win the NBA championship? By your logic, it means just that.


That is not what I'm saying at all. But if a prediction has not yet occurred half a century later, then it certainly suggests that you did not interpret the data you currently have correctly. If the Nets finally won in 2070, it will have nothing to do with the facts on the ground right now.


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## KenOC

It’s true (as DrMike suggests) that things are better now, and for more people, than they ever have been. More people living in democratic societies, levels of violence much reduced, fewer living in abject poverty, and so forth. This has been discussed in other threads. And yet…

Those vast flocks of migrating Monarchs are, indeed, gone. The air at the Grand Canyon is by no means as pristine as it was in my living memory. Much of our land, previously open, has been turned into houses and shopping centers.

Above all, many of the animals we all know and love are reduced to countable numbers. Among mammals, “wild” animals (including whales and other mammalian sea life) now account for only four percent of total mammalian biomass. We have accurate counts of many iconic species, and their numbers are dropping year by year due to man’s influence. Of the Hominidae, our own family, only one species flourishes – us. All the others (gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, etc.) are now either endangered or critically endangered, and their future does not look bright.

There are still a few mountain lions in my area, but all are tagged and collared. Their territories, which are necessarily large, are cut up by freeways and toll roads, and more are killed by cars each year than are born. Their days, too, are numbered.

We may still have our Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets; even the poor will have them. But are we building the world we really want to leave to our descendants? Given our numbers, can we?


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## Luchesi

mmsbls said:


> This link shows how solar activity and global mean temperatures show little correlation since the significant rise in temperatures (roughly last 50 years). The solar activity has actually gone down very slightly over that period. More importantly solar activity does not explain the significant drop in stratospheric temperatures while climate models do account for this change.
> 
> The anomalous year of 1998 can fool someone into thinking the rise is not very large from then on, but every fit I've seen of tropospheric temperature rise shows a fairly consistent rate of increase after 1980 or so. Also sea level has risen consistently since well before 2000.


The heating effect of the most intense solar activity we have records for is only about a tenth of the Sun's yearly heating increase from apogee to perigee (June to January).


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## Jacck

Luchesi said:


> The heating effect of the most intense solar activity we have records for is only about a tenth of the Sun's yearly heating increase from apogee to perigee (June to January).


Changing Sun, Changing Climate?
https://history.aip.org/climate/solar.htm


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> So basically SM is arguing that neo-Malthusianism is unfalsifiable. They get an infinite amount of time for their predictions to come true. When they don't happen as they describe, well, they aren't wrong, they just have the timing wrong. 50 years and counting wrong. That's one hell of a margin of error. It could happen two millennia from now, or two hundred millennia from now, and Ehrlich's far distant descendant will declare his ancestor vindicated. Pathetic. That isn't scientific, however loosely you define the term.


The Malthusian argument is of the same nature as a myriad of other predictions based on observation: predictions of terrible earthquakes to come, volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, solar flares taking out continental power grids, etc. We have evidence of past catastrophe and often of current stresses and stressors. Plate tectonics explicates the mechanisms that are racheting up the next big Pacific Coast temblor but cannot accurately predict the date. Some here put forth argument that because we have not yet had the next gigantic earthquake, it cannot come and we must dismiss the idea that it will come. They offer the same critique of predictions of exploding populations outrunning the food supply--it cannot happen, they say, because it hasn't happened (globally) yet, and never will because everything will just work out fine, trust me.

The recognition of AGW and its destructive effects upon biosphere health posed a new, unanticipated collateral threat to both the environment and to the cornucopian economics of charlatans like Julian Simon, resulting in today's frenzy to denounce anything--Malthusianism, AGW--that threatens to undermine the euphoria of endless improvement so necessary to the mental well-being of the critics of both. Science is thus overturned by wishful thinking and visions of a dreamlike Earthly Paradise just ahead......

Here is Wikipedia on Human Overpopulation:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation


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## Strange Magic

Jacck said:


> Changing Sun, Changing Climate?
> https://history.aip.org/climate/solar.htm


Excellent article, Jacck. The article concludes that greenhouse gases are by far the major cause of today's global warming. Here's the Abstract:

"Since it is the Sun's energy that drives the weather system, scientists naturally wondered whether they might connect climate changes with solar variations. Yet the Sun seemed to be stable over the timescale of human civilization. Attempts to discover cyclic variations in weather and connect them with the 11-year sunspot cycle, or other possible solar cycles ranging up to a few centuries long, gave results that were ambiguous at best. These attempts got a well-deserved bad reputation. Jack Eddy overcame this with a 1976 study that demonstrated that irregular variations in solar surface activity, a few centuries long, were connected with major climate shifts. The mechanism was uncertain, but plausible candidates emerged. The next crucial question was whether a rise in the Sun's activity could explain the global warming seen in the 20th century? By the 1990s, there was a tentative answer: minor solar variations could indeed have been partly responsible for some past fluctuations... *but future warming from the rise in greenhouse gases was [found to] far outweigh any solar effects.(1)*

(Boldface added).


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## Open Book

Bwv 1080 said:


> Global population will most likely peak at around 9-10 billion sometime mid-century, so less than a 40% increase with most of that growth occurring in Africa


What's going to cause that ceiling in population growth that I'm always hearing about? No one ever explains why population should peak or how the peak figure given was obtained. We're not far from 8 billion now and some parts of the world are still mushrooming.

Growth in Africa or elsewhere will affect other parts of the world, especially where people today migrate from one place to another. Part of the climate change treaties that nations agree to should include incentives for population control everywhere. High tech consumption gets most of the blame for climate change but billions of people burning wood and dung for heat in low tech societies isn't good for the environment either, it's even less efficient and more polluting as fuel.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> The Malthusian argument is of the same nature as a myriad of other predictions based on observation: predictions of terrible earthquakes to come, volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, solar flares taking out continental power grids, etc. We have evidence of past catastrophe and often of current stresses and stressors. Plate tectonics explicates the mechanisms that are racheting up the next big Pacific Coast temblor but cannot accurately predict the date. Some here put forth argument that because we have not yet had the next gigantic earthquake, it cannot come and we must dismiss the idea that it will come. They offer the same critique of predictions of exploding populations outrunning the food supply--it cannot happen, they say, because it hasn't happened (globally) yet, and never will because everything will just work out fine, trust me.


You try and conflate Malthusianism with legitimate areas of science to grant it some credibility. The major difference is that we have actually seen earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural disasters that lend observational data to hypotheses to strengthen them. That isn't the case with Malthusianism. In fact, the great predictions have not occurred. You can point to minor examples in lower species on a small scale - something happened to some species on an island. The problem with those are that lower species have only one way to deal with scarcity and reductions of resources - adaptation and natural selection. That process is slower the more complex the organism. Humans, though, have more than that. We have technological advancement that allows us to adapt much more rapidly. In less than 100 years, we went from a species that was reliant on animals and steam power for long distance transportation, to one that has set foot on the moon. If the temperature goes up, we invent air conditioning. If the temperature goes down, we put on more clothing and light a fire and insulate our houses with ever more sophisticated methods and materials. When we need more food, we develop new food sources that can grow in places that previously they couldn't, and yield a whole lot more per acre than they used to. And that is how mankind has continued to grow significantly while at the same time increasing the food supply and the quality of life.

Malthusianism is a philosophical idea, not a scientific one. Scientific hypotheses have to be testable, and they have to be falsifiable. Malthus predicted mass death because population would outpace food availability. He was wrong - several centuries and counting. Ehrlich though he could do him one better - and he was wrong. Hardin has yet to be demonstrated to be right. One thing these latter two seem to have in common is some really horrific ideas to limit population. Hardin recommended - if not downright insisted - on forced sterilization, and he was quite specific on what races most deserved it. Ehrlich was a little bit nicer, but he also put forward such ideas as introducing sterilizing agents into the food or water supply, better prenatal screening to encourage sex-selective abortions (his reasoning being that people preferred having boys, and helping them select just for boys would significantly reduce the birth rate). Malthus at least wasn't such a eugenic monster.

Quit shrouding these ideas with a veneer of science. It most definitely is not. If you believe it is, then you have to also provide the data that would prove it wrong. You can't just have some open-ended prediction. Do you know how absurd that is? In my field, if I made a prediction based on my data, test that prediction, and don't find the predicted result, but in fact the opposite (yes, the opposite of Ehrlich's prediction has happened), then we would say that hypothesis was wrong. But in your case, you would just turn around and say, no, that doesn't disprove the hypothesis - we just didn't look hard and long enough.

The evidence is already there that we could support a vastly larger population than Malthus or Ehrlich predicted, and at the same time improve life for that ever larger population. And now the evidence is showing that the rate of growth is slowing. We are reaching an equilibrium point. And our ability to support that amount is not showing signs of diminishing. Show me your data to the contrary, and not just your pie-in-the-sky predictions. If all you have are predictions with no specifics, and that are incredibly open-ended, you are no different than an astrologer. My daily horoscope is about as likely to accurately predict the future as Paul Ehrlich, based on his track record.


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## Open Book

DrMike said:


> That really is a stupid question. No - the earth cannot support an infinite number of people. Who is saying that it will? Are you happy with that straw man you have constructed? The earth will reach an equilibrium. We are already seeing population growth slow - we are not heading to an "infinite" number of people - whatever that is. But clearly the earth can quite easily sustain much more people than you think or than Ehrlich or Hardin or Malthus thought. Need proof? We currently are. There - I have my proof, and Simon won his wager. My side seems to be doing better than yours. But go on with your proclamations that you all are geniuses while the facts on the ground are simply idiotic. Who should we believe - you or our lying eyes?
> 
> So will you ever acknowledge a threshold, beyond which you will finally admit Ehrlich and Hardin would be wrong? If the hypothesis is not falsifiable, it isn't an hypothesis, and it isn't science. Good to see you've finally come back to faith - just not in religion.


So, where between the world's current population and an infinite number of people are you personally going to start to believe enough is enough?

What's going to stabilize the population? Did you read the Scientific American article I posted on population growth in Africa?

As to reaching an equilibrium, there are other facets to that. We're haven't reached an equilibrium for loss of species, not even close, that's proceeding at breakneck speed. We may not survive with too great a loss of species.


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## Guest

Open Book said:


> What's going to cause that ceiling in population growth that I'm always hearing about? No one ever explains why population should peak or how the peak figure given was obtained. We're not far from 8 billion now and some parts of the world are still mushrooming.
> 
> Growth in Africa or elsewhere will affect other parts of the world, especially where people today migrate from one place to another. Part of the climate change treaties that nations agree to should include incentives for population control everywhere. High tech consumption gets most of the blame for climate change but billions of people burning wood and dung for heat in low tech societies isn't very good for the environment either.


Because populations naturally reach such equilibrium points. There are numerous factors that contribute to lower birth rates without artificial efforts by governments. Availability of birth control, lower infant mortality, better health in general, less subsistence living, better education, etc., etc. That is just how mankind has behaved. Much to the chagrin of the Malthusians, you just can't predict and manage these things in humans. With as much as these ideas reject religion, they still believe that they can manage the perfection of mankind here and now - they think they know all the secrets behind our species, and with some top-down approaches, can perfect us, immanentize the eschaton. Who needs a heaven after earth - we will provide a heaven here on earth, if you just give us the keys and let us drive. It doesn't work that way. In all the efforts to directly manipulate human populations - trying to limit the size, trying to improve the gene pool, trying to eliminate the undesirables - the methods prescribed have been horrific, either in practice or in theory. Sure - SM comes forward with some feel good ideas about equality for women. We all know that at the heart of it he really is advocating universal access to abortion (women's healthcare is the new euphemism). Problem is, SM is in no position to recommend any of these notions, and the real thinkers in this field he loves so much are recommending much more draconian measures - the very ones he waves off. So if we do allow population control, it won't be with SMs seemingly benign, enlightened gradualism, it will be through forced sterilization, coerced abortion, restriction of healthcare for the old and the chronically ill, and all the other groups that will be written off as undesirable. Because that is what these movements ultimately turn to. That is what those he cites as the leading thinkers in this field have advocated. So no - I don't buy that they are outliers. I think that those horrific ideas are actually part of the entire movement. SM is the outlier.


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## Luchesi

Jacck said:


> Changing Sun, Changing Climate?
> https://history.aip.org/climate/solar.htm


Thanks, that's a good summary.

When we did a regression analysis of the API index (anomalous propagation) we found that we could predict the daily changes in the stock market.

Sudden stratospheric cooling episodes are now being linked to winter stormtrack polar vortex dynamics. This seems to be an effect of the quiet Sun. I'm not a climatologist but it's VERY interesting for me to casually follow, since everything we do depends upon what the 30,000 ft wave pattern is doing.


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## Guest

Open Book said:


> So, where between the world's current population and an infinite number of people are you personally going to start to believe enough is enough?
> 
> What's going to stabilize the population? Did you read the Scientific American article I posted on population growth in Africa?
> 
> As to reaching an equilibrium, there are other facets to that. We're haven't reached an equilibrium for loss of species, not even close, that's proceeding at breakneck speed. We may not survive with too great a loss of species.


Unlike Malthus and Ehrlich and Hardin, I don't presume to know what that point is. Yes - we see population growth in Africa. That is pretty much a pattern. As conditions improve, populations increase until they reach that point where they are at equilibrium with their resources, and all the other factors, and even more that we don't know. Mankind is not a computer system. With a computer, if you put in a given input, you get a definite, predictable output. That isn't how mankind works.

It is not our job to force artificial population levels on the high or the low side. You just can't control such things, not without disastrous consequences. Life will proceed on this planet much as it ever has. In fits and starts. There is certainly no harm in trying to conserve things, and we should where at all possible. And we are.

But all the Malthusians on here like to cite the dire predictions, but refuse to look at the conclusions that the big minds in the field came to as to how to solve the "problem." Presumably Ehrlich and Hardin are bigger minds in this field than Strange Magic - they saw no way of limiting population other than some really horrific measures. Now - if they are truly as brilliant in this field as he would have us believe, why should I then believe that SM has better ideas of how to stop the "Population Bomb" than they did?

What really is the solution you all suggest? And don't give me SM's tired milquetoast "bring equality worldwide to women" because that tells me you are unserious about what you see as a looming disaster of epic proportions. That is about as lame as when politicians claim they will fund some massive new government program by scraping together tax dollars here and there by eliminating "waste and fraud." If the problem is slow-moving enough that we can wait for a multi-century long project of bringing full female equality to the planet, then it really isn't an imminent disaster of epic proportions, now is it?


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## Open Book

KenOC said:


> We might want to think not only about survival but about the quality of life that will prevail as the world grows more crowded. I remember very well when I first became aware of the idea of "population," at a very young age. I was astonished to hear that there were two billion people in the world, which seemed like quite a lot. In my own country, the US, there were about 150 million.
> 
> Now, of course, world population has grown more than three-fold, while my own country's population has doubled (and a bit more). The differences in the landsape are obvious. Areas where we used to drive through the countryside are now covered by housing developments and shopping centers. Former wilderness areas and mountain trails, where you could reliably escape society and find yourself quite alone, are now well-peopled by hikers, campers, and sportsmen. Not all of this is solely due to increased population, of course. There are other factors in play as well. But still…
> 
> I remember traveling by car on a vacation from Portland OR to the Grand Canyon. Two memories stand out. First, we had to stop by the roadside for a good long time because the windshield was entirely covered by Monarch butterflies, which were common then in huge migrating swarms. Second, the view across the canyon was entirely clear, unobscured by the "blue air" that is now a daily feature there. Both these things are unlikely to be experienced today.
> 
> Man can, of course, survive. Just look at the mega-cities with populations up to 40 million people, with their favelas and slums where millions live in almost unthinkable teeming squalor. Yet live they do, and reproduce as well. Will this be the future for more and more of us as the years pass?


Someone remarked that this is merely your anecdotal observation, which is laughable. The signs of deterioration of the environment have been noticed by everyone of a certain age with an interest in it. All together a collection of anecdotal observations constitute evidence.

What's better proof than an aerial map? I can't find it with google, but I think it was Nature Conservancy Magazine that published side by side aerial photographs of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, one from 1940 and one from a few years ago. Except for land preserved for the National Seashore (a national park, which we're lucky someone had the foresight to create), the Cape is now wall-to-wall development of mostly second homes. If any cracks escaped development it's only a matter of time before they fall, too. In 1940 the Cape was still largely a wilderness. That's a relatively short time ago.

Same goes for Long Island. A friend's family built a house there in the 50's in a new development. It was surrounded by undeveloped forest which my friend and neighbor children would explore. Today Long Island ranges from farmland to vacation retreat to a densely settled suburb of New York City complete with slums. But precious little undeveloped forest or seashore.

There's only one Long Island and one Cape Cod. These type of environments are finite. Gone with the undeveloped land are the species of animal and plant that depended on those unique environments. They can't coexist with human settlement.


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## Bwv 1080

Luchesi said:


> Thanks, that's a good summary.
> 
> When we did a regression analysis of the API index (anomalous propagation) we found that we could predict the daily changes in the stock market.
> 
> .


So you are a billionaire then?


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> This link shows how solar activity and global mean temperatures show little correlation since the significant rise in temperatures (roughly last 50 years). The solar activity has actually gone down very slightly over that period. More importantly solar activity does not explain the significant drop in stratospheric temperatures while climate models do account for this change.
> 
> The anomalous year of 1998 can fool someone into thinking the rise is not very large from then on, but every fit I've seen of tropospheric temperature rise shows a fairly consistent rate of increase after 1980 or so. Also sea level has risen consistently since well before 2000.


As this thread can be very adversarial, let me just preface this question by stating this is me wanting to know for my own knowledge, not to make a point (I don't know the methodology in this field):
When you say that the climate models account for the change, do you mean that the models were able to predict the change, or that in light of new information about solar activity, the models were modified to incorporate this factor?


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## Open Book

" As conditions improve, populations increase until they reach that point where they are at equilibrium with their resources"

This is a euphemism for "resources run out and nations go to war with each other over them until population is reduced by killing". How comforting.

Incentives to population control have already been mentioned. Make birth control free everywhere. Taxation of children. International pressure - make population incentives part of the climate treaty. Economic sanctions against nations whose governments don't comply with promoting local population control.

I agree there are no easy answers, but something has to be tried.


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## Bwv 1080

But the evidence shows in the US, Europe and now China, that industrialization and development are accompanied by a birthrate falling close to replacement level, if not below.


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## Guest

Open Book said:


> " As conditions improve, populations increase until they reach that point where they are at equilibrium with their resources"
> 
> This is a euphemism for "resources run out and nations go to war with each other over them until population is reduced by killing". How comforting.
> 
> Incentives to population control have already been mentioned. Make birth control free everywhere. Taxation of children. International pressure - make population incentives part of the climate treaty. Economic sanctions against nations whose governments don't comply with promoting local population control.
> 
> I agree there are no easy answers, but something has to be tried.


BWV has beat me to it - the birth rate in the U.S. is falling, and it isn't due to war. And it has been falling in Europe AFTER the last major war. In fact, the places where the birth rates are higher are areas where there is more strife and political turmoil - like Africa. So no - that was not a euphemism, as you claimed. The birth rate in the U.S. is falling amidst a prolonged period of peace and increasing resources. Fit that into your model. And it is also happening with increased tax benefits to those with children. So again, it doesn't fit your model. Nobody is imposing economic sanctions on the U.S., and still our birth rate is declining. See? Your best ideas appear to be superfluous or unnecessary.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> BWV has beat me to it - the birth rate in the U.S. is falling, and it isn't due to war. And it has been falling in Europe AFTER the last major war. In fact, the places where the birth rates are higher are areas where there is more strife and political turmoil - like Africa. So no - that was not a euphemism, as you claimed. The birth rate in the U.S. is falling amidst a prolonged period of peace and increasing resources. Fit that into your model. And it is also happening with increased tax benefits to those with children. So again, it doesn't fit your model. Nobody is imposing economic sanctions on the U.S., and still our birth rate is declining. See? Your best ideas appear to be superfluous or unnecessary.


economic development negatively correlates with natality, economic development positively correlates with IQ








Russia is something of an outlier, because despite a good IQ, they do not seem to be able to modernize into a developed nation.


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## Bwv 1080

Jacck said:


> economic development negatively correlates with natality, economic development positively correlates with IQ
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Russia is something of an outlier, because despite a good IQ, they do not seem to be able to modernize into a developed nation.


Dont want to go down the rabbit hole of pseudo-scientific racism



> Richard Lynn (born 20 February 1930)[1] is a controversial English psychologist and author. He is a former professor emeritus of psychology at Ulster University, having had the title withdrawn by the university in 2018,[2] and assistant editor of the journal Mankind Quarterly,[3] which has been described as a "white supremacist journal".[4] Lynn studies intelligence and is known for his belief in racial differences in intelligence.[5][6]


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## Bwv 1080

Can see falling birthrates here

https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:IND:CHN:USA&idim=region:SSF&ifdim=region&hl=en&dl=en&ind=false


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## Jacck

Bwv 1080 said:


> Dont want to go down the rabbit hole of pseudo-scientific racism


we won't go into the rabbithole, it is no pseudoscience nevertheless, just unconvenient truth. If I was a white supremacist, I would not recognize the fact that East Asians have in average 5 points and Ashkenazy Jews 15 points higher IQs than Europeans. They are cognitively superior. And these differences are mostly due to genetics. 
In fact, IQ score is such an excellent predictor of your success in life, that it had to be discredited and suppressed. Your IQ score is the single most useful information for hiring by companies, so good in fact, that the universities took it to the court to prohibit employers to measure your IQ, because it would make universities almost obsolete. But no need to continue this discussion. There is a correlation between IQ and GPD and it is up to science to disentagle the cause and effect, but given the known fact that IQ is 70% hereditary, you can draw your own conclusions.








the world is getting dumber and dumber, because IQ negativaly correlates with natality. Higly intelligent people have few children.

some interesting info on the Ashkenazy
https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/pellissier20131211


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> the world is getting dumber and dumber, because IQ negativaly correlates with natality. Higly intelligent people have few children.


I'm not sure this is true. According to the graphic you put up, the lower IQs and higher birth rates were in parts of the world also racked with disease, higher levels of poverty, more political strife, and lower life expectancy. They are hardly poised to dominate the world. Furthermore, I suspect that as economic and political situations improve in those areas, you will then see them becoming much more like the already developed world. Early development also has a huge impact on future outcome, and so I think a lot of the disadvantages that we see in places like Africa come a lot from instability and poor early development.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> I'm not sure this is true. According to the graphic you put up, the lower IQs and higher birth rates were in parts of the world also racked with disease, higher levels of poverty, more political strife, and lower life expectancy. They are hardly poised to dominate the world. Furthermore, I suspect that as economic and political situations improve in those areas, you will then see them becoming much more like the already developed world. Early development also has a huge impact on future outcome, and so I think a lot of the disadvantages that we see in places like Africa come a lot from instability and poor early development.


Africa will not improve because the IQ genetics. Those countries will always be plagued by terrible corruption and exploited by the clever nations such as the Chinese, Europeans, Russians etc. I was in subsaharan Africa, and I have nothing but deep sympathy and empathy for the people there, but they are unable to efficiently run and organize things. I once gave some money to some guy on the street, others saw it and they started a bloody fight on the street because of the money. I felt so bad. 
I really do like Africa and Africans. It is an incredible rich continent, both naturally and culturally, but it is being exploited by the cunning. 
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/05/africa-poor-stealing-wealth-170524063731884.html
https://www.vision.org/exploitation-of-africa-8304
or just google how the clever Chinese are indebting their economies.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> As this thread can be very adversarial, let me just preface this question by stating this is me wanting to know for my own knowledge, not to make a point (I don't know the methodology in this field):
> When you say that the climate models account for the change, do you mean that the models were able to predict the change, or that in light of new information about solar activity, the models were modified to incorporate this factor?


My understanding is that greenhouse gases accumulate below the stratosphere and trap the infrared heat being radiated away from earth (greenhouse effect). The trapping of this heat leads to enhanced radiative cooling of layers above the greenhouse gases. I believe both models and general analysis lead to this effect. I think the tropospheric heating coupled with stratospheric cooling is a basic signature of increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and one clear way to distinguish between human caused forcings (adding CO2 to the atmosphere) and natural ones.

I think scientists still have significant uncertainty about exactly the processes and temperature variation in the high stratosphere, but the general cooling is a straightforward prediction.


----------



## Strange Magic

I welcome DrMike's superheated denunciations of Malthusianism, AGW, my notions about full equality for women as being in his mind merely a quest for universal adoption of abortion as either a key tool in reducing fertility or as a positive good in itself. I appreciate all his other arguments that substitute his dream of an impending earthly paradise for the realities warned of by an ever-growing consensus of the world's scientists. He does affirm that the Malthusian mechanism has been shown correct in small examples, often islands, among both non-human and human populations. He also understands that there is that overwhelming consensus among concerned scientists--experts in climatology and the chemistry of oceans and atmospheres about AGW--but chooses to reject all solutions other than massively switching to nuclear reactors.

He agrees, as best as can be determined, that global population will continue to increase by billions, to 10, 15 billions--quadrupling, quintupling, sextupling the world's numbers in about a century. He agrees, I hope, that those countries experiencing population stabilization and reduction are precisely those that have done most to free women and give them access to effective contraception, and that this is key to any successful attempt to stabilize and reduce global populations. As he is a scientist conversant with simple mathematics, I know DrMike understands the powerful leveraging effect that population growth has upon the consumption of materials and the effusion of wastes and pollutants into the environment--as per-capita throughput of such materials increases, the parallel increases in the consuming populations also multiplies the threat to the environment by manyfold.

DrMike knows also that forests, coral reefs, and wilderness everywhere are disappearing, along with their associated fauna, leading to a anthropogenic Great Dying/Mass Extinction event, now exacerbated by AGW, but he is untroubled, believing the greater good is that they perish so that our teeming billions might have room, food, and materials. He believes, without evidence but along with a minority of "cornucopian" economists unversed in the sciences, that a benign equilibrium will be reached some day between our billions and a healthy, clean, stable biosphere--that the growing of populations and consumption and waste will reach an exquisite balance point and usher in a Golden Age of peace, love, and prosperity. We just need to install some nuclear reactors and wait for it to happen.

It all boils down, for the lay public, of who to believe. On the one hand we have a phalanx-like consensus among concerned and knowledgeable scientists and their massed organizations warning of impending danger; on the other we find a small coterie of purported "economists", some merely ignorant of science, others actual charlatans offering infinite dreams of impossible futures. Simple prudence and a concern for our descendants dictates listening to the warnings and taking action to both limit AGW and to slow then reverse the relentless increase in human population in a proven, progressive, and deeply humane manner.


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## mmsbls

Jacck said:


> Africa will not improve because the IQ genetics. Those countries will always be plagued by terrible corruption and exploited by the clever nations such as the Chinese, Europeans, Russians etc. I was in subsaharan Africa, and I have nothing but deep sympathy and empathy for the people there, but they are unable to efficiently run and organize things. I once gave some money to some guy on the street, others saw it and they started a bloody fight on the street because of the money. I felt so bad.
> I really do like Africa and Africans. It is an incredible rich continent, both naturally and culturally, but it is being exploited by the cunning.
> https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/05/africa-poor-stealing-wealth-170524063731884.html
> https://www.vision.org/exploitation-of-africa-8304
> or just google how the clever Chinese are indebting their economies.


Well, population is governed by fertility rates. Africa's fertility rate is presently 4.4- 4.7. That rate is down from 6.7 in 1975, 6.2 in 1990, and 5.3 in 2000. Projections seem to indicate further drops in fertility to 2.14 in 2100.

I think there is clearly hope for a reduction in population in Africa.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I welcome DrMike's superheated denunciations of Malthusianism, AGW, my notions about full equality for women as being in his mind merely a quest for universal adoption of abortion as either a key tool in reducing fertility or as a positive good in itself. I appreciate all his other arguments that substitute his dream of an impending earthly paradise for the realities warned of by an ever-growing consensus of the world's scientists. He does affirm that the Malthusian mechanism has been shown correct in small examples, often islands, among both non-human and human populations. He also understands that there is that overwhelming consensus among concerned scientists--experts in climatology and the chemistry of oceans and atmospheres about AGW--but chooses to reject all solutions other than massively switching to nuclear reactors.
> 
> He agrees, as best as can be determined, that global population will continue to increase by billions, to 10, 15 billions--quadrupling, quintupling, sextupling the world's numbers in about a century. He agrees, I hope, that those countries experiencing population stabilization and reduction are precisely those that have done most to free women and give them access to effective contraception, and that this is key to any successful attempt to stabilize and reduce global populations. As he is a scientist conversant with simple mathematics, I know DrMike understands the powerful leveraging effect that population growth has upon the consumption of materials and the effusion of wastes and pollutants into the environment--as per-capita throughput of such materials increases, the parallel increases in the consuming populations also multiplies the threat to the environment by manyfold.
> 
> DrMike knows also that forests, coral reefs, and wilderness everywhere are disappearing, along with their associated fauna, leading to a anthropogenic Great Dying/Mass Extinction event, now exacerbated by AGW, but he is untroubled, believing the greater good is that they perish so that our teeming billions might have room, food, and materials. He believes, without evidence but along with a minority of "cornucopian" economists unversed in the sciences, that a benign equilibrium will be reached some day between our billions and a healthy, clean, stable biosphere--that the growing of populations and consumption and waste will reach an exquisite balance point and usher in a Golden Age of peace, love, and prosperity. We just need to install some nuclear reactors and wait for it to happen.
> 
> It all boils down, for the lay public, of who to believe. On the one hand we have a phalanx-like consensus among concerned and knowledgeable scientists and their massed organizations warning of impending danger; on the other we find a small coterie of purported "economists", some merely ignorant of science, others actual charlatans offering infinite dreams of impossible futures. Simple prudence and a concern for our descendants dictates listening to the warnings and taking action to both limit AGW and to slow then reverse the relentless increase in human population in a proven, progressive, and deeply humane manner.


Show me the data that supports Malthusianism. And I reiterate - what possible result could allow you to concede that hypothesis is wrong? Let's just settle this scientifically, if, as you argue, Malthusianism is a scientific idea.

You keep linking it to climate science to grant it credibility. Nice bait and switch.

As for all the rest - you can accept SM's skewed synopsis, his caricature of what I believe, or you could just read what I have actually written.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> My understanding is that greenhouse gases accumulate below the stratosphere and trap the infrared heat being radiated away from earth (greenhouse effect). The trapping of this heat leads to enhanced radiative cooling of layers above the greenhouse gases. I believe both models and general analysis lead to this effect. I think the tropospheric heating coupled with stratospheric cooling is a basic signature of increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and one clear way to distinguish between human caused forcings (adding CO2 to the atmosphere) and natural ones.
> 
> I think scientists still have significant uncertainty about exactly the processes and temperature variation in the high stratosphere, but the general cooling is a straightforward prediction.


Sorry, I probably wasn't clear. I mean the specific issue of the changes in solar activity - are the models predictive in this aspect, or have they been modified ex post facto to better fit what has been observed, in hopes of creating a better predictive model? In other words, are the models more accurate because they predicted and allowed for these fluctuations, or are the models more accurate because they have been modified after new variables have been introduced?


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> I'm not sure this is true. According to the graphic you put up, the lower IQs and higher birth rates were in parts of the world also racked with disease, higher levels of poverty, more political strife, and lower life expectancy. They are hardly poised to dominate the world.


The race is not to the swift... Darwin might say that the winners in the evolutionary sweepstakes are those who reproduce most successfully and continually. Nature doesn't attach any special value to high IQs, powerful militaries, or in fact to anything except getting enough food to live, sustaining enough genetic variability to quash new diseases as they spring up, and having offspring -- lots of them.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> The race is not to the swift... Darwin might say that the winners in the evolutionary sweepstakes are those who reproduce most successfully and continually. Nature doesn't attach any special value to high IQs, powerful militaries, or in fact to anything except getting enough food to live, sustaining enough genetic variability to quash new diseases as they spring up, and having offspring -- lots of them.


There is a certain necessity in swiftness, though. Those that can adapt the quickest will have a better chance at survival. Where IQ would help is in developing strategies to stave off the natural effects of not yet having the necessary adaptations. For example, primates are not naturally found, typically, in cold climates, as all on their own, they don't have those adaptations for such climates as seen in other species that do - greater amounts of body fat, thicker fur coats, etc. But humans as a species have developed non-genetic adaptations to allow us to survive in even the harshest of such climates - ever better clothing, the construction of elaborate insulated shelters, and the ability to heat such structures. Thus you can find humans at the top of Mount Everest, in scientific stations in Antarctica, in Siberia, and the northernmost reaches of Canada and Alaska. You don't see gorillas, chimpanzees, or others of our most closely related species there.


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## Jacck

KenOC said:


> The race is not to the swift... Darwin might say that the winners in the evolutionary sweepstakes are those who reproduce most successfully and continually. Nature doesn't attach any special value to high IQs, powerful militaries, or in fact to anything except getting enough food to live, sustaining enough genetic variability to quash new diseases as they spring up, and having offspring -- lots of them.


the cold climates in the Northern hemispheres plus interbreeding with Neanderthal DNA probably selected for higher IQs. It was necessary to plan for the harsh winters in order to survive and the clever ones survived better. Nowadays, the evolutionary pressures are gone, and almost every human survives. So the gene pool necessarily degenerates. I had some courses in human genetics as a med student, and this happens also with genetic disorders. In the past, people with cystic fibrosis would not survive into adulthood. Now they survive and have offspring, but they spread the defect genes into the population. Humankind is decoupled from evolutionary pressures, which trimmed and pruned the species in the past. It can lead only to slow degeneration.


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## KenOC

DrMike, I was responding to your comment about poor countries with rapid population growth: "They are hardly poised to dominate the world." Northing about humans in general.

BTW you don't much see _any _of our closest relative species anywhere these days since, thanks to our efforts at stewardship, they are all skidding toward extinction. This seems a shame, but most places they're not important in our diets, so maybe it doesn't matter.


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## Bwv 1080

Historical timescales are too short for biological natural selection to much impact. The real issue for people is competition for resources with other groups of humans, not against nature. Social organization and technology wins that contest, not genetics. High IQ scores are a result of social organization, not a determinate of it - a society that can properly feed and educate its children will show higher measured intelligence.


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## Jacck

Bwv 1080 said:


> Historical timescales are too short for biological natural selection to much impact. The real issue for people is competition for resources with other groups of humans, not against nature. Social organization and technology wins that contest, not genetics. High IQ scores are a result of social organization, not a determinate of it - a society that can properly feed and educate its children will show higher measured intelligence.


IQ is given mostly by genetics. You cannot improve it much by socialization. There are countless studies about this
https://student.societyforscience.org/article/iq-genes
this does not mean that the genetics of IQ is simple. There are hundred of genes involved, each of the genes having various alleles, but of course the genes come in clusters. Then there is also epigenetics which can modify the expression of genes¨
https://www.sciencealert.com/epigen...opamine-receptors-affect-general-intelligence


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## Strange Magic

Here is Wikipedia's introductory material on Malthusianism, short and sweet. Malthusianism isn't a hypothesis; it's more in the nature of a mathematical relationship: If population grows exponentially (and it does; everybody knows that), then the food supply must also grow exponentially to feed the growing population (it occasionally does). The question for today is, on a finite Earth where arable land is nearing its geographical limits and while AGW is increasingly acting as a drag on agricultural production, can the Malthusian catastrophe be indefinitely postponed without continuing population-driven human-caused degradation of the physical environment? The answer is No.

"Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply is linear. It derives from the political and economic thought of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus believed there were two types of "checks" that in all times and places kept population growth in line with the growth of the food supply: "preventive checks", such as moral restraints (abstinence, delayed marriage until finances become balanced), and restricting marriage against persons suffering poverty or perceived as defective, and "positive checks", which lead to premature death such as disease, starvation and war, resulting in what is called a Malthusian catastrophe. The catastrophe would return population to a lower, more "sustainable", level. Malthusianism has been linked to a variety of political and social movements, but almost always refers to advocates of population control.

Neo-Malthusianism is the advocacy of population control programs to ensure resources for current and future populations. In Britain the term 'Malthusian' can also refer more specifically to arguments made in favour of preventive birth control, hence organizations such as the Malthusian League. Neo-Malthusians differ from Malthus's theories mainly in their enthusiasm for contraception. Malthus, a devout Christian, believed that "self-control" (abstinence) was preferable to artificial birth control. In some editions of his essay, Malthus did allow that abstinence was unlikely to be effective on a wide scale, thus advocating the use of artificial means of birth control as a solution to population "pressure". Modern "neo-Malthusians" are generally more concerned than Malthus with environmental degradation and catastrophic famine than with poverty.

Malthusianism has attracted criticism from a diverse range of differing schools of thought, including Marxists and socialists, libertarians and free market enthusiasts, social conservatives, feminists and human rights advocates, characterising it as excessively pessimistic, misanthropic or inhuman. Many critics believe Malthusianism has been discredited since the publication of Principle of Population, often citing advances in agricultural techniques and modern reductions in human fertility. Many modern proponents believe that the basic concept of population growth eventually outstripping resources is still fundamentally valid, and "positive checks" are still likely in humanity's future if there is no action to curb population growth."

The above paragraphs make no mention of AGW, the unexpected and most unwelcome guest at the party of the "cornucopian" economists celebrating the Death of Malthusianism. AGW itself is the unwelcome child of runaway population growth fatally linked to the increasing release of greenhouse gases into the environment--today, one cannot discuss the one without discussing the other.  Some people seem incapable of understanding that.


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## Tikoo Tuba

Dr. Lovey says 'abolish nuclear weapons and you'll feel better in the morning'.


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## Jacck

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Dr. Lovey says 'abolish nuclear weapons and you'll feel better in the morning'.


a nuclear war would certainly cool the planet


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Here is Wikipedia's introductory material on Malthusianism, short and sweet. Malthusianism isn't a hypothesis; it's more in the nature of a mathematical relationship: If population grows exponentially (and it does; everybody knows that), then the food supply must also grow exponentially to feed the growing population (it occasionally does). The question for today is, on a finite Earth where arable land is nearing its geographical limits and while AGW is increasingly acting as a drag on agricultural production, can the Malthusian catastrophe be indefinitely postponed without continuing population-driven human-caused degradation of the physical environment? The answer is No.


You are awfully certain, given that there is no real evidence that we will ever hit this supposed Malthusian catastrophe. The problem with it being phrased as a mathematical equation is that you can get a very definite answer out of a mathematical equation. Not the case with this philosophy posing as science. Your problem is that the variables keep changing - not just in the nature of variables, but in the fact that new variables pop up all the time, and you don't know what you don't know. The problem with being so certain you are right is quite dramatically illustrated by Ehrlich. Of course, Ehrlich faced no downside to being wrong, because he has his legions of zealots who continue to assert he was right - just off with the timing. Wait long enough, and he will be proven correct! How long must we wait? Well, who knows (except Ehrlich claimed to know). But just because he was spectacularly wrong doesn't mean that he is wrong wrong. He was only sort of wrong. Just a little wrong (so far, at least wrong by 50+ years and counting). Did he publish a follow up book to explain why his previous book was wrong? Or does he still let people buy his spectacularly false prediction and collect the proceeds? Oh well - I guess people still purchase Marx' literature also.


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> a nuclear war would certainly cool the planet


A big enough nuclear war would both cool the planet and bring about a Malthusian/Ehrlichian utopia! SM might achieve his 90% reduction that way! Some of these women-oppressing Middle East nations might be more easily convinced to launch nuclear war than to launch programs to promote female equality.


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## Tikoo Tuba

Jacck said:


> a nuclear war would certainly cool the planet


The War of Annihilation should've already happened by now . There's something good going on .


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## Guest

DrMike said:


> A big enough nuclear war would both cool the planet and bring about a Malthusian/Ehrlichian utopia! SM might achieve his 90% reduction that way! Some of these women-oppressing Middle East nations might be more easily convinced to launch nuclear war than to launch programs to promote female equality.


By the way, SM - since you have a hard time discerning serious from facetious, no, I'm not actually advocating nuclear war, on a small or large scale. Hope you can sleep at night now that I've helped you discern my intent.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> By the way, SM - since you have a hard time discerning serious from facetious, no, I'm not actually advocating nuclear war, on a small or large scale. Hope you can sleep at night now that I've helped you discern my intent.


I appreciate that you immediately sensed that your communication skills needed (and still need) improvement. When you have mastered Say What You Mean; Mean What You Say, then you'll free yourself of the need to "'splain" all over again.

I would appreciate more of a fact-based, source-based exposition (other than resorting to the wearying, infantile fantasies of economic charlatans like Julian Simon) of your positions. Other than your devotion to nuclear reactors, and your opposition to most scientific consensuses on environmental matters, little is known of your actual views.


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> There is a certain necessity in swiftness, though. Those that can adapt the quickest will have a better chance at survival...


All that bulging-braincase swiftness isn't doing its owners much good as their populations decline while far poorer and possibly not-quite-so-swift peoples in s--thole countries (to use Trump's term) see their numbers burgeon. I suspect Darwin has already placed his bets.


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## Jacck

KenOC said:


> All that bulging-braincase swiftness isn't doing its owners much good as their populations decline while far poorer and possibly not-quite-so-swift peoples in s--thole countries (to use Trump's term) see their numbers burgeon. I suspect Darwin has already placed his bets.


Trump has a s--- for brains. That man can't even produce a normal sentence. :lol:
"_Look, having nuclear-my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart-you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world-it's true!-but when you're a conservative Republican they try-oh, do they do a number-that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune-you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged-but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me-it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right-who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners-now it used to be three, now it's four-but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years-but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us_."

the medical term for such kind of speech is word salad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_salad


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## KenOC

OTOH, Trump won our own little Darwinian contest here. He may even win the next one, since most of his likely opponents are showing increasing signs of mental incontinence (whatever that is!) :lol:


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## Tikoo Tuba

KenOC said:


> OTOH, Trump won our own little Darwinian contest here. He may even win the next one, since most of his likely opponents are showing increasing signs of mental incontinence (whatever that is!) :lol:


Shall there be peace through strength or strength through peace ? Humanistic love is not the answer .


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Sorry, I probably wasn't clear. I mean the specific issue of the changes in solar activity - are the models predictive in this aspect, or have they been modified ex post facto to better fit what has been observed, in hopes of creating a better predictive model? In other words, are the models more accurate because they predicted and allowed for these fluctuations, or are the models more accurate because they have been modified after new variables have been introduced?


I don't know. I don't know much about detailed solar models.

These models don't have anything to do with climate models though. I guess I'm not sure if I'm still missing your point.


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## Larkenfield

If you fool with Mother Nature, she’ll fool with you . . . and she has no conscience.


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## SixFootScowl

Jacck said:


> IQ is given mostly by genetics. You cannot improve it much by socialization.


I wouldn't put too much stock in IQ: 
8 Reasons The IQ Is Meaningless


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## KenOC

Fritz Kobus said:


> I wouldn't put too much stock in IQ:
> 8 Reasons The IQ Is Meaningless


IQ is something that can be reliably measured and that correlates quite closely with academic achievement, earning power, and other things with real-life significance.

The current problem with IQ arises from the fact that different human groups ("races" as we commonly think of them) have differing mean IQs. One very large racial group has a mean IQ higher than the average for Caucasians of European heritage. That doesn't seem to bother anybody (except college admission officials who are intent on maintaining a racial balance). Another large group has a mean IQ lower than the same average for Caucasians, although to point that out seems, somehow, racist.

A lot of the ferment in the study of human cognition has come, for a number of years, from efforts to explain away that difference, although it remains unchanged after almost a century while meanwhile IQ tests have gradually shed their last vestiges of cultural bias. The first line of defense is to claim that IQ is meaningless (which it obviously is not). The second is to claim that the entire concept of "race" is meaningless. The mind boggles at the lengths to which ideology can drive us.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese

> *Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe*


 Jesus Hitler was not as racist as that one


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## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> IQ is something that can be reliably measured and that correlates quite closely with academic achievement, earning power, and other things with real-life significance.
> 
> The current problem with IQ arises from the fact that different human groups ("races" as we commonly think of them) have differing mean IQs. One very large racial group has a mean IQ higher than the average for Caucasians of European heritage. That doesn't seem to bother anybody (except college admission officials who are intent on maintaining a racial balance). Another large group has a mean IQ lower than the same average for Caucasians, although to point that out seems, somehow, racist.
> 
> A lot of the ferment in the study of human cognition has come, for a number of years, from efforts to explain away that difference, although it remains unchanged after almost a century while meanwhile IQ tests have gradually shed their last vestiges of cultural bias. The first line of defense is to claim that IQ is meaningless (which it obviously is not). The second is to claim that the entire concept of "race" is meaningless. The mind boggles at the lengths to which ideology can drive us.


Socioeconomic status is something that can be reliably measured and that correlates with academic achievement, earning power, and IQ. I agree that IQ does correlate with things like academic achievement and earning power, but it is my understanding that IQ can be significantly influenced by factors other than genetics. It seems that one can explain a significant amount of the achievement disparity by saying some people grow up in environments not conducive to learning, health, and other necessities for advancement. But we already knew that.

The concept of race is not meaningless. Just ask those who have been on the receiving end of racist behaviors and policies. But using the biological definition of race, there are no human races. My understanding is that there may once have been races in the human lineage, but there has been too much interbreeding since then.


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## SixFootScowl

mmsbls said:


> The concept of race is not meaningless. Just ask those who have been on the receiving end of racist behaviors and policies. But using the biological definition of race, there are no human races. My understanding is that there may once have been races in the human lineage, but there has been too much interbreeding since then.


Genetic differences between people groups do not justify classification into race, but race is a reality in terminology that it is used widely, as you note, for justifying behaviours. There is one race: The Human Race. It just happens that if there is a particular socio/economic group or cultural group one does not like, it is easier to categorize it by "race."

I grew up in a highly racist society where racial slurs were common place (1960s), but in the 1990s and moving forward I find now that the workforce is somewhat integrated that working in a professional office next to workers of other people groups (black, native American, middle eastern, far east, India, etc.) these folks are not so different from me other than their physical characteristics, such as skin color, and their culture, which is not that apparent in the workplace. We had a low class white neighborhood in Detroit and in the 60s/70s those people were referred to as "White Trash" even though the same color they were treated like white people were treating black people in the 1960s.

The "White Flight" of the 1960s/70s of white people to the suburbs of Detroit was driven by "race" but I think a huge factor was socioeconomic status. In the 1990s living in a suburb of Detroit (and having had left Detroit when my parents moved out in 72) old school people told me the neighborhood was changing (black people were moving into my suburb) and to get out, but I stayed put because I realized they were the same black people I was working with and of the same socio economic status as me. I am still here and it is still a nice neighborhood.

It is a different world today, but there are still big pockets of racism for sure.


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## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> Socioeconomic status is something that can be reliably measured and that correlates with academic achievement, earning power, and IQ. I agree that IQ does correlate with things like academic achievement and earning power, but it is my understanding that IQ can be significantly influenced by factors other than genetics. It seems that one can explain a significant amount of the achievement disparity by saying some people grow up in environments not conducive to learning, health, and other necessities for advancement. But we already knew that.
> 
> The concept of race is not meaningless. Just ask those who have been on the receiving end of racist behaviors and policies. But using the biological definition of race, there are no human races. My understanding is that there may once have been races in the human lineage, but there has been too much interbreeding since then.


I think this discussion is about to tread on a lot of sensitive toes, so I won't pursue it beyond this last post.

First, the figure given earlier, is that IQ is about 70% heritable, is correct. This has been demonstrated several ways over the years, including studies of identical twins separated at birth and brought up in very different socioeconomic circumstances.

Second, races are reliably defined genetically (sometimes the word "ethnicity" is used commercially). Readily available DNA tests will tell you your own racial balance. This is actually a boon for researchers in human cognition, since "pure" human samples are no longer needed for statistical analysis. But DNA testing for race may have unexpected and serious social consequences, explored in this article.


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## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> I think this discussion is about to tread on a lot of sensitive toes, so I won't pursue it beyond this last post.
> 
> First, the figure given earlier, is that IQ is about 70% heritable, is correct. This has been demonstrated several ways over the years, including studies of identical twins separated at birth and brought up in very different socioeconomic circumstances.
> 
> Second, races are reliably defined genetically (sometimes the word "ethnicity" is used commercially). Readily available DNA tests will tell you your own racial balance. This is actually a boon for researchers in human cognition, since "pure" human samples are no longer needed for statistical analysis. But DNA testing for race may have unexpected and serious social consequences, explored in this article.





> IQ can be significantly influenced by factors other than genetics.





> IQ is about 70% heritable


These statements are compatible. The Flynn effect and the decreasing gap in IQ over time between populations indicate a potential significant environmental effect.

For technical reasons, I think biologists would refer to populations of humans rather than races.

I feel that I am at my limit in understanding the biological definition of race and of IQ differences so I'm not sure I can say more of value (or if what I have said has significant value).


----------



## Luchesi

I might be mistaken but when I see an intelligent person I expect them to be sharp in a lot of subjects, but the master of none, as they say.

A slightly lower intelligent person can dedicate themselves to a subject or a career and do better for themselves and for their employers.


----------



## Jacck

KenOC said:


> OTOH, Trump won our own little Darwinian contest here. He may even win the next one, since most of his likely opponents are showing increasing signs of mental incontinence (whatever that is!) :lol:


Trump is likely in the beginning stages of dementia. If he gets reelected, then by 2025 he will be drooling. It is kind of scary that such a man is the military commander of a nuclear superpower and has a finger on a nuclear button. But I guess many people around him and possibly even many leaders around the world are quite happy with him in the office, since he is probably easily manipulable. I personally do not care about him much. We have our own toxic politicians to worry about and Putin is certainly a bigger threat than Trump. 
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opini...-we-need-know-psychologist-column/3404007002/


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

I'm a master of 4'33"


----------



## samm

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> I'm a master of 4'33"


A pity some others in this thread aren't. I've never read so much bilge in one thread.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Paranoid people have to scientifically filter water even from a nice wild mountain springhead .


----------



## Luchesi

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Paranoid people have to scientifically filter water even from a nice wild mountain springhead .


Unfiltered spring water and many brands of toothpaste have sand (silica) as an abrasive substance. Your body can't recognize it in order to eliminate it, so all that sand accumulates in your body over many decades as you brush your teeth.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Luchesi said:


> Unfiltered spring water and many brands of toothpaste have sand (silica) as an abrasive substance. Your body can't recognize it in order to eliminate it, *so all that sand accumulates in your body over many decades* as you brush your teeth.


Gives new meaning to the lyrics of "Turn to Stone."


----------



## Jacck

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Paranoid people have to scientifically filter water even from a nice wild mountain springhead .


because we read about giardiasis and the mess it can do
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870550/


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Jacck said:


> because we read about giardiasis and the mess it can do
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870550/


Why not learn to read water and drink beyond confusion ?


----------



## Jacck

Wiped out: America's love of luxury toilet paper is destroying Canadian forests
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-toilet-paper-us-climate-change-impact-report


----------



## SixFootScowl

Jacck said:


> Wiped out: America's love of luxury toilet paper is destroying Canadian forests
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-toilet-paper-us-climate-change-impact-report


Back to corn cobs folks! :lol:


----------



## KenOC

Despite the best etimate of seas rising at 1/8"per year, the NY Times publishes this garbage:

With More Storms and Rising Seas, Which U.S. Cities Should Be Saved First?


----------



## Open Book

Jacck said:


> Wiped out: America's love of luxury toilet paper is destroying Canadian forests
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-toilet-paper-us-climate-change-impact-report


 I wonder how many Americans realize we will be asked to sacrifice many of our luxuries for global warming. I do believe in man-made global warming but this is what will happen if we buy into the Green New Deal. I think young Americans are spoiled and are in for a shock.

When I was in Europe (decades ago) I was amazed at the poor quality of toilet paper there, even in countries like Germany that looked otherwise as advanced as the U.S. European toilet paper was like brown paper towel but flimsier.

By sustainable, the article means made of recycled materials, coarse, and thin. I like my plush American toilet paper.


----------



## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> Despite the best etimate of seas rising at 1/8"per year, the NY Times publishes this garbage:
> 
> With More Storms and Rising Seas, Which U.S. Cities Should Be Saved First?


It's a wonder that these little mice-like guys (Melomys rubicola) got all the way out to this island, Bramble Cay.
They've been studied and now they're officially extinct on this island, because sea level submerged over about 90% of the island. Storm surges killed them and loss of habitat. They didn't build a seawall..

Researchers wanted to start a captive breeding program, but the application process took over 5 months and by then the mice were extinct.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Jacck said:


> Wiped out: America's love of luxury toilet paper is destroying Canadian forests
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-toilet-paper-us-climate-change-impact-report


So the headline is BS in that no one cuts down a full grown tree for pulp, its not economic. Pulp is either a byproduct of sawmills or of thinning small trees in managed forests. That said, there should be a ban on cutting boreal forests (although this would kill the Canadian timber industry). The US South can plant and grow trees in a carbon-neutral or even net-negative - on southern pine plantations sawtimber can be grown in 15-20 years then replanted and repeated. If used in building, that carbon is more or less permanently sequestered.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

A ranch windmill can with minimal maintenance pump water or it could run an air-compressor . Best to compress cool , de-humidified air in an underground mother tank . Bring this air up to a surface tank where solar energy may increase air-pressure energy . Employ compressed-air motorized go-cart and go thee art to town for a concert . Or might thou power the magnificat pipe organ in the meadow ' neath our cheery cherry tree...


----------



## Open Book

Bwv 1080 said:


> So the headline is BS in that no one cuts down a full grown tree for pulp, its not economic. Pulp is either a byproduct of sawmills or of thinning small trees in managed forests. That said, there should be a ban on cutting boreal forests (although this would kill the Canadian timber industry). The US South can plant and grow trees in a carbon-neutral or even net-negative - on southern pine plantations sawtimber can be grown in 15-20 years then replanted and repeated. If used in building, that carbon is more or less permanently sequestered.


Why a ban on boreal forests in particular? A total ban?


----------



## Bwv 1080

Open Book said:


> Why a ban on boreal forests in particular? A total ban?


Boreal forests are slow growing compared to temperate farmed ones. A fast growing young forest is a carbon sink, taking CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in the trees - so timber production from managed forests should be prioritized over old-growth, slow growing Boreal forests


----------



## Strange Magic

> Bwv 1080: "If used in building, that carbon is more or less permanently sequestered."


This is becoming more problematic as hurricanes and tornados and flooding grow in intensity. The resulting, sudden creation of vast quantities of construction and furnishing debris--wood, drywall, carpeting, etc.--is being met by quick disposal in _ad hoc_ permeable landfills excavated in haste. This sequestration of carbon and other unsuitable materials is short-lived, and the carbon will be released either as a methane ingredient, seeping into groundwater, or outright erosion and stripping of the landfill.

https://www.wired.com/story/where-do-they-put-all-that-toxic-hurricane-debris/


----------



## Bwv 1080

Strange Magic said:


> This is becoming more problematic as hurricanes and tornados and flooding grow in intensity. The resulting, sudden creation of vast quantities of construction and furnishing debris--wood, drywall, carpeting, etc.--is being met by quick disposal in _ad hoc_ permeable landfills excavated in haste. This sequestration of carbon and other unsuitable materials is short-lived, and the carbon will be released either as a methane ingredient, seeping into groundwater, or outright erosion and stripping of the landfill.
> 
> https://www.wired.com/story/where-do-they-put-all-that-toxic-hurricane-debris/


Well I guess we're all just f#%^ed then and no point wasting our few remaining years on discussion boards


----------



## Strange Magic

Bwv 1080 said:


> Well I guess we're all just f#%^ed then and no point wasting our few remaining years on discussion boards


Actually, there are things we can do to arrest and then reverse, over time, the increasingly extreme weather that accompanies AGW, by fighting AGW. All it takes is leadership, vision, and education, especially from the top.


----------



## mmsbls

Open Book said:


> I wonder how many Americans realize we will be asked to sacrifice many of our luxuries for global warming. I do believe in man-made global warming but this is what will happen if we buy into the Green New Deal. I think young Americans are spoiled and are in for a shock.


Besides toilet paper, what else do you think Americans will be asked to sacrifice?


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

We could have a old forest dedicated to violin wood . To be loved .


----------



## KenOC

An amusing situation in Oregon: GOP lawmakers are in hiding and some have fled the state, "to thwart the passage of a cap-and-trade proposal that would dramatically lower greenhouse gas emissions by 2050." State police are tracking them down and have the authority to return them to the state capitol by force, if necessary. Funds are being raised on the Internet to help them with statutory $500/day fines for avoiding their duties.

Republicans believe the measure should be put to the voters, but Democrats, in control of the legislature, disagree.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oregon-senators-face-dollar500-fines-for-fleeing-threaten-to-sue/ar-AADd3Pw


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Stop Donald Trump talking, thats gotta stop alot of green house gas


----------



## SixFootScowl

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Stop Donald Trump talking, thats gotta stop alot of green house gas


He is trying to prevent the oncoming global cooling and a new ice age.


----------



## Luchesi

Fritz Kobus said:


> He is trying to prevent the oncoming global cooling and a new ice age.


What will cool the planet?


----------



## Jacck

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Stop Donald Trump talking, thats gotta stop alot of green house gas


the rest of the world can only hope that this dangerous cretin and the psychopaths surrounding him will be voted out in 1 year
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...on-is-trying-to-make-war-with-iran-inevitable
Iraq was not enough for them.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Luchesi said:


> What will cool the planet?


Someone posted these links, I think in this thread:

https://principia-scientific.org/modern-solar-grand-maximum-ends-little-ice-age-cooling-coming/

https://notrickszone.com/2017/01/12...4000-years-just-ended-cooling-begins-in-2025/


----------



## Open Book

mmsbls said:


> Besides toilet paper, what else do you think Americans will be asked to sacrifice?


Anything for which there is an alternative that causes less production of greenhouse gases. Eating meat, driving cars, using excess air conditioning or heating. Buying too many things we don't need, like the latest fashions every year. I think certain politicians have austerity in mind.


----------



## mmsbls

Open Book said:


> Anything for which there is an alternative that causes less production of greenhouse gases. Eating meat, driving cars, using excess air conditioning or heating. Buying too many things we don't need, like the latest fashions every year. I think certain politicians have austerity in mind.


I don't know what every politician thinks about climate change. I work in the field of climate change mitigation in the transportation sector. When I started about 25 years ago (the focus then was on criteria pollutant reduction such as ozone and particulates), I saw people working in two areas - technology and behavior. Behavior researchers tried to understand how to reduce vehicles miles traveled by encouraging people to work from home, car share, or take public transportation. Those in the technology area (e.g. me) focused on new technologies and fuels to reduce emissions.

After some time, I was struck by how ineffectual behavior changes were compared to the remarkable technological progress. In theory, behavior is a wonderful way to reduce many negative outcomes, but in practice, it's incredibly difficult to achieve. The policy researchers I work with focus on technological change such that behavior matters relatively little. The actual policies in place are focused on technology and not on behavior (for very good reasons).

It's certainly true that getting people to eat less meat, drive fewer miles, and recycle more will help reduce the negative effects of AGW, and society probably should encourage such behaviors. I would be stunned to see a regulatory body actually prohibit or limit eating meat or driving. No one I know in the policy field ever talks about such policies. Maybe 20-30 years from now people will realize that we cannot meet well understood critical targets without such policies, but I believe we are a long way from that eventuality.


----------



## KenOC

Global warming issues continue to cause some overheating in Oregon. Rebel Republican lawmakers remained in hiding today, so that no quorum would be possible for a vote on a pretty draconian carbon cap-and-trade bill. The governor has ordered police to find the rascals and bring them in, saying “It is absolutely unacceptable that the Senate Republicans would turn their back on their constituents who they are honor-bound to represent here in this building. They need to return and do the jobs they were elected to do.”

The Senate Republican leader replied, “Protesting cap-and-trade by walking out today represents our constituency and exactly how we should be doing our job. We have endured threats of arrest, fines and pulling community project funds from the governor, Senate president and majority leader. We will not stand by and be bullied by the majority party any longer."

Meanwhile, Republican Senator Brian Boquist responded by telling state police to “send bachelors and come heavily armed” if they come and get him. And to top it off, the state Senate closed today due to a “possible militia threat” over the same issue.

Is this going to be a continuing story elsewhere?


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Why don't we ask Mother herself?


----------



## KenOC

Jacck said:


> the rest of the world can only hope that this dangerous cretin and the psychopaths surrounding him will be voted out in 1 year


Well, the Democrats seem to be rounding up every cretin they can find to run against him! :lol:


----------



## Strange Magic

> KenOC: "Meanwhile, Republican Senator Brian Boquist responded by telling state police to "send bachelors and come heavily armed" if they come and get him. And to top it off, the state Senate closed today due to a "possible militia threat" over the same issue.
> 
> Is this going to be a continuing story elsewhere?"


I think so. Starting with Pat Buchanan's superheated "Culture Wars" rhetoric in the 1980s and 1990s, and the continuing blowtorch language that emanates from the National Rifle Association, and given the increasing cult of personality developing around Donald Trump--he is becoming very close to a god to a large percentage of his followers--there is a possibility of an insurrection or insurrections following a Trump loss in 2020. That's where we are today.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

mmsbls said:


> I work in the field of climate change mitigation in the transportation sector.


That's very interesting . Yes, mitigate transportation .


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Tikoo Tuba said:


> That's very interesting . Yes, mitigate transportation .


Pedal Power ?


----------



## SixFootScowl

Tikoo Tuba said:


> That's very interesting . Yes, mitigate transportation .


I am afraid that part of the transportation mitigation is roundabouts, or what I call demolition derbys. I drive extra miles to avoid them. How do they mitigate that?


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> I think so. Starting with Pat Buchanan's superheated "Culture Wars" rhetoric in the 1980s and 1990s, and the continuing blowtorch language that emanates from the National Rifle Association, and given the increasing cult of personality developing around Donald Trump--he is becoming very close to a god to a large percentage of his followers--there is a possibility of an insurrection or insurrections following a Trump loss in 2020. That's where we are today.


I look for the democrats to do it again like they did it when Trump won in 2016.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Open Book said:


> Anything for which there is an alternative that causes less production of greenhouse gases. Eating meat, driving cars, using excess air conditioning or heating. Buying too many things we don't need, like the latest fashions every year. I think certain politicians have austerity in mind.


I think the politicians and their families along with their supports should be forced to do it five years before anyone else does.


----------



## Open Book

Fritz Kobus said:


> I am afraid that part of the transportation mitigation is roundabouts, or what I call demolition derbys. I drive extra miles to avoid them. How do they mitigate that?


I hate them. They are antiquated. Some of them have two lanes, which causes even more problems. I live near one that causes a major slowdown from 3:00 to 7:00 every workday, thousands of people's time wasted. Why not just build overpasses so traffic can sail right through the terrible intersections?

And they used to be called rotaries here. "Roundabout" seems to have replaced "rotary" because it sounds quainter and cuter?


----------



## Luchesi

Fritz Kobus said:


> Someone posted these links, I think in this thread:
> 
> https://principia-scientific.org/modern-solar-grand-maximum-ends-little-ice-age-cooling-coming/
> 
> https://notrickszone.com/2017/01/12...4000-years-just-ended-cooling-begins-in-2025/


The sun is doing it? Changes in the magnetic output of the star are obvious, but changes in the heat output are difficult to detect. And they're swamped by the annual changes in the heat received due to the elliptical shape of our orbit.


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> I look for the democrats to do it again like they did it when Trump won in 2016.


What does this mean?


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> What does this mean?


I know you want to forget the evil things your party does:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ayed-demonstrations-erupt-across-us/93633154/


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Pedal Power ?


I am convinced teleportation has reality . I think personal peace is requisite for experiencing this , and then an expansive peace may hold a responsibly collective understanding of it .


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> I know you want to forget the evil things your party does:
> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ayed-demonstrations-erupt-across-us/93633154/


Johnnie, if you read your link, you will see that the protests following Trump's election were overwhelmingly peaceful. In Portland, the problems arose when anarchists who are not on anybody's side co-opted the protests. The protests were peaceful, and legitimate, probably fuelled by Hillary's 3 million vote margin in the popular vote. No, I am talking about insurrection, thugs, militias, goons with guns, for which we got a taste in Charlottesville. Charlottesville wasn't a "Republican" thing; it wasn't a "Democratic" thing. The supporters of Hillary in 2016 were not, and the supporters of whoever the Democrats nominate, though, will never be so madly disruptive as those who may not accept a Trump loss in 2020. Given the fervor with which MAGA-heads now adore their leader as nearly a god, the concern is real. It could be scary. Johnnie, you yourself suggested civil war might break out if "they try to take away our guns"--that is, pass sensible laws prohibiting silencers, giant magazines, cop-killer bullets, and called for universal background checks.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Johnnie, if you read your link, you will see that the protests following Trump's election were overwhelmingly peaceful. In Portland, the problems arose when anarchists who are not on anybody's side co-opted the protests. The protests were peaceful, and legitimate, probably fuelled by Hillary's 3 million vote margin in the popular vote. No, I am talking about insurrection, thugs, militias, goons with guns, for which we got a taste in Charlottesville. Charlottesville wasn't a "Republican" thing; it wasn't a "Democratic" thing. The supporters of Hillary in 2016 were not, and the supporters of whoever the Democrats nominate, though, will never be so madly disruptive as those who may not accept a Trump loss in 2020. Given the fervor with which MAGA-heads now adore their leader as nearly a god, the concern is real. It could be scary. Johnnie, you yourself suggested civil war might break out if "they try to take away our guns"--that is, pass sensible laws prohibiting silencers, giant magazines, cop-killer bullets, and called for universal background checks.


How well has the gun laws worked in Chicago? Only a crazy person thinks Trump is a god. I have never said this. And if claim I do maybe you could be sued along with the owner of this site.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Johnnie, if you read your link, you will see that the protests following Trump's election were overwhelmingly peaceful. In Portland, the problems arose when anarchists who are not on anybody's side co-opted the protests. The protests were peaceful, and legitimate, probably fuelled by Hillary's 3 million vote margin in the popular vote. No, I am talking about insurrection, thugs, militias, goons with guns, for which we got a taste in Charlottesville. Charlottesville wasn't a "Republican" thing; it wasn't a "Democratic" thing. The supporters of Hillary in 2016 were not, and the supporters of whoever the Democrats nominate, though, will never be so madly disruptive as those who may not accept a Trump loss in 2020. Given the fervor with which MAGA-heads now adore their leader as nearly a god, the concern is real. It could be scary. Johnnie, you yourself suggested civil war might break out if "they try to take away our guns"--that is, pass sensible laws prohibiting silencers, giant magazines, cop-killer bullets, and called for universal background checks.


----------



## Strange Magic

^^^^I see the children's guns have been concealed. And I may be wrong about Trump: he may not be regarded by some as an actual God; one of his supporters in Orlando pointed out that Trump was "a Godly, Christian man". And that's the strong impression I get also, after a few hits on the bong. Accuser No. 16 may be Satan in disguise.

P.S.: the silly video is real; Politifact checked it out. Maybe we can have a thread on crazy, silly videos of stupid things that are done in schools (mostly schools, it seems). Such stories are often used as filler on local news outlets here. Not quite sure how it fits into a discussion of insurrection, militias, etc. Can someone help?


----------



## mmsbls

This thread is about scientific problems with people changing the environment. The thread is not about politics. Keep the discussion focused on environmental issues.


----------



## Luchesi

The Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH, mission will focus directly on the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, and how it generates the solar wind. Composed of four suitcase-sized satellites, PUNCH will image and track the solar wind as it leaves the Sun. The spacecraft also will track coronal mass ejections – large eruptions of solar material that can drive large space weather events near Earth – to better understand their evolution and develop new techniques for predicting such eruptions.

These observations will enhance national and international research by other NASA missions such as Parker Solar Probe, and the upcoming ESA (European Space Agency)/NASA Solar Orbiter, due to launch in 2020. PUNCH will be able to image, in real time, the structures in the solar atmosphere that these missions encounter by blocking out the bright light of the Sun and examining the much fainter atmosphere.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Flying saucers are about to be officially recognized . This will imply an advanced technology of clean unlimited energy may realistically be hoped for . There is a funny old song by the Skillet Lickers that begins " You better pray to the Lord when you see them flying saucers ..." U.S. Congress members have been receiving classified indoctrination . The Air Force has photographic evidence . Scientists are making plausible theories to support observations by jet pilots .

I have never seen a flying saucer , but my granny saw a little one land in her yard . Since I didn't laugh at her story she told it to me several times . Hmm ... I don't believe what she witnessed was a machine . She heard the roar of a tuba as it rose into the arrh .


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Tikoo Tuba said:


> n . The Air Force has photographic evidence .


Correction : U.S. Navy


----------



## Luchesi

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Flying saucers are about to be officially recognized . This will imply an advanced technology of clean unlimited energy may realistically be hoped for . There is a funny old song by the Skillet Lickers that begins " You better pray to the Lord when you see them flying saucers ..." U.S. Congress members have been receiving classified indoctrination . The Air Force has photographic evidence . Scientists are making plausible theories to support observations by jet pilots .
> 
> I have never seen a flying saucer , but my granny saw a little one land in her yard . Since I didn't laugh at her story she told it to me several times . Hmm ... I don't believe what she witnessed was a machine . She heard the roar of a tuba as it rose into the arrh .


Yes, it's a new religion that humans can put their imaginations to. But this one might turn out to be true (and not just scary stories but our worst nightmare).


----------



## SixFootScowl

Luchesi said:


> Yes, it's a new religion that humans can put their imaginations to. But this one might turn out to be true (and not just scary stories but *our worst nightmare*).


*Yes, our worst nightmare.*


----------



## Luchesi

Fritz Kobus said:


> *Yes, our worst nightmare.*


The author is well-spoken. He explains Project Mogul very well. I work with helium technicians who worked with the technicians on Project Mogul. There's more to the incident which is quite embarrassing for the government and those facts aren't emphasized in any book I've skimmed through. I haven't understood that, if they're out to sell books, but maybe the researchers in the know have more integrity than that, or it's patriotism?

Anything's possible, so Jesus might be a good spaceman with his army to protect us, and the Bible writers had no words or concepts for what he was teaching about his return, so they interpreted what he said in religious/spiritual terms and the metaphors of those primitive times.


----------



## KenOC

Back on topic a bit -- the sad story of orangutans on Sumatra, where the jungle is being leared for palm oil plantations.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/one-casualty-of-the-palm-oil-industry-an-orangutan-mother-shot-74-times/ar-AADBr3c?ocid=spartanntp


----------



## Jacck

KenOC said:


> Back on topic a bit -- the sad story of orangutans on Sumatra, where the jungle is being leared for palm oil plantations.
> https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/one-casualty-of-the-palm-oil-industry-an-orangutan-mother-shot-74-times/ar-AADBr3c?ocid=spartanntp


it is sad, the whole destruction of the rainforests in the tropics. I visited several of those areas and there is legal as well as an illegal logging everywhere. I was in Laos in 2003 and there were Japanese and Chinese logging companies destroying the beautiful forests. Now the hills in Laos look deforested. I was also in Sumatra and Borneo and the same happens there. There is at least some hope with the Heart of Borneo project where they intend to keep a big nature reserve in the center of Borneo








Those who are behind the destruction of the forests undermine the future of their nations. The Chinese under Mao fell huge forests in the north of their country, now the Gobi started spreading southward. It is stupidity combined with greed combined with psychopaty of people such as the current Brazil leader Bolsonaro.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/02/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-amazon-rainforest-protections
the problem with old growth forests is that once you destroy them, it would take centuries for them to grow again. The secondary forests that you replant have a lesser quality.


----------



## Jacck

The high-tech farming revolution
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07dgymk/the-high-tech-farming-revolution


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Jacck said:


> The high-tech farming revolution


Hello from the farm . Tech like GPS on the harvesting machine is useful . Revolutionary ? no . I can casually think while riding about on a tractor of a revolution in farming yet to be .


----------



## Bwv 1080

How about some positive examples of fooling w mother nature? This is a miracle of genetic engineering, first by native Americans then by Europeans and others


----------



## Jacck

the climate sensitivity estimated to just 1.2°C (in a paper published in Nature), which is not that bad
https://www.wired.com/story/the-dizzying-science-of-climate-change-gets-a-bit-clearer/

this fearmongering by some of the media is crazy. Here they liken ocean warming to an atomic bomb
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ceans-equivalent-to-an-atomic-bomb-per-second
despite the fact, that the ocean has warmed just 0.1°C in a decade

and this is an apocalyptic bonbon - Why everything will collapse
as a result of this fearmongering, 38% of Millennials Worried About Having Children


----------



## joen_cph

"_*How Earth would look if all the ice melted*_" - maps:

https://www.unian.info/multimedia/photo/10008831-karta-zemli-bez-lednikov.html

(my country would be just gone, except for a few minor hills in central Jutland, now considered very provincial ... a lot of heavily populated China, all of the Netherlands, Florida, a lot of Belgium and Germany, etc. etc.
Don't know if this was already presented here somewhere)


----------



## Guest

joen_cph said:


> "_*How Earth would look if all the ice melted*_" - maps:
> 
> https://www.unian.info/multimedia/photo/10008831-karta-zemli-bez-lednikov.html
> 
> (my country would be just gone, except for a few minor hills in central Jutland, now considered very provincial ... a lot of heavily populated China, all of the Netherlands, Florida, a lot of Belgium and Germany, etc. etc.
> Don't know if this was already presented here somewhere)


I'm in! Let's do it!


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## Guest

joen_cph said:


> "_*How Earth would look if all the ice melted*_" - maps:
> 
> https://www.unian.info/multimedia/photo/10008831-karta-zemli-bez-lednikov.html
> 
> (my country would be just gone, except for a few minor hills in central Jutland, now considered very provincial ... a lot of heavily populated China, all of the Netherlands, Florida, a lot of Belgium and Germany, etc. etc.
> Don't know if this was already presented here somewhere)


My only issue is with "if." A recent study showed that the last time CO2 was this high there was no polar ice at all. We are already there. We are at an atmosphere which is inconsistent with polar ice. It is just that it takes time for ice to melt. It is a "first order phase transition," meaning that each gram of ice melted requires a certain amount of energy (heat of fusion). The head being accumulated in the atmosphere is melting the polar ice, bit by bit, and that will continue until it is gone.


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## KenOC

Past climates have ranged from an ice-free earth to an earth with frozen seas all the way to the equator. There has been much discussion of the causes of this variability. CO2 is often blamed, but so are long-term fluctuations in the sun's energy output.


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## joen_cph

Obviously all the ice is unlikely to melt within the most foreseable future. But I found the maps instructive in showing the most vulnerable areas seen from a global perspective, and it's being predicted now that we are talking at least several meters of rising sea level within this century. There are scientists here suggesting the possible melting of all of Greenland's ice. That's a real lot.


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## Jacck

Baron Scarpia said:


> My only issue is with "if." A recent study showed that the last time CO2 was this high there was no polar ice at all. We are already there. We are at an atmosphere which is inconsistent with polar ice. It is just that it takes time for ice to melt. It is a "first order phase transition," meaning that each gram of ice melted requires a certain amount of energy (heat of fusion). The head being accumulated in the atmosphere is melting the polar ice, bit by bit, and that will continue until it is gone.


although CO2 and sea-level rise appear to be correlated throughout the last 700,000 years, what drove these two factors over the period of 700,000 years was very different from those over the last 50 - 100 years. As a result, this correlation is not a reliable guide to the cause and effect relationship between CO2 and sea-level rise in recent years. Until the Industrial Revolution, melting of snow and ice at the end of cyclical glacial periods was driven by changes in the Earth's orbit. As snow and ice melted on the planet, the albedo, or reflectivity, of the earth declined, with land and ocean absorbing more heat from the sun. As the planet slowly warmed, a warmer and better-mixed ocean released CO2 into the atmosphere, which amplified the warming that was already in progress. In all, temperature typically increased by 6°C over thousands of years during these interglacial periods, and one third of this increase was a result of the CO2 that outgassed from the ocean once warming began. Therefore, CO2 was not the initial cause of melting ice on the planet. It merely amplified a signal that was already in progress.

so we have no certain knowledge of what is going to happen now


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## Guest

joen_cph said:


> Obviously all the ice is unlikely to melt within the most foreseable future. But I found the maps instructive in showing the most vulnerable areas seen from a global perspective, and it's being predicted now that we are talking at least several meters of rising sea level within this century. There are scientists here suggesting the possible melting of all of Greenland's ice. That's a real lot.


Greenland might actually be green? How much fertile land might that add for new agricultural possibilities?


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## KenOC

joen_cph said:


> Obviously all the ice is unlikely to melt within the most foreseable future. But I found the maps instructive in showing the most vulnerable areas seen from a global perspective, and it's being predicted now that we are talking at least several meters of rising sea level within this century. There are scientists here suggesting the possible melting of all of Greenland's ice. That's a real lot.


Of course people are predicting all sorts of things. The current rate of sea level rise (averaged) seems to be about 1/8" per year, which means 1.25 inches per decade. At that rate, sea levels will rise about ten inches by the end of this century. A far cry from "several meters," which I have to believe is an estimate involving some very substantial speculation.


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> although CO2 and sea-level rise appear to be correlated throughout the last 700,000 years, what drove these two factors over the period of 700,000 years was very different from those over the last 50 - 100 years. As a result, this correlation is not a reliable guide to the cause and effect relationship between CO2 and sea-level rise in recent years. Until the Industrial Revolution, melting of snow and ice at the end of cyclical glacial periods was driven by changes in the Earth's orbit. As snow and ice melted on the planet, the albedo, or reflectivity, of the earth declined, with land and ocean absorbing more heat from the sun. As the planet slowly warmed, a warmer and better-mixed ocean released CO2 into the atmosphere, which amplified the warming that was already in progress. In all, temperature typically increased by 6°C over thousands of years during these interglacial periods, and one third of this increase was a result of the CO2 that outgassed from the ocean once warming began. Therefore, CO2 was not the initial cause of melting ice on the planet. It merely amplified a signal that was already in progress.
> 
> so we have no certain knowledge of what is going to happen now


I would not disagree that there is a lot of uncertainty in any predictions. But CO2 and warming is more than a "correlation." There is a physical mechanism which connects CO2 and climate warming. It strikes me that the biggest uncertainty is the reaction of the environment to CO2 emissions. For instance, so far the oceans have tended to absorb the excess CO2 being released. That could change, higher temperatures could cause to oceans to start releasing CO2.


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## KenOC

Baron Scarpia said:


> ...For instance, so far the oceans have tended to absorb the excess CO2 being released. That could change, higher temperatures could cause to oceans to start releasing CO2.


Currently about 30% of CO2 emissions are absorbed by the ocean with the unfortunate side effect of increasing ocean acidity. Already, acidity has jumped from pre-industrial levels and continues to increase. The most obvious impacts will be on calcifying species that use calcium carbonate to make shells and other structures, internal and external. Bad news for clams, oysters, coral, and so forth!

"If we continue emitting CO2 at the same rate, by 2100 ocean acidity will increase by about 150 percent, a rate that has not been experienced for at least 400,000 years." --UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme, 2015


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## joen_cph

Of course, all sorts of downplaying the tendencies and CO2 effects can also be be found. But a very recent estimate here (June 2019) says that due to acceleration in the melting processes, all of Greenland's ice could be gone within 1000 years, not 6000-7000 years, as was previously thought.


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## KenOC

joen_cph said:


> Of course, all sorts of downplaying the tendencies and CO2 effects can also be be found. But a very recent estimate here (June 2019) says that due to accelleration in the melting processes, all of Greenland's ice could be gone within 1000 years, not 6000-7000 years, as was previously thought.


Yes, there seem to be multiple scenarios for warming going past the "tipping point." One of the most interesting is the thawing of millions of square miles of permafrost, exposing vast quantities of now-frozen vegetation to natural decay processes and liberating huge quantities of CO2. Another is a change in ocean circulation, leading to a pretty sudden melting of the Greenland ice sheet. It's hard to evaluate these. There are already signs (maybe) of accelerated melting of that ice.

Any or all of this, or something else entirely, could happen, or maybe not.


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## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> Yes, there seem to be multiple scenarios for warming going past the "tipping point." One of the most interesting is the thawing of millions of square miles of permafrost, exposing vast quantities of now-frozen vegetation to natural decay processes and liberating huge quantities of CO2. Another is a change in ocean circulation, leading to a pretty sudden melting of the Greenland ice sheet. It's hard to evaluate these. There are already signs (maybe) of accelerated melting of that ice.
> 
> Any or all of this, or something else entirely, could happen, or maybe not.


I'm curious why you think it won't happen. The Sun will cool us? The oceans will absorb more and more heat instead of less and less? The stratosphere will direct cool air from the poles to the south? This will statistically bring down the warming trend because of the placement of the sensors, but the planet won't be cooling.

What cools the planet over 30 year timespans? Increased dust from the loop boundary from the recent supernova in the Sagittarius? We can hope it doesn't block too much of the Sun's warmth.


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## joen_cph

Well, in the flow of depressing news, here are some mostly recent, more constructive initiatives in these matters:

- _Scientists find that soil bacteria can devour potent greenhouse gas_
https://www.zmescience.com/science/...781337&goal=0_3b5aad2288-d6cc3596ff-242781337

- _Ethiopia plants 350 mio. trees in one day to combat drought (and greenhouse effects)_
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...50-million-trees-in-one-day-to-combat-drought

- _By 2040, Norway has promised all of its short-haul flights will be on electric aircraft. It could revolutionise the airline industry._
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180814-norways-plan-for-a-fleet-of-electric-planes

(a couple of days ago, a new record was set: 225,000 airline flights in one single day:

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1154399755075751936)


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## Guest

joen_cph said:


> Of course, all sorts of downplaying the tendencies and CO2 effects can also be be found. But a very recent estimate here (June 2019) says that due to acceleration in the melting processes, all of Greenland's ice could be gone within 1000 years, not 6000-7000 years, as was previously thought.


Could we speed that up any further so as to get started on turning it into the North Atlantic's bread basket?


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## Guest

I kid, but what are the estimates as to how much arable land all this warming will open up? Siberia? Greenland? The potential for new first growth? Feeding more people?


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## Johnnie Burgess

DrMike said:


> I kid, but what are the estimates as to how much arable land all this warming will open up? Siberia? Greenland? The potential for new first growth? Feeding more people?


Feeding more people will drive the liberals crazy some will say it can not be done.


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## Guest

DrMike said:


> I kid, but what are the estimates as to how much arable land all this warming will open up? Siberia? Greenland? The potential for new first growth? Feeding more people?


Granted warming may make agriculture more productive closer to the poles, but change in mean temperature will not make those places equivalent to the temperate zones. There is much less sunlight in those regions, for one thing.


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## Strange Magic

The Wikipedia article on desertification provides information on the rate at which AGW is rendering lands unfit for agriculture as we post. The question then becomes whether putting Greenland and Siberia under the plow over the next centuries will even remotely offset today's losses of arable land. This disregards the certain addition of an additional 2-3-5 whatever billions to Earth's current population of nearly 8 billions. So, rather than a host of rhetorical questions, perhaps those with scientific training among us can begin working on the answers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertification


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> The Wikipedia article on desertification provides information on the rate at which AGW is rendering lands unfit for agriculture as we post. The question then becomes whether putting Greenland and Siberia under the plow over the next centuries will even remotely offset today's losses of arable land. This disregards the certain addition of an additional 2-3-5 whatever billions to Earth's current population of nearly 8 billions. So, rather than a host of rhetorical questions, perhaps those with scientific training among us can begin working on the answers.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertification


Thanks for your condescension and ire. They weren't rhetorical questions. And I know you think this forum is the location where all societal and environmental problems will be solved, but I am not so optimistic. I think it will continue to just be a place where people converse.


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## Guest

DrMike said:


> Thanks for your condescension and ire. They weren't rhetorical questions. And I know you think this forum is the location where all societal and environmental problems will be solved, but I am not so optimistic. I think it will continue to just be a place where people converse.


Are you under the impression that your post shows no sign of condesension or ire?


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## KenOC

On a totally neutral basis: If the ice cover on Greenland were to melt, say, over the next 100 years, what would be uncovered? Rich agricultural land or bare rock?


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Thanks for your condescension and ire. They weren't rhetorical questions. And I know you think this forum is the location where all societal and environmental problems will be solved, but I am not so optimistic. I think it will continue to just be a place where people converse.


As an aid, I did a quick Internet search and came up with a figure of 23 hectares of arable land being lost each minute to desertification. Perhaps you could research how many hectares per minute can be opened to cultivation in Greenland and Siberia and when we can expect to see this begin. Will this be able to additionally handle those expected incremental billions? You are correct; these are not (this time) rhetorical questions. I've started the process of getting answers.

https://reliefweb.int/report/world/high-price-desertification-23-hectares-land-minute


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## joen_cph

KenOC said:


> On a totally neutral basis: If the ice cover on Greenland were to melt, say, over the next 100 years, what would be uncovered? Rich agricultural land or bare rock?


Of course, it's been going through various phases, but 2.4 million years ago it was a landscape with both deciduous (birch) and coniferous forests (larch), plus moors. The present ice cap is believed to be around 1 million years old. The ice cap did not melt away during a warmer period around 100,000 years ago.

Cf. map also showing main rivers etc. here (there are probably also sources in English somewhere)

https://www.geus.dk/udforsk-geologi...at-isfjord/indlandsisen-klimaet-og-istiderne/

moors = hede
nåleskov = coniferous
løvfældende = deciduous
+ barren mountain sections/glaciers (especially in the East)









The uncovered, pictured tree fragments on that website suggest that vegetation back in those days didn't tend to be tall.

But most of the results shown above seem to be based on DNA-findings in the lowest, dirty ice. They also hope to find preserved dinosaur DNA-some time ... 
https://ing.dk/artikel/skoven-under-indlandsisen-79795
https://www.berlingske.dk/videnskab/engang-var-her-groent

At least one drill found a mud layer, mixed up with ice layers
https://ing.dk/artikel/jubel-i-gronland-vi-har-mudder-i-borehullet-110555 (the assumption in that article about Greenland being ice-free about 100,000 years ago has since been revised). But the massive ice seems to have scraped the surface down to the rock in many cases.

The cap is up to 3 km thick. They have about 15 km of ice cores http://www.isogklima.nbi.ku.dk/forskning/boring_og_analyse/


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## joen_cph

It's an interesting question, what is below the ice. 
Asking on another forum, I got this information from someone, who says he has been visiting the drills in Greenland:

Most of the surface down below the ice there will be rock. The ice has indeed scraped a lot of the earth away, and pressed all materials, including the rock, downwards and outwards.

Actually, a lot of the former surface is now below sea level, but parts of it would then become islands, if the ice melted - yet since the ice pressure would also be gone, those rocks would then tend to raise to above sea level again, slowly.

So generally, one shouldn't expect a vast Klondyke of agricultural opportunities ...


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## Strange Magic

^^^^Very true about the isostatic depressing of Greenland (and Antarctica) under the weight of massive ice sheets. Scandinavia is still rebounding (rising) from the lost load of its Pleistocene ice mantle. The Baltic will tend to shrink and freshen, and much will become marshland. AGW and rising sea levels will offer a countering effect--what the end result will be is not fully known.


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## philoctetes

I fear that our attempts to control warming retroactively may be failing already. And I'm not optimistic about projects like this one, where it's not clear who is steering the ship or what the risks and tradeoffs are.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevor...experiment-to-block-out-the-sun/#2bee0cde40c2

Harvard Scientists Begin Experiment To Block Out The Sun


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## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> I fear that our attempts to control warming retroactively may be failing already. And I'm not optimistic about projects like this one, where it's not clear who is steering the ship or what the risks and tradeoffs are.
> 
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevor...experiment-to-block-out-the-sun/#2bee0cde40c2
> 
> Harvard Scientists Begin Experiment To Block Out The Sun


I totally agree. Geoengineering to fix the problems caused by the uncontrolled, unplanned geoengineering of billions of people exploiting a planet, will be a "cure" at least as bad as the disease.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I totally agree. Geoengineering to fix the problems caused by the uncontrolled, unplanned geoengineering of billions of people exploiting a planet, will be a "cure" at least as bad as the disease.


Right. Soooooo much better to cure this planet of the disease called humanity.

So glad this thread won't die.


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## Strange Magic

Remember this article on mammalian biomass? Wild mammals: 4% of total. Humans: 36% of total. Domesticated livestock: 60% of total. A race now between humans and livestock as to which grows faster. The Amazon rainforest is the current area of interest, as Bolsonaro clears forest and wildlife habitat so we can bring Whoppers to the billions more coming. After that deforested soil bakes under the tropical sun for a while, then burns deeply and bakes into an impermeable bricklike surface, we can race ATVs over it. The grandkids will love it!

https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.html


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## philoctetes

Only 30-50 feral hogs are enough to destroy the planet :lol:

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/08/06/think-feral-hogs-is-joke-millions-more-are-rampaging-across-us/?outputType=amp


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Remember this article on mammalian biomass? Wild mammals: 4% of total. Humans: 36% of total. Domesticated livestock: 60% of total. A race now between humans and livestock as to which grows faster. The Amazon rainforest is the current area of interest, as Bolsonaro clears forest and wildlife habitat so we can bring Whoppers to the billions more coming. After that deforested soil bakes under the tropical sun for a while, then burns deeply and bakes into an impermeable bricklike surface, we can race ATVs over it. The grandkids will love it!
> 
> https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.html


To quote from that article:


> When it comes to the biomass of all life on earth, humans and their livestock are barely a blip. They only account for 8 percent of total animal biomass, while arthropods account for 50 percent.
> 
> Overall, animals have nothing on the other other kingdoms. Plants dominate, accounting for about 80 percent of all of the earth's biomass, followed by bacteria at about 15 percent.
> 
> Since most plants are terrestrial, the study found that most of earth's biomass is found on land, but most animal biomass is found in the oceans.


When you put things in their proper perspective, it really doesn't look like the total human population is that much of the total biomass on this planet - barely a blip, according to the article.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Remember this article on mammalian biomass? Wild mammals: 4% of total. Humans: 36% of total. Domesticated livestock: 60% of total. A race now between humans and livestock as to which grows faster. The Amazon rainforest is the current area of interest, as Bolsonaro clears forest and wildlife habitat so we can bring Whoppers to the billions more coming. After that deforested soil bakes under the tropical sun for a while, then burns deeply and bakes into an impermeable bricklike surface, we can race ATVs over it. The grandkids will love it!
> 
> https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.html


There is a figure from the scientific article this article cites as reference, which gives you an idea of the relative sizes of all forms of life on this planet, as a share of the total biomass (measured in Gigatons of Carbon, abbreviated in the figure as GT of C) - I tried posting it on here but it won't work, but you can see it here, in the journal PNAS (I think it is open access, so you should all be able to open it):
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> When you put things in their proper perspective, it really doesn't look like the total human population is that much of the total biomass on this planet - barely a blip, according to the article.


You are correct. Total biomass, excluding vegetation (which is declining due to deforestation and desertification), leaves us--once we dismiss mammals--with reptiles and amphibians (under threat), fish stocks (threatened), insects and other Arthropoda, also under threat, coelenterates (corals especially), the various worm phyla, etc., etc. Many of these phyla will themselves become or are already at risk as forests disappear and seas warm and acidify. But as Stephen Jay Gould reminded us by way of consolation, Earth is primarily a planet of bacteria which we will be unable to drive to extinction. A proper perspective.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> When you put things in their proper perspective, it really doesn't look like the total human population is that much of the total biomass on this planet - barely a blip, according to the article.


Odd. The first thing that struck me about the Ecowatch biomass article--the very first thing!--was the utterly unprecedented current dominance in numbers/biomass/percentage of a single species, _Homo sapiens_. Nowhere in the paleontological/fossil,record is there a parallel. The vast herds of the Serengeti were composed of a multiplicity of species--predators, prey. Ditto the Great Plains, the rainforests, the vastness of the oceans, the long-vanished landscapes of the Cenozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleozoic all teeming with a vast diversity of large species. What a bizarre aberration is today's warped and distorted maldistribution, think I--and very likely the authors of the article. But, being of a robustly cheerful nature, others seem to find nothing amiss here, nothing unusual, nothing to wonder or be concerned sbout. I envy them.


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## mmsbls

I agree that the percentage of human and human livestock is remarkably high. I had seen this number before and was stunned that it is apparently true.


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## millionrainbows

Yes, I agree; there's way to many Homos on this planet.


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## Guest

Stunned that the only sentient species to ever walk this planet, that is capable of multiple and complex communication strategies, that can manipulate their environment beyond, at most, the simple use of rudimentary and found tools, should have a massive survival advantage over anything else beyond single cell organisms? Really? I would think the surprising thing would be the opposite, else what good is millennia of natural selection for beneficial adaptations?


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Stunned that the only sentient species to ever walk this planet, that is capable of multiple and complex communication strategies, that can manipulate their environment beyond, at most, the simple use of rudimentary and found tools, should have a massive survival advantage over anything else beyond single cell organisms? Really? I would think the surprising thing would be the opposite, else what good is millennia of natural selection for beneficial adaptations?


Ahh, the dominance of humankind over all other creatures of like size and presumed divinity of creation (!) with whom we share the planet. "What a piece of work is man!". We bestride the Earth like a colossus, the pinnacle of both glory and wisdom. It will all end fabulously, I'm sure (will it not?)


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## Strange Magic

millionrainbows said:


> Yes, I agree; there's way to many Homos on this planet.


Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Homo Neanderthalensis, Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi: it's driving the hominin anthropologists and taxonomists nuts. And more to come, likely.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Ahh, the dominance of humankind over all other creatures of like size and presumed divinity of creation (!) with whom we share the planet. "What a piece of work is man!". We bestride the Earth like a colossus, the pinnacle of both glory and wisdom. It will all end fabulously, I'm sure (will it not?)


Why don't you actually respond to my post from an evolutionary and natural selection standpoint, since that was how I approached it, and not from a theological perspective. Yours was the epitome of a straw man argument. If we are the Apex species on this planet, then that is through millennia of natural selection that brought us to this point, to the evolution of a brain that gives us survival skills orders of magnitude higher than the next closest animal on the intelligence spectrum.


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## Totenfeier

Strange Magic said:


> Ahh, the dominance of humankind over all other creatures of like size and presumed divinity of creation (!) with whom we share the planet. "What a piece of work is man!". We bestride the Earth like a colossus, the pinnacle of both glory and wisdom. It will all end fabulously, I'm sure (will it not?)


"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but a whimper."

T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"


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## Guest

Humans are uniquely poised because of the brains and intelligence that have evolved. We don't have particularly useful attributes that allow us to live in extreme environments, hot or cold. But our brains helped us to develop clothing, shelter, Central heating and cooling, fire, refrigeration, etc. We can survive under water and on land without the attributes of amphibians.

So my question - do we begrudge any other species exploiting to the fullest extent their evolutionary advantages? Do you now want to cull humans like just some other species, managed by Fish and Wildlife Management?


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Why don't you actually respond to my post from an evolutionary and natural selection standpoint, since that was how I approached it, and not from a theological perspective. Yours was the epitome of a straw man argument. If we are the Apex species on this planet, then that is through millennia of natural selection that brought us to this point, to the evolution of a brain that gives us survival skills orders of magnitude higher than the next closest animal on the intelligence spectrum.


You repeatedly belabor the painfully obvious. All of these "survival skills" that have made humankind the Apex species have brought us far beyond the point of mere stable persistence as a species to the point where we are messing with the fundamentals of the viability of the biosphere; twiddling the dials controlling the chemistries of oceans and atmospheres, scything through the ecosystems that both birthed and then nurtured us, laying waste to land, water and air, and engaging in wholesale elimination of creatures we shared the planet with for millennia. Not buying the feigned objectivity and the resulting "above the clouds" equanimity. From an "evolutionary and natural selection standpoint", we are facing, if not the endgame, then quite a chokepoint indeed. But time to whip out the prescription rose-colored glasses and pronounce this the Best of All Possible Worlds.


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## Guest

This planet has seen choke points before. It's almost like on one side you appeal to science, but then on the other you act view this is all unique, forgetting the science. The planet has heated and cooled before. It has undergone evolutionary chokepoints before. That the specific causes are different this time is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant to the fact that the things have happened before, and will likely happen again, with our without us.

The difference this time is that there is a species that actually has the capacity to better withstand the phenomenon. Almost like natural selection generated a species much less at the mercy of the natural world.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> This planet has seen choke points before. It's almost like on one side you appeal to science, but then on the other you act view this is all unique, forgetting the science. The planet has heated and cooled before. It has undergone evolutionary chokepoints before. That the specific causes are different this time is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant to the fact that the things have happened before, and will likely happen again, with our without us.
> 
> The difference this time is that there is a species that actually has the capacity to better withstand the phenomenon. Almost like natural selection generated a species much less at the mercy of the natural world.


You ignore that every preceding chokepoint has been of non-human origin and either a sudden or a relentless catastrophe. If sudden (asteroid impact, etc.), we have had mass extinctions that have taken millennia if not millions of years for the biosphere to recover from. If slow but inexorable (glaciation), then species have had millennia to migrate and/or evolve. This is the most elementary stuff! The current situation is obvious to the vast consensus of the world's relevant scientists as unique both in its anthropogenic origin and in its grim rapidity.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> You ignore that every preceding chokepoint has been of non-human origin and either a sudden or a relentless catastrophe. If sudden (asteroid impact, etc.), we have had mass extinctions that have taken millennia if not millions of years for the biosphere to recover from. If slow but inexorable (glaciation), then species have had millennia to migrate and/or evolve. This is the most elementary stuff! The current situation is obvious to the vast consensus of the world's relevant scientists as unique both in its anthropogenic origin and in its grim rapidity.


It is estimated that 99% of all species that have ever existed on this planet have gone extinct. What exists now on this planet, then, represents maybe 1% of all species that have ever been. Call it creative destruction. Extinctions are a fact of life on this planet, whether they are sudden or gradual. Like I said, the forces of natural selection have brought us to the point that we have a species that is uniquely poised to be able to adapt in ways that far outpace the natural selection forces of mutation and reproduction. With our ability to clone species, as well, our ability to bring other species through catastrophes has also improved. I'm not in any way saying that we should therefore abuse the planet with abandon, but it seems that this may all be just part of what has been going on since the very beginning of life, regardless of what you believe that was.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> It is estimated that 99% of all species that have ever existed on this planet have gone extinct. What exists now on this planet, then, represents maybe 1% of all species that have ever been. Call it creative destruction. Extinctions are a fact of life on this planet, whether they are sudden or gradual. Like I said, the forces of natural selection have brought us to the point that we have a species that is uniquely poised to be able to adapt in ways that far outpace the natural selection forces of mutation and reproduction. With our ability to clone species, as well, our ability to bring other species through catastrophes has also improved. I'm not in any way saying that we should therefore abuse the planet with abandon, but it seems that this may all be just part of what has been going on since the very beginning of life, regardless of what you believe that was.


The current situation is without precedent. It is not "just part of what has been going on since the very beginning of life.". Never has a single species put the survival of so many other species or of entire vast ecosystems in jeopardy. Or even its very own survival. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make blind.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Stunned that the only sentient species to ever walk this planet, that is capable of multiple and complex communication strategies, that can manipulate their environment beyond, at most, the simple use of rudimentary and found tools, should have a massive survival advantage over anything else beyond single cell organisms? Really?


No, not at all. I assume humans do have a massive survival advantage. I was stunned that humans and human livestock have already reached 96% of mammalian biomass by weight. What percentage did you think they had reached?


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> No, not at all. I assume humans do have a massive survival advantage. I was stunned that humans and human livestock have already reached 96% of mammalian biomass by weight. What percentage did you think they had reached?


99.99% give our take.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> No, not at all. I assume humans do have a massive survival advantage. I was stunned that humans and human livestock have already reached 96% of mammalian biomass by weight. What percentage did you think they had reached?


99.99% give or take.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> The current situation is without precedent. It is not "just part of what has been going on since the very beginning of life.". Never has a single species put the survival of so many other species or of entire vast ecosystems in jeopardy. Or even its very own survival. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make blind.


That is a tautology. Everything new is without precedent. Prior to life on this planet, the emergence of life would have been without precedent. Ditto the emergence of vertebrates, mammals, the first ice age, etc.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> 99.99% give or take.


I guess we were both way off. I don't think the actual number matters except where it may have negative consequences for people, and I don't understand enough about the biosphere to know whether and at what point the percentage of wild mammals matter. I suspect the number of humans matters much more than the percentage of the mammalian biomass we represent.


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## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> ..I was stunned that humans and human livestock have already reached 96% of mammalian biomass by weight.


A related number is driven by our love of animal protein. All those cattle gotta eat, and you can bet they eat more than we do! So…70% of agricultural land use is related to meat production. And more open land is being created by clearing our forests every day. It's the main driving force behind biodiversity loss and the ongoing Anthropocene extinction.

So, a *new UN report* calls for a change in humanity's diet to reduce meat consumption.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike, you cannot escape the argument by hiding behind the hairs you split. Big extinctions , as you point out and as every schoolchild knows, "are a fact of life on this planet". They are fully precedented and result from asteroid/comet impacts, volcanism or vast outpourings of flood basalts, etc. What is without precedent is the ongoing current great extinction event caused by the metastatic increase in numbers of a single species and that species' distortions of the natural chemistry of the biosphere and disruption of its major ecosystems. These facts seem not to register with you. Why is that? And did you intend for others to actually believe that you believed all along that Earth's mammal stocks other than humans and their livestock account for 0.01% of mammal biomass? No surprise to you; no shock? Profound ignorance? Or is it profound cynicism?


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## Strange Magic

mmsbls said:


> I guess we were both way off. I don't think the actual number matters except where it may have negative consequences for people, and I don't understand enough about the biosphere to know whether and at what point the percentage of wild mammals matter. I suspect the number of humans matters much more than the percentage of the mammalian biomass we represent.


What does matter inside people's heads is what sort of world they had hoped to leave to their children's children and grandchildren. I was born into a world that still was rich in fauna, especially megafauna--and with less than a third of today's human population--tigers, orangutans, giraffes, gibbons, rhinos, cheetahs--and was nourished and comforted in my childhood innocence by the knowledge that the wild world was a rich, diverse wonderland that had nurtured the birth and evolution of our own species, and we were to be the custodians of that natural treasure. Perhaps at one time it would have been possible to lose our rich fauna and still soldier on as masters of our suddenly empty and sterile world. But that's turning out to not be the case; we are finding that our fate is also linked to that of our fellow passengers on this island planet, and we had better fix it for them also if we hope to keep it for ourselves. The kids and grandkids will appreciate it if and when we can overcome the ignorance and/or the cynicism that blocks a close look at the gravity of the situation.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> DrMike, you cannot escape the argument by hiding behind the hairs you split. Big extinctions , as you point out and as every schoolchild knows, "are a fact of life on this planet". They are fully precedented and result from asteroid/comet impacts, volcanism or vast outpourings of flood basalts, etc. What is without precedent is the ongoing current great extinction event caused by the metastatic increase in numbers of a single species and that species' distortions of the natural chemistry of the biosphere and disruption of its major ecosystems. These facts seem not to register with you. Why is that? And did you intend for others to actually believe that you believed all along that Earth's mammal stocks other than humans and their livestock account for 0.01% of mammal biomass? No surprise to you; no shock? Profound ignorance? Or is it profound cynicism?


It's actually really simple. I'm not nihilistic. I'm also not as utterly pessimistic about the future as so many on here are. I don't think the planet is perpetually on the brink of destruction. Every new generation has its Chicken Littles telling us the sky is falling. The one consistent thing is just how reliably bad humans are at predicting the future. And I don't think humans are a problem that needs to be fixed.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> It's actually really simple. I'm not nihilistic. I'm also not as utterly pessimistic about the future as so many on here are. I don't think the planet is perpetually on the brink of destruction. Every new generation has its Chicken Littles telling us the sky is falling. The one consistent thing is just how reliably bad humans are at predicting the future. And I don't think humans are a problem that needs to be fixed.


Yet another variation on the theme:"Don't Worry! Be Happy!". Retouch the X-rays. Are there any problems that need to be fixed? Can't be, really, because humans are so bad at predicting the future. Let's just coast along and see what happens.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Yet another variation on the theme:"Don't Worry! Be Happy!". Retouch the X-rays. Are there any problems that need to be fixed? Can't be, really, because humans are so bad at predicting the future. Let's just coast along and see what happens.


I don't know who you were responding to, but it clearly wasn't me, as I argued none of those points. Strange Magic - lining up straw men and knocking them down on talkclassical.com since Sept. 2015!


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## Strange Magic

Marine heatwaves killing corals on the Great Barrier Reef (but nothing to worry about)......

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49255642

Cyanide bombs: part of our weaponry against wildlife....

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-49292681


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## Strange Magic

Strange Magic said:


> Yet another variation on the theme:"Don't Worry! Be Happy!". Retouch the X-rays. Are there any problems that need to be fixed? Can't be, really, because humans are so bad at predicting the future. Let's just coast along and see what happens.


That's a nicely-fitting shoe on your foot, Doctor. I think I got the size just right.......


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> That's a nicely-fitting shoe on your foot, Doctor. I think I got the size just right.......


Shocking that you think you are right. Unprecedented.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Shocking that you think you are right. Unprecedented.


It is not a matter of thinking one is right; it is a matter of knowing one is right. And I am--the science, the facts, are unequivocal.


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## Tero

KenOC said:


> On a totally neutral basis: If the ice cover on Greenland were to melt, say, over the next 100 years, what would be uncovered? Rich agricultural land or bare rock?


Something very much resembling Scotland and Iceland. Bring more sheep.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> It is not a matter of thinking one is right; it is a matter of knowing one is right. And I am--the science, the facts, are unequivocal.


Ehrlich thought the same when he made that bet, or when he predicted the Population Bomb that would occur in the 70s . . . or was it the 80s? There is nothing quite so satisfying as the schadenfreude at watching someone with such certainty as to state an absolute then fall flat on their face.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Ehrlich thought the same when he made that bet, or when he predicted the Population Bomb that would occur in the 70s . . . or was it the 80s? There is nothing quite so satisfying as the schadenfreude at watching someone with such certainty as to state an absolute then fall flat on their face.


Have you thought of getting full time into the recycling business? :lol:


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## KenOC

Perhaps we _should _feel optimistic, seeing as how our numbers are burgeoning! We're certainly doing better than any of our closest relatives in our family of primates. I'm sure if they had an ounce of sense, they'd do better than this:


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Perhaps we _should _feel optimistic, seeing as how our numbers are burgeoning! We're certainly doing better than any of our closest relatives in our family of primates. I'm sure if they had an ounce of sense, they'd do better than this:


Shame they didn't get that last 1% or more that differentiates then from us genetically - they'd be better situated to adapt and survive. Evolutionary dead ends?


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Shame they didn't get that last 1% or more that differentiates then from us genetically - they'd be better situated to adapt and survive. Evolutionary dead ends?


The cynicism. Remarkable. What will the grandkids say?


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> The cynicism. Remarkable. What will the grandkids say?


Any number of things, given the highly advanced brains they will have, the possibilities are endless. Unlike their less evolved non-human primate cousins. They may even learn multiple languages and be able to comment in more than one.


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## Woodduck

DrMike said:


> Shame they didn't get that last 1% or more that differentiates then from us genetically - they'd be better situated to adapt and survive. Evolutionary dead ends?


You must be joking. By "adapting and surviving" in such a stupid and profligate manner, it's we who ensure that otherwise successful species become dead ends.

From the rest of the planet's point of view, the shame is that we got "that last 1%".


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> You must be joking. By "adapting and surviving" in such a stupid and profligate manner, it's we who ensure that otherwise successful species become dead ends.
> 
> From the rest of the planet's point of view, the shame is that we got "that last 1%".


Evolution is neither good nor bad. It just is. The rest of the planet has no point of view because we are the only species on this planet who can even conceive of such notions. No other species even takes into consideration the levels of other plants and animals. They are, until they are no more.


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> Evolution is neither good nor bad. It just is. The rest of the planet has no point of view because we are the only species on this planet who can even conceive of such notions. No other species even takes into consideration the levels of other plants and animals. They are, until they are no more.


Hey, so long as we have chicken nuggets and burgers, and McRibs when McDonalds sees fit to offer them, what other animals do we need? Our descendants will save a lot of money on zoo admissions.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Hey, so long as we have chicken nuggets and burgers, and McRibs when McDonalds sees fit to offer them, what other animals do we need? Our descendants will save a lot of money on zoo admissions.


We can clone animals for zoos. That will come in handy as we colonize new planets.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> We can clone animals for zoos. That will come in handy as we colonize new planets.


The Good Doctor is now rising above all earthly cares on wings of hubris, into the stratosphere of thought where the air is cold and very thin. He will soon burst free from both gravitational and evolutionary bonds with his natal planet and companion species and become a trans-planetary Superman, beyond Good and Evil, while we poor creatures are left below among the ruins to ponder the legacy we leave.

Cloning! Cloning is today's answer. Forget genetic diversity; let's get busy cloning that 4%. Yesterday the answer was nuclear reactors.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> The Good Doctor is now rising above all earthly cares on wings of hubris, into the stratosphere of thought where the air is cold and very thin. He will soon burst free from both gravitational and evolutionary bonds with his natal planet and companion species and become a trans-planetary Superman, beyond Good and Evil, while we poor creatures are left below among the ruins to ponder the legacy we leave.
> 
> Cloning! Cloning is today's answer. Forget genetic diversity; let's get busy cloning that 4%. Yesterday the answer was nuclear reactors.


What do you have against scientific advancement? Or are you now going beyond science and delving into areas of morality? But then again, morality is just an evolutionary construct. Other species have no morality. They want something, they take it. Simple as that. No consideration of long term consequences. If I am merely the latest in an evolutionary chain, and morality is merely a construct that has evolved to help our species interact better in large numbers, I'm under no obligation to abide by it, from an evolutionary or scientific standpoint. Why should I not be able to live as the other species, acting purely out of self interest? There is no external force that governs such things. If we live, great. If we die, well, we wouldn't be the first, or the last, to do so.

For that matter, why do I even have to agree to scientific fact? We live in a world where I must accept a person with an X and a Y chromosome calling themselves a female because that is how they identify, and if I don't accept it, that doesn't mean I am merely pro science, but rather a hateful bigot. We are in a world where the leader of the largest abortion provider in the United States is fired, not because she no longer ardently supports abortion rights, but because she won't say that men should have access to abortions. So maybe I can simply reject all of this scientific data regarding climate because I simply don't identify with it. If something as fundamental as XX = female only if the person chooses to be female, them maybe no scientific fact need be absolute.


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## Strange Magic

^^^^Thank you for a full, rich presentation of your views. Don't forget your protein pill, and put your helmet on.


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## Guest

Explain to me from a scientific perspective why I should care about what happens to the Earth 1 microsecond after I die and cease to exist.


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## Johnnie Burgess

DrMike said:


> What do you have against scientific advancement? Or are you now going beyond science and delving into areas of morality? But then again, morality is just an evolutionary construct. Other species have no morality. They want something, they take it. Simple as that. No consideration of long term consequences. If I am merely the latest in an evolutionary chain, and morality is merely a construct that has evolved to help our species interact better in large numbers, I'm under no obligation to abide by it, from an evolutionary or scientific standpoint. Why should I not be able to live as the other species, acting purely out of self interest? There is no external force that governs such things. If we live, great. If we die, well, we wouldn't be the first, or the last, to do so.
> 
> For that matter, why do I even have to agree to scientific fact? We live in a world where I must accept a person with an X and a Y chromosome calling themselves a female because that is how they identify, and if I don't accept it, that doesn't mean I am merely pro science, but rather a hateful bigot. We are in a world where the leader of the largest abortion provider in the United States is fired, not because she no longer ardently supports abortion rights, but because she won't say that men should have access to abortions. So maybe I can simply reject all of this scientific data regarding climate because I simply don't identify with it. If something as fundamental as XX = female only if the person chooses to be female, them maybe no scientific fact need be absolute.


Some people thinks it so bad a monkey will die but support the right of a woman to kill her unborn child. Those people should never talk about morality because they do not have any.


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## KenOC

A creative suggestion from an unexpected source, as reported by the BBC: “Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has suggested people should ‘poop every other day’ as a way to save the planet. His comment came in answer to a journalist who asked him how to combine agricultural development and protecting the environment.”


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Explain to me from a scientific perspective why I should care about what happens to the Earth 1 microsecond after I die and cease to exist.


We'll just let that float there.......

No kids, I guess.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> We'll just let that float there.......
> 
> No kids, I guess.


If my consciousness ceases to exist when I die, my caring what happens to anyone and anything dies at that moment as well. 
You didn't answer the question. Scientifically, why should I care what happens after my death? Does any other species? Scientifically, my obligation, at most, is survival and propagation of the species. And as far as that goes, so far I'm batting 1000.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> If my consciousness ceases to exist when I die, my caring what happens to anyone and anything dies at that moment as well.
> You didn't answer the question. Scientifically, why should I care what happens after my death? Does any other species? Scientifically, my obligation, at most, is survival and propagation of the species. And as far as that goes, so far I'm batting 1000.


Indeed! Why care about anything? Perfectly defensible position. _Après moi, le Déluge!_


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## Guest

So you don't have an answer? You don't actually have a reason as to why anybody should care? I mean, I know you have no theological reasoning. Just a vague notion you want the planet to go on and on forever? If we are all here by chance, and there is nothing after this, then what does it matter if it all disappeared tomorrow? What motivates you to be so impassioned about your drive to drop the human population by 90%? If there is nothing before or after this, then there are no grandchildren of mine that exist. A human being not yet conceived does not exist. Whether the planet is here or not for some theoretical person 200 years from now is completely immaterial.


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## Tikoo Tuba

Should existence ever end , it would do so now .


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> So you don't have an answer? You don't actually have a reason as to why anybody should care? I mean, I know you have no theological reasoning. Just a vague notion you want the planet to go on and on forever? If we are all here by chance, and there is nothing after this, then what does it matter if it all disappeared tomorrow? What motivates you to be so impassioned about your drive to drop the human population by 90%? If there is nothing before or after this, then there are no grandchildren of mine that exist. A human being not yet conceived does not exist. Whether the planet is here or not for some theoretical person 200 years from now is completely immaterial.


"What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach."

No kids, I guess.


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## KenOC

DrMike is of course corrrect. There is no wholly logical reason why we should care if our planet is left a toxic ruin, carrying with it a payload only of bacteria resistant to its pervasive poisons.

But I'll miss those Whoppers.


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> So you don't have an answer? You don't actually have a reason as to why anybody should care? I mean, I know you have no theological reasoning. Just a vague notion you want the planet to go on and on forever? If we are all here by chance, and there is nothing after this, then what does it matter if it all disappeared tomorrow? What motivates you to be so impassioned about your drive to drop the human population by 90%? If there is nothing before or after this, then there are no grandchildren of mine that exist. A human being not yet conceived does not exist. Whether the planet is here or not for some theoretical person 200 years from now is completely immaterial.


We want to keep what we perceive as valuable. It's basic.


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## Guest

Surely there is some food you have tried that is better than a Whopper, else I would think you were absolutely ready to kiss this entire planet goodbye immediately. I'll miss a plate of great ribs (pork, of course - I'm not some heathen Texan who claims to know what BBQ is) complimented with some fried okra and wonderfully smoky turnip greens. If I had the choice, the ribs would be from Dreamland.

And SM clearly doesn't understand my offspring situation either, nor my reference to batting 1000 in the survival and species propagation categories. That's okay. He probably thinks I have also abandoned religion. I know he thinks I care nothing for the planet, because what else could anybody conclude of someone who doesn't fully support his every pronouncement on the issue of this planet and it's survival.


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## Guest

Surely there is some food you have tried that is better than a Whopper, else I would think you were absolutely ready to kiss this entire planet goodbye immediately. I'll miss a plate of great ribs (pork, of course - I'm not some heathen Texan who claims to know what BBQ is) complimented with some fried okra and wonderfully smoky turnip greens. If I had the choice, the ribs would be from Dreamland.

And SM clearly doesn't understand my offspring situation either, nor my reference to batting 1000 in the survival and species propagation categories. That's okay. He probably thinks I have also abandoned religion. I know he thinks I care nothing for the planet, because what else could anybody conclude of someone who doesn't fully support his every pronouncement on the issue of this planet and it's survival.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> We want to keep what we perceive as valuable. It's basic.


You can't keep anything if you cease to exist. What does it matter? Everything eventually dies, even our sun. If this miniscule existence is it, them why not simply live life to the fullest and leave everyone and everything to try and do likewise?


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> You can't keep anything if you cease to exist. What does it matter? Everything eventually dies, even our sun. If this miniscule existence is it, them why not simply live life to the fullest and leave everyone and everything to try and do likewise?


Words to live by. I am inspired.


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## Woodduck

DrMike said:


> Evolution is neither good nor bad. It just is. The rest of the planet has no point of view because we are the only species on this planet who can even conceive of such notions. No other species even takes into consideration the levels of other plants and animals. They are, until they are no more.


Well goodness me. I had no idea that planets couldn't conceive of notions. Thank you, professor. 

You're absolutely right. **** all those evolutionary dead ends! I'm sure you're smart enough to suggest ways of killing them off even faster.


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## Woodduck

DrMike said:


> Explain to me from a scientific perspective why I should care about what happens to the Earth 1 microsecond after I die and cease to exist.


Explain from a scientific perspective why you should care about existing at all. Then explain how a "scientific perspective" is needed as a justification for caring.



> You can't keep anything if you cease to exist. What does it matter? Everything eventually dies, even our sun. If this miniscule existence is it, them why not simply live life to the fullest and leave everyone and everything to try and do likewise?


Is it conceivable to you that "living life to the fullest" involves caring for things outside one's own skin?


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## Guest

I see there will be no answer to the question.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Explain from a scientific perspective why you should care about existing at all. Then explain how a "scientific perspective" is needed as a justification for caring.
> 
> Is it conceivable to you that "living life to the fullest" involves caring for things outside one's own skin?


My caring does not come from a scientific perspective. I'm just wondering what motivates the people who believe their existence ends at death.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> My caring does not come from a scientific perspective. I'm just wondering what motivates the people who believe their existence ends at death.


Perhaps a trip downstairs to the Religious Discussion Group is in order.......


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## Room2201974

DrMike said:


> My caring does not come from a scientific perspective. I'm just wondering what motivates the people who believe their existence ends at death.


TC welcomes James G. Watt (me worry?)


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> You can't keep anything if you cease to exist. What does it matter? Everything eventually dies, even our sun. If this miniscule existence is it, them why not simply live life to the fullest and leave everyone and everything to try and do likewise?


This seems to be the conclusion of many religions. Forsake your family and the future, and fervently follow the theology -- and all you have to do is die! There's nothing else to do!

Camus said something similar from a very different set of traditions. He said the only one really serious philosophical question is "Suicide?".


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## Strange Magic

Room2201974 said:


> TC welcomes James G. Watt (me worry?)


Good old Jim Watt! About as corrupt a public official as they come--voted onto TIME magazine's list of top ten worst cabinet members. His middle name--Gaius--was of course the real name of the Roman emperor Caligula, famous for making his horse a senator ( or was it a consul?).


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## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Good old Jim Watt! About as corrupt a public official as they come--voted onto TIME magazine's list of top ten worst cabinet members. His middle name--Gaius--was of course the real name of the Roman emperor Caligula, famous for making his horse a senator ( or was it a consul?).


You mean he deleted 30,000 emails that were subpoenaed and bleach bit the server so they could not be retrieved.


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## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> Good old Jim Watt! About as corrupt a public official as they come--voted onto TIME magazine's list of top ten worst cabinet members. His middle name--Gaius--was of course the real name of the Roman emperor Caligula, famous for making his horse a senator ( or was it a consul?).


What a guy. Wiki remembers;
"A controversy erupted after a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in September 1983, when Watt mocked affirmative action with his description of a department coal leasing panel: "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent."[22]

Within three weeks of making this statement, on October 9, 1983, he announced his resignation at deputy undersecretary Thomas J. Barrack's ranch, near President Reagan's Rancho del Cielo."


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> You mean he deleted 30,000 emails that were subpoenaed and bleach bit the server so they could not be retrieved.


Do I mean that? I had no idea.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Do I mean that? I had no idea.


What can be more than corrupt than deleting 30,000 subpoenaed emails?


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> What can be more than corrupt than deleting 30,000 subpoenaed emails?


Deleting 30,001 emails.


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## Room2201974

Johnnie Burgess said:


> What can be more than corrupt than deleting 30,000 subpoenaed emails?


"Adoption" meetings!


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Good old Jim Watt! About as corrupt a public official as they come--voted onto TIME magazine's list of top ten worst cabinet members. His middle name--Gaius--was of course the real name of the Roman emperor Caligula, famous for making his horse a senator ( or was it a consul?).


Wow, that is some real historical cherry picking. Gaius was the second most common prenomen in the Roman world, following only Lucius. Sure, it was Caligula's prenomen (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanic us), most likely because it had also belonged to Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus) and Julius Caesar himself (Gaius Julius Caesar). But yeah, I'm sure it was Caligula they had in mind when his parents have him that middle name.


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## Guest

So clearly my subtle attempts are evading you - you'd rather scold than take the point I'm trying to make, so I'll lead you by the hand here.

Many on here think that the way to get people to care about the environment and AGW and be motivated to do something is to scold and ridicule and lecture and tell them how unenlightened they are. I find it amazing that you don't have more success with your methods. Lecturing and condescension are usually such powerful tools of persuasion!

Look, you want people to be as motivated in a particular area, they need positive motivation. You all have wonderful ideas for negative motivation - tax this, regulate that, have the government force people to act in this way and not in that way. Negative motivations only get you so far, and most people look for every possible way to evade them, loopholes, etc. But give them positive motivation, and it is amazing what they will do. 

If my house is on fire, I am highly motivated to act. If my neighbor's house is on fire, I am highly motivated, if not as highly as for my own. If somebody's house on the other side of the planet is on fire, it would barely register me. 

So how do you positively motivate people? Well, you don't do it by citing scary new stories, or throwing the latest IPCC panel report at them, or some new scientific paper - the overwhelming majority of people on this planet will never read or understand a scientific paper. Religion is a highly motivating force - for good or for ill. When it is for good, it can motivate people to great lengths of selflessness, and is frequently used for charity.

But you all don't like religion, for the most part, based on how much it gets ridiculed. Fine. I tried to coax you to provide a positive motivation for why anybody should care about what happens to the planet 100 years from now, and what you came up with was pretty pathetic, as far as motivating factors go. In fact, you spent more effort ridiculing my statements. I'm sure that was cathartic for you, but ultimately pointless.

You are never going to motivate people to be more than casually interested in the environment and AGW by lecturing and shaming and condescending to them. You'll get them to say what they think they are supposed to say - sure, I care about the environment - but that support ends up being a mile wide and an inch deep. Ask people if they think global warming is important, and a majority agree. Once you start attaching price tags to how much they might have to pay, and support is inversely proportional to the amount they will have to pay. Because they see no motivation. And you aren't doing a thing to provide it. If they don't believe as you do, you just dismiss them as ignorant and backwards. How is that working for you? 

So go ahead - bemoan the death of the planet and don't bother ever trying to figure out how to positively motivate people to help. You'll feel virtuous and self-righteous, and I'm sure it is cathartic. But if it is actual results you want, you need to change your methodology. You sure haven't convinced me that you have any good reasons as to why I should join you.


----------



## Open Book

DrMike said:


> If my consciousness ceases to exist when I die, my caring what happens to anyone and anything dies at that moment as well.
> You didn't answer the question. Scientifically, why should I care what happens after my death? Does any other species? Scientifically, my obligation, at most, is survival and propagation of the species. And as far as that goes, so far I'm batting 1000.


No other species can plan for the future the way humans can. Not just store food for next winter like a squirrel, which is probably hardwired behavior favored by evolution, but plan long term, for all kinds of contingencies. We can make plans that enable our species to continue. We are aware that we are a species and most of us want to preserve our species. Preservation of our species now requires more than just selfish behavior that benefits the individual (like most behavior that evolution has allowed to persist), it requires cooperation and planning.

And you didn't answer the question about having kids, which is admittedly no one's business except that it would shed light on why you don't care about the future. Most people with kids do. Why invest all that energy into having kids if you don't care about their ability to survive and have kids of their own? Most of us want our kids to have a decent quality of life, so we care about the future.

It's a riot that the admins tried to dry up this thread by producing another, similar one, but it persisted.


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> No other species can plan for the future the way humans can. Not just store food for next winter like a squirrel, which is probably hardwired behavior favored by evolution, but plan long term, for all kinds of contingencies. We can make plans that enable our species to continue. We are aware that we are a species and most of us want to preserve our species. Preservation of our species now requires more than just selfish behavior that benefits the individual (like most behavior that evolution has allowed to persist), it requires cooperation and planning.
> 
> And you didn't answer the question about having kids, which is admittedly no one's business except that it would shed light on why you don't care about the future. Most people with kids do. Why invest all that energy into having kids if you don't care about their ability to survive and have kids of their own? Most of us want our kids to have a decent quality of life, so we care about the future.
> 
> It's a riot that the admins tried to dry up this thread by producing another, similar one, but it persisted.


Read the post just before and you will see what I was getting at. In fact, I have lots of motivations, I do have children, and I want the best for them. But I was trying to draw out from people on here positive motivations, beyond simple biological considerations, for why anybody should care. Mine include theological, but I don't think many on here want to have anything to do with such things. Adherence to scientific publications, though, seems like a poor substitute as far as positive motivations go. I want the best for my kids, not because I have evolved to think that way, but for bigger, more motivating reasons.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Wow, that is some real historical cherry picking. Gaius was the second most common prenomen in the Roman world, following only Lucius. Sure, it was Caligula's prenomen (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanic us), most likely because it had also belonged to Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus) and Julius Caesar himself (Gaius Julius Caesar). But yeah, I'm sure it was Caligula they had in mind when his parents have him that middle name.


The only Gaius anybody into Roman history cares about--as a Gaius--was Caligula.


----------



## Open Book

I can't see any way around some deprivations that are required to preserve the world whether we like it or not, DrMike. How should we motivate people to be OK with some deprivation? Maybe by touting the attractions of a simpler life that relies on cooperation instead of "Everyone for himself, whoever has the most in the end wins"? I think people are overwhelmed by materialism, it's not that rewarding. 

I'm not against religion. I think people may need religion or something is missing in their lives, even if religion is an illusion. Without religion they try to fill their lives up with excess material things or drugs or other harmful stuff.

People who mock religion, I wonder wonder what they will be thinking when they are dying. Will they be atheists on their deathbeds and face their impending simple oblivion bravely? I doubt it.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> The only Gaius anybody into Roman history cares about--as a Gaius--was Caligula.


Seriously? 99.99% of people who even know who Caligula was probably only know him as Caligula. So i find that really hard to buy. And anybody who knows that Caligula's prenomen was Gaius would also know that it came from being named after the other Gaius Julius Caesars - both of which are far more interesting, other than for Caligula's depravity.


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> I can't see any way around some deprivations that are required to preserve the world whether we like it or not, DrMike. How should we motivate people to be OK with some deprivation? Maybe by touting the attractions of a simpler life that relies on cooperation instead of "Everyone for himself, whoever has the most in the end wins"? I think people are overwhelmed by materialism, it's not that rewarding.
> 
> I'm not against religion. I think people may need religion or something is missing in their lives, even if religion is an illusion. Without religion they try to fill their lives up with excess material things or drugs or other harmful stuff.
> 
> People who mock religion, I wonder wonder what they will be thinking when they are dying. Will they be atheists on their deathbeds and face their impending cessation of existence bravely? I doubt it.


Deprivation is not the obstacle. There are numerous examples of people going through deprivation willingly when the motivation is strong enough. Look at people who sacrifice their lives to help others. Parents will deprive themselves of any number of things to help their children. Humans are capable of extraordinary things when they have the right motivation. Logic and science and chastisement rarely motivate people to those heights, though.

Religion is falling in the world, and secularism is rising. It seems that selflessness is also falling. I just don't think that secularism, logic, science, whatever substitutes for religion you want, have the kind of motivating power to drive selflessness in mass quantities. I'm not saying that only religious people are selfless, or are the only virtuous types. I'm just saying that the level of motivation you need to energize people to willingly accept the amount of deprivation necessary to correct what so many on here believe to be inevitable is not going to come from any of the sources and methods they like to use.


----------



## Strange Magic

A large Earth-crossing asteroid is heading toward us. Astronomers closely studying its projected path based on its past orbit are confident that it will impact the Earth within X number of months, years, whatever. The astronomers submit their findings to the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, NOAA, The Royal Society, and the UN, along with an plea that action be taken, and a list of suggestions for deflecting the asteroid. A majority of the general US public is sufficiently convinced by the science reporting in the mainstream media that the problem is real and that "something should/must be done". The president and a chunk of the US Senate and House, however, argue that either A) the "science" is fake, or B) that the impact will either be not so bad or happen on the other side of the Earth--maybe hit China or land in the Pacific. Let's wait and see what, if anything, happens.

However, enough members of the Senate and House decide to ignore the possible downside at the polls if they support a plan to spend billions to deflect the asteroid. They have respect for the astronomers' and the greater scientific consensus, believe what they've been told about the dangers, and vote to put an effective program into motion, hoping there is enough time--they rise above politics and do their job in a veto-proof majority.

Today, the US Congress, given a pro-science majority and a pro-science president to offer leadership, could defy entrenched, irrational opposition to vigorously halting and reversing AGW, and vote a series of measures to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, trying several approaches to find whichever works best: a carbon tax, a crash program to electrify transportation, to eliminate and penalize deforestation, and a whole host of whatever solutions the scientists and engineers suggest or propose. The answer is leadership, not followership.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Seriously? 99.99% of people who even know who Caligula was probably only know him as Caligula. So i find that really hard to buy. And anybody who knows that Caligula's prenomen was Gaius would also know that it came from being named after the other Gaius Julius Caesars - both of which are far more interesting, other than for Caligula's depravity.


The only Gaius that anybody into Roman history cares about--as a Gaius--was Caligula.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> A large Earth-crossing asteroid is heading toward us. Astronomers closely studying its projected path based on its past orbit are confident that it will impact the Earth within X number of months, years, whatever. The astronomers submit their findings to the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, NOAA, The Royal Society, and the UN, along with an plea that action be taken, and a list of suggestions for deflecting the asteroid. A majority of the general US public is sufficiently convinced by the science reporting in the mainstream media that the problem is real and that "something should/must be done". The president and a chunk of the US Senate and House, however, argue that either A) the "science" is fake, or B) that the impact will either be not so bad or happen on the other side of the Earth--maybe hit China or land in the Pacific. Let's wait and see what, if anything, happens.
> 
> However, enough members of the Senate and House decide to ignore the possible downside at the polls if they support a plan to spend billions to deflect the asteroid. They have respect for the astronomers' and the greater scientific consensus, believe what they've been told about the dangers, and vote to put an effective program into motion, hoping there is enough time--they rise above politics and do their job in a veto-proof majority.
> 
> Today, the US Congress, given a pro-science majority and a pro-science president to offer leadership, could defy entrenched, irrational opposition to vigorously halting and reversing AGW, and vote a series of measures to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, trying several approaches to find whichever works best: a carbon tax, a crash program to electrify transportation, to eliminate and penalize deforestation, and a whole host of whatever solutions the scientists and engineers suggest or propose. The answer is leadership, not followership.


Yeah? How is that working for you? Solved the problem yet? That isn't leadership. You just want to appoint a dictator who can just do what the scientists tell him to do.

Like I said - that method isn't going to get what you want. You can continue to pursue it, if you aren't actually interested in effecting change. Browbeating and dictating policies - yep, highly motivating.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> The only Gaius that anybody into Roman history cares about--as a Gaius--was Caligula.


Ah - cause you say so? I took several Roman history courses in college as part of my history minor. I never heard any professors who taught my courses state this line of yours.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Yeah? How is that working for you? Solved the problem yet? That isn't leadership. You just want to appoint a dictator who can just do what the scientists tell him to do.
> 
> Like I said - that method isn't going to get what you want. You can continue to pursue it, if you aren't actually interested in effecting change. Browbeating and dictating policies - yep, highly motivating.


The answer, part of it anyway, lies in the voting booth. Elect a president who respects science, and Congresspeople who pledge to do their jobs. The gun control situation shows today the we have both a president and a choking majority in the Senate who defy large public majorities for real change in the gun laws.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Ah - cause you say so? I took several Roman history courses in college as part of my history minor. I never heard any professors who taught my courses state this line of yours.


You had the wrong professors.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> The answer, part of it anyway, lies in the voting booth. Elect a president who respects science, and Congresspeople who pledge to do their jobs. The gun control situation shows today the we have both a president and a choking majority in the Senate who defy large public majorities for real change in the gun laws.


Ah, so you're going to stick with this line? Okay. Just don't be surprised when you don't move the needle at all. Virtue signaling over desired results.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> You had the wrong professors.


Yeah - they had PhDs in their field. You like to appeal to authority in other areas - not here?


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Deprivation is not the obstacle. There are numerous examples of people going through deprivation willingly when the motivation is strong enough. Look at people who sacrifice their lives to help others. Parents will deprive themselves of any number of things to help their children. Humans are capable of extraordinary things when they have the right motivation. Logic and science and chastisement rarely motivate people to those heights, though.
> 
> Religion is falling in the world, and secularism is rising. It seems that selflessness is also falling. I just don't think that secularism, logic, science, whatever substitutes for religion you want, have the kind of motivating power to drive selflessness in mass quantities. I'm not saying that only religious people are selfless, or are the only virtuous types. I'm just saying that the level of motivation you need to energize people to willingly accept the amount of deprivation necessary to correct what so many on here believe to be inevitable is not going to come from any of the sources and methods they like to use.


You seem to have suspicions about the dangers of the related problems of AGW and overpopulation.

And then you ask why people should care about the future when they will die soon anyway. ..Let the promises of this or that religion be our refuge?

Predictably, many people will oppose these posted opinions, even if they don't reply. I like to hear your outlooks.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> And anybody who knows that Caligula's prenomen was Gaius would also know that it came from being named after the other Gaius Julius Caesars - both of which are far more interesting, other than for Caligula's depravity.


Nevertheless, nobody cares that Caligula's praenomen was Gaius because  he was named Gaius for other Gaius Julius Caesars. Your professors would be startled to learn that you find such a minor microfact so obsessively important.


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> You seem to have suspicions about the dangers of the related problems of AGW and overpopulation.
> 
> And then you ask why people should care about the future when they will die soon anyway. ..Let the promises of this or that religion be our refuge?
> 
> Predictably, many people will oppose these posted opinions, even if they don't reply. I like to hear your outlooks.


Most religions preach not only what will come after this life, but also obligations during this life. It isn't all about the afterlife.

But the point is simply this - all we get is nagging and browbeating and appeals to science to "motivate" people to believe in AGW. Sure - you'll snag a few, shame them into going along. That has been the methodology - that, and trotting out hypocritical celebrities who fly around their planet in private jets to tell everybody how committed they are to the environment. And Average Joe is the one who gets the criticism because they can't buy that expensive all electric vehicle, or because they dare to have more kids than the smarter people tell them they should, or eat more steaks and burgers than the intelligentsia think is necessary. And they are the ones lectured to that they are the problem. And then they get the latest IPCC report thrown in their face.

Why, oh why, has that technique not been able to get 100% of people behind helping the environment?


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Nevertheless, nobody cares that Caligula's praenomen was Gaius because  he was named Gaius for other Gaius Julius Caesars. Your professors would be startled to learn that you find such a minor microfact so obsessively important.


They'd likely laugh at you suggesting that the G. in James G. Watt was because his parents wanted to name him after Caligula, especially since Gaius was the Latin equivalent of John in its ubiquity.

And I've once again hit peak Strange Magic for the day, so I'll leave you to scream at the silence.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> They'd likely laugh at you suggesting that the G. in James G. Watt was because his parents wanted to name him after Caligula, especially since Gaius was the Latin equivalent of John in its ubiquity.
> 
> And I've once again hit peak Strange Magic for the day, so I'll leave you to scream at the silence.


Poor James Gaius Watt! Lousy Secretary of the Interior, and stuck with a lousy middle name--who knows what his parents were thinking? Born under a Bad Sign.


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Most religions preach not only what will come after this life, but also obligations during this life. It isn't all about the afterlife.
> 
> But the point is simply this - all we get is nagging and browbeating and appeals to science to "motivate" people to believe in AGW. Sure - you'll snag a few, shame them into going along. That has been the methodology - that, and trotting out hypocritical celebrities who fly around their planet in private jets to tell everybody how committed they are to the environment. And Average Joe is the one who gets the criticism because they can't buy that expensive all electric vehicle, or because they dare to have more kids than the smarter people tell them they should, or eat more steaks and burgers than the intelligentsia think is necessary. And they are the ones lectured to that they are the problem. And then they get the latest IPCC report thrown in their face.
> 
> Why, oh why, has that technique not been able to get 100% of people behind helping the environment?


You don't want government to 'motivate' us.

You want religious claims to motivate us?

The evidence won't motivate us, it's too difficult to sort out?

It's complicated.

I try to follow the evidence, but I'm as emotional as anyone else (which includes worries of the economy and equities turning downward, because markets only need a clear direction and they will overshoot. It's musical chairs and you need to guess correctly. Very stressful.).


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> You don't want government to 'motivate' us.
> 
> You want religious claims to motivate us?
> 
> The evidence won't motivate us, it's too difficult to sort out?
> 
> It's complicated.
> 
> I try to follow the evidence, but I'm as emotional as anyone else (which includes worries of the economy and equities turning downward, because markets only need a clear direction and they will overshoot. It's musical chairs and you need to guess correctly. Very stressful.).


You aren't hearing what I'm saying. I didn't say government shouldn't motivate us, I'm saying government is extremely poor at motivating us, because typically their only tool is negative motivation: do this or else! How well do you respond to that? And besides, most of those negative motivations end up disproportionately hurting poorer people. So then they feel they are being picked on.

Religion? I already acknowledged that people don't want to use that to motivate people in the area of environmentalism, even though elsewhere I have noted that is a missed opportunity. Why not phrase it in the sense that it is irresponsible for a person who professes a belief in God to then abuse God's creations? But that is problematic, as it really isn't going to sound sincere, especially coming from people who are frequently apathetic, if not outright despising of religion.

I know you really want people to bend to scientific argument. Hah! People do all kinds of things to themselves in spite of more firmly established scientific evidence of the inherent dangers - smoking/tobacco consumption, excessive alcohol consumption, beyond the occasional red wine for its benefits, drug abuse, and there are many others. You think throwing scientific arguments about what may happen to the planet 100+ years from now are going to be more convincing?

I don't know what the motivation will be for the environmental side to get people to gladly join them - and I'm not particularly motivated to help you find it, given that so many on that side take such glee at mocking my skepticism. Not exactly how to win friends and influence people. I'm just here telling you all that, if your goal is to actually accomplish something and not merely achieve a sense of moral superiority, then you need to come up with some better arguments and some better reasons for people to give up not just comforts, but in many cases necessities, to join the fight. I asked for people to explain why I should care - I got ridicule. Fair enough. That tells me you care more about the means than the ends.


----------



## Strange Magic

Religion and AGW: Despite the Pope's expressed concern over AGW and the small but growing band of young evangelicals urging their coreligionists to get on board, the New Religion of worshipping Trump himself as a god has derailed among Republicans any enthusiasm for combatting climate change--if Trump and his handlers aren't buying, they're not buying. The only thing that offers hope is victory at the polls and a total purge of the do-nothing, know-nothing deniers in Congress and the Oval Office. I agree that a religion of caring for the Earth would/could be a powerful force for change, but religion is both obsessed with retrograde doctrinal minutiae, and in the US has largely abandoned observation, common sense, and morals to embrace the ethical vacuum that is Donald Trump and his enablers/explainers/excusers.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/pope-didnt-fix-climate-change


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Religion and AGW: Despite the Pope's expressed concern over AGW and the small but growing band of young evangelicals urging their coreligionists to get on board, the New Religion of worshipping Trump himself as a god has derailed among Republicans any enthusiasm for combatting climate change--if Trump and his handlers aren't buying, they're not buying. The only thing that offers hope is victory at the polls and a total purge of the do-nothing, know-nothing deniers in Congress and the Oval Office. I agree that a religion of caring for the Earth would/could be a powerful force for change, but religion is both obsessed with retrograde doctrinal minutiae, and in the US has largely abandoned observation, common sense, and morals to embrace the ethical vacuum that is Donald Trump and his enablers/explainers/excusers.
> 
> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/pope-didnt-fix-climate-change


As you can see here, SM perfectly encapsulates the thus far completely ineffectual method of trying to convince people to support environmentalist policies - use it as an all-encompassing political cudgel, care more about blasting your political opponents than appealing to people, and guarantee that your condescension and disdain for those who disagree with you will permanently keep them opposed to your views.

Thank you, SM, for brilliantly illustrating the very problem I am trying to describe!


----------



## Open Book

DrMike said:


> Religion? I already acknowledged that people don't want to use that to motivate people in the area of environmentalism, even though elsewhere I have noted that is a missed opportunity. Why not phrase it in the sense that it is irresponsible for a person who professes a belief in God to then abuse God's creations? But that is problematic, as it really isn't going to sound sincere, especially coming from people who are frequently apathetic, if not outright despising of religion.


If you are religious, are you motivated by a concern for abuse against God's creations? If you are, why isn't that enough to motivate you to be concerned about climate change regardless of how the rest of the world is trying to arouse concern about it? What do you care about the methods used to persuade other people if you have your own motivations?

It didn't sound as if you were offended at God's creations being negatively impacted by climate change and overpopulation, not by things you said earlier. You came off as a cold Darwinist - if species can't adapt to man, too bad about them, they don't deserve to live, and it's no great loss.


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> If you are religious, are you motivated by a concern for abuse against God's creations? If you are, why isn't that enough to motivate you to be concerned about climate change regardless of how the rest of the world is trying to arouse concern about it? What do you care about the methods used to persuade other people if you have your own motivations?
> 
> It didn't sound as if you were offended at God's creations being negatively impacted by climate change and overpopulation, not by things you said earlier. You came off as a cold Darwinist - if species can't adapt to man, too bad about them, they don't deserve to live, and it's no great loss.


Well, I'll excuse you if you maybe haven't been down to the cesspool of the groups, not knowing that much of what I said was facetious - I am, in fact, religious. I do believe I have a religious obligation to care for God's creations. And I do my part. As to the greater AGW issue, I am sympathetic to a point, but I don't buy the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker. I also think there are things that can be done without the extreme measures that some claim we need. Like I have said before, the future predictions are where I am most skeptical.


----------



## Strange Magic

As is DrMike's long tested and favored approach, he actually offers nothing himself by way of tackling almost any of the planet's problems and challenges. He prefers to pepper others with questions, rhetorical or otherwise, and find usually imaginary holes in others' proposals, arguments, evidence, yet never reveals anything contributory to the solutions required. Other than nuclear reactors and a recent feeble allusion to cloning, there is nothing. Why, you ask? Because he remains in the thrall of Panglossian cornucopian "economists"-- actually themselves prophets of a new religion of future abundance and prosperity arrived at hand-in-glove with the salvivic certainties of the already established yet blinkered faiths. "Faith" trumps science; ignorance and devotion to a new and very false god triumphs in the Senate and the White House over a growing public awareness of and pressure for change. But the Young are beginning to lead the way forward.....


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> ...Like I have said before, the future predictions are where I am most skeptical.


Yogi Berra: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> Yogi Berra: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."


Yet NASA, NOAA, the National Academy of Sciences, the UN (several agencies), the US Military and Intelligence, and the Royal Society, along with a phalanx of national and international scientific associations, are willing to try and are staking their reputations and credentials on such prediction.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Yet NASA, NOAA, the National Academy of Sciences, the UN (several agencies), the US Military and Intelligence, and the Royal Society, along with a phalanx of national and international scientific associations, are willing to try and are staking their reputations and credentials on such prediction.


Given how you still revere Ehrlich in spite of his failed predictions, and are still quite the Malthusian, exactly what repercussions do you expect would come to those groups should their predictions prove wrong? I'm sure they will simply be passed off as "we were merely off in the timing" or some such rationalization.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> As is DrMike's long tested and favored approach, he actually offers nothing himself by way of tackling almost any of the planet's problems and challenges. He prefers to pepper others with questions, rhetorical or otherwise, and find usually imaginary holes in others' proposals, arguments, evidence, yet never reveals anything contributory to the solutions required. Other than nuclear reactors and a recent feeble allusion to cloning, there is nothing. Why, you ask? Because he remains in the thrall of Panglossian cornucopian "economists"-- actually themselves prophets of a new religion of future abundance and prosperity arrived at hand-in-glove with the salvivic certainties of the already established yet blinkered faiths. "Faith" trumps science; ignorance and devotion to a new and very false god triumphs in the Senate and the White House over a growing public awareness of and pressure for change. But the Young are beginning to lead the way forward.....


Nah - you got me all wrong. Hell, I've never even heard the term "Panglossian cornucopian" until you typed it. Nah - I'm just a good old biblical Christian, who still believes that the commandment to multiply and replenish the earth is still in effect. Go ahead - use that wonderful persuasiveness you have to now ridicule my religious beliefs. I believe faith and science can work together - hence my being both a scientist and a believer. You call me ignorant, I'm sure - once again, winning friends and influencing people.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Everybody row!


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Given how you still revere Ehrlich in spite of his failed predictions, and are still quite the Malthusian, exactly what repercussions do you expect would come to those groups should their predictions prove wrong? I'm sure they will simply be passed off as "we were merely off in the timing" or some such rationalization.


Always the rhetorical questions: "Exactly (I love that "exactly"!) what repercussions do you expect, etc., etc.". But, as always, my rhetorical question that I always ask The Doctor: Where's the Beef?


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Always the rhetorical questions: "Exactly (I love that "exactly"!) what repercussions do you expect, etc., etc.". But, as always, my rhetorical question that I always ask The Doctor: Where's the Beef?


13 years from now, when the planet is still here, and you are still saying the same things and the end is no nearer and support for your ideas is no larger, we'll revisit this and the wisdom of your methodology.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> 13 years from now, when the planet is still here, and you are still saying the same things and the end is no nearer and support for your ideas is no larger, we'll revisit this and the wisdom of your methodology.


I guess you no longer keep abreast of the news or of the scientific literature. Probably better for your equilibrium. Rest now.


----------



## Luchesi

Anti-natalists: The people who want you to stop having babies

On Reddit, r/antinatalism has nearly 35,000 members

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-49298720


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> Anti-natalists: The people who want you to stop having babies
> 
> On Reddit, r/antinatalism has nearly 35,000 members
> 
> https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-49298720


That is actually a pretty small number. I'm sure you could drum up at least 35,000 followers for just about any idea. These people would believe that Strange Magic is a pathetic moderate. Fringe is the best way to describe them.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> That is actually a pretty small number. I'm sure you could drum up at least 35,000 followers for just about any idea. These people would believe that Strange Magic is a pathetic moderate. Fringe is the best way to describe them.


I agree. A fringe. I much prefer approaching population stabilization and then reduction from the overwhelmingly positive and demonstrated approach of striving for full female equality and autonomy coupled with women's confidential access to effective contraception.


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> That is actually a pretty small number. I'm sure you could drum up at least 35,000 followers for just about any idea. These people would believe that Strange Magic is a pathetic moderate. Fringe is the best way to describe them.


This is fascinating. I thought of you.






One of the key players of our immune system is the complement system. An army of millions and trillions of tiny bombs, which work together in a complex and elegant dance to stop intruders in your body.


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> This is fascinating. I thought of you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One of the key players of our immune system is the complement system. An army of millions and trillions of tiny bombs, which work together in a complex and elegant dance to stop intruders in your body.


The complement system is an incredible one - although this gave me nightmarish flashbacks of my early immunology courses, where I had to memorize the ridiculously complex complement cascade pathway. I couldn't recite it for you now - I have spent most of my career focusing on other components of the immune system, primarily the T cells.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Within religious teachings , a vow of poverty most relates to conservation/minimalistic energy usage . But we've needed some wealth to fulfill our human purpose in Life : Mother instructed us to advance technology and protect the earth from mass-extinction-class asteroids . We can be artists of the balance .


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## Strange Magic

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Within religious teachings , a vow of poverty most relates to conservation/minimalistic energy usage . But we've needed some wealth to fulfill our human purpose in Life : Mother instructed us to advance technology and protect the earth from mass-extinction-class asteroids . We can be artists of the balance .


Well put! I and I believe many other science-oriented conservationists regard humanity's role on Earth as being the Wise Curators of a museum planet. That is currently not the case.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Well put! I and I believe many other science-oriented conservationists regard humanity's role on Earth as being the Wise Curators of a museum planet. That is currently not the case.


A museum planet? Look but don't touch? That is not in any way practical. We have to live here, our basic survival requires a certain level of "touching the exhibits" that wouldn't be allowed in a museum.

I view this planet like my home. I live in it. I use it. It gets signs of wear and tear, sure, but I do what I can, within my abilities and my income, to keep it in good repair looking nice. I even pay extra for insurance to protect against unforeseen damage. But that has its limits. You can always pay more for insurance, but after a point the cost to risk ratio is not worth it for those extremely rare potentialities. I have lots of trees around my house, and we get severe weather here in the South, so I buy an appropriate amount of insurance. If someone offered to sell me insurance that was an order of magnitude more expensive because it would protect me from everything from trees falling on my roof up to and including falling asteroids and elephants, well, I'll hold onto my money and take my chances.


----------



## Luchesi

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Within religious teachings , a vow of poverty most relates to conservation/minimalistic energy usage . But we've needed some wealth to fulfill our human purpose in Life : Mother instructed us to advance technology and protect the earth from mass-extinction-class asteroids . We can be artists of the balance .


Oh mother... The rock removed dinos and such. We arose from our burrows and invented Reality TV. When another rock removes us just imagine what glorious creatures will arise to defend this galaxy against the nasty invaders from nearby galaxies (older than M31). Creatures from Planet Earth, by such a quirk of fate, will be safe long enough to learn to release new baby universes to keep the eternally-inflating multiverse fertile. A larger perspective.

Anyway, that's how I see it.. lol


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> A museum planet? Look but don't touch? That is not in any way practical. We have to live here, our basic survival requires a certain level of "touching the exhibits" that wouldn't be allowed in a museum.
> 
> I view this planet like my home. I live in it. I use it. It gets signs of wear and tear, sure, but I do what I can, within my abilities and my income, to keep it in good repair looking nice. I even pay extra for insurance to protect against unforeseen damage. But that has its limits. You can always pay more for insurance, but after a point the cost to risk ratio is not worth it for those extremely rare potentialities. I have lots of trees around my house, and we get severe weather here in the South, so I buy an appropriate amount of insurance. If someone offered to sell me insurance that was an order of magnitude more expensive because it would protect me from everything from trees falling on my roof up to and including falling asteroids and elephants, well, I'll hold onto my money and take my chances.


I did not expect you to understand. I make no claim to "spirituality" but your dispassion is of an altogether different order.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I did not expect you to understand. I make no claim to "spirituality" but your dispassion is of an altogether different order.


Can't make a reply without being condescending, can you? You really are tiring. As many times as I try to cool things down and try and just debate, you always look for ways of disagreeing in the most disagreeable way, don't you? I'm about done with you.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Can't make a reply without being condescending, can you? You really are tiring. As many times as I try to cool things down and try and just debate, you always look for ways of disagreeing in the most disagreeable way, don't you? I'm about done with you.


I know that you hate it when others vigorously disagree with you. You've "been done" with me a number of times before. Do you really mean it this time?


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I know that you hate it when others vigorously disagree with you. You've "been done" with me a number of times before. Do you really mean it this time?


Yes, I believe I do. Just like I'm done with the political groups. Have a great life.


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## Strange Magic

Regarding being the curators of a museum planet, as conscientious curators, humankind would pay careful attention to the carrying capacity of the land and waters. We would also take care that our numbers did not grow such that they threatened the survival of species and entire ecosystems, or grow to the point where we and our livestock did not so dominate the Earth's mammalian biomass as currently. Reducing through full female equality global populations to mid-18th-century levels or about 10% of today's figure would assure both a rich, vibrant, abundant human culture and a wholly-viable biosphere. The Good Doctor posts of his house and property but even he would not expand his house indefinitely to the point where it occupies almost the entire plot of land upon which it sits. Yet this is both today's trend and is sanctioned by the "endless growth" economists and ideologues that govern much political thinking certainly in the USA today. But as Wise Custodians, humankind would ensure the places for orangutans, tigers, polar bears, right whales--even king cobras--remain viable and inviolate. As rational beings, we can have our cake and eat it too, given imagination, leadership, and a concern for both our planet and our children's children's children.


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## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> Regarding being the curators of a museum planet, as conscientious curators, humankind would pay careful attention to the carrying capacity of the land and waters. We would also take care that our numbers did not grow such that they threatened the survival of species and entire ecosystems, or grow to the point where we and our livestock did not so dominate the Earth's mammalian biomass as currently. Reducing through full female equality global populations to mid-18th-century levels or about 10% of today's figure would assure both a rich, vibrant, abundant human culture and a wholly-viable biosphere. The Good Doctor posts of his house and property but even he would not expand his house indefinitely to the point where it occupies almost the entire plot of land upon which it sits. Yet this is both today's trend and is sanctioned by the "endless growth" economists and ideologues that govern much political thinking certainly in the USA today. But as Wise Custodians, humankind would ensure the places for orangutans, tigers, polar bears, right whales--even king cobras--remain viable and inviolate. As rational beings, we can have our cake and eat it too, given imagination, leadership, and a concern for both our planet and our children's children's children.


It's in line with what we know about trial-and-error-evolved species. We use up all the resources in one area, and enjoy the good times, and then we move on. We overpopulate, diverge and adapt. It's always worked in the past. Will we change something so deep within us??


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## Strange Magic

Luchesi said:


> It's in line with what we know about trial-and-error-evolved species. We use up all the resources in one area, and enjoy the good times, and then we move on. We overpopulate, diverge and adapt. It's always worked in the past. Will we change something so deep within us??


We certainly need to change, or else our children's and their offspring's future looks bleak. Scientists and other speculative people have thought about these issues for many decades--one such was Rêne Dubos who, while pursuing a stellar career as a microbiologist, thought deeply about the place of humankind within a viable biosphere, and wrote extensively on the issue. There have been many others.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Dubos


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Luchesi said:


> Will we change something so deep within us??


Who has been programmed by the fascist Moton ? Many . It is a political belief that you are entitled to all the energy that your money can buy . Adherents support the modern govt/corporate machine . They laugh when viewing North Korea from space . Why ? Because the country is dark at night - no streetlamps , no ultra-glitter neon cities . Is it poverty that is their sorry joke ? The Amish are ridiculed also . But living by candlelight is so pleasant , and with friends coming by to play music in the evening .


----------



## Guest

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Who has been programmed by the fascist Moton ? Many . It is a political belief that you are entitled to all the energy that your money can buy . Adherents support the modern govt/corporate machine . They laugh when viewing North Korea from space . Why ? Because the country is dark at night - no streetlamps , no ultra-glitter neon cities . Is it poverty that is their sorry joke ? The Amish are ridiculed also . But living by candlelight is so pleasant , and with friends coming by to play music in the evening .


So we are to envy the environmental progressiveness of North Korea. Reminds me of the old saying about Rome - they make a wasteland and call it peace. A plague wiping out humanity will also decrease energy usage. Not the same as someone willingly choosing to do so. The Amish and the North Korean are in no way comparable. Unless you think it would be good to force environmental regulations with a gun, I wouldn't cite North Korea to argue your case.


----------



## KenOC

US Senator Jim Inhofe was chairman of the Senate Environment Committee from 2003 to 2007 and again from 2015 to 2017. Given his position, he had some surprising views. From Wiki:



> In 2012, Inhofe's "The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future" was published by WorldNetDaily Books, presenting his global warming conspiracy theory. He said that, because "God's still up there", the "arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."


This kind of thinking floors me. God doesn't care that we visit the most heinous atrocities in each other and on our companion species, but is going to prevent us from damaging the atmosphere we live in? Is there something in a religious way of thinking that destroys the capacity for rational thought?


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> US Senator Jim Inhofe was chairman of the Senate Environment Committee from 2003 to 2007 and again from 2015 to 2017. Given his position, he had some surprising views. From Wiki:
> 
> This kind of thinking floors me. God doesn't care that we visit the most heinous atrocities in each other and on our companion species, but is going to prevent us from damaging the atmosphere we live in? Is there something in a religious way of thinking that destroys the capacity for rational thought?


Is that a serious question? Some of the big names in the neo-Malthusian can have suggested some pretty horrendous solutions to what they see as a population problem. Could we ask whether there is something with science that destroys the capacity for moral thought?


----------



## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> US Senator Jim Inhofe was chairman of the Senate Environment Committee from 2003 to 2007 and again from 2015 to 2017. Given his position, he had some surprising views. From Wiki:
> 
> This kind of thinking floors me. God doesn't care that we visit the most heinous atrocities in each other and on our companion species, but is going to prevent us from damaging the atmosphere we live in? Is there something in a religious way of thinking that destroys the capacity for rational thought?


He knows what God does, because he's so smart.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> He knows what God does, because he's so smart.


Only religious people show that kind of hubris, right? Why, they seem like the kind of people who would demand we do what they say because they think they can predict the next century and beyond.


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Only religious people show that kind of hubris, right? Why, they seem like the kind of people who would demand we do what they say because they think they can predict the next century and beyond.


Knowing what God does is more difficult than extrapolating trends into the next century.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Who has been programmed by the fascist Moton ? Many . It is a political belief that you are entitled to all the energy that your money can buy . Adherents support the modern govt/corporate machine . They laugh when viewing North Korea from space . Why ? Because the country is dark at night - no streetlamps , no ultra-glitter neon cities . Is it poverty that is their sorry joke ? The Amish are ridiculed also . But living by candlelight is so pleasant , and with friends coming by to play music in the evening .


So do you want to live like the people in North Korea?


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> Knowing what God does is more difficult than extrapolating trends into the next century.


Malthus and Ehrlich clearly showed that even extrapolating trends out 10 years is extremely difficult - a century? Predictions are always based on predictable trends. They are worthless when there are too many unknowns. Peak oil, food production, technological breakthroughs - all areas where extrapolation failed.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Malthus and Ehrlich clearly showed that even extrapolating trends out 10 years is extremely difficult - a century? Predictions are always based on predictable trends. They are worthless when there are too many unknowns. Peak oil, food production, technological breakthroughs - all areas where extrapolation failed.


The Supreme World Champions of extrapolation are the cornucopian "economists" confidently forecasting a world of infinite growth and plenty for all in an earthly paradise. Simple prudence, though, dictates that humankind instead pay serious attention to the overwhelming scientific consensus that AGW is real and is exacerbated by ongoing population growth. Sooner or later, the wolf comes.


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## Tikoo Tuba

Johnnie Burgess said:


> So do you want to live like the people in North Korea?


I'd walk all the land with a backpack and a flute . 
Give a hoot , don't pollute !


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Malthus and Ehrlich clearly showed that even extrapolating trends out 10 years is extremely difficult - a century? Predictions are always based on predictable trends. They are worthless when there are too many unknowns. Peak oil, food production, technological breakthroughs - all areas where extrapolation failed.


They were sending a warning. The IPCC is doing it too. Preachers do it all the time. You might warn us to take your god concept seriously. I've never seen you post about that. It's surely equally as important.

People learn something and get excited, but the planet is very big. In our short lives, the sizes/distances in the universe and the timescales are inconceivable. How about 'living' forever?

What's invisible and the biggest, most capable thing we can imagine containing the First Cause?


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> They were sending a warning. The IPCC is doing it too. Preachers do it all the time. You might warn us to take your god concept seriously. I've never seen you post about that. It's surely equally as important.
> 
> People learn something and get excited, but the planet is very big. In our short lives, the sizes/distances in the universe and the timescales are inconceivable. How about 'living' forever?
> 
> What's invisible and the biggest, most capable thing we can imagine containing the First Cause?


I'm not sure exactly where you are going with this, so I won't assume.

But, getting to your first point - "They were sending a warning." True - preachers and religious leaders do it all the time. But there is a major difference. At least in Western countries, with predominantly Christian backgrounds, the preachers can't get governments to enact taxes and other legislation based on their warnings. The IPCC, and other political supporters of climate science, are going beyond sending a warning. They are trying to enact taxes and other legislation that will have a very real, very tangible impact on peoples' lives. The two are not on comparable ground.

I don't post up here very much at all about my religious views because the forum has the rule that religious discussion should only take place down in the groups. I no longer post in the groups, but you can go down to the groups and find the religious ones and see that I have in the past discussed my beliefs.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Luchesi said:


> They were sending a warning. The IPCC is doing it too. Preachers do it all the time. You might warn us to take your god concept seriously. I've never seen you post about that. It's surely equally as important.
> 
> People learn something and get excited, but the planet is very big. In our short lives, the sizes/distances in the universe and the timescales are inconceivable. How about 'living' forever?
> 
> What's invisible and the biggest, most capable thing we can imagine containing the First Cause?


Hot Air? ?


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> I'm not sure exactly where you are going with this, so I won't assume.
> 
> But, getting to your first point - "They were sending a warning." True - preachers and religious leaders do it all the time. But there is a major difference. At least in Western countries, with predominantly Christian backgrounds, the preachers can't get governments to enact taxes and other legislation based on their warnings. The IPCC, and other political supporters of climate science, are going beyond sending a warning. They are trying to enact taxes and other legislation that will have a very real, very tangible impact on peoples' lives. The two are not on comparable ground.
> 
> I don't post up here very much at all about my religious views because the forum has the rule that religious discussion should only take place down in the groups. I no longer post in the groups, but you can go down to the groups and find the religious ones and see that I have in the past discussed my beliefs.


"They are trying to enact taxes and other legislation that will have a very real, very tangible impact on peoples' lives."

Makes me wonder whether people would pay more in accordance with their recommendations than what many people already contribute to their churches. I've seen some figures but I can't remember what they were.

It's moot because very little will be done. And it would take more than people can afford.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> "They are trying to enact taxes and other legislation that will have a very real, very tangible impact on peoples' lives."
> 
> Makes me wonder whether people would pay more in accordance with their recommendations than what many people already contribute to their churches. I've seen some figures but I can't remember what they were.
> 
> It's moot because very little will be done. And it would take more than people can afford.


It is already known that while belief in AGW has majority support, that support drops off precipitously when you start attaching a price tag to that support. According to this article, belief is surging in the U.S., but 70% are unwilling to pay as little as $10/month to fight it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/do-most-americans-believe-climate-change-polls-say-yes/580957/


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## Strange Magic

Steve King on Population Growth: What a Guy!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49349794


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> It is already known that while belief in AGW has majority support, that support drops off precipitously when you start attaching a price tag to that support. According to this article, belief is surging in the U.S., but 70% are unwilling to pay as little as $10/month to fight it.
> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/do-most-americans-believe-climate-change-polls-say-yes/580957/


An excellent article that all should read. Here's an excerpt:

"Yet it's not clear that Americans are willing to do anything about fighting climate change. Many economists support a carbon tax, a policy that makes polluters pay for emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Forty-four percent of Americans say they would support such a tax, according to the AP.

Americans become more supportive of a carbon tax, though, when they know where the money it collects will go. Sixty-seven percent of Americans would support a carbon tax if it were used to restore forests and wetlands. Majorities also endorse a tax that would support renewable-energy R&D or public-transit improvements. But even then, most people are not willing to spend much. Seventy percent say they would vote against a $10 monthly fee tacked on to their power bill. Forty percent would oppose a $1 monthly increase."

The message that comes through loud and clear is the need for political leadership. One can quote polls if one is looking for an excuse to sit on one's hands because A) you believe there actually is no problem, or B) if one believes that one's planet is not worth saving (too expensive!). But this is where leadership, and educating the public a la FDR and his fireside chats comes into play. We'll never get that from D. Trump or Mitch McConnell. What is required is the same sort of political, electoral housecleaning of the sort that put FDR into office and broke the paralysis of the Great Depression.


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## Tikoo Tuba

When it is said we don't want to fight climate change , this more simply means we do not want to fight . When we don't want to fight with nuclear weapons , we do not want them to exist . We also do not want political leadership . I suppose I'll not explain who we are .


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## KenOC

Some climate reporting garbage. BBC has a big story on Kiritimati, the world's largest coral atoll. The title is, "Climate change: How to save a sinking Island nation." It goes on at length about how rising seas are drowning the entire place, causing mass relocations.

Well, no doubt it's wet there - the highest point is just two meters above sea level. But Wiki's lengthy article makes no mention of increased flooding, either from sea level rise or from the more common culprit, overpumping groundwater. Again, there is no mention of forced relocations*. And current sea level rise is about an eighth of an inch per year - there's no doubt that Kiritimati's years are numbered, but it's hard to see an emergency quite yet.

This kind of reporting does a disservice to those worried about a very real problem. BBC's article, complete with the usual alarmism, is *here*.

*In fact, the atoll's population is increasing. "The island's population has strongly increased in recent years, from about 2,000 in 1989 to about 5,000 in the early 2000s."


----------



## joen_cph

...................working on it

EDIT: It's complicated. Everybody agrees that the population has indeed gone up on and that immigration hasn't been much so far, due to the limited financial means of the locals. It's the prospect of future immigration due to climate changes that worries.

The wording in the BBC article is:
"_This culture may be set to disappear. One in seven of all relocations in Kiribati - whether between islands or internationally - are attributed to environmental change. And a 2016 UN report has shown that half of households have already been affected by sea level rise on Kiritimati._"

Kiribati is of course not Kiritimati, and 'affecting households' is not the same as relocating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiribati

The mentioned UN report is this one:
https://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:5903/Online_No_20_Kiribati_Report_161207.pdf 
For instance, on P.37 it says:
Kiribati: " _The vast majority (95%) of households were affected by one or more natural hazards in the period 2005-2015. Sea level rise is the hazard which has impacted the most house-holds, affecting approximately 80 per cent._ "

Kiribati has bought up land in other countries, possibly due to the prospect of future exodus:
https://qz.com/228948/an-entire-isl...te-to-fiji-before-they-sink-into-the-pacific/

Local population censuses: http://www.mfed.gov.ki/statistics/documents/2015_Population_Census_Report_Volume_1final_211016.pdf). 
(p.4,5 in http://www.climate.gov.ki/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/20_KIRITIMATI-revised-2012.pdf

Migration is also dealt with in the report:
"_Migration is not a common experience in Kiribati and international migration is rare_ " (p.41)
"_Future migration flows are likely to be increasingly motivated by climate change, but large numbers may be unable to benefit from migration _"(p.60)

Concerning local worries and strategies, cf. for example this, Kiribati maybe being wiped off the map in the 20th century, and some villages already gone:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/10/24/kiribati/?noredirect=on


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> An excellent article that all should read. Here's an excerpt:
> 
> "Yet it's not clear that Americans are willing to do anything about fighting climate change. Many economists support a carbon tax, a policy that makes polluters pay for emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Forty-four percent of Americans say they would support such a tax, according to the AP.
> 
> Americans become more supportive of a carbon tax, though, when they know where the money it collects will go. Sixty-seven percent of Americans would support a carbon tax if it were used to restore forests and wetlands. Majorities also endorse a tax that would support renewable-energy R&D or public-transit improvements. But even then, most people are not willing to spend much. Seventy percent say they would vote against a $10 monthly fee tacked on to their power bill. Forty percent would oppose a $1 monthly increase."
> 
> The message that comes through loud and clear is the need for political leadership. One can quote polls if one is looking for an excuse to sit on one's hands because A) you believe there actually is no problem, or B) if one believes that one's planet is not worth saving (too expensive!). But this is where leadership, and educating the public a la FDR and his fireside chats comes into play. We'll never get that from D. Trump or Mitch McConnell. What is required is the same sort of political, electoral housecleaning of the sort that put FDR into office and broke the paralysis of the Great Depression.


Now if you and some of you liberal friends off to pay my extra fees you can do so.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Peace is the necessity of a world in balance . But look out! People will reason that a Supreme Evil Dictator can accomplish this . For sanity , have some respect for anarchy .


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Now if you and some of you liberal friends off to pay my extra fees you can do so.


Leadership, Johnnie, Leadership! And educating the citizenry about issues. I just finished reading a book about the appeasement of the dictators Hitler and Mussolini by the English and French in the 1930s. The author makes clear that the dangers posed by the dictators were well known and the repeated failure of appeasement to reduce the threat was equally known. Yet lack of leadership on the part of the ruling elites of the two big European democracies allowed conditions to so deteriorate that WWII became inevitable. Ditto with reasonable gun control in the USA today--an increasingly alarmed public, disturbed by the unprecedented saturation of American society with guns, is thwarted in its efforts to curb gun violence by an entrenched head-in-the-sand political opposition terrorized by the threats of the National Rifle Association to destroy its opponents on Primary Day. There is no leadership!


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> ...an increasingly alarmed public, disturbed by the unprecedented saturation of American society with guns, is thwarted...


From Pew Research, 2013 but I doubt much has changed.

Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware

More recently, the Washington Post reports, "Yet the current rate of firearm violence is still far lower than in 1993, when the rate was 6.21 such deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 3.4 in 2016."


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Leadership, Johnnie, Leadership! And educating the citizenry about issues. I just finished reading a book about the appeasement of the dictators Hitler and Mussolini by the English and French in the 1930s. The author makes clear that the dangers posed by the dictators were well known and the repeated failure of appeasement to reduce the threat was equally known. Yet lack of leadership on the part of the ruling elites of the two big European democracies allowed conditions to so deteriorate that WWII became inevitable. Ditto with reasonable gun control in the USA today--an increasingly alarmed public, disturbed by the unprecedented saturation of American society with guns, is thwarted in its efforts to curb gun violence by an entrenched head-in-the-sand political opposition terrorized by the threats of the National Rifle Association to destroy its opponents on Primary Day. There is no leadership!


If you want a carbon tax you can pay my share.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

KenOC said:


> From Pew Research, 2013 but I doubt much has changed.
> 
> Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
> 
> More recently, the Washington Post reports, "Yet the current rate of firearm violence is still far lower than in 1993, when the rate was 6.21 such deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 3.4 in 2016."


He will ignore that. Also if you take Chicago, St Louis, Baltimore and Detroit out of US totals the US is at the bottom in ranked nations.


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## KenOC

More fluff climate reporting, though simple carelessness this time. “July was officially the hottest month in Earth’s history.” Not likely, given that the planet was a ball of molten matter at one time. Even in much later geologic history, there have been long periods when mean terrestrial temperatures were much higher than we experience now. Maybe that’s why Trump wants to buy Greenland…?


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> From Pew Research, 2013 but I doubt much has changed.
> 
> Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
> 
> More recently, the Washington Post reports, "Yet the current rate of firearm violence is still far lower than in 1993, when the rate was 6.21 such deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 3.4 in 2016."


Western-Style Democracies, Showing Gun Deaths per 100,000 people and Guns per 100 people:

Australia 0.93 21.7
Austria 2.63 30.4
Belgium 1.82 17.2
Canada 1.97 30.8
Denmark 1.28 12.0
Finland 3.25 27.5
France 2.83 31.2
Germany 1.01 30.3
Ireland 0.80 3.89
Netherlands 0.58 3.90
New Zealand 1.07 30.0
Norway 1.75 31.3
Spain 0.62 10.4
Sweden 1.47 31.6
Switzerland 3.01 24.5
United Kingdom 0.23 6.60
United States 10.54 101.54

Average Number of Gun Deaths per 100,000 for All Countries Above Other than USA: 1.58. USA: 10.54
Average Number of Guns per 100 People for All Countries Above Other than USA: 21.45. USA: 101.05


----------



## Strange Magic

A listing of the most deadly gun massacres since 1949. We note that the old, sane NRA was seized by fanatics in 1977. In 1949, according to Gunwatch, there were 55 million guns in America. In 1977, there were 151 million guns, a rate of increase of 3.4 million guns per year. After the seizure of the NRA in 1977, the rate of increase jumped by 160% to a new rate of 5.6 million guns per year, resulting in a US gun supply of 347 million guns by 2012. The results of the efforts of the new, radical NRA to weaponize American society begin to show up in the Wilkes-Barre massacre of 1982. By 2005, the trend of rapidly increasing numbers of massacres is quite clear. Only those stupefied by ideology fail to see the trend. The schoolchildren see it. Their parents are beginning to see it.

1949. 13 dead Camden
1966. 18 dead Texas Tower
1982. 13 dead Wilkes-Barre
1984. 22 dead San Ysidro
1986. 15 dead Edmond P.O.
1990. 10 dead GMAC
1991. 24 dead Luby's
1999. 15 dead Columbine
2005. 10 dead Red Lake
2007. 33 dead Virginia Tech
2009. 11 dead Geneva County
2009. 13 dead Fort Hood
2009. 14 dead Binghamton 
2012. 12 dead Aurora
2012. 28 dead Sandy Hook
2013. 13 dead Washington Navy Yard
2015. 15 dead Umpqua
2015. 16 dead San Bernardino
2016. 50 dead Orlando
2017. 59 dead Las Vegas
2017. 27 dead Sutherland
2018. 17 dead Parkland
2018. 11 dead Pittsburgh
2018. 12 dead Thousand Oaks
2019. 12 dead Virginia Beach
2019. 22 dead El Paso
2019. 9 dead Dayton

If we look at the years 1999 (Columbine) through 2012, we find the rate of increase of guns has jumped to 12.4 million per year. No surprise since the NRA insists that guns make us safer and sales increase after every massacre; there were two gun shows going nearby as parents mourned their Parkland dead children. Taking the 12.4 million guns per year through to 2018, there are now more than 420 million guns in these United States of America, making us in theory the safest country in the world. But somehow our death rate from guns is some 5 times higher than other high income countries. Could it be that the NRA and our guns are killing us? The answer is yes.

Note: a full discussion of the current plague of guns choking America's public space can be found downstairs in the several Political forums.


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> More fluff climate reporting, though simple carelessness this time. "July was officially the hottest month in Earth's history." Not likely, given that the planet was a ball of molten matter at one time. Even in much later geologic history, there have been long periods when mean terrestrial temperatures were much higher than we experience now. Maybe that's why Trump wants to buy Greenland…?


Perhaps the word "recorded" needs to be inserted? I think you are being too clever by half.


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> He will ignore that. Also if you take Chicago, St Louis, Baltimore and Detroit out of US totals the US is at the bottom in ranked nations.


What happens when suicide by gun is added back into the equation:

https://americanhealth.jhu.edu/article/how-do-gun-laws-affect-suicide-rates
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/


----------



## EdwardBast

DrMike said:


> You aren't hearing what I'm saying. I didn't say government shouldn't motivate us, I'm saying government is extremely poor at motivating us, because typically their only tool is negative motivation: do this or else! How well do you respond to that? And besides, most of those negative motivations end up disproportionately hurting poorer people. So then they feel they are being picked on.


This is utter nonsense. The government has been subsidizing fossil fuel companies (positive motivation) for decades. Had those subsidies gone to sustainable technologies, our current situation would be less pressing and dire, and the U.S. would be at the forefront of energy innovation with all the economic benefits that affords.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> What happens when suicide by gun is added back into the equation:
> 
> https://americanhealth.jhu.edu/article/how-do-gun-laws-affect-suicide-rates
> https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/


Why should 99 percent of people who do not break the law be punished for 1 percent?


----------



## Guest

EdwardBast said:


> This is utter nonsense. The government has been subsidizing fossil fuel companies (positive motivation) for decades. Had those subsidies gone to sustainable technologies, our current situation would be less pressing and dire, and the U.S. would be at the forefront of energy innovation with all the economic benefits that affords.


As if government hasn't also been subsidizing "sustainable technologies." 
Regardless, your response doesn't actually address my statement. Do you deny that carbon taxes would disproportionally affect poor people?


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Why should 99 percent of people who do not break the law be punished for 1 percent?


The punishment: I can't have my assault rifle with giant-capacity magazine. I can't have my cop-killer bullets. I can't have my bump stock. I can't have my silencers. I can't carry my weapons into church, school, the library, the shopping mall. And, worst of all, I have to submit to a universal background check like the NRA was for, before they were against it. The suffering! Things are deteriorating to the point they were when Eisenhower was president and mass murders were virtually unknown, and the NRA was an organization of hunters, target shooters, and collectors/hobbyists like my father. Terrible!


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> As if government hasn't also been subsidizing "sustainable technologies."
> Regardless, your response doesn't actually address my statement. Do you deny that carbon taxes would disproportionally affect poor people?


As serious articles on carbon taxes or taxes on carbon dioxide emissions make clear, there are many ways of mitigating whatever regressive effects such taxes might have. The Wikipedia entry is just one of several sources of information.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> The punishment: I can't have my assault rifle with giant-capacity magazine. I can't have my cop-killer bullets. I can't have my bump stock. I can't have my silencers. I can't carry my weapons into church, school, the library, the shopping mall. And, worst of all, I have to submit to a universal background check like the NRA was for, before they were against it. The suffering! Things are deteriorating to the point they were when Eisenhower was president and mass murders were virtually unknown, and the NRA was an organization of hunters, target shooters, and collectors/hobbyists like my father. Terrible!


Texas disagrees with you on some of them


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> As if government hasn't also been subsidizing "sustainable technologies."
> Regardless, your response doesn't actually address my statement. Do you deny that carbon taxes would disproportionally affect poor people?


This link shows results of a study looking at the effect of a $15/ton carbon tax on each quintile in the US. Higher quintile families have a higher carbon tax burden/person.Still higher quintile families can probably afford to pay higher taxes.

The particular policy this study considers is a carbon fee and dividend. The dividend returns all proceeds from the fee equally to US families. The study estimates that 53% of families and 58% of individuals receive a net financial benefit from the policy. Those who would receive a benefit are overwhelmingly from the lower quintiles.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

This has been the Age of Fire . We have already learned how it will come to a close . The sun will shoot it's great arrow at the earth . Our evening sky will be wild and beautiful then , of fanciful waves upon waves of energetic light . In the morning , we rest .


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> Western-Style Democracies, Showing Gun Deaths per 100,000 people and Guns per 100 people:...


Interesting lists and no doubt accurate, though they don't address the points raised in my post (which were about the declines in US gun violence, not their current frequency). The statistics will also tell you that the incidence of aggravated assault and forcible rape are much higher in the US than in many other countries, and these crimes have only a marginal connection with firearms. Could it be that the problem is not guns, but simply that we're a more violent society?


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> Interesting lists and no doubt accurate, though they don't address the points raised in my post (which were about the declines in US gun violence, not their current frequency). The statistics will also tell you that the incidence of aggravated assault and forcible rape are much higher in the US than in many other countries, and these crimes have only a marginal connection with firearms. Could it be that the problem is not guns, but simply that we're a more violent society?


Gun violence has manifested itself in recent decades, as the number of guns has increased by sevenfold since 1949, in gun-inflicted suicides, mass killings in public spaces, and in inner cities murder as handguns have proliferated. While it is (partially) true that the average person in the US may be experiencing less danger from guns, statistically, the facts is facts strongly correlating gun saturation with gun-caused death. Also, the slaughter of people, including schoolchildren, _en masse_, and of inner-city minority youth, causes societal stresses much more pronounced than the country experienced 50 or 60 years ago. We may be a more violent society, but the NRA and the gun manufacturers have ensured that people have now an abundance of lethal tools with which to express that violence.

In short, is this the way we want to live? It wasn't like this when the NRA was sane and the gun manufacturers hadn't joined in a ghastly alliance with that radical and unAmerican organization, now a tool of Putin's Russia.


----------



## KenOC

You refuse to respond to the fact (Pew Research, Washington Post) that firearm violence in the US has declined by close to half since 1993. Why?

I repeat: From Pew Research, 2013:​Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware

More recently, the Washington Post reports, "Yet the current rate of firearm violence is still far lower than in 1993, when the rate was 6.21 such deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 3.4 in 2016."​


----------



## Strange Magic

I thought I did reply, but I'll do it again. And forget the "refuse" rhetoric. I'll be happy to acknowledge the drop--uneven and wavering--in "firearm violence" since 1993. If Pew says it, I believe it. Pew, however, seems not to consider gun suicide as "firearm violence", nor do they focus on the socially traumatizing and behavior-changing nature of the rising mass killings. Some apologists for gun insanity assure us that the mass killings account for only a small number of deaths--small consolation for traumatizing schoolchildren and others occupying public spaces and distorting social cohesion. And Pew does not make the obvious comparison to other western democracies with much lower rates of gun possession and gun death. But if we must grasp at straws.....

In your opinion, is the current gun situation in America today healthy? Is it healthy compared with the 1950s? Is this the best of all possible worlds?


----------



## KenOC

I merely point out that your rhetoric suggests that gun violence in the US is at an all-time high. And of course it is not. It is, in fact, considerably reduced from 25 years ago.


----------



## Strange Magic

I state facts. From Wikipedia. Note USA homicide and suicide rates compared with other countries. I freely affirm that The Facts drive my rhetoric. I repeat: do you think the current American gun situation is healthy? Is it healthier than it was in the 1950s? You don't have to answer--we both know what the answer is.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Shall murder and suicide along with abortion and homosexuality be considered population control ? Seems very crude . Our wisdom of population/resource balance is with the wise grandmothers . They have big brains that attend to this .


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> I state facts. From Wikipedia.


I hereby give up trying to get you to respond to the clear fact of the decline in gun violence in the US over that past quarter century.


----------



## joen_cph

From the Pew source:"_Nearly all the decline in the firearm homicide rate took place in the 1990s; the downward trend stopped in 2001 and resumed slowly in 2007_. "

Mathematicians among us might try to calculate the number of decades of patience and 100,000s of deaths it takes, to bring bring it down to a more average level.

Likewise what the increase in mass shootings will statistically evolve into, during these decades.


----------



## KenOC

joen_cph said:


> From the Pew source:"_Nearly all the decline in the firearm homicide rate took place in the 1990s; the downward trend stopped in 2001 and resumed slowly in 2007_. "
> 
> Mathematicians among us might try to calculate the number of decades of patience and 100,000s of deaths it takes, to bring bring it down to a more average level.
> 
> Likewise what the increase in mass shootings will statistically evolve into, during these decades.


Well said. The parts of the US with the highest gun violence rates already have very strong gun laws. Unfortunately, the wielders of the handguns involved, most of which are unregistered or stolen, are not much concerned with waiting periods, background checks, and the like. These are simply illegal firearms and new laws and restrictions will have little effect. Only a total ban on handguns, and draconian punishments for possession, will be likely to make a difference. A constitutional amendment would do the trick, but nobody seems to be talking about this.


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> I hereby give up trying to get you to respond to the clear fact of the decline in gun violence in the US over that past quarter century.


I suggest you read my posts #935 and #937, or re-read them with stronger eyeglasses. But for the third time, and very clearly, I will affirm that Pew says that there has been--by their definition--a "decline in gun violence in the US over that past quarter century". Should we therefore feel better? Do the Pew figures include the violence of gun suicide? Do they reflect the sense of chaos and distortion engendered by the mass killings in our social spaces? The carnage in our inner cities? And what about my previous questions to you? Is the current US gun situation healthy in your opinion? Were things less deadly in the 1950s? And some new questions: Why is Russia seeking to infiltrate the NRA? Are assault weapons with hundred-round magazines to be open-carried into churches and libraries and malls as a right under the second amendment? I await your replies.


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> Well said. The parts of the US with the highest gun violence rates already have very strong gun laws. Unfortunately, the wielders of the handguns involved, most of which are unregistered or stolen, are not much concerned with waiting periods, background checks, and the like. These are simply illegal firearms and new laws and restrictions will have little effect. Only a total ban on handguns, and draconian punishments for possession, will be likely to make a difference. A constitutional amendment would do the trick, but nobody seems to be talking about this.


I have proposed that everybody's currently legal weaponry be grandfathered in, but all new purchases be subject to both limitations as to magazine capacity, and that cop-killer bullets, silencers, and bump stocks be banned. All gun sales and transfers be subject to rigorous background checks, with loopholes eliminated. Then a 50 to 75-year public health program instituted similar to that against cigarettes--another legal product--to wean people away from both guns and the paranoia associated with gun obsession so that we return to the America that once was before the NRA so warped and distorted people's attitudes toward guns and to our freely-elected government and our fellow citizens. Gun ownership should be encouraged to revert back to hunters, target shooters, hobbyists as a matter of normalcy, responsible citizenship, and common decency. It's taken the NRA 50 to 75 years to corrupt America; it will take the same probably to return it to health.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> I have proposed that everybody's currently legal weaponry be grandfathered in, but all new purchases be subject to both limitations as to magazine capacity, and that cop-killer bullets, silencers, and bump stocks be banned. All gun sales and transfers be subject to rigorous background checks, with loopholes eliminated. Then a 50 to 75-year public health program instituted similar to that against cigarettes--another legal product--to wean people away from both guns and the paranoia associated with gun obsession so that we return to the America that once was before the NRA so warped and distorted people's attitudes toward guns and to our freely-elected government and our fellow citizens. Gun ownership should be encouraged to revert back to hunters, target shooters, hobbyists as a matter of normalcy, responsible citizenship, and common decency. It's taken the NRA 50 to 75 years to corrupt America; it will take the same probably to return it to health.


Now how will you wean criminals from mugging people or breaking into homes?


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> I suggest you read my posts #935 and #937, or re-read them with stronger eyeglasses. But for the third time, and very clearly, I will affirm that Pew says that there has been--by their definition--a "decline in gun violence in the US over that past quarter century". Should we therefore feel better? Do the Pew figures include the violence of gun suicide? Do they reflect the sense of chaos and distortion engendered by the mass killings in our social spaces? The carnage in our inner cities? And what about my previous questions to you? Is the current US gun situation healthy in your opinion? Were things less deadly in the 1950s? And some new questions: Why is Russia seeking to infiltrate the NRA? Are assault weapons with hundred-round magazines to be open-carried into churches and libraries and malls as a right under the second amendment? I await your replies.


European countries have higher suicide rates and do not have free access to guns like the US, people do not need guns for suicide. Women tend not to use guns.


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Now how will you wean criminals from mugging people or breaking into homes?


By supporting your local police.


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## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> By supporting your local police.


Not working so far.


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Not working so far.


You had better argue crime rates with KenOC!


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> European countries have higher suicide rates and do not have free access to guns like the US, people do not need guns for suicide. Women tend not to use guns.


The high rates for European countries are almost entirely due to the very high rates in Russia, Belarus, and the former Russian-controlled Baltic states, and Belgium as a statistical outlier. Look up the numbers for yourself:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate.

You're right: people commit suicide using lots of methods. Many attempts fail--hanging, poison, slashing wrists, etc.,--and the person can change their mind or be stopped/saved in time. But put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger, and the results are virtually certain. Many news stories on the current swift rise of US suicide rates if you bother to check the Internet.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> The high rates for European countries are almost entirely due to the very high rates in Russia, Belarus, and the former Russian-controlled Baltic states, and Belgium as a statistical outlier. Look up the numbers for yourself:
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate.
> 
> You're right: people commit suicide using lots of methods. Many attempts fail--hanging, poison, slashing wrists, etc.,--and the person can change their mind or be stopped/saved in time. But put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger, and the results are virtually certain. Many news stories on the current swift rise of US suicide rates if you bother to check the Internet.


Finland and Belgium have higher rates than the United States. Japan has higher rates and guns are banned there.


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Finland and Belgium have higher rates than the United States. Japan has higher rates and guns are banned there.


Therefore, What?!?


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Therefore, What?!?


Higher suicide rate in country that bans guns.


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## Strange Magic

Here are fresh new stats from Pew. Well worth reading. As I've posted before, the trends that typify the recent upward trends in the damage caused by guns are A) gun-executed suicides, and B) the explosion of mass killings. While still accounting for a small number of gun deaths, mass killings of innocent people--children, shoppers, worshippers, merrymakers--are the most socially disruptive and corrosive forms of contemporary gun violence (along with inner-city handgun murders and woundings). More guns will not fix anything.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Here are fresh new stats from Pew. Well worth reading. As I've posted before, the trends that typify the recent upward trends in the damage caused by guns are A) gun-executed suicides, and B) the explosion of mass killings. While still accounting for a small number of gun deaths, mass killings of innocent people--children, shoppers, worshippers, merrymakers--are the most socially disruptive and corrosive forms of contemporary gun violence (along with inner-city handgun murders and woundings). More guns will not fix anything.
> 
> https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/


That is your opinion, I do not agree. Everyone has the right to defend themselves.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Here are fresh new stats from Pew. Well worth reading. As I've posted before, the trends that typify the recent upward trends in the damage caused by guns are A) gun-executed suicides, and B) the explosion of mass killings. While still accounting for a small number of gun deaths, mass killings of innocent people--children, shoppers, worshippers, merrymakers--are the most socially disruptive and corrosive forms of contemporary gun violence (along with inner-city handgun murders and woundings). More guns will not fix anything.
> 
> https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/


Avoided explaining how in Japan guns are banned but they have higher suicide rate. Show you do not need guns to commit suicide.


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Higher suicide rate in country that bans guns.


Let me understand: the fewer a country's guns per capita, the higher their suicide rates. Now we know that Japan has always had a high suicide rate due to cultural factors going back many centuries, even before guns were invented, so we can throw out that example. We're left then with Finland and Belgium to hang a whole theory on. How about all those other advanced countries the Wikipedia chart showed that had both far fewer guns and far fewer suicides? Let's look at that graphic again:









Lucky us! We get both a high suicide rate and a high homicide rate, a twofer.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Let me understand: the fewer a country's guns per capita, the higher their suicide rates. Now we know that Japan has always had a high suicide rate due to cultural factors going back many centuries, even before guns were invented, so we can throw out that example. We're left then with Finland and Belgium to hang a whole theory on. How about all those other advanced countries the Wikipedia chart showed that had both far fewer guns and far fewer suicides? Let's look at that graphic again:
> 
> View attachment 122652


No, you throw it because it disproves you fantasy.


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> No, you throw it because it disproves you fantasy.


Say what? Please explain carefully.

I think we all understand that there are many ways to commit suicide: poison, jump off cliff or out window, hang, slash wrists, seppuku (Japan). Most effective way is gun (efficient US way).


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Say what? Please explain carefully.


That guns cause suicide. You seem to get pleasure when there is a mass shooting. You never bring up articles where people use a gun to defend themselve from a bad person.


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> That is your opinion, I do not agree. Everyone has the right to defend themselves.


So, more guns will fix everything! A Nation of Scorpions. Vladimir Putin smiles.


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> That guns cause suicide. You seem to get pleasure when there is a mass shooting. You never bring up articles where people use a gun to defend themselve from a bad person.


You seem to pretend mass shootings do not happen, or if they do, it's no big deal--just the price in innocent blood we pay for the NRA's vision of America. Vladimir Putin smiles.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

They do happen but for some strange reason the shooter is a member of the democrat party. Maybe we should ban democrats from owning guns.


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> They do happen but for some strange reason the shooter is a member of the democrat party. Maybe we should ban democrats from owning guns.


We retreat now into the surreal.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> We retreat now into the surreal.


When the mass shooter life is checked they belong to one party, democrat.


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> When the mass shooter life is checked they belong to one party, democrat.


Johnnie, I'm checking out of this increasingly bizarro dialogue. I do not wish to travel more deeply into your world for fear the birds will eat my breadcrumbs and I then cannot find my way out. I leave you alone on the stage, with your cap and bells. The bells ring softly as I leave the deserted theater and re-enter the sunlight.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Mass murders appear to be acts of war , ritualistic illusions of war . Political/social activists who employ illusion and confusion as a tactical weapon are complicit . This is tribulation . How can there be respect and love for earth in the midst of it ? There is hysteria . Anxiety by it's nature is unfocused and in the extreme is wrongly focused , destructively oppositional .


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> This link shows results of a study looking at the effect of a $15/ton carbon tax on each quintile in the US. Higher quintile families have a higher carbon tax burden/person.Still higher quintile families can probably afford to pay higher taxes.
> 
> The particular policy this study considers is a carbon fee and dividend. The dividend returns all proceeds from the fee equally to US families. The study estimates that 53% of families and 58% of individuals receive a net financial benefit from the policy. Those who would receive a benefit are overwhelmingly from the lower quintiles.


You'll forgive my pessimism that either party would ever pass any kind of tax where the dividends get turned directly to people. More likely, they'll view it as yet another cash cow that they can use to dole out in politically expedient ways to guarantee their incumbency. Sure, the Democrat-controlled House may pass all kinds of pie-in-the sky things right now because they are free of consequence, given that they won't pass a GOP Senate or Trump's veto.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> You'll forgive my pessimism that either party would ever pass any kind of tax where the dividends get turned directly to people. More likely, they'll view it as yet another cash cow that they can use to dole out in politically expedient ways to guarantee their incumbency...


Maybe. I'm a bit pessimistic about some things as well, but I know too much about climate change to not push for a good solution. The policy I mentioned is an Act before congress - the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act H.R. 763. Anyone interested (in the US) can join the Citizens Climate Lobby and work to pass the legislation. Personally I would use some significant fraction of the fees to fund research and stimulate relevant markets, but I'm not sure what the best fraction would be.

I think there will eventually be a carbon tax/fee in the US. I don't see a way around mandates in some areas, but everyone I know in the field generally views a carbon tax of some sort as the appropriate way forward. I don't think Congress can use the funds for general purposes. There will be too much pressure to use the carbon tax/fee to combat greenhouse gas emissions or to make the fee more acceptable to the general public.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Maybe. I'm a bit pessimistic about some things as well, but I know too much about climate change to not push for a good solution. The policy I mentioned is an Act before congress - the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act H.R. 763. Anyone interested (in the US) can join the Citizens Climate Lobby and work to pass the legislation. Personally I would use some significant fraction of the fees to fund research and stimulate relevant markets, but I'm not sure what the best fraction would be.
> 
> I think there will eventually be a carbon tax/fee in the US. I don't see a way around mandates in some areas, but everyone I know in the field generally views a carbon tax of some sort as the appropriate way forward. I don't think Congress can use the funds for general purposes. There will be too much pressure to use the carbon tax/fee to combat greenhouse gas emissions or to make the fee more acceptable to the general public.


Right - just like the government would never borrow from Social Security funds to pay for other things?

I'm just not that optimistic, even if it were implemented exactly as it is intended, that there would be any net result. There is still China and India. And besides, "carbon" is not like tobacco, another item with a "sin" tax. Nobody needs tobacco, even when they are addicted. But "carbon?" Jacking up the price of so many things that are essential for everyday life? The energy that powers your home? The gas that powers your car?

And like I already cited - 70% of Americans are not willing to pay $10/month to combat climate change, even if they believe in it. The politicians who pass such a tax will be out of office by the next election. In the wake of Democrats passing Obamacare, their party proceeded to then lose in nearly 1000 elections nationwide, propelling the GOP to their strongest position since the 1920s. And even when they passed Obamacare, they knew that the idea of raising taxes to pay for it would be so toxic that they went out of their way to claim it wouldn't increase taxes.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Right - just like the government would never borrow from Social Security funds to pay for other things?
> 
> I'm just not that optimistic, even if it were implemented exactly as it is intended, that there would be any net result. There is still China and India. And besides, "carbon" is not like tobacco, another item with a "sin" tax. Nobody needs tobacco, even when they are addicted. But "carbon?" Jacking up the price of so many things that are essential for everyday life? The energy that powers your home? The gas that powers your car?
> 
> And like I already cited - 70% of Americans are not willing to pay $10/month to combat climate change, even if they believe in it. The politicians who pass such a tax will be out of office by the next election. In the wake of Democrats passing Obamacare, their party proceeded to then lose in nearly 1000 elections nationwide, propelling the GOP to their strongest position since the 1920s. And even when they passed Obamacare, they knew that the idea of raising taxes to pay for it would be so toxic that they went out of their way to claim it wouldn't increase taxes.


I think that you are saying a carbon fee and dividend or some type of carbon tax will be difficult. I agree. I strongly believe such a fee is necessary to prevent the very serious effects of climate change. We spend about $527/household/month for national defense. I personally believe climate change is a much more significant concern than an attack by a foreign nation so I would reduce defense spending and use some of that funding for climate change mitigation.


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> Right - just like the government would never borrow from Social Security funds to pay for other things?


Actually the law _requires _that surplus cash in the social security "trust fund" be invested in treasury securities. I mean, what could go wrong? Right?


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

mmsbls said:


> I would reduce defense spending and use some of that funding for climate change mitigation.


You are asking for fearlessness and trust . That'd be the climate change raining genius ideas .


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

mmsbls said:


> I think that you are saying a carbon fee and dividend or some type of carbon tax will be difficult. I agree. I strongly believe such a fee is necessary to prevent the very serious effects of climate change. We spend about $527/household/month for national defense. I personally believe climate change is a much more significant concern than an attack by a foreign nation so I would reduce defense spending and use some of that funding for climate change mitigation.


I think we should create a voluntary carbon tax, liberals would be free to contribute as much as they want to give. Conservatives could choose to opt out.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I think that you are saying a carbon fee and dividend or some type of carbon tax will be difficult. I agree. I strongly believe such a fee is necessary to prevent the very serious effects of climate change. We spend about $527/household/month for national defense. I personally believe climate change is a much more significant concern than an attack by a foreign nation so I would reduce defense spending and use some of that funding for climate change mitigation.


The only government program progressives/liberals/Democrats ever want to cut. Never want to cut anything else.

Not only do I find these proposals unlikely to pass, I also find them fundamentally unserious. As long as Democrats push climate legislation that also coincidentally look like progressive wish lists, I don't believe they are actually serious about fixing anything. Show me a proposal that includes promoting more nuclear energy and that wants to cut from welfare programs to get funding, and not just the military, and that will be the signal to me that they actually are serious.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> The only government program progressives/liberals/Democrats ever want to cut. Never want to cut anything else.
> 
> Not only do I find these proposals unlikely to pass, I also find them fundamentally unserious. As long as Democrats push climate legislation that also coincidentally look like progressive wish lists, I don't believe they are actually serious about fixing anything. Show me a proposal that includes promoting more nuclear energy and that wants to cut from welfare programs to get funding, and not just the military, and that will be the signal to me that they actually are serious.


The only actual proposal I mentioned was H.R. 763, a bill that is revenue neutral and doesn't cut funding from any other program. Let me say that again. H.R. 763 does not require reducing funding to any other government program. There are no progressive wish lists in the bill. The group I work with is very serious and works hard to get bipartisan support. There are conservatives in my local chapter because, like so many people, they also view climate change as a huge potential problem. Mitigating climate change and defending our country from potential external attacks are both critically important.

Maybe this diversion is too political given the discussion about funding.

On a more technical level, I personally would be happy to have more nuclear energy if it could be as cost competitive and safe as renewable sources.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

mmsbls said:


> I personally would be happy to have more nuclear energy ... if


Nuclear energy is not safe . Iffiness need be kept spare . All you may be entitled to is a small fire of sticks in a little round hut .


----------



## Guest

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Nuclear energy is not safe . Iffiness need be kept spare . All you may be entitled to is a small fire of sticks in a little round hut .


Even counting Chernobyl and Japan, it is vastly safer than coal.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

KenOC said:


> Actually the law _requires _that surplus cash in the social security "trust fund" be invested in treasury securities. I mean, what could go wrong? Right?


We need to have an constitution amendment to force them to payback the funds taken from social security.


----------



## Bwv 1080

Johnnie Burgess said:


> We need to have an constitution amendment to force them to payback the funds taken from social security.


Why? That's as Good as Money, Sir. Those are IOU's


----------



## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> Why? That's as Good as Money, Sir. Those are IOU's


It's a ponzi scheme. Pure and simple. If the Social Security administration were a private enterprise it would have been busted up by the Justice Department long ago.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> The only actual proposal I mentioned was H.R. 763, a bill that is revenue neutral and doesn't cut funding from any other program. Let me say that again. H.R. 763 does not require reducing funding to any other government program. There are no progressive wish lists in the bill. The group I work with is very serious and works hard to get bipartisan support. There are conservatives in my local chapter because, like so many people, they also view climate change as a huge potential problem. Mitigating climate change and defending our country from potential external attacks are both critically important.
> 
> Maybe this diversion is too political given the discussion about funding.
> 
> On a more technical level, I personally would be happy to have more nuclear energy if it could be as cost competitive and safe as renewable sources.


This from the summary of H.R. 763, taken directly from www.congress.gov (emphasis added):


> The fees must be deposited into a *Carbon Dividend Trust Fund and used for administrative expenses* and dividend payments to U.S. citizens or lawful residents


Is that "Carbon Dividend Trust Fund" going to be locked as securely as is the Social Security Trust Fund and not pilfered to pay for other programs? And "administrative expenses?" I take it that is the cost of the vast new bureaucracy that will be created to manage this new tax? Yeah - I'm sure the average person will see a lot of this money returned as "dividends" - just as soon as the government pays all the new expenses created by it. And we all know how good Congress is at managing money.


----------



## Bwv 1080

DrMike said:


> It's a ponzi scheme. Pure and simple. If the Social Security administration were a private enterprise it would have been busted up by the Justice Department long ago.


No, a pay as you go pension scheme is not a Ponzi scheme. What is the government supposed to do, find the money somewhere to fully fund it like a corporate pension? The asset side of SS is future tax receipts


----------



## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> No, a pay as you go pension scheme is not a Ponzi scheme. What is the government supposed to do, find the money somewhere to fully fund it like a corporate pension? The asset side of SS is future tax receipts


SS has a massive fatal flaw - when it was created, there was a much higher ratio of workers to retired people, and life expectancy was not as long. Thus there were more people paying into the program than withdrawing from it, and they didn't have to be paid as long. Now people are living longer and there are much fewer people paying in relative to those drawing on it. Ideally those years of surplus should have built up to help in lean years. We are now at the lean years, and SS is about to go deep in the red. And with the baby boomers retiring, birth rates declining, then there really is no way to ever get ahead. Hence it is a ponzi scheme - there will never be the necessary funds coming in for those currently working. Everybody paying in now is under the assumption that the next generation will pay for them - there isn't enough of the next generation to do that. So just like Bernie Madoff's customers, the early investors were getting paid, but new investors were being sold a bill of goods. And in the meantime the government spent the surplus, and left a bunch of IOUs. So either way, future generations are screwed - sure, the government will always make good on those IOUs, but only by going further into debt, borrowing from yet some other source, pushing the bill back further, leaving again future generations to pay at an even higher rate. The only difference between this and Madoff is that Bernie couldn't go force people to give him the money he need to keep his house of cards standing.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> And we all know how good Congress is at managing money.


Agreed. Congress has been terrible at managing money (except for a brief moment of fiscal sanity under Bill Clinton) ever since Ronald Reagan was conned into embracing Voodoo Economics in the 1980s. Honest Tax-And-Spend budgets were replaced by Borrow-And-Spend under Republican guidance, and the Democrats, being weak and seeing how well the GOP bamboozled themselves and the voting public into accepting the idea of letting the grandkids pay the bills, to their shame went along with the scam. Trump budget boasts first Trillion-Dollar deficit not in a recession year. Good job, team!


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## Strange Magic

There are many fixes for Social Security. The final fix (if there is one) will be a mix of those solutions, with an effective and representative Congress finally elected to implement the changes.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> This from the summary of H.R. 763, taken directly from www.congress.gov (emphasis added):
> 
> Is that "Carbon Dividend Trust Fund" going to be locked as securely as is the Social Security Trust Fund and not pilfered to pay for other programs? And "administrative expenses?" I take it that is the cost of the vast new bureaucracy that will be created to manage this new tax? Yeah - I'm sure the average person will see a lot of this money returned as "dividends" - just as soon as the government pays all the new expenses created by it. And we all know how good Congress is at managing money.


So here's the problem. Most of the world believes that climate change is a critical problem that we must solve; otherwise, the consequences will be much worse than any attempted solution. Since I work in the field of climate change mitigation (although I'm not a policy researcher), I'm aware of many proposed solutions. I believe H.R. 763 is a reasonably straightforward bill that includes the most important elements necessary to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The dividend may not be ideal (my concerns are different from yours), but I think it may be a good way to make the bill more palatable to lawmakers. I also believe other regulation is likely necessary given the slow response from society to date.

If you believed climate change were as problematic as I do, what would you propose?


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> So here's the problem. Most of the world believes that climate change is a critical problem that we must solve; otherwise, the consequences will be much worse than any attempted solution. Since I work in the field of climate change mitigation (although I'm not a policy researcher), I'm aware of many proposed solutions. I believe H.R. 763 is a reasonably straightforward bill that includes the most important elements necessary to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The dividend may not be ideal (my concerns are different from yours), but I think it may be a good way to make the bill more palatable to lawmakers. I also believe other regulation is likely necessary given the slow response from society to date.
> 
> If you believed climate change were as problematic as I do, what would you propose?


We come at it from different angles. I believe that there is significant evidence that the earth is warming, and that it is linked to increased greenhouse gas emissions, most likely due to human activity. Where I differ is in how correctly the future effects can be predicted, and to what extent we can, or should, act.

In general, I'm not the biggest fan of top-down solutions, start a government program here, create a tax there, mandate this, prohibit that, make a new bureaucracy. I don't like that way - reducing freedoms. I've explained this all before and am not going to rehash it all here. I do agree that conventional energy sources have been sucking at the teat of government for far too long, and am highly open to eliminating subsidies to oil and coal, and especially to corn growers. I'd like to see more red tape cut for allowing new construction of nuclear power plants. I'm open to grant-funding apparatuses to fund innovation in the energy sector. Rather than have the government pick in advance what they want to win, let all compete on an equivalent footing, and those with the best ideas and most equipped to implement their ideas get funded. It works relatively well in the biomedical science field. And it allows private companies a way of getting the upfront costs covered for risky ventures that may not pan out, that they might otherwise be risk averse to trying.

I don't like new tax policies. I don't think they ever achieve what they promise, and more often than not get tinkered with to the point that politicians get to manipulate loopholes to benefit their constituents over others. And I don't like the idea of a paternalistic government, with the mindset that they are like the responsible parent, forcing you to eat your vegetables whether you damn well like them or not. For better or worse, we need a system of government based on the consent of the governed. If you can't come up with a solution that the people will accept, then forcing it anyways is not "being responsible" or "showing leadership" - it is a dictatorship, an autocracy.


----------



## KenOC

Johnnie Burgess said:


> We need to have an constitution amendment to force them to payback the funds taken from social security.


We have one. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> We have one. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."


Oh, I fully believe in the validity of the debts. I just highly question if those debts will every actually be paid, or just continuously kicked down the road, while even more debt is loaded on, of which I am not allowed to question the validity. I acknowledge we have the debt. I'm not so cool with the reasons we come up with for incurring more debt.


----------



## Bwv 1080

DrMike said:


> Oh, I fully believe in the validity of the debts. I just highly question if those debts will every actually be paid, or just continuously kicked down the road, while even more debt is loaded on, of which I am not allowed to question the validity. I acknowledge we have the debt. I'm not so cool with the reasons we come up with for incurring more debt.


Government debt is never repaid in full, always just refinanced and it would be stupid to try to do otherwise. Always a mistake to treat governments like households


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

DrMike said:


> Even counting Chernobyl and Japan, it is vastly safer than coal.


Account for nuclear waste . Sit on it like it was the top of a pyramid and let's hear about your pain in the butinsky . Ouch . We can be lead on by a hope in tech advances , and likely they will come , but they may require a psycho/social condition for them to emerge . Shallow and evasive reasoning is not it .


----------



## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> Government debt is never repaid in full, always just refinanced and it would be stupid to try to do otherwise. Always a mistake to treat governments like households


I never said that. But an ever increasing debt? Deficits as far as the eye can see regardless of the party in power? Promising new programs with no realistic way to pay for them? Our debt will only function so long as others are willing to buy it from us. We are in a pretty comfortable spot right now, but being so tied to China buying our debt doesn't seem like the best of plans.


----------



## Guest

On a related topic - is anybody else concerned that 16-year-old autistic Greta Thunberg is starving herself regularly and skipping school all to the delight of adults that would otherwise be thrown in jail for child abuse and neglect, but instead are praised for providing us with the environmental movement's Joan of Arc, or whatever other fantasy they are dreaming up with her? I think a girl that needs some help is being exploited by people who see her as a useful tool - someone that nobody dare criticize. Nevermind the fact that there is precious little in this world that we would take directions from a teenager about. This is exploitation, pure and simple. All in the name of global warming.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> On a related topic - is anybody else concerned that 16-year-old autistic Greta Thunberg is starving herself regularly and skipping school all to the delight of adults that would otherwise be thrown in jail for child abuse and neglect, but instead are praised for providing us with the environmental movement's Joan of Arc, or whatever other fantasy they are dreaming up with her? I think a girl that needs some help is being exploited by people who see her as a useful tool - someone that nobody dare criticize. Nevermind the fact that there is precious little in this world that we would take directions from a teenager about. This is exploitation, pure and simple. All in the name of global warming.


It's an interesting situation. I don't know much about her. I didn't know that she was autistic (presumably very mild) and starving herself (how much?). Normally we're impressed when young people learn enough about the world to take part in serious discussions of politics. I'm not so happy about a child missing school. I certainly don't understand the starving (or even eating too little), if true, since being a vegan should make a strong statement and reduce one's carbon footprint enough.

I don't know who might be exploiting her, but I would suggest a different approach to her if we talked.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> It's an interesting situation. I don't know much about her. I didn't know that she was autistic (presumably very mild) and starving herself (how much?). Normally we're impressed when young people learn enough about the world to take part in serious discussions of politics. I'm not so happy about a child missing school. I certainly don't understand the starving (or even eating too little), if true, since being a vegan should make a strong statement and reduce one's carbon footprint enough.
> 
> I don't know who might be exploiting her, but I would suggest a different approach to her if we talked.


Autism spectrum - Aspberger's. She regularly goes on hunger strikes. Her mother documents a lot of it in the book she has written. Granted, I have to go off of translations by others, as it is not yet available in English, as I understand it. She forced her family to go vegan with her - guilted them into it. She only eats certain things which her mother must specially prepare, and must be stored in a refrigerator at her school, but she will refuse to eat it if her mother accidentally puts tape on the container to label it - that harms the environment. Her mother is an opera singer who now has to reject any job opportunities that are located in places she can't reach in a carbon-neutral way (flying is definitely out). 
https://quillette.com/2019/04/23/self-harm-versus-the-greater-good-greta-thunberg-and-child-activism/

Too often people like to use children to fight these battles for them. They think they carry some greater moral authority than adults - I suspect they are being used more like human shields that terrorists like to use. You wouldn't dare attack our side with these innocent, wise-beyond-their-years kids here! It isn't just one side. In the gun control debate, particularly in the wake of the Parkland shooting in Florida, both the pro- and anti-gun control groups latched onto teens from the school who spoke to their confirmation biases, while simultaneously denouncing the opinions of those teens on the other side.

I think Greta has a lot of problems that she needs to work through. I don't think the way she is being used is going to help her at all. Good for her that she cares about the environment - but she is causing harm to herself in the process, and shame on the adults who applaud that harm. She needs help, not exploitation.


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> I never said that. But an ever increasing debt? Deficits as far as the eye can see regardless of the party in power? Promising new programs with no realistic way to pay for them? Our debt will only function so long as others are willing to buy it from us. We are in a pretty comfortable spot right now, but being so tied to China buying our debt doesn't seem like the best of plans.


An excessive national debt makes it harder to grow without additional borrowing. And increases in general interest rates, because they heavily impact debt service, quickly eat up any room in national budgets for discretionary spending.

If debt gets too high as a percent of GDP, it will be extraordinarily difficult to draw down. Ask Greece, currently at 182%! The US is at what is close to an all-time high at 109% (and without a major war to blame it on), while China, now the world's second-largest economy and increasingly our economic rival, is at 54%. (numbers per the IMF)


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> On a related topic - is anybody else concerned that 16-year-old autistic Greta Thunberg is starving herself regularly and skipping school all to the delight of adults that would otherwise be thrown in jail for child abuse and neglect, but instead are praised for providing us with the environmental movement's Joan of Arc, or whatever other fantasy they are dreaming up with her? I think a girl that needs some help is being exploited by people who see her as a useful tool - someone that nobody dare criticize. Nevermind the fact that there is precious little in this world that we would take directions from a teenager about. This is exploitation, pure and simple. All in the name of global warming.


Which is more important: the tale of a Scandinavian child who is an autistic vegan bullying her family into veganism and is on a children's crusade to publicize the dangers of AGW? Or is the real and important story the ongoing war of the Trump administration against USDA scientists speaking out about the reduced rice yields that AGW threatens? It's clear that Greta Thunberg is the latest shiny thing to attract the attention of AGW deniers, as a distraction from the mounting avalanche of evidence demonstrating the onset of global warming. Previous efforts denounced those jetting to conferences on the environment. Now the crime is to be young, dedicated, principled, and sailing to a conference. The dereliction of responsibility in dealing with climate change by the Trump administration is a daily and constant scandal of monstrous proportions, but we are asked by DrMike to waste our time instead wringing our hands over the real or imagined sins of a teenage girl. Pathetic!

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/23/agriculture-department-climate-change-1376413


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## Strange Magic

> DrMike: "Too often people like to use children to fight these battles for them. They think they carry some greater moral authority than adults - I suspect they are being used more like human shields that terrorists like to use. You wouldn't dare attack our side with these innocent, wise-beyond-their-years kids here! It isn't just one side. In the gun control debate, particularly in the wake of the Parkland shooting in Florida, both the pro- and anti-gun control groups latched onto teens from the school who spoke to their confirmation biases, while simultaneously denouncing the opinions of those teens on the other side."


Here is another case of uppity teen-agers--this time actual Parkland Massacre survivors--on the receiving end of righteous indignation from another massacre survivor (who you would think ought to know better). Like DrMike, Jesse Hughes believes the Parkland students should just shut up, or else their "exploiters" and they just might be committing treason....

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43549912

(These are the sorts of topics discussed regularly down in the Political Groups.)


----------



## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> An excessive national debt makes it harder to grow without additional borrowing. And increases in general interest rates, because they heavily impact debt service, quickly eat up any room in national budgets for discretionary spending.
> 
> If debt gets too high as a percent of GDP, it will be extraordinarily difficult to draw down. Ask Greece, currently at 182%! The US is at what is close to an all-time high at 109% (and without a major war to blame it on), while China, now the world's second-largest economy and increasingly our economic rival, is at 54%. (numbers per the IMF)


China is our rival, with terrible policies. Do you think we have to pay them back?


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> China is our rival, with terrible policies. Do you think we have to pay them back?


Absolutely we have to. The second we choose not to pay back one of our creditors, everybody starts to worry we won't pay them back, they stop buying our debt, and we look like unfaithful borrowers. That would be disastrous. There are many things that China has to answer for - but refusing to pay our debts is not a viable option.


----------



## KenOC

Luchesi said:


> China is our rival, with terrible policies. Do you think we have to pay them back?


Are you suggesting it's OK to steal from folks we dislike? I'll add that we're bombing a lot more countries than China is!

In any event, see the 14th Amendment for an answer to your question. Our debt to China is about 6% of our total national debt, currently $22 trillion. (For comparison, money owed Social Security is about 10% of total debt.) The United States, not so long ago the world's largest creditor nation, has been for several years the world's largest debtor nation.


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## Strange Magic

A One-and-a-Half-Year-Old Post:

Here are the statistics showing the percentage increases in the National Debt during the terms of all presidents between Eisenhower and Obama. To the extent that presidents set policy goals, these reflect the financial rigor and integrity of the two political parties both before and after Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party endorsed Voodoo Economics (also called Trickle-Down Economics, or Borrow-and-Spend) in the early 1980s. As is clear from the record, before the GOP got drunk on Voodoo, both parties ran the much smaller deficits reflected in their shared policy of honest Tax-and-Spend.

But starting with Ronald Reagan, it is clear that Republicans cannot be trusted with money, and that the Democrats must step in afterward to clean up the mess, just like FDR after Hoover in 1932. It is no surprise therefore that Donald Trump and the Republican Party have again rediscovered Voodoo Economics, which shafts Trump voters more than any other group. In the next ten years, if the Trump/GOP tax scam becomes law, the taxes of all Americans earning $75,000 or less will rise by $5 trillion, and the taxes of those making $100,000 or more will be lowered by $5 trillion. Meanwhile, the National Debt will increase by an extra $1 trillion over its expected rise. This is how Donald Trump and the corrupt, morally dead Republican Party rewards the supporters of Trump and Trumpism. So much for Republican populism and for fiscal integrity.

Obama: 68%, cleaning up after Bush's Iraq War and Great Recession (as of fiscal year 2016)
*Bush 2: 101%, borrowing for Iraq and for more tax cuts for the rich; the death of the Clinton surpluses*
Clinton: 32%, cleaning up after Reagan/Bush Voodoo by raising taxes
Bush 1: 54%, continuation of Voodoo, but slight raise of taxes
*Reagan: 186%, the birth of Voodoo Economics and borrowing money from the kids to give to the rich*
Carter: 43%, the last of the long string of honest Tax-and-Spend administrations
Ford: 47%, highest increase since FDR but before Reagan
Nixon: 34%, not too bad for Tricky Dick Nixon
Johnson: 13%, the Great Society and Vietnam? only JFK and Ike increased the debt by less
Kennedy: 8%, golden years of tax-and-spend
Eisenhower: 9%, golden years of tax-and-spend


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Absolutely we have to. The second we choose not to pay back one of our creditors, everybody starts to worry we won't pay them back, they stop buying our debt, and we look like unfaithful borrowers. That would be disastrous. There are many things that China has to answer for - but refusing to pay our debts is not a viable option.


Disastrous. Okay, nothing can be done.

Social programs.

Defense expenditures.

Tax as we go.


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## Strange Magic

Luchesi said:


> Disastrous. Okay, nothing can be done.
> 
> Social programs.
> 
> Defense expenditures.
> 
> Tax as we go.


We can start getting the money from where it is found--among the rich and hyper-rich:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts-about-wealth-in-the-united-states/

About time these paid their fair share of taxes........

A brief excerpt:

"In fact, *the top one percent alone* holds more wealth than the middle class. They owned 29 percent-or over $25 trillion-of household wealth in 2016, while the middle class owned just $18 trillion.
This has not always been the case. Before 2010, the middle class owned more wealth than the top one percent. Since 1995, the share of wealth held by the middle class has steadily declined, while the top one percent's share has steadily increased."


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> These statements are compatible. The Flynn effect and the decreasing gap in IQ over time between populations indicate a potential significant environmental effect.
> 
> For technical reasons, I think biologists would refer to populations of humans rather than races.
> 
> I feel that I am at my limit in understanding the biological definition of race and of IQ differences so I'm not sure I can say more of value (or if what I have said has significant value).


Race exists, it is mostly a social construct. The point is that genetic variation within a race is very large compared to the genetic variations between populations or _races_. If I measure the average genetic variation between two randomly selected people of the same race, it will be almost as large as the average genetic variation between two randomly selected people of different races. There is less than 5% of additional variation if I compare two people of different races. You can identify specific genetic markers that are associated with a certain racial group that and can tell you if you likely have descendants that came from a certain place. It does not imply that group is genetically distinct.

The claim that IQ tests have been purged of cultural bias is impossible to justify. Even if the test itself is in some sense neutral, that is not sufficient. The U.S. has not been purged of cultural/racial bias. Minority groups are treated differently and effectively live in a different country than white Americans. We are far from demonstrating that any statistical differences that appear on a test are intrinsic, and not due to cultural factors.


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## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> We can start getting the money from where it is found--among the rich and hyper-rich:
> 
> https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts-about-wealth-in-the-united-states/
> 
> About time these paid their fair share of taxes........


A bit old but likely still in the ball park.

"The top-earning 1 percent of Americans will pay nearly half of the federal income taxes for 2014, the largest share in at least three years, according to a study.

"According to a projection from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent of Americans will pay 45.7 percent of the individual income taxes in 2014-up from 43 percent in 2013 and 40 percent in 2012 (the oldest period available).

"The bottom 80 percent of Americans are expected to pay 15 percent of all federal income taxes in 2014, according to the study. The bottom 60 percent are expected to pay less than 2 percent of federal income taxes."

Article (from CNBC) is here. So, what's a "fair share"?


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

KenOC said:


> A bit old bit likely still in the ball park.
> 
> "The top-earning 1 percent of Americans will pay nearly half of the federal income taxes for 2014, the largest share in at least three years, according to a study.
> 
> "According to a projection from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent of Americans will pay 45.7 percent of the individual income taxes in 2014-up from 43 percent in 2013 and 40 percent in 2012 (the oldest period available).
> 
> "The bottom 80 percent of Americans are expected to pay 15 percent of all federal income taxes in 2014, according to the study. The bottom 60 percent are expected to pay less than 2 percent of federal income taxes."
> 
> Article (from CNBC) is here. So, what's a "fair share"?


Liberals won't be satisfied till maybe when they pay around 70% or maybe more.


----------



## Strange Magic

More from the Brookings Institute report:

"ONLY THE TOP 20 PERCENT HAS RECOVERED SINCE THE GREAT RECESSION

While the middle class has seen modest growth of 7 percent in their net worth since 1995, it has not yet recovered to its previous peak in 2007. This tepid recovery is driven by declines in home-ownership and stock market participation since 2007—if you do not hold assets, you cannot benefit from recovery in asset prices.

In contrast, the wealthy have seen robust growth since 1995 and have fully recovered from the Great Recession. Median net worth for the top 80th-99th percentiles has increased by 149 percent since 1995. For the top one percent, it has grown by 187 percent from a far higher base, making it difficult to even see the wealth of the bottom 99 percent on the following chart!"


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> A bit old but likely still in the ball park.
> 
> "The top-earning 1 percent of Americans will pay nearly half of the federal income taxes for 2014, the largest share in at least three years, according to a study.
> 
> "According to a projection from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent of Americans will pay 45.7 percent of the individual income taxes in 2014-up from 43 percent in 2013 and 40 percent in 2012 (the oldest period available).
> 
> "The bottom 80 percent of Americans are expected to pay 15 percent of all federal income taxes in 2014, according to the study. The bottom 60 percent are expected to pay less than 2 percent of federal income taxes."
> 
> Article (from CNBC) is here. So, what's a "fair share"?


Taxing the top 1% at 100% will not pay for all the promised programs. For European style social welfare programs, you need European style taxation, which means raising taxes on everybody, including the sacred middle class. Anybody who sells insane platitudes about how we just need to make the rich pay their "fair share" is utterly unserious. Kind of like those who want to replace fossil fuels but don't want more nuclear power.


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## KenOC

Did some math. On average, each taxpayer _not _in the top 1 percent pays 1.2% of what a one-percenter pays.

Each taxpayer in the bottom 80 percent pays 0.4% of what a one-percenter pays.

Each taxpayer in the bottom 60 percent pays 0.07% of what a one-percenter pays.

This is for income tax only, of course. Remember that close to half of filers pay no tax at all, or end up with a net credit (negative tax).


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## mmsbls

This thread is about environmental science - not politics. Let's get back to the topic that has less chance of causing problems.


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## Tikoo Tuba

Got anxiety ? Can't maintain a focus ? The Doctor of Environmental Science prescribes happy pills . The shaman recommends philosophy .


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## Bwv 1080

Keep on foolin, mother nature's a bitch

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...-is-volunteering-for-landmark-gene-editing-st


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## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> Keep on foolin, mother nature's a bitch
> 
> https://www.npr.org/sections/health...-is-volunteering-for-landmark-gene-editing-st


This is potentially really interesting - it isn't introducing anything foreign into the body. Fetuses and children in the first few months of life have a different form of hemoglobin than adults. In this study, they have turned that gene for fetal hemoglobin back on in the person's own cells. We are already treating people with sickle cell disease with drugs that stimulate fetal hemoglobin production - this would just be a more permanent solution. They are going very slow with the study.

I think it is exciting.


----------



## starthrower

KenOC said:


> Did some math. On average, each taxpayer _not _in the top 1 percent pays 1.2% of what a one-percenter pays.
> 
> Each taxpayer in the bottom 80 percent pays 0.4% of what a one-percenter pays.
> 
> Each taxpayer in the bottom 60 percent pays 0.07% of what a one-percenter pays.
> 
> This is for income tax only, of course. Remember that close to half of filers pay no tax at all, or end up with a net credit (negative tax).


Looks like America has a lot of poor people. And we do have 50 million seniors.


----------



## Guest

None of the current Democratic candidates for president are willing to look at expanding nuclear energy as a way to wean us off of carbon-based power generation. These were some of their responses from the recent CNN town hall on climate change:
Bernie Sanders, when asked about France supplying 70% of their energy from nuclear, "I think if you talk to the people in Japan in terms of what happened at Fukushima, talk to the people in Russia what happened in Chernobyl, you know what, they may not feel so comfortable with nuclear power . . . . So I'm not a fear-monger here, and I wish the people in France the very best. But I think that the way forward, the most cost-effective way forward, the way forward that is safest is moving to sustainable energies like wind and geothermal."

Elizabeth Warren, "In my administration, we're not going to build any new nuclear power plants, and we are going to start weaning ourselves off nuclear energy and replacing it with renewable fuels. . . . "

Joe Biden wasn't asked about it. But while he doesn't want to shut down existing nuclear power plants, he also doesn't support building any new ones.

Kamala Harris was asked the following:


> "Given the existential threat to humanity posed by global warming," one questioner asked Harris, "do you believe the time has come to put past nuclear-power failures into perspective and to embrace a new and smarter generation of nuclear-power technologies given all that has been learned and the scale of the crisis we're confronting today?"


Her response: She doesn't believe that should be done. And she justified it with the following, "The biggest issue that I believe we face in terms of nuclear energy is the waste and what are we going to do with that." She then talked about not storing waste on any federal land, specifically brought up Yucca Mountain in Nevada . . . which just happens to be the third nominating contest once primary/caucus season starts.

Those 4 are the current frontrunners, according to the polls. None of them would include nuclear energy as part of a plan to fight climate change.


----------



## Strange Magic

New Jersey is Ground Zero for nuclear chickens coming home to roost. The Oyster Creek nuke, the oldest in the country, has been shut down, as its safe effective life is over. Locals are left scratching their heads about the legacy of nuclear waste left behind--whether it will ever be trucked away or will sit brooding over their neighborhood "forever". The Good News: locals have been told that the containers of waste sitting there can ''survive a missile strike".

https://www.app.com/story/news/loca...y-shore-decommissioning-speeds-up/1274417001/

Back when nuclear power was first being boosted, we were told that electricity produced by such plants would be "too cheap to meter". Jersey taxpayers now find that they must cough up $300 million per year in subsidies beyond rates to utility PSE&G to keep their three nukes up and running.

https://www.njspotlight.com/stories...-as-reluctant-bpu-approves-nuclear-subsidies/

IF the government comes up with a geologist-approved final waste retention site, located deep within very old Precambrian bedrock, with very little to no exposure to subsurface water, and with little evidence of faulting or of earthquake activity, then nuclear might have a better chance of being considered as a transitional energy source as we switch to 100% sustainable energy sources. That is, also, provided safe delivery to that or those sites is assured. THEN, relatively safe Dyson/Teller/TRIGA reactors might be just the ticket for some of that transitional power. But the nuclear waste problem must be solved first, and soon.


----------



## Guest

A lot of the fear drummed up about nuclear energy relies on ignorance about waste disposal. Scientists actually have very good ideas about how to deal with it. And there isn't that much of it.



> There is not that much of it. All of the used fuel ever produced by the commercial nuclear industry since the late 1950s would cover a football field to a depth of less than 10 yards. That might seem like a lot, but coal plants generate that same amount of waste every hour.


You can read more here:
https://www.nei.org/fundamentals/nuclear-waste


----------



## Strange Magic

This from the Good Doctor's link:

"Taxpayers are assessed $800 million annually ($2.2 million per day) because of the federal government’s failure to meet its obligation to dispose of used fuel that currently resides at nuclear plants across the country. The United States must establish a sustainable national program—supported by dedicated funding—to permanently dispose of this fuel. 

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) codified the U.S. Department of Energy’s responsibility for developing a geologic repository for used nuclear fuel. In 2002, the president and Congress approved Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the site for this repository. In 2010, however, the DOE shut down the Yucca Mountain project without citing any technical or safety issues. In contrast, decades of scientific study had consistently concluded that the proposed repository could safely protect future generations. At the time, $12 billion had already been spent on Yucca Mountain and 65,000 metric tons of spent fuel were in temporary storage across 39 states. In 2014, a federal court ordered the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete safety and environmental reviews of the site. While these reviews have since concluded that Yucca Mountain complies with all regulations, a final decision awaits an extensive formal hearing. That hearing can’t happen until Congress funds it.

Meanwhile, the inventory of used fuel has now grown to more than 80,000 metric tons while the taxpayer liability for government inaction continues to increase."

Geologists not affiliated with nuclear power are not happy with the Yucca Mountain site and never have been, as it is in an area of active block-faulting. Yucca Mountain was both chosen and opposed, though, for political reasons, though it is inherently a bad location on scientific grounds.


----------



## KenOC

I believe there is substantial non-fuel radioactive waste from the fuel production cycle, normal plant operations, and decommissioning. Concentrating only on spent fuel may be understating the problem.

Decommissioning is a major issue because (I believe) the entire reactor core and much surrounding piping and equipment has been rendered radioactive. As a result decommissioning costs are quite high - perhaps $250 million for a nuke in the US. This can be reduced by simply entombing the reactor on-site, although neighbors may be a bit nervous. 

BTW the two big units at the San Onofre nuclear plant, right down the road from my house, were removed from service six years ago because of non-nuclear problems. They are still waiting for decommissioning, a cost estimated in 2014 at $4 billion. Any bets on what the actual cost will turn out to be?

Some will remember the San Onofre plant as a suggestive background in one of the Naked Gun movies... 









​


----------



## Guest

Even renewable energy sources generate waste- a lot of which is just as problematic as from nuclear power plants. But it seems that the amount of waste from a nuclear power plant is orders of magnitude lower than coal plants. A country the size of Finland has managed to locate a suitable long term underground storage facility for nuclear waste - surely we can as well. And yes, there is a lot of low level waste generated, but it can mostly be stored on site. Any power source that is capable of generating the levels of energy required to power an industrialized nation is going to have substantial concerns regarding safety and waste. But nuclear energy is carbon neutral.

The science around nuclear energy and waste storage is pretty clear - why are we telling people to trust the science regarding climate but to disregard the science regarding nuclear power?


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> Even renewable energy sources generate waste- a lot of which is just as problematic as from nuclear power plants. But it seems that the amount of waste from a nuclear power plant is orders of magnitude lower than coal plants.


Um, isn't there a rather important difference between the two types of waste you are ignoring? AND if the problem of storing radioactive wastes were as simple as you say, then we're obviously unsuited to the use of nuclear technology in any form because we've been unable to solve that problem for decades.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Um, isn't there a rather important difference between the two types of waste you are ignoring? AND if the problem of storing radioactive wastes were as simple as you say, then we're obviously unsuited to the use of nuclear technology in any form because we've been unable to solve that problem for decades.


The solution for the disposal of nuclear waste is more a political problem than a practical one. Like I said, if Finland and France can come up with solutions, then surely we can.

There are differences between the different wastes, but just because solar panels and windmills don't produce radioactive waste doesn't mean they don't produce toxic waste.


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> The solution for the disposal of nuclear waste is more a political problem than a practical one. Like I said, if Finland and France can come up with solutions, then surely we can.​


​Let's talk again when that happens. :lol:

​


DrMike said:


> There are differences between the different wastes, but just because solar panels and windmills don't produce radioactive waste doesn't mean they don't produce toxic waste.


I believe you were talking about coal, though...


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> [/FONT][/COLOR]
> [/LEFT]
> Let's talk again when that happens. :lol:
> 
> 
> 
> I believe you were talking about coal, though...​




I talked about both coal and renewable energy generation of waste. You were the one vague about the type of waste to which you were referring.​


----------



## Strange Magic

Imagine the increase in waste--toxic and otherwise--as we add another 3-4-5 billion people to the planet and then fully equip each and every one of them with all the material goodies that the growing masses of today enjoy. You ain't seen nuthin' yet! You may be able then to actually walk on the water.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Strange Magic said:


> You may be able then to actually walk on the water.


Walk through a muddy garden with a will , and so to keep your feets clean . Take care .


----------



## KenOC

According to 538.com, seven of the ten candidates in tonight's Democratic debate support further development of nuclear power. Two (Warren and Sanders) oppose it. One is unclear.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> According to 538.com, seven of the ten candidates in tonight's Democratic debate support further development of nuclear power. Two (Warren and Sanders) oppose it. One is unclear.


Biden won't eliminate what we already have, but also won't expand. So the the frontrunners believe climate change is an imminent existential threat, but won't increase a high yielding carbon neutral energy source because storing the containable waste is a little tricky? That makes sense.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Biden won't eliminate what we already have, but also won't expand. So the the frontrunners believe climate change is an imminent existential threat, but won't increase a high yielding carbon neutral energy source because storing the containable waste is a little tricky? That makes sense.


Possibly it's for the same reason that most experts I know prefer renewable energy. Wind and solar are projected to be less expensive than nuclear power. Wind and solar have fewer safety concerns. Studies indicate that renewable energy (wind, solar, hydro) can supply all the US energy needs. I also believe that wind and solar power create more jobs than nuclear. I agree that it makes sense.


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> ... Wind and solar are projected to be less expensive than nuclear power...I also believe that wind and solar power create more jobs than nuclear.


Am I the only one detecting a contradiction here?


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Possibly it's for the same reason that most experts I know prefer renewable energy. Wind and solar are projected to be less expensive than nuclear power. Wind and solar have fewer safety concerns. Studies indicate that renewable energy (wind, solar, hydro) can supply all the US energy needs. I also believe that wind and solar power create more jobs than nuclear. I agree that it makes sense.


You are talking projections and predictions. We already know what nuclear energy can do. Can wind and solar produce comparable amounts of energy as nuclear right now? With as small of a footprint?

And I didn't realize job creation was the goal. Hell, putting people on bikes to turn turbines would create even more jobs.

Quite frankly, I think there is a very unscientific opposition to nuclear energy that is driven by a lot of fear mongering from those who purport to be pro-science. I also don't find it surprising in the least that those pushing and developing wind and solar technology would try to downplay nuclear energy. After all, they want that government money coming their way. They give future promises of just how wonderful they project their technology will be in time. Nuclear energy is here now, and has been getting progressively better.


----------



## Room2201974

DrMike said:


> You are talking projections and predictions. We already know what nuclear energy can do. Can wind and solar produce comparable amounts of energy as nuclear right now? With as small of a footprint?
> 
> And I didn't realize job creation was the goal. Hell, putting people on bikes to turn turbines would create even more jobs.
> 
> Quite frankly, I think there is a very unscientific opposition to nuclear energy that is driven by a lot of fear mongering from those who purport to be pro-science. I also don't find it surprising in the least that those pushing and developing wind and solar technology would try to downplay nuclear energy. After all, they want that government money coming their way. They give future promises of just how wonderful they project their technology will be in time. Nuclear energy is here now, and has been getting progressively better.


As the son of an American hibakusha, I can say with 100% accuracy, you don't know what you're talking about. I've found it universal that if one doesn't have any "skin" in the game of any subject, one has no clue about that subject.

You don't know what the cost is....because you've never had to pay it.


----------



## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> As the son of an American hibakusha, I can say with 100% accuracy, you don't know what you're talking about. I've found it universal that if one doesn't have any "skin" in the game of any subject, one has no clue about that subject.
> 
> You don't know what the cost is....because you've never had to pay it.


We are talking nuclear power plants, not nuclear bombs. If you don't know the difference, I think you are the one without a clue. France supplies 80% of their power through nuclear energy. Can you tell me how many injuries they have from it?

Fearing nuclear energy because of the bombing of Hiroshima is kind of like fearing electricity because someone close to you was struck by lightning.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> Am I the only one detecting a contradiction here?


There are a number of ways that companies that have the same gross receipts can have a different number of jobs. Some industries have more money going to management (higher paying jobs) and to investors. Those industries will create fewer jobs. My understanding is that the large powerplants (e.g. nuclear) create fewer jobs than smaller distributed ones (wind and solar).


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> You are talking projections and predictions. We already know what nuclear energy can do. Can wind and solar produce comparable amounts of energy as nuclear right now? With as small of a footprint?


The cost projections I was referring to are for 2020. They are based on present knowledge. Likely both technologies will get cheaper, but I haven't seen projections that place nuclear less expensive than wind or solar. The goal is to replace fossil fuel powerplants with net zero carbon emission power over the next 20-30 years. Both technologies can contribute to that goal.



DrMike said:


> And I didn't realize job creation was the goal. Hell, putting people on bikes to turn turbines would create even more jobs.


Job creation is not the goal of climate change mitigation, but why would anyone ignore the benefits of particular technologies?



DrMike said:


> Quite frankly, I think there is a very unscientific opposition to nuclear energy that is driven by a lot of fear mongering from those who purport to be pro-science. I also don't find it surprising in the least that those pushing and developing wind and solar technology would try to downplay nuclear energy. After all, they want that government money coming their way. They give future promises of just how wonderful they project their technology will be in time. Nuclear energy is here now, and has been getting progressively better.


I agree with all of this, but it has little to do with expert opinion on how to replace fossil fuel based powerplants with net zero carbon emission power.


----------



## Room2201974

DrMike said:


> We are talking nuclear power plants, not nuclear bombs. If you don't know the difference, I think you are the one without a clue. France supplies 80% of their power through nuclear energy. Can you tell me how many injuries they have from it?
> 
> Fearing nuclear energy because of the bombing of Hiroshima is kind of like fearing electricity because someone close to you was struck by lightning.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll

As I said, no skin in the game...just another Internet poser!

I mean, I get it. Why should you display empathy? You can't even begin to imagine the cost. I'm obviously wrong in expecting you to.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> The cost projections I was referring to are for 2020. They are based on present knowledge. Likely both technologies will get cheaper, but I haven't seen projections that place nuclear less expensive than wind or solar. The goal is to replace fossil fuel powerplants with net zero carbon emission power over the next 20-30 years. Both technologies can contribute to that goal.
> 
> Job creation is not the goal of climate change mitigation, but why would anyone ignore the benefits of particular technologies?
> 
> I agree with all of this, but it has little to do with expert opinion on how to replace fossil fuel based powerplants with net zero carbon emission power.


As Milton Friedman once pointed out, you can create a whole lot more jobs by having people dig with spoons instead of shovels. What kinds of jobs do wind and solar generate? People cleaning the panels out in the desert?

What is the footprint in terms of actual acreage to make a wind or solar farm that can create the energy equivalent of one nuclear power plant?


----------



## Strange Magic

A recent look at nuclear power.....

"The False Promise of Nuclear Power in an Age of Climate Change", from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear-power-in-an-age-of-climate-change/

Again, a proposal that fission be utilized only as a transitional power source as we switch over to renewable sources.


----------



## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll
> 
> As I said, no skin in the game...just another Internet poser!
> 
> I mean, I get it. Why should you display empathy? You can't even begin to imagine the cost. I'm obviously wrong in expecting you to.


That makes my point. So few for that long? Your attempt at trying to use an emotional veto aside, I think the record speaks for itself in terms of how safe nuclear energy. And might I remind you it wasn't a nuclear reactor that they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but actual atomic bombs that were meant to explode and cause devastation.

Edit: by the way, several of the fatalities listed there are due to medical radiation accidents, people getting radiation therapy (I'm assuming to treat cancer) that went wrong. Unless you are also proposing eliminating radiation therapy for cancer patients because your parent lived through Hiroshima/Nagasaki, I think it is disingenuous to include those stats to argue your point.

Nuclear energy is safe. 100% safe? No. But I think we lose more people to traffic fatalities in a single year than we have lost to nuclear energy-related accidents in the entire history of nuclear power reactor usage. The opposition to it is not based in science, but on emotion and irrational arguments conflating nuclear weapons with nuclear reactors.


----------



## Room2201974

DrMike said:


> That makes my point. So few for that long? Your attempt at trying to use an emotional veto aside, I think the record speaks for itself in terms of how safe nuclear energy. And might I remind you it wasn't a nuclear reactor that they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but actual atomic bombs that were meant to explode and cause devastation.
> 
> Nuclear energy is safe. 100% safe? No. But I think we lose more people to traffic fatalities in a single year than we have lost to nuclear energy-related accidents in the entire history of nuclear power reactor usage. The opposition to it is not based in science, but on emotion and irrational arguments conflating nuclear weapons with nuclear reactors.


Whataboutism from an internet expert with no direct negative experience on this subject! You should stick with quoting Morrissey!


----------



## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> Whataboutism from an internet expert with no direct negative experience on this subject! You should stick with quoting Morrissey!


Neither do you. It was your parent. And that was a nuclear weapon, not a nuclear power plant. Again, that's like opposing electricity because your parent was struck by lightning. You haven't exhibited any knowledge of nuclear energy - just using emotion over what your parent went through as a veto so you don't have to provide an argument. There is a difference between a nuclear weapon and a nuclear reactor. Not the least of which that reactors are built to specifically contain the radiation source and shield people from it, while a weapon is built to specifically unleash that radiation on people. Now there is also a difference between an alcoholic drink and a Molotov cocktail.

And when the hell did I quote Morrissey?


----------



## Strange Magic

Let us hypothesize upon the effects of a powerful, penetrating ''bunker-buster" bomb dropped onto A) a wind turbine farm, B) a solar panel or reflector field, or C) a nuclear reactor. In an era of easy bombing or cruise missile deployment during wartime or to stifle another nation's nuclear capability, this is a real possibility. Israel has a history of attacking other nations' reactors, often usefully executed, but, so far to my knowledge, nobody has yet--purposely or inadvertently--attacked a working reactor. What will be the consequences of such an attack? Retribution? Increasing use as a weapon of mass destruction against a hated and implacable foe? Ugly to contemplate.


----------



## joen_cph

Actually, for a start you just need a 9/11 scenario. The Swedes put up a nuclear reactor, Barsebäck, in a densely populated region just across the water from Copenhagen (and two international airports). The place was closed down gradually from 2005, due to the obvious flaws of such a placement. But scientists said that an attack would be a major disaster for the whole region and the country, including evacuating within 60-100 km etc.

Wikipedia has some info on the vulnerability
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerability_of_nuclear_plants_to_attack

Here's another, lesser known case of radioactive waste problems






+ other problems with waste up there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash

Also, there's the recent problem at Fukushima, where the Japanese are maybe going to dump waste in the sea, to much international concern:
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-radioactive-water-into-pacific-minister-says


----------



## Bwv 1080

_The perfect is the enemy of the good_, an apt description for environmentalist puritans in regards to both nuclear and fracked natural gas

if climate change is as big of a risk as the greens believe, a few hundred casualties from a nuclear accident should be an acceptable cost


----------



## Guest

joen_cph said:


> Actually, for a start you just need a 9/11 scenario. The Swedes put up a nuclear reactor, Barsebäck, in a densely populated region just across the water from Copenhagen (and two international airports). The place was closed down gradually from 2005, due to the obvious flaws of such a placement. But scientists said that an attack would be a major disaster for the whole region and the country, including evacuating within 60-100 km etc.
> 
> Wikipedia has some info on the vulnerability
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerability_of_nuclear_plants_to_attack
> 
> Here's another, lesser known case of radioactive waste problems
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> + an a-bomb that has unfortunately disappeared up there in an 1968-accident:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash
> 
> Also, there's the recent problem at Fukushima, where the Japanese are maybe going to dump waste in the sea, to much international concern:
> https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-radioactive-water-into-pacific-minister-says


Got it - climate change is an imminent existential crisis, spelling perhaps the doom of the planet, and if we don't act now, our fate may already be sealed!!!!!!

But by no means should we employ this well-established, carbon-neutral energy source that is capable of generating large amounts of energy because scenarios show that if there were a military strike, these could be vulnerable (even though this has yet to happen) and there have been a few high profile, low actual fatality accidents, the most significant of which was exacerbated by a horrific government response that continued to dump unsuspecting people into the radioactive fallout rather than admit that anything happened.

That seems completely logically consistent. Science!!!!! Except when we don't like science.


----------



## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> _The perfect is the enemy of the good_, an apt description for environmentalist puritans in regards to both nuclear and fracked natural gas
> 
> if climate change is as big of a risk as the greens believe, a few hundred casualties from a nuclear accident should be an acceptable cost


Except that, with the exception of Chernobyl, there hasn't been hundreds of casualties from nuclear power.

Again - France has been generating 80% of their total energy needs from nuclear energy, and has been doing it for decades! Where are all the stories about the numerous fatalities and accidents from France's nuclear energy production?


----------



## joen_cph

DrMike said:


> Got it - climate change is an imminent existential crisis, spelling perhaps the doom of the planet, and if we don't act now, our fate may already be sealed!!!!!!
> 
> (...)
> 
> That seems completely logically consistent. Science!!!!! Except when we don't like science.


You're creating a hyperbole that's not in the sources. The Greenland source is describing an obvious, not very well-known problem created by careless activities with nuclear waste and other waste, problems further increased by a climate change that wasn't foreseen.


----------



## Guest

joen_cph said:


> You're creating a hyperbole that's not in the sources. The Greenland source is describing an obvious, not very well-known problem created by careless activities with nuclear waste and other waste, problems further increased by a climate change that wasn't foreseen.


And yet, even though this was 50 years ago, with safety measures nowhere near what they are now, there was remarkably little damage done. Diesel barrels and asbestos in a remote location in northern Greenland? And the only death from the Thule accident was one of the airmen who couldn't eject - and as a result, now even nuclear weapons are safer. And if the U.S. and Danish governments haven't found the secondary stage of the one weapon by now, after 50 years, I doubt some enterprising ISIS fighter will succeed in the frigid waters off the coast of Greenland.

Again - where is the issue here. And careless activities? Judging based on what we now know, sure. But what they knew then? You can't judge by that measure. And even if they were "careless," I think the fear over this is greatly overhyped for dramatic effect for a news broadcast.


----------



## Room2201974

DrMike said:


> Neither do you. It was your parent. And that was a nuclear weapon, not a nuclear power plant. Again, that's like opposing electricity because your parent was struck by lightning. You haven't exhibited any knowledge of nuclear energy - just using emotion over what your parent went through as a veto so you don't have to provide an argument. There is a difference between a nuclear weapon and a nuclear reactor. Not the least of which that reactors are built to specifically contain the radiation source and shield people from it, while a weapon is built to specifically unleash that radiation on people. Now there is also a difference between an alcoholic drink and a Molotov cocktail.
> 
> And when the hell did I quote Morrissey?


Once again, showing your lack of understanding in the cost...the real cost. I'm out of this thread. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt about in your philosophy." When Hamlet made that statement, he knew it was useless to try to illuminate Horiatio!

"Come on, let's get some coffee and leave the kennel to lassie."


----------



## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> Once again, showing your lack of understanding in the cost...the real cost. I'm out of this thread. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt about in your philosophy." When Hamlet made that statement, he knew it was useless to try to illuminate Horiatio!
> 
> "Come on, let's get some coffee and leave the kennel to lassie."


Please enlighten me what special insight you have about nuclear energy production and nuclear energy reactors due to your parent living through the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings. You haven't explained that. If you want special treatment for that, you have to justify it. Nuclear weapons and nuclear energy reactors are not one and the same. I realize you think you can use it as an emotional veto and you think it excuses you from having to make an argument for your side, but that just doesn't cut it. If you don't want to have to provide a reasoned argument, fine, just say it. But right now, it sounds like you are using a "if you don't know, I'm not going to explain it to you" cop-out.


----------



## Strange Magic

Clearly the sane, rational path is to transition to renewable energy, slowly decommissioning existing reactors as we go along, ever-mindful of the need to guard against future reactor meltdowns, all the while concerned about waste storage and transport and also acts of war carried out against reactors by terrorists and belligerent states. And hoping and expecting that shortcuts are not taken while decommissioning. Should be a piece of cake! We'll keep checking on things here in New Jersey as Oyster Creek decommissions very quickly, taking less than a decade rather than the 60 years previously postulated. Meanwhile we'll continue subsidizing the Salem/Hope Creek nukes @ $300 million per year. it's all in the planning, the planning.....


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> As Milton Friedman once pointed out, you can create a whole lot more jobs by having people dig with spoons instead of shovels. What kinds of jobs do wind and solar generate? People cleaning the panels out in the desert?


Mystic, teleportation engineer, lead singer, the person who stands on one foot and points at 4-dimensional objects. I assumed you were joking so I answered in kind.



DrMike said:


> What is the footprint in terms of actual acreage to make a wind or solar farm that can create the energy equivalent of one nuclear power plant?


The honest answer is anywhere from 0 acres to larger than a nuclear power plant.

Look, you made the comment that those who want to replace fossil fuels but don't want more nuclear power are utterly unserious. That's simply not true. There are people who have studied power demand, power generating technology, power plant turnover, technology cost, etc. who believe that nuclear power is neither necessary nor the best pathway to reach net-zero carbon emission power generation. These people are clearly serious.

I'm not opposed to nuclear power, but I do worry about the cost.


----------



## KenOC

I‘ve been involved in “alternative energy” evaluations, off and on, for many years. One thing I’ve learned: The people putting forward these ideas are usually non-objective partisans, willing to stretch the truth and fudge the numbers until they get the answers they want – because, after all, they’re doing “good”, so dishonesty is justified. The only people who can outdo them in this department (and then just maybe) are the partisans of rail-based mass transit, whose cost estimates are almost always low by a factor of ten or so.

My direct work experience, plus living in California generally, has made me a total cynic.

Anyway, this state has huge wind farms and very large desert installations to generate power, using both photovoltaic cells and high-intensity focused sun heating. They should be state of the art or close to it. It might be interesting to look into what the actual cost of power “at the busbars” of these installations actually is. I have heard that they contribute to California having the highest retail cost of electricity of any state in the nation (although past political malpractice is certainly a contributor as well).


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Mystic, teleportation engineer, lead singer, the person who stands on one foot and points at 4-dimensional objects. I assumed you were joking so I answered in kind.
> 
> The honest answer is anywhere from 0 acres to larger than a nuclear power plant.
> 
> Look, you made the comment that those who want to replace fossil fuels but don't want more nuclear power are utterly unserious. That's simply not true. There are people who have studied power demand, power generating technology, power plant turnover, technology cost, etc. who believe that nuclear power is neither necessary nor the best pathway to reach net-zero carbon emission power generation. These people are clearly serious.
> 
> I'm not opposed to nuclear power, but I do worry about the cost.


The thing is nuclear energy has been a viable, carbon neutral energy source for much longer than these renewable sources you talk about. But those claiming to be protecting the environment and combating climate change defied the science and pushed for more and more regulations to make it extremely difficult to build new reactors, in spite of the evidence of the safety of the technology. We could have switched more and more away from dirty technologies. And yes, I think those interest groups who are now pushing renewables, now that they are a more reliable source, are one and the same, if not intimately linked, with those who resisted more nuclear, and have persuaded so many people, including the top candidates for the presidential nomination in the Democratic party, that building a nuclear reactor is simply asking for a Chernobyl level event on American soil.


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## KenOC

Found this article on Forbes. It talks about California and also European countries. Interesting reading!

*If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?*


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> Found this article on Forbes. It talks about California and also European countries. Interesting reading!
> 
> *If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?*


Our old friend Michael Shellenberger of Forbes again. I thought the purpose of wind and solar was to cut the emission of carbon dioxide into the environment, thus slowing or even someday reversing AGW. I have no memory of a PR campaign focusing on the specific cost savings of wind and solar as the reason to dump coal and other fuels--I thought the idea was to save the planet for the grandkids, whether it cost more, less, or the same. These ''revelations" of Shellenberger, with their implication that people are being lied to, form a pattern and seem to serve his and Forbes' purpose, whatever that purpose is.


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## KenOC

You can't win for losing! More on renewables and "distributed energy sources." They have led to a huge increase in use of sulphur hexafluoride, or SF6, used in their switchgear. Leakage of this odorless gas, which contributes 23,500 times more atmospheric warming than CO2, has increased its atmospheric presence by almost two-fold in the past two decades. "Just one kilogram of SF6 warms the Earth to the same extent as 24 people flying London to New York return." It persists for about a thousand years.

It remains unregulated, according to this *BBC report*.


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## Guest

That is serious.

Some perspective, the article says SF6 contributes 23,500 times more warming than CO2. Presumably that is comparing at the same concentration. CO2 concentration is 400 parts per million. SF6 concentration is (according to the graph) 9 parts per _trillion_. CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is about 40 million times higher than SF6 concentration. So even though SF6 is 23,500 times more potent than CO2, it contributes about 0.05% of the warming that CO2 does.

So we have a _long_ way to go before this byproduct of certain "green" technologies becomes as big a problem as CO2.


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> You can't win for losing! More on renewables and "distributed energy sources." They have led to a huge increase in use of sulphur hexafluoride, or SF6, used in their switchgear. Leakage of this odorless gas, which contributes 23,500 times more atmospheric warming than CO2, has increased its atmospheric presence by almost two-fold in the past two decades. "Just one kilogram of SF6 warms the Earth to the same extent as 24 people flying London to New York return." It persists for about a thousand years.
> 
> It remains unregulated, according to this *BBC report*.


Yet another powerful argument for tackling runaway population growth as a coequal contributor to environmental degradation worldwide. Imagine again with me a world with one-tenth of today's human population--that, along with profound changes in our technology and lifestyles--is an essential goal toward which civilization should strive. While more and more people, old and young, are becoming convinced of the dread warning of AGW and other threats to the environment, except for Bernie Sanders (and the moronic howling of the Right over his remarks about population), nobody yet beyond thoughtful scientists pays any attention to the need for population reduction. This needs to be--and most effectively is--approached through full female emancipation and equality, though the reduction will likely take perhaps hundreds of years to achieve. The main obstacle will likely turn out to be religious zealotry, as AGW itself could be construed as evidence that God is bungling the job of maintaining Earth's heat balance--a concept which immediately calls for denial of AGW as a possibility. And most major religions hold women as second-class beings, breedstock, servants: "All men are created equal....."


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## mmsbls

Strange Magic said:


> Yet another powerful argument for tackling runaway population growth as a coequal contributor to environmental degradation worldwide. Imagine again with me a world with one-tenth of today's human population--that, along with profound changes in our technology and lifestyles--is an essential goal toward which civilization should strive. While more and more people, old and young, are becoming convinced of the dread warning of AGW and other threats to the environment, except for Bernie Sanders (and the moronic howling of the Right over his remarks about population), nobody yet beyond thoughtful scientists pays any attention to the need for population reduction. This needs to be--and most effectively is--approached through full female emancipation and equality, though the reduction will likely take perhaps hundreds of years to achieve. The main obstacle will likely turn out to be religious zealotry, as AGW itself could be construed as evidence that God is bungling the job of maintaining Earth's heat balance--a concept which immediately calls for denial of AGW as a possibility. And most major religions hold women as second-class beings, breedstock, servants: "All men are created equal....."


I agree that population growth is a potentially serious problem. The growth rate has decreased significantly since the 60s largely, I believe, due to increased wealth and women's rights. I did read a book awhile back that attempted to estimate the "ideal" world population. The author came up with 2 billion people but, of course, admitted that there was large uncertainty.

SM, do you know of papers or books that also estimate the "ideal" population size?


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I agree that population growth is a potentially serious problem. The growth rate has decreased significantly since the 60s largely, I believe, due to increased wealth and women's rights. I did read a book awhile back that attempted to estimate the "ideal" world population. The author came up with 2 billion people but, of course, admitted that there was large uncertainty.
> 
> SM, do you know of papers or books that also estimate the "ideal" population size?


I think the second we stay to think of humans like livestock whose populations need to be controlled, we are heading down a dark road. That so many malthusian intellectuals have had some pretty horrific solutions is a feature, not a bug of this thinking.


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## Strange Magic

mmsbls said:


> I agree that population growth is a potentially serious problem. The growth rate has decreased significantly since the 60s largely, I believe, due to increased wealth and women's rights. I did read a book awhile back that attempted to estimate the "ideal" world population. The author came up with 2 billion people but, of course, admitted that there was large uncertainty.
> 
> SM, do you know of papers or books that also estimate the "ideal" population size?


If you google "carrying capacity" you will be be immersed in droves of material addressing that vey subject. Estimates of ideal population size are all over the map, ranging from the hallucinatory ravings of Julian Simon to results drawn from careful studies of African veldt wildlife populations and inferences drawn from them. I pick an order of magnitude drop as that seems as doable going down as it was going up, in about 250 years. And it brings us back psychologically to the mid-18th century when, as lovers of CM, literature, art, science, philosophy, we know that great things were conceived and produced with a small (by today's standard) population. This is long-term thinking and doesn't solve today's problems, but it's got to start somewhere, sometime, and the path via full female emancipation is both noble and doable.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> I think the second we stay to think of humans like livestock whose populations need to be controlled, we are heading down a dark road. That so many malthusian intellectuals have had some pretty horrific solutions is a feature, not a bug of this thinking.


As usual, the Good Doctor fails to grasp the point that by not treating 50% of the population (girls and women) as livestock, breedstock, servants, we can have population sanity, an environmentally viable world, and a better, fairer society. But I expect many more posts about the horrific solutions of the Malthusians who want just to kill everybody.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> The thing is nuclear energy has been a viable, carbon neutral energy source for much longer than these renewable sources you talk about. But those claiming to be protecting the environment and combating climate change defied the science and pushed for more and more regulations to make it extremely difficult to build new reactors, in spite of the evidence of the safety of the technology. We could have switched more and more away from dirty technologies. And yes, I think those interest groups who are now pushing renewables, now that they are a more reliable source, are one and the same, if not intimately linked, with those who resisted more nuclear, and have persuaded so many people, including the top candidates for the presidential nomination in the Democratic party, that building a nuclear reactor is simply asking for a Chernobyl level event on American soil.


I don't really know how dangerous most people view nuclear power. When I was a grad student in nuclear engineering, one of my professors was an expert on nuclear safety. We learned that the radiation from Three Mile Island was essentially near baseline outside the reactor facility. I suspect that the vast majority of people with interests in renewable energy do not consider Chernobyl or Three Mile Island but rather the Fukushima accident and the issue of nuclear waste storage.

Do you think it would be a bad idea convert 100% of our power production to renewable sources, or do you simply think we should use nuclear power as well?


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> I think the second we stay to think of humans like livestock whose populations need to be controlled, we are heading down a dark road. That so many malthusian intellectuals have had some pretty horrific solutions is a feature, not a bug of this thinking.


I think there's a significant difference between need to and ought to control. I think humans would be better off with a smaller population just as I feel that humans would be better off with more education, less disease, less war, etc.. Given that there seems to be a natural reduction in population with greater wealth and women's rights, I think we should pursue those and educate people about the issues surrounding large populations.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I don't really know how dangerous most people view nuclear power. When I was a grad student in nuclear engineering, one of my professors was an expert on nuclear safety. We learned that the radiation from Three Mile Island was essentially near baseline outside the reactor facility. I suspect that the vast majority of people with interests in renewable energy do not consider Chernobyl or Three Mile Island but rather the Fukushima accident and the issue of nuclear waste storage.
> 
> Do you think it would be a bad idea convert 100% of our power production to renewable sources, or do you simply think we should use nuclear power as well?


You have more information than the average person, who, rather than being exposed to actual science on the matter, is exposed to incessant scare tactics regarding nuclear energy. Can you point to anything in pop culture that ever paints nuclear energy in a positive light? With all the scary stories that the news ran about Fukushima, how much was it played up just how few actual injuries from radiation occurred, and that, in spite of the level of damage done from such a natural catastrophe? I mean, where were the exultant stories about only 1 single fatality?

No - I think there is still a concerted effort to scare people away from nuclear energy.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I think there's a significant difference between need to and ought to control. I think humans would be better off with a smaller population just as I feel that humans would be better off with more education, less disease, less war, etc.. Given that there seems to be a natural reduction in population with greater wealth and women's rights, I think we should pursue those and educate people about the issues surrounding large populations.


There should be a significant difference - but when you put such questions in the hands of the government, it very quickly shifts completely to the "ought to" side. Government rarely intervenes for the sole purpose of offering suggestions. When government intervenes, it is for the purpose of controlling. So you can get such drastic differences as the "it is patriotic to have as many children as you can" mentality of Hungary, to the 1 child (accompanied with forced abortions) policy of China.

As you correctly point out, higher standards of living tend to result in lower birth rates. If it is lower birth rates we want globally, we should focus on higher standards of living, not just draconian population control measures. Industrialized nations are seeing lower birth rates. But for non-industrialized nations, population growth is a good thing. Higher populations tend to foster innovation. When you have more people than you need for providing for basic needs, then your excess can start to focus on innovation. And you can't simply just drop existing technology into a country that hasn't gone through the process of industrializing and expect them to suddenly be an advanced, industrialized nation, anymore than you can take a country with no history of pluralistic, liberal government with the people sovereign and hand them a constitution and expect them to automatically change.

Large population growth is a necessary precursor to advancement. Then once the advancement has occurred, population levels once again stabilize. And so we are seeing that globally, population levels are starting to level off.

All the other attendant problems that are tied to larger populations of humans are not a problem, per se, of large populations so much as a problem with policies, and those can be altered. We can replant trees. We can sequester more wild land and leave it for nature. Those are policy issues. We have done it in many industrialized nations. It would be nice if developing nations learned from our mistakes, but just like children growing up, sometimes they need to make their own mistakes and learn, as we have.

I would also point out that the technology and innovation that is creating carbon-neutral energy solutions is coming from those wealthy, industrialized nations with large populations.


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## Strange Magic

There is so much irrelevance in the above post that it's difficult to know where to begin. Offering women contraception and advising them of the availability of abortion are not "draconian population control measures". Population growth in non-industrialized nations is not a good thing, as the often-referenced (by me) comparison of Thailand and the Philippines shows clearly, as do the waves of migrants heading north in Africa rather than staying home to "innovate". And innovation in creating carbon-neutral energy solutions from wealthy, industrialized countries with large populations?? Like Denmark? The Good Doctor's post is filled with many similar assertions offered without a shred of corroborating evidence but reeking instead of a pre-cooked ideology, and a Will to Believe. Again, no cigar.


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## Open Book

DrMike said:


> There should be a significant difference - but when you put such questions in the hands of the government, it very quickly shifts completely to the "ought to" side. Government rarely intervenes for the sole purpose of offering suggestions. When government intervenes, it is for the purpose of controlling. So you can get such drastic differences as the "it is patriotic to have as many children as you can" mentality of Hungary, to the 1 child (accompanied with forced abortions) policy of China.
> 
> As you correctly point out, higher standards of living tend to result in lower birth rates. If it is lower birth rates we want globally, we should focus on higher standards of living, not just draconian population control measures. Industrialized nations are seeing lower birth rates. But for non-industrialized nations, population growth is a good thing. Higher populations tend to foster innovation. When you have more people than you need for providing for basic needs, then your excess can start to focus on innovation. And you can't simply just drop existing technology into a country that hasn't gone through the process of industrializing and expect them to suddenly be an advanced, industrialized nation, anymore than you can take a country with no history of pluralistic, liberal government with the people sovereign and hand them a constitution and expect them to automatically change.
> 
> Large population growth is a necessary precursor to advancement. Then once the advancement has occurred, population levels once again stabilize. And so we are seeing that globally, population levels are starting to level off.
> 
> All the other attendant problems that are tied to larger populations of humans are not a problem, per se, of large populations so much as a problem with policies, and those can be altered. We can replant trees. We can sequester more wild land and leave it for nature. Those are policy issues. We have done it in many industrialized nations. It would be nice if developing nations learned from our mistakes, but just like children growing up, sometimes they need to make their own mistakes and learn, as we have.
> 
> I would also point out that the technology and innovation that is creating carbon-neutral energy solutions is coming from those wealthy, industrialized nations with large populations.


Historically there were surges in innovation when humans went from rural living in small bands to forming larger groups, especially when those groups became cities. Humans have already achieved the density necessary for innovation even in the less developed parts of the world - they already have big cities there. More population growth isn't going to improve innovation there. Even if it did, are we to wait while these areas of the world reinvent the wheel from the ground up and go through the same innovations developed countries did? Wait for them to go through the same processes, which would take centuries, which would be centuries of continued high population growth until they catch up at which point their improved lifestyle will result in a larger carbon footprint to go with that large population which has been growing unabated. Should less developed countries keep mushrooming in size when they have fewer high tech solutions to the problems population growth causes, like feeding people, as it is?

You seem to have little faith and trust in government. You seems to fear its motives if it were to try to influence the population growth rate even with something as benign as taxation for large families. Why then do you trust government to be able to protect the environment with policies? How are we to "sequester wild land"? There is hardly any wild land left because there are so many of us humans who each want our piece of it. Only in places with inhospitable climate are there expansive wild places, they are rare everywhere else. Those nature documentaries are misleading, Africa is not limitless wild land everywhere you look, it is wild land being encroached upon by a fast-growing human population.

In a capitalist society landowners do not want to preserve their land in its wild state, they want to develop it to make money. Are you in favor of government taking land away from its owners to preserve it in its wild state? The demands of a growing population fuel development, which is the enemy of preserving land in its wild state.


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## Bwv 1080

been fooling heavily with mother nature, who wants half your children dead


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## Bwv 1080

Food as software and the end of the livestock industry

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/...-is-going-to-radically-change-your-world.html


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## Jacck

Ocean ecosystems take two million years to recover after mass extinction - new research
https://theconversation.com/ocean-e...ver-after-mass-extinction-new-research-124328


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## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> been fooling heavily with mother nature, who wants half your children dead


Take away message I get - when your children are less likely to die really young, you don't have as many. This advance in medical science is one of the true miracles of the last 100+ years, along with vaccines - bringing infant mortality down that significantly.


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## KenOC

Agricultural revolution: Finally tried it today. I ordered a Whopper meal and an Impossible Burger so my wife and I could make a comparo. We both thought the taste was about the same, but the non-meat one was a bit drier. However we also agreed that, absent all the veggies and sauce, both "meat" parts were mediocre at best.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Take away message I get - when your children are less likely to die really young, you don't have as many. This advance in medical science is one of the true miracles of the last 100+ years, along with vaccines - bringing infant mortality down that significantly.


Effective, easily available and confidentially-sourced contraception is a great help in bringing down those birthrates.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Agricultural revolution: Finally tried it today. I ordered a Whopper meal and an Impossible Burger so my wife and I could make a comparo. We both thought the taste was about the same, but the non-meat one was a bit drier. However we also agreed that, absent all the veggies and sauce, both "meat" parts were mediocre at best.


I noted an aftertaste with the Impossible Whopper. You are right, though - it is drier. I didn't find it unpleasant, but I doubt I'd order it again. It isn't healthier - for the most part they are comparable, but the non-meat has more sodium.


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> I noted an aftertaste with the Impossible Whopper. You are right, though - it is drier. I didn't find it unpleasant, but I doubt I'd order it again. It isn't healthier - for the most part they are comparable, but the non-meat has more sodium.


As of now, I wouldn't order it again either. For one thing, it costs more. But as a sign of things to come: If they told me it was a "real" burger, I probably wouldn't have thought otherwise. BTW McDonald's is starting to test market meatless burgers in Canada.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> As of now, I wouldn't order it again either. For one thing, it costs more. But as a sign of things to come: If they told me it was a "real" burger, I probably wouldn't have thought otherwise. BTW McDonald's is starting to test market meatless burgers in Canada.


Everybody is trying them. I go to church with the CEO of a Southeast regional fast food chain that specializes mostly in fried chicken and burgers, and is more "Southern" than most fast food chains, and he told me he has been sampling a lot of the different meatless burgers to find one to test in his chains.

The cost didn't bother me that much with the Burger King Impossible. But I think I would have noticed the aftertaste. But you are right - for the quality of Burger King and McDonald's beef patties, there isn't a huge difference. But other chains, where the burgers taste better, if you tasted them side by side I think you could very easily taste the difference.


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> Everybody is trying them. I go to church with the CEO of a Southeast regional fast food chain that specializes mostly in fried chicken and burgers, and is more "Southern" than most fast food chains, and he told me he has been sampling a lot of the different meatless burgers to find one to test in his chains.
> 
> The cost didn't bother me that much with the Burger King Impossible. But I think I would have noticed the aftertaste. But you are right - for the quality of Burger King and McDonald's beef patties, there isn't a huge difference. But other chains, where the burgers taste better, if you tasted them side by side I think you could very easily taste the difference.


For kicks, check out this video. A well-known Brazilian YT chef and carnivore pits a Beyond Meat burger against a regular one. The results are hilarious since he's genuinely distressed by the results.


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## Bwv 1080

> about 1970 a great reversal began in America's use of resources. Contrary to the expectations of many professors and preachers, America began to spare more resources for the rest of nature, first in relative and more recently in absolute amounts. A series of decouplings
> is occurring, so that our economy no longer advances in tandem with exploitation of land, forests, water, and minerals. American use of almost everything except information seems to be peaking, not because the resources are
> exhausted, but because consumers changed consumption and producers changed production. Changes in behavior and technology liberate the environment.
> Farms
> Consider first land. Agriculture has always been the greatest raper of nature, stripping and simplifying and regimenting it, and reducing acreage left. Then, in America, in about 1940 acreage and yield decoupled (Figure 1). Since about 1940 American farmers have quintupled corn while using the same or even less land. Corn matters because it towers over other crops, totaling more tons than wheat, soy, rice, and potatoes together


https://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/Nature_Rebounds.pdf


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## joen_cph

As regards the destruction of natural, varied habitats, I was stunned the other day to read that in a couple of decades, one country like Spain is said to have lost about 64 mio birds
https://www.audubon.org/news/how-spain-lost-millions-common-birds-during-past-two-decades

There are tendencies and increased awareness about restoring natural areas in my country too, away from uniform farming, but those tendencies are only slowly advancing.


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## Strange Magic

Watched _The Biggest Little Farm_ a few days ago. It shows a sustainable form of highly-diversified agriculture first explored popularly in the book _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ by Michael Pollan some years ago. Well worth viewing. Coupled with a reduced population, it represents a viable alternate path.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Biggest_Little_Farm


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## Bwv 1080

China's one child policy a worse disaster than the Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution?



> Perhaps no government policy anywhere in the world affected more people in a more intimate and brutal way than China's one-child policy. In the West, there's a tendency to approve of it as a necessary if overzealous effort to curb China's population growth and overcome poverty. In fact, it was unnecessary and has led to a rapid aging of China's population that may undermine the country's economic prospects. The scholar Wang Feng has declared the one-child policy to be China's worst policy mistake, worse even than the Cultural Revolution or the Great Leap Forward (which led to the worst famine in world history). The one-child policy broke up families and destroyed lives on an epic scale-and although it officially ended last fall, it continues to ripple through the lives of Chinese and the 120,000 Chinese babies who were adopted in America and other Western countries.


https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/07/chinas-worst-policy-mistake/


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## Bwv 1080

Strange Magic said:


> Watched _The Biggest Little Farm_ a few days ago. It shows a sustainable form of highly-diversified agriculture first explored popularly in the book _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ by Michael Pollan some years ago. Well worth viewing. Coupled with a reduced population, it represents a viable alternate path.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Biggest_Little_Farm


How is relying on animal waste for fertilizer sustainable? ISTM that this model only works because there are plenty of rich people on CA willing to pay a premium for a luxury good (organic farm-to-table produce). The way to feed the world is technology - GMOs to reduce water, herbicide and pesticide use and increase yields, information technology and precision farming, and eventually replacing livestock with in vitro meat production

Get over the reduced population - barring some catastrophe, it's not going to happen until mid century or so as Industrialization and the accompanying declining birth rates spread through Africa (it's already happening in Asia and Latin America)


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## Strange Magic

Bwv 1080 said:


> How is relying on animal waste for fertilizer sustainable? ISTM that this model only works because there are plenty of rich people on CA willing to pay a premium for a luxury good (organic farm-to-table produce). The way to feed the world is technology - GMOs to reduce water, herbicide and pesticide use and increase yields, information technology and precision farming, and eventually replacing livestock with in vitro meat production
> 
> Get over the reduced population - barring some catastrophe, it's not going to happen until mid century or so as Industrialization and the accompanying declining birth rates spread through Africa (it's already happening in Asia and Latin America)


Not going to "get over" reducing the population. Your path "forward" has some positive aspects--such as reducing livestock meat production and consumption. But the herbicide/pesticide/GMO route, while it will be vigorously pursued, is in a race with AGW and still-increasing global population now manifesting itself in mass migration and social disruption. Long-term--and I think long term--we must reduce the global population to ecologically sustainable levels, or kiss the planet goodbye as a place we can live.


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## mmsbls

Strange Magic said:


> Not going to "get over" reducing the population. Your path "forward" has some positive aspects--such as reducing livestock meat production and consumption. But the herbicide/pesticide/GMO route, while it will be vigorously pursued, is in a race with AGW and still-increasing global population now manifesting itself in mass migration and social disruption. Long-term--and I think long term--we must reduce the global population to ecologically sustainable levels, or kiss the planet goodbye as a place we can live.


Reducing the population is clearly important, and researchers should try to understand how this transition can be made minimizing negative impacts. I don't see a path to reducing the population much in the mid-term (say to 1950-1960 or so). Increasing women's rights and people's standard of living will naturally cause the population to plateau and likely decrease.

In my research area researchers have investigated both behavior and technology as solutions to reducing GHG emission. Behavior is really, really difficult to modify. I believe the best way forward is to use technological change to reduce GHG emissions. The more we reduce, the fewer the negative impacts of climate change.

Even though I'm pessimistic in reaching the net-zero goal in 2050 and even the 80% reduction goal in 2050, I don't see a scenario where humans can no longer live on earth.


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## Strange Magic

> Bwv 1080: "How is relying on animal waste for fertilizer sustainable?"


While I have no overall objection to the judicious application of select non-manure fertilizers to cropland, we should remember that manure and wood ash and a handful of other readily-available (lime, marl) materials were all that sustained agriculture until the mid-18th century--about the same time as world population was at my target 10% of today's bloated 7.5-8 billions (to grow larger by 3-5 billions). The combination of animal (and plant) waste with non-manure fertilizers should easily sustain an agriculture to feed a global population one-tenth the size of today's, using the methods described in both Pollan's book and the film, scaled up or down appropriately as justifiable.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Even though I'm pessimistic in reaching the net-zero goal in 2050 and even the 80% reduction goal in 2050, I don't see a scenario where humans can no longer live on earth.


I wouldn't argue it is likely, but I can't say it's impossible that some unanticipated thermal runaway could kick in and change the climate so quickly that even GMOs can't keep up. There could be huge disruption and decrease of population, even if Homo Sapiens don't go extinct.


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## Strange Magic

> mmsbls: "Even though I'm pessimistic in reaching the net-zero goal in 2050 and even the 80% reduction goal in 2050, I don't see a scenario where humans can no longer live on earth."


I have no guaranteed crystal ball that shows me the exact future, and so I cannot say we either will or won't survive the coming centuries as AGW, the introduction of novel and quite possibly toxic materials into the biosphere, and billions more people demanding ever-growing levels of "prosperity" continue as currently headed. But, as we fix flat tires on the vehicle so we can move forward, we should focus more on where the car is heading--is it toward a cliff?--and begin to think realistically about our, and the planet's, future. Is it important that there are abundant wild and free-roaming creatures in wilderness (''what's that?") areas? What do we know about the effects of the growing acidity of seawater, for example? Maybe I read too much science fiction in my youth, and too many books like _The Challenge of Man's Future_ and Willy Ley's _Engineers' Dreams_, with the result that--along with my training as a geologist--I became concerned with long-term consequences moreso than my peers. Will humanity survive on a future Earth if things continue as they have? I don't know. But prudence suggests we think a lot harder about it.


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## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> How is relying on animal waste for fertilizer sustainable? ISTM that this model only works because there are plenty of rich people on CA willing to pay a premium for a luxury good (organic farm-to-table produce). The way to feed the world is technology - GMOs to reduce water, herbicide and pesticide use and increase yields, information technology and precision farming, and eventually replacing livestock with in vitro meat production
> 
> Get over the reduced population - barring some catastrophe, it's not going to happen until mid century or so as Industrialization and the accompanying declining birth rates spread through Africa (it's already happening in Asia and Latin America)


I think most of this is true - except for the in vitro meat production. That will meet irrational fear from people. For a short while there were people using scare tactics, claiming that was essentially what KFC had done - genetically bred chickens with massive breasts and no heads. As a result, they could no longer call them chickens, so they had to start going by "KFC" instead of "Kentucky Fried Chicken." Oddly enough, Europe, where they are supposedly more environmentally aware than us in the U.S., will probably have the bigger revulsion to in vitro meat - much in the same way they have been more resistant to GMO crops. For one thing, in vitro meat is not "organic." It is also not "free range." Plus, if you eliminate the livestock, you also eliminate the fecal matter they need to fertilize their "organic" crops.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Reducing the population is clearly important, and researchers should try to understand how this transition can be made minimizing negative impacts. I don't see a path to reducing the population much in the mid-term (say to 1950-1960 or so). Increasing women's rights and people's standard of living will naturally cause the population to plateau and likely decrease.
> 
> In my research area researchers have investigated both behavior and technology as solutions to reducing GHG emission. Behavior is really, really difficult to modify. I believe the best way forward is to use technological change to reduce GHG emissions. The more we reduce, the fewer the negative impacts of climate change.
> 
> Even though I'm pessimistic in reaching the net-zero goal in 2050 and even the 80% reduction goal in 2050, I don't see a scenario where humans can no longer live on earth.


My big prediction - we will hit these "drop dead" dates, doomsday, and we won't have hit these goals we have set. My further prediction - it will end up being like the Y2K fears. The fears were based on old technology that was already obsolete by that point, and ultimately it will pass by incredibly unremarkably. And then there will be increased calls, saying, "well, just because it didn't happen when we predicted doesn't mean it isn't coming." And then the apathy for such doomsday predictions will increase even more. Celebrities will continue to lecture the common man about how responsible they are, while jetsetting around the world in whatever the major form of international travel is at that point in the future. Al Gore's clone (because human cloning will be commonplace at that point) will be producing "An Inconvenienter Truth, v. 5.1," and it will be greenlit for a documentary Oscar before it even goes to post-production.


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## Bwv 1080

DrMike said:


> I think most of this is true - except for the in vitro meat production. That will meet irrational fear from people. For a short while there were people using scare tactics, claiming that was essentially what KFC had done - genetically bred chickens with massive breasts and no heads. As a result, they could no longer call them chickens, so they had to start going by "KFC" instead of "Kentucky Fried Chicken." Oddly enough, Europe, where they are supposedly more environmentally aware than us in the U.S., will probably have the bigger revulsion to in vitro meat - much in the same way they have been more resistant to GMO crops. For one thing, in vitro meat is not "organic." It is also not "free range." Plus, if you eliminate the livestock, you also eliminate the fecal matter they need to fertilize their "organic" crops.


That all will be a headwind, but the vastly increased feed efficiency, reduction of CO2 and methane emission and animal rights issues will eventually win out. It does not necessarily have to be the US and Europe, the developing world may be the key. The tech also promises products such as synthesized human breast milk to replace infant formula.


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## mmsbls

Strange Magic said:


> I have no guaranteed crystal ball that shows me the exact future, and so I cannot say we either will or won't survive the coming centuries as AGW, the introduction of novel and quite possibly toxic materials into the biosphere, and billions more people demanding ever-growing levels of "prosperity" continue as currently headed. But, as we fix flat tires on the vehicle so we can move forward, we should focus more on where the car is heading--is it toward a cliff?--and begin to think realistically about our, and the planet's, future. Is it important that there are abundant wild and free-roaming creatures in wilderness (''what's that?") areas? What do we know about the effects of the growing acidity of seawater, for example? Maybe I read too much science fiction in my youth, and too many books like _The Challenge of Man's Future_ and Willy Ley's _Engineers' Dreams_, with the result that--along with my training as a geologist--I became concerned with long-term consequences moreso than my peers. Will humanity survive on a future Earth if things continue as they have? I don't know. But prudence suggests we think a lot harder about it.


I don't think it matters much whether the vast majority of people think harder about these issues. There are already a significant number of people with extensive expertise who spend their lives thinking about climate change and other environmental concerns. These people will continue to acquire data, build models, test the models, and inform society. That process will not cease and almost certainly will increase with time.

The real question is how society will react to the information. Will we collectively act to mitigate some, most, or only few of the negative effects? My best guess is somewhere between some and most.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> My big prediction - we will hit these "drop dead" dates, doomsday, and we won't have hit these goals we have set.


I agree with this prediction. I'm not exactly sure what the definition of doomsday is, but I have never heard or read anything by climate science experts that seems to match anything like doomsday.



DrMike said:


> My further prediction - it will end up being like the Y2K fears.


We would all love that, Given that we don't know what actions society will take over the next 30 years or so, it's hard to estimate how far short of our goals we may fall. However, the present effects of climate change are already vastly worse than Y2K so it's somewhat hard to imagine that effects 30 to 50 years from now will not be much worse without appropriate action.


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## Guest

The bottom line is that, for the most likely fossil fuel usage of the next generation or two, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the ice caps will melt and sea level will rise 20 meters (~70 feet). I see no scenario where that is no big deal.


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## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> That all will be a headwind, but the vastly increased feed efficiency, reduction of CO2 and methane emission and animal rights issues will eventually win out. It does not necessarily have to be the US and Europe, the developing world may be the key. The tech also promises products such as synthesized human breast milk to replace infant formula.


But we already have the vastly increased efficiency of GMO crops, and yet Europe still resists. Besides, you know all the conspiracy theories about biotech and pharmaceutical companies right now. If they were also producing the meat that people eat? Good Lord, it will blow the conspiracy theorists' minds!!!!


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## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> The bottom line is that, for the most likely fossil fuel usage of the next generation or two, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the ice caps will melt and sea level will rise 20 meters (~70 feet). I see no scenario where that is no big deal.


Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! (hat tip to Ghostbusters)


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## Open Book

To those poking fun at doomsday scenarios, things can get plenty miserable for our species without our actually reaching doomsday. We may not reach extinction, we'll just live miserably with a lower life expectancy. Areas will be almost unlivable due to high temperatures. Mass migrations will turn into widespread wars over food, water, land, other resources made scarce by climate change, and more disease and suffering. 

We can't solve the climate problem unless we solve the population problem. The graphs show this, if they are accurate - pollution levels are growing fastest where population is growing fastest. And we probably can't solve the population problem without raising the standard of living everywhere in the world so that people voluntarily want to taper off the size of their families. 

That will require a level of international cooperation that is unprecedented. The developed world will have to give unselfishly and the undeveloped world would have to be accepting, not rejecting, of the developed world. For political reasons I'm not sure it's going to happen.


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## Bwv 1080

Open Book said:


> To those poking fun at doomsday scenarios, things can get plenty miserable for our species without our actually reaching doomsday. We may not reach extinction, we'll just live miserably with a lower life expectancy. Areas will be almost unlivable due to high temperatures. Mass migrations will turn into widespread wars over food, water, land, other resources made scarce by climate change, and more disease and suffering.
> 
> We can't solve the climate problem unless we solve the population problem. The graphs show this, if they are accurate - pollution levels are growing fastest where population is growing fastest. And we probably can't solve the population problem without raising the standard of living everywhere in the world so that people voluntarily want to taper off the size of their families.
> 
> That will require a level of international cooperation that is unprecedented. The developed world will have to give unselfishly and the undeveloped world would have to be accepting, not rejecting, of the developed world. For political reasons I'm not sure it's going to happen.


I hope (or maybe don't hope) that you realize that 'the population problem' cannot be solved in a timeframe relevant to global warming without actually killing people?


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## Guest

Open Book said:


> To those poking fun at doomsday scenarios, things can get plenty miserable for our species without our actually reaching doomsday. We may not reach extinction, we'll just live miserably with a lower life expectancy. Areas will be almost unlivable due to high temperatures. Mass migrations will turn into widespread wars over food, water, land, other resources made scarce by climate change, and more disease and suffering.
> 
> We can't solve the climate problem unless we solve the population problem. The graphs show this, if they are accurate - pollution levels are growing fastest where population is growing fastest. And we probably can't solve the population problem without raising the standard of living everywhere in the world so that people voluntarily want to taper off the size of their families.
> 
> That will require a level of international cooperation that is unprecedented. The developed world will have to give unselfishly and the undeveloped world would have to be accepting, not rejecting, of the developed world. For political reasons I'm not sure it's going to happen.


The graphs have been showing this since Malthus. Forgive me for sounding like a broken record, but Ehrlich predicted that doomsday was to come in the 70s and 80s - when his graphs "proved it." Forgive me, again, for pointing out the obvious - it didn't happen.


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## Strange Magic

mmsbls said:


> I agree with this prediction. I'm not exactly sure what the definition of doomsday is, but I have never heard or read anything by climate science experts that seems to match anything like doomsday.
> 
> We would all love that, Given that we don't know what actions society will take over the next 30 years or so, it's hard to estimate how far short of our goals we may fall. However, the present effects of climate change are already vastly worse than Y2K so it's somewhat hard to imagine that effects 30 to 50 years from now will not be much worse without appropriate action.


There will be no "Doomsday".

This is the way the world ends 
This is the way the world ends 
This is the way the world ends 
Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot, _The Hollow Men_


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> The graphs have been showing this since Malthus. Forgive me for sounding like a broken record, but Ehrlich predicted that doomsday was to come in the 70s and 80s - when his graphs "proved it." Forgive me, again, for pointing out the obvious - it didn't happen.


Yes, you sound like a broken record. Again, restate clearly your thesis: that if a bad thing hasn't happened (yet), that is proof that it will never happen. But, funny thing, there have been mass extinctions (we're in one now), asteroids have struck the earth, and people have starved as their monoculture crops collapsed and their populations dependent on that monoculture have grown past the carrying capacity of their environment. So we need other reasons why bad things can't happen. Ideology will work; nutty cornucopian, Panglossian economics will work; libertarianism will work; also religious fervor that says It's All Under Control. Take your pick--mix and match.


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## Strange Magic

Bwv 1080 said:


> I hope (or maybe don't hope) that you realize that 'the population problem' cannot be solved in a timeframe relevant to global warming without actually killing people?


So realized. But despite that knowledge, we must begin educating the public about the role population plays in compounding and leveraging environmental degradation, and also stepping up the push for full female equality and control over their bodies. I am positive that all have noticed the lack of any reference to the effect of population growth and current numbers in general media coverage of AGW or other environmental issues--loss of wildlife, loss of wilderness, increasing pollution from plastic waste, etc., etc. Back during the 1960s, people took out full-page features in the newspapers (The Hugh Moore Fund, for instance) to discuss population growth. Now, the silence is deafening--"Population problem? What population problem? Some countries need to increase their populations or there'll be nobody left, etc., etc.". A race to catastrophe. But let's start reversing the trend toward ever more people using ever more materials, and refocusing on the role of population is a beginning.


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## Guest

Open Book said:


> To those poking fun at doomsday scenarios, things can get plenty miserable for our species without our actually reaching doomsday. We may not reach extinction, we'll just live miserably with a lower life expectancy. Areas will be almost unlivable due to high temperatures. Mass migrations will turn into widespread wars over food, water, land, other resources made scarce by climate change, and more disease and suffering.
> 
> We can't solve the climate problem unless we solve the population problem. The graphs show this, if they are accurate - pollution levels are growing fastest where population is growing fastest. And we probably can't solve the population problem without raising the standard of living everywhere in the world so that people voluntarily want to taper off the size of their families.
> 
> That will require a level of international cooperation that is unprecedented. The developed world will have to give unselfishly and the undeveloped world would have to be accepting, not rejecting, of the developed world. For political reasons I'm not sure it's going to happen.


This was all obvious to Ehrlich, and he published some very specific predictions. And they didn't occur.

Why not? You and others continue the predictions, but never address why those predictions were wrong. Okay, if they are still right, and have yet to happen, what led to Ehrlich being so far off in the timeframe? 40+ years and counting off. So what did he not know then that we do now? The wars over food haven't happened. In fact, worldwide hunger has dropped since then as we have been able to grow more food on less land. When resources become scarce, with new technology, we end up replacing technologies. Another reason Ehrlich was so wrong in his commodities wager with Simon - he assumed the same things would continue to have the same demand forever - he couldn't imagine what actually happened, that technology changed, and what was once a scarce much in demand resource was now either more abundant than previously thought (new supplies found) or obsolete, no longer as necessary as it once was.

So why was Ehrlich so wrong? And why is it not possible that you are wrong now?


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## Strange Magic

^^^^The above post shows the value of recycling. The Doctor circles, then returns unerringly to "arguments" made dozens of posts and times before. Paul Ehrlich's timing was wrong: agreed. But Malthus, Ehrlich, Hardin & Co.'s basic arguments, now reinforced with the then-unknown phenomenon of AGW and the additions of billions to the global population, remain as cogent as before, except that now almost all of Earth's premier scientific associations and organizations agree that "Doctor, We Have A Problem!". And continued population growth compounds the problem.


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## Room2201974

Murphy's law meets the "new clear" industry:

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/thousands-bags-radioactive-fukushima-waste-20642951


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I agree with this prediction. I'm not exactly sure what the definition of doomsday is, *but I have never heard or read anything by climate science experts that seems to match anything like doomsday. *
> .


Really? Never? Not even from Ehrlich or Hardin?
The following is a list of 18 dire predictions made back in 1970, around the first Earth Day, many by scientists (Ehrlich being quite prominent in the doomsday predictions.


> 1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that "civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."
> 2. "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation," wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
> 3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction."
> 4. "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make," Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years."
> 5. "Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born," wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled "Eco-Catastrophe! "By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s."
> 6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the "Great Die-Off."
> 7. "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
> 8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine."
> 9. In January 1970, Life reported, "Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…."
> 10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, "At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable."
> 11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America's rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
> 12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that "air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during "smog disasters" in New York and Los Angeles.
> 13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons "may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945." Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).
> 14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, `I am very sorry, there isn't any.'"
> 15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
> 16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, "Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
> 17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that "since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it."
> 18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years," he declared. "If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."


My main point is not to say that scientists are charlatans. Science has greatly increased our understanding in countless ways and improved our quality of life immensely. The average poor person in the United States lives better than the wealthy industrialists of over a century ago - better than Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, and that is thanks to scientific advances.
But science sometimes suffers from scientists being victims of their own success, and their hubris kicks in. Maybe some of the current worst predictions will come true, but just like those predictions by scientists nearly 50 years ago, there is also a not insignificant chance they won't. And I'm not prepared to do the kind of massive alterations to economies and culture they are calling for based on those predictions until they can prove to me they are much better at predicting.
You know there is a reason that vaccines and drugs and new medical procedures must go through extensive testing and trials before they are approved for use - because regardless of how grave the health threat is, or how potentially beneficial the new treatment might be, you still have to make sure the treatment won't do more harm than good. Most of the proposals I hear to combat global warming fall in the category of high cost, low reward. And when it isn't even clear the predicted outcomes are anything near certain, that is more than I am willing to do.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Really? Never? Not even from Ehrlich or Hardin?
> The following is a list of 18 dire predictions made back in 1970, around the first Earth Day, many by scientists (Ehrlich being quite prominent in the doomsday predictions.


A dog gnawing, gnawing on a favored bone........

It would be helpful if The Doctor would share with us the source of his quoted material--he clearly cribbed it from somewhere. With sufficient energy, a similar list of crazy predictions of wonderful things just around the corner could be compiled from the writings of the cornucopian economists and futurologists that spring up like mushrooms to comfort the concerned. Julian Simon would lead the pack, with his promise that Earth can support an infinite population. And we have confident predictions of people routinely living to 150 in perfect health, flying cars for all, etc. The point is that it is more wise, more prudent to listen to what the unified scientific community is saying today, now that AGW--suspected by only a tiny few specialists in 1970--is a thoroughly-documented additional stressor on the environment. The boy cried Wolf perhaps too often in the 1960s and 1970. But eventually the wolf does indeed come. Will we be ready?


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Really? Never? Not even from Ehrlich or Hardin?
> The following is a list of 18 dire predictions made back in 1970, around the first Earth Day, many by scientists (Ehrlich being quite prominent in the doomsday predictions.


Well, I was referring to climate science experts making predictions about AGW (so not people like Ehrlich or Hardin). I have not read or heard anything that suggests doomsday from that community. I have heard concerns from people in that community that suggest outcomes worse than what's found in the IPCC reports but nothing doomsdayish.

One huge difference between the scientists predicting catastrophe back in the 1970s and today's climate science experts is the size of the research effort supporting the predictions. There are many thousands of climate scientists, and many have been working specifically on AGW collecting data, creating models, comparing models, meeting periodically to create assessment reports that bring together a wide range of relevant research. Nothing like that existed 50 years ago.

The greatest scientist of the past century, Einstein, was a "quantum physics denier" in that he explicitly did not believe in one of the most important aspects of quantum theory. The physics community disagreed with him. The community was correct. I have little confidence in individual scientist proclamations, but when a community of researchers working for decades and building on well understood basic science come to believe something more and more strongly over time, I think we should pay attention.

One question is whether it's reasonable to expect solutions to AGW similar to those increasing food yields, reducing criteria pollutants, and developing or expanding resources. I think those problems were simpler for several reasons, but we'll see.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Well, I was referring to climate science experts making predictions about AGW (so not people like Ehrlich or Hardin). I have not read or heard anything that suggests doomsday from that community. I have heard concerns from people in that community that suggest outcomes worse than what's found in the IPCC reports but nothing doomsdayish.
> 
> One huge difference between the scientists predicting catastrophe back in the 1970s and today's climate science experts is the size of the research effort supporting the predictions. There are many thousands of climate scientists, and many have been working specifically on AGW collecting data, creating models, comparing models, meeting periodically to create assessment reports that bring together a wide range of relevant research. Nothing like that existed 50 years ago.
> 
> The greatest scientist of the past century, Einstein, was a "quantum physics denier" in that he explicitly did not believe in one of the most important aspects of quantum theory. The physics community disagreed with him. The community was correct. I have little confidence in individual scientist proclamations, but when a community of researchers working for decades and building on well understood basic science come to believe something more and more strongly over time, I think we should pay attention.
> 
> One question is whether it's reasonable to expect solutions to AGW similar to those increasing food yields, reducing criteria pollutants, and developing or expanding resources. I think those problems were simpler for several reasons, but we'll see.


Yes, the community was right on quantum physics. That is cherry picking, though. There are plenty of examples where the individual was right, and the community was wrong. Semmelweiss, for example, was convinced that doctors were spreading disease by going from the morgue to the maternity wing without first washing their hands. Later the germ theory of disease vindicated him, but he was the voice in the wilderness before.

The point is there is a reason many people have said the following in one form or another, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." We know now that those predictions in the 70s were wrong. But at the time they had a lot of support in the scientific community. It is good that we know a lot more now than we did 50 years ago. That helps in a lot of ways. But just as 50 years ago we had no idea how the situation would change by now, we don't really know where situations will take us 50 years from now. 50 years before man first stepped on the moon, air flight was still in its infancy. We may be able to predict conditions as long as we can also control the variables, and can guarantee predictable future conditions. But new variables constantly enter the equation, and we can't factor those in because we don't even know what they will be. And that is why the myriad of high cost, low benefit proposals don't seem worthwhile to undertake.


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## Strange Magic

^^^^A plan for the future: Just Float, but build lots of nuclear reactors, a low cost/high benefit proposal?


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Yes, the community was right on quantum physics. That is cherry picking, though. There are plenty of examples where the individual was right, and the community was wrong.


I assume you are not actually suggesting that, in general, people should put the same stock in individual's ideas as in the scientific community's ideas.



DrMike said:


> And that is why the myriad of high cost, low benefit proposals don't seem worthwhile to undertake.


I agree completely with this statement although I'm not sure what it has to do with AGW. What do low benefit proposals have to do with climate change mitigation?


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I assume you are not actually suggesting that, in general, people should put the same stock in individual's ideas as in the scientific community's ideas.
> 
> I agree completely with this statement although I'm not sure what it has to do with AGW. What do low benefit proposals have to do with climate change mitigation?


A lot of the proposals, especially the drastic curbing of fossil fuel usage in the United States, will have a huge economic impact, but most estimates I have heard, especially if India and China don't also participate, suggest minimal impact on warming.


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## Open Book

DrMike said:


> Really? Never? Not even from Ehrlich or Hardin?
> The following is a list of 18 dire predictions made back in 1970, around the first Earth Day, many by scientists (Ehrlich being quite prominent in the doomsday predictions.
> 1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that "civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."
> 2. "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation," wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
> 3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction."
> 4. "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make," Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years."
> 5. "Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born," wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled "Eco-Catastrophe! "By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s."
> 6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the "Great Die-Off."
> 7. "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
> 8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine."
> 9. In January 1970, Life reported, "Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…."
> 10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, "At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable."
> 11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America's rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
> 12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that "air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during "smog disasters" in New York and Los Angeles.
> 13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons "may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945." Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).
> 14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, `I am very sorry, there isn't any.'"
> 15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
> 16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, "Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
> 17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that "since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it."
> 18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years," he declared. "If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."
> "
> 
> My main point is not to say that scientists are charlatans. Science has greatly increased our understanding in countless ways and improved our quality of life immensely. The average poor person in the United States lives better than the wealthy industrialists of over a century ago - better than Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, and that is thanks to scientific advances.
> But science sometimes suffers from scientists being victims of their own success, and their hubris kicks in. Maybe some of the current worst predictions will come true, but just like those predictions by scientists nearly 50 years ago, there is also a not insignificant chance they won't. And I'm not prepared to do the kind of massive alterations to economies and culture they are calling for based on those predictions until they can prove to me they are much better at predicting.
> You know there is a reason that vaccines and drugs and new medical procedures must go through extensive testing and trials before they are approved for use - because regardless of how grave the health threat is, or how potentially beneficial the new treatment might be, you still have to make sure the treatment won't do more harm than good. Most of the proposals I hear to combat global warming fall in the category of high cost, low reward. And when it isn't even clear the predicted outcomes are anything near certain, that is more than I am willing to do.


Many of those things on that list are partially true already. They are in progress. People in Chinese cities do wear gas masks. Tropical rain forests are disappearing and so are the species that are unique to them. Air pollution does kill people with respiratory illnesses, they die younger in polluted areas. Do only catastrophic, dramatic effects impress you?

The starvation predictions may not be as dire as predicted because of improvements in agriculture, but what guarantee is there that these will continue as needed?

What does it matter exactly _ when_ things get really bad? The fact that we are on the path to things getting really bad should concern you.

Do you have the same casual reaction with things that are precious to you? Do you squander your money and say, I'm not bankrupt yet? Or do you say, hey, I can see that I'm on the path to bankruptcy, I'd better stop spending so much money?

Everyone would agree that some people are living better lives than ever before, better than kings in past centuries, in their First World bubble. That does not mean all is right with the world.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> A lot of the proposals, especially the drastic curbing of fossil fuel usage in the United States, will have a huge economic impact, but most estimates I have heard, especially if India and China don't also participate, suggest minimal impact on warming.


Yes, the majority of policy measures to mitigate climate change will have near to mid-term negative economic impacts. Every measure I have studied or read about is expected to have long-term economic benefits. And those benefits occur even without counting social costs (e.g. reduced agricultural production, damage to ecosystems, health effects of criteria pollutants, property damage, human displacement, etc.). The experts I know believe those social costs are much larger than commonly discussed. Climate change mitigation will require the entire world to take actions (some countries more than others) to reduce GHG emissions.

If only the US acts, we won't accomplish what's needed. But the US can lead the way for others to act. The Northeast states followed California in their regulation. China has asked colleagues of mine to help them draft regulation focused on transportation similar to that existing in California. If the US pushed hard for GHG reductions, other nations would likely be moved to follow. The bottom line is that we all need to act, and the US can act as a catalyst to push other countries to join in effective ways. I feel that we simply don't have a choice. The consequences are too important.

Incidentally, you mention huge economic impacts. Do you have an idea on how big "huge" is?


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## Guest

................duplicate post


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Yes, the majority of policy measures to mitigate climate change will have near to mid-term negative economic impacts. Every measure I have studied or read about is expected to have long-term economic benefits. And those benefits occur even without counting social costs (e.g. reduced agricultural production, damage to ecosystems, health effects of criteria pollutants, property damage, human displacement, etc.). The experts I know believe those social costs are much larger than commonly discussed. Climate change mitigation will require the entire world to take actions (some countries more than others) to reduce GHG emissions.
> 
> If only the US acts, we won't accomplish what's needed. But the US can lead the way for others to act. The Northeast states followed California in their regulation. China has asked colleagues of mine to help them draft regulation focused on transportation similar to that existing in California. If the US pushed hard for GHG reductions, other nations would likely be moved to follow. The bottom line is that we all need to act, and the US can act as a catalyst to push other countries to join in effective ways. I feel that we simply don't have a choice. The consequences are too important.
> 
> Incidentally, you mention huge economic impacts. Do you have an idea on how big "huge" is?


While you may be talking about ideas that scientists have, realistically, it comes down to policies and legislation that politicians enact. Warren, who looks more and more like the frontrunner, said she will ban fracking on day one, which has not only been an economic boon, but has probably played a significant role in how much we have lowered our carbon emissions. Several of the Democratic candidate have said they will either scale back or eliminate nuclear power. All of the frontrunners, I believe, have endorsed the Green New Deal, whose authors have said it is about rearranging our economy. Among other things, it proposes retrofitting all buildings and structures in this country to be more energy efficient. Cost estimates are in the trillions. I don't have a price tag for all of these proposals, in addition to perennial ideas like carbon taxes, but I think they certainly count as huge, and will have little impact on global warming - some might even have a negative impact.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> While you may be talking about ideas that scientists have, realistically, it comes down to policies and legislation that politicians enact. Warren, who looks more and more like the frontrunner, said she will ban fracking on day one, which has not only been an economic boon, but has probably played a significant role in how much we have lowered our carbon emissions.


Fracking does have economic benefits, but it simply doesn't help in reaching our climate change goals. Natural gas has a lower carbon intensity (carbon emissions per constant amount of energy) than coal so switching from coal power generation to natural gas will reduce carbon emissions. The problem is that we need to lower emissions by something like 80-100% of 1990 emissions levels in 2050, and natural gas usage will do little to get us to those targets. It's carbon intensity is way too high. Also, building out more natural gas infrastructure will delay the transition to renewable technologies because stock turnover of powerplants can take 20 years or more. So fracking may look good in the near-term but is very problematic for climate change mitigation in the long-term.



DrMike said:


> Among other things, it proposes retrofitting all buildings and structures in this country to be more energy efficient. Cost estimates are in the trillions. I don't have a price tag for all of these proposals, in addition to perennial ideas like carbon taxes, but I think they certainly count as huge, and will have little impact on global warming - some might even have a negative impact.


I would caution making arguments that certain policies cost trillions of dollars. So does the military every 2 years. The reason we fund the military is that some people believe that the spending is worth the benefits our military affords. The spending on climate change mitigation is proposed to get the benefits that a very low carbon future will afford.

My research includes modeling transportation of cars and on-road trucks in California. We compare a business as usual (BAU) scenario with a low carbon scenario (80% reduction in carbon emissions in 2050 from 1990). In our baseline model the overall cost of California transportation is roughly $4 trillion from 2015-2050. The low carbon scenario costs a few tens of billion dollars less over that timeframe than the BAU scenario. And we haven't included the social cost of both scenarios (enormous for the BAU scenario).

I'm not sure what you mean when saying climate change policies will have little impact or a negative impact on global warming. All the policies I take seriously have enormous impacts. Otherwise, why would we study them?


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## Strange Magic

The same arguments about cost apply throughout our economy. It isn't as if money spent to create new infrastructure to generate energy while releasing far less carbon will disappear down a rathole. Just like desparately needed infrastructure to repair and replace and build new bridges, tunnels, sewage treatment plants, water delivery systems results in people working and being paid and materials and equipment supplied and crafted, so will building charging stations, new mass transit systems, solar and wind farms, energy storage facilities, etc. Money and jobs will cycle through the economy, assuming the hyper-rich are not allowed to siphon off and pocket the lion's share. The economy boomed during WWII, and much of that matériel ended up at the bottom of the sea or in the junkyard--what if it actually resulted in jobs, tax revenues, and new and better infrastructure?


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Fracking does have economic benefits, but it simply doesn't help in reaching our climate change goals. Natural gas has a lower carbon intensity (carbon emissions per constant amount of energy) than coal so switching from coal power generation to natural gas will reduce carbon emissions. The problem is that we need to lower emissions by something like 80-100% of 1990 emissions levels in 2050, and natural gas usage will do little to get us to those targets. It's carbon intensity is way too high. Also, building out more natural gas infrastructure will delay the transition to renewable technologies because stock turnover of powerplants can take 20 years or more. So fracking may look good in the near-term but is very problematic for climate change mitigation in the long-term.
> 
> I would caution making arguments that certain policies cost trillions of dollars. So does the military every 2 years. The reason we fund the military is that some people believe that the spending is worth the benefits our military affords. The spending on climate change mitigation is proposed to get the benefits that a very low carbon future will afford.
> 
> My research includes modeling transportation of cars and on-road trucks in California. We compare a business as usual (BAU) scenario with a low carbon scenario (80% reduction in carbon emissions in 2050 from 1990). In our baseline model the overall cost of California transportation is roughly $4 trillion from 2015-2050. The low carbon scenario costs a few tens of billion dollars less over that timeframe than the BAU scenario. And we haven't included the social cost of both scenarios (enormous for the BAU scenario).
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean when saying climate change policies will have little impact or a negative impact on global warming. All the policies I take seriously have enormous impacts. Otherwise, why would we study them?


Again, I'm talking about actual legislation that is being proposed, what will actually happen, not scenarios that you hypothesize and cost out. I know California does more than most States, and my mother's utility bills are ridiculous. What about eliminating nuclear energy? Several Democratic candidates purpose doing that. That is very low carbon emissions, right?

As to the costs, I think we can absolutely talk about trillions in spending since you specifically asked me what these huge costs would be. Retrofitting ALL buildings and structures in this country is going to go well beyond the 2-year military budget. And that is but one idea in the Green New Deal.

I am not convinced that we can switch the entire nation to renewables, and in the meantime, until those power options become more viable, without driving people to the poor house with higher utility bills, then natural gas is a much better option than coal. What is the alternative - stick with dirty coal until renewables are ready? Which country in the world right now is run completely off of renewable? What's the largest nation that has effectively switched over?


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## KenOC

Can't win for losing! From the *BBC*:

"A new study suggests that a switch to 100% organic food production in England and Wales would see an overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions. While going fully organic would produce fewer direct emissions than conventional farming, researchers say it would limit food production.

"As a result more imports would be needed, resulting in up to five times more land being used overseas.
Overall emissions could rise by 21% compared to the conventional approach."

The details are interesting.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Again, I'm talking about actual legislation that is being proposed, what will actually happen, not scenarios that you hypothesize and cost out.


I'm talking about regulation already in place - ZEV mandates, low carbon fuel standard, carbon taxes. Carbon taxes and the low carbon fuel standard (a variation of feebates) are generally viewed by economists as the most economically efficient way to meet certain goals. Many of us view ZEV mandates as the only way to meet climate change goals in sectors such as transportation.



DrMike said:


> I know California does more than most States, and my mother's utility bills are ridiculous. What about eliminating nuclear energy? Several Democratic candidates purpose doing that. That is very low carbon emissions, right?


Nuclear energy has zero carbon emissions, yes. It is projected



DrMike said:


> As to the costs, I think we can absolutely talk about trillions in spending since you specifically asked me what these huge costs would be. Retrofitting ALL buildings and structures in this country is going to go well beyond the 2-year military budget. And that is but one idea in the Green New Deal.


The problem here is that your comparisons are not meaningful. The right comparison is a lifecycle cost analysis of a policy versus the cost for not doing that policy. I don't know much about retrofitting buildings, but I did see a paper suggesting that there would be a 21 year payback period for energy efficiency retrofits. So if the total capital costs would be in the trillions, the savings on fuel (and potentially other benefits) would offset that capital cost over a 21 year timeframe. If timeframes of more than 21 years were considered, the energy retrofits would save money. Again, that does not include the benefits of climate change mitigation which are believed to be enormous. The 2-year military budget is about $1.4 trillion, and the spending over 30 years is then roughly $21 trillion. So the comparison would be $21 trillion for the military compared to some savings for energy retrofits.

I think the main issue seems to be that you don't consider climate change to be problematic at all (on the order of Y2K). Obviously any policy that proposes to spend trillions on a problem that does not exist would be insane. If military spending had no benefits, the US would be crazy to spend much money on defense. I consider climate change to be an enormous concern that requires very serious actions. The actions have significant costs in the near to mid-term, but longer term benefits may outweigh those costs. That is most definitely not the case for military spending.


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## Guest

But if we drive ourselves to the poor house in the process? You mention military spending. That is lower than entitlement spending. And those who are proposing even more spending on climate action also propose trillions in New spending on even more entitlement programs. And how do you even switch completely to renewables without driving utility costs through the roof? Why is California, one of the biggest in leading the country in climate action, also strapped with such high utility costs? Is that what we can all look forward to? My mother lives alone in Northern California and spends over $500 per month on utilities. I spend less than half of that in the middle of Summer in Alabama with a family of 5. The only country I am aware of that had gone completely renewable is Iceland, and a lot of that is from geothermal, due to volcanic activity. How do you scale that up to a country the size of the U.S.?


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## Johnnie Burgess

DrMike said:


> But if we drive ourselves to the poor house in the process? You mention military spending. That is lower than entitlement spending. And those who are proposing even more spending on climate action also propose trillions in New spending on even more entitlement programs. And how do you even switch completely to renewables without driving utility costs through the roof? Why is California, one of the biggest in leading the country in climate action, also strapped with such high utility costs? Is that what we can all look forward to? My mother lives alone in Northern California and spends over $500 per month on utilities. I spend less than half of that in the middle of Summer in Alabama with a family of 5. The only country I am aware of that had gone completely renewable is Iceland, and a lot of that is from geothermal, due to volcanic activity. How do you scale that up to a country the size of the U.S.?


Cost does not matter to a liberal. They do not care if about the cost. They do not care abou the millions of job that would be lost in the coal and oil industries.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> But if we drive ourselves to the poor house in the process? You mention military spending. That is lower than entitlement spending. And those who are proposing even more spending on climate action also propose trillions in New spending on even more entitlement programs. And how do you even switch completely to renewables without driving utility costs through the roof? Why is California, one of the biggest in leading the country in climate action, also strapped with such high utility costs? Is that what we can all look forward to? My mother lives alone in Northern California and spends over $500 per month on utilities. I spend less than half of that in the middle of Summer in Alabama with a family of 5. The only country I am aware of that had gone completely renewable is Iceland, and a lot of that is from geothermal, due to volcanic activity. How do you scale that up to a country the size of the U.S.?


The total mismanagement of the economy from the Reagan introduction of Voodoo Economics and the resultant flow of the nation's wealth to the very top, continuing today, is what is driving everybody else to the poorhouse. Where is the vaunted infrastructure bill? Yes, we have a cocaine high of gig, benefit-free, employment at the moment, and a soaring stock market benefitting the already-wealthy, as people scramble to survive, yet income and wealth inequality continue to increase. A massive, structured program to install a sustainable, efficient infrastructure that also makes sure the spending reaches the general population will be, like the federal highway program under Eisenhower, a powerful agent in improving people's lives and also their sense of mission.

Johnnie, take another look at the "millions" employed today by the coal industry. Coal is dying by its own hand and its death will not be mourned.


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## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> The total mismanagement of the economy from the Reagan introduction of Voodoo Economics and the resultant flow of the nation's wealth to the very top, continuing today, is what is driving everybody else to the poorhouse. Where is the vaunted infrastructure bill? Yes, we have a cocaine high of gig, benefit-free, employment at the moment, and a soaring stock market benefitting the already-wealthy, as people scramble to survive, yet income and wealth inequality continue to increase. A massive, structured program to install a sustainable, efficient infrastructure that also makes sure the spending reaches the general population will be, like the federal highway program under Eisenhower, a powerful agent in improving people's lives and also their sense of mission.
> 
> Johnnie, take another look at the "millions" employed today by the coal industry. Coal is dying by its own hand and its death will not be mourned.


Sure the coal miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania will disagree with you. And you will be yelling at them next year when they vote for Trump over a democrat who tells them they will kill their job like Hillary did in 2016.

So strange you see no problem with a 500 dollar utility bill?


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Sure the coal miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania will disagree with you. And you will be yelling at them next year when they vote for Trump over a democrat who tells them they will kill their job like Hillary did in 2016.
> 
> So strange you see no problem with a 500 dollar utility bill?


I am certain that coal miners everywhere--those that are left in a dying industry--will vote for Trump. I won't yell at them. Many of them can be put to work in a program to restore the coal-mined countryside to a state of stability, where streams are clear and not filled with acid and mine tailings, and mountaintops are restored, their soil rejuvenated, trees planted.

And what should The Doctor's mother's utility bill be? What do we actually know? Maybe she lives in a very poorly insulated home, with an old, inefficient source of heat and hot water. Perhaps if her home were retrofitted to higher standards, something The Doctor is suspicious of, her utility bills would shrink. Find out more and tell us about it.


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## Room2201974

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Sure the coal miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania will disagree with you. And you will be yelling at them next year when they vote for Trump over a democrat who tells them they will kill their job like Hillary did in 2016.


Pssst, pssst! Do you know where I can elbow my way into one of them mining jobs? I'm halfway to black lung disease and I'm looking to pick up on some carbon credits.


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## Guest

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Sure the coal miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania will disagree with you. And you will be yelling at them next year when they vote for Trump over a democrat who tells them they will kill their job like Hillary did in 2016.


...except that Hilary said no such thing. Can we agree this is "politics" and verboten for the main board.


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## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> ...except that Hilary said no such thing. Can we agree this is "politics" and verboten for the main board.


This is what she said:


> Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let's reunite around politics that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these under-served poor communities. So, for example, I'm the only candidate who has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right, Tim? [Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) was in the audience.]


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## Guest

We can step back a little further



> Look, we have serious economic problems in many parts of our country. And Roland is absolutely right. Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let's reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these underserved poor communities.
> 
> So for example, I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?
> 
> And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.
> 
> Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.


Commenting on the negative reaction to her remarks, she later said



> It was a misstatement because what I was saying is the way things are going now, they will continue to lose jobs. It didn't mean that we were going to do it. What I said is that is going to happen unless we take action to help and prevent it.


The question is, who is "we" in "Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." It seems clear to me that "we" was the economy as a whole, which was moving away from coal, mainly into cheaper natural gas. She was not threatening government action to kill coal companies.

People in coal country would have been better served by economic investment in their communities, rather than an ineffective policy to "bring back coal" which has only resulted in continued contraction of the coal industry.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-...xt-hillary-clintons-comments-about-coal-jobs/


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## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> We can step back a little further
> 
> Commenting on the negative reaction to her remarks, she later said
> 
> The question is, who is "we" in "Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." It seems clear to me that "we" was the economy as a whole, which was moving away from coal, mainly into cheaper natural gas. She was not threatening government action to kill coal companies.
> 
> People in coal country would have been better served by economic investment in their communities, rather than an ineffective policy to "bring back coal" which has only resulted in continued contraction of the coal industry.
> 
> https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-...xt-hillary-clintons-comments-about-coal-jobs/


That is your spin and her spin after the fact. But she did, in fact, say what you claimed she didn't say.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> That is your spin and her spin after the fact. But she did, in fact, say what you claimed she didn't say.


Please!! Baron Scarpia has provided the full context from which the Hillary Haters have winkled out only that part they think they can use to their advantage. But let the record show that the Haters' efforts here, anyway, have instead resounded and redounded back to reveal the puerile shallowness of the attempt.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> But if we drive ourselves to the poor house in the process?


I assume you don't read the same studies that I do. In general the studies project initial periods of increased costs followed by significant savings after that period. It's difficult to project the economic effect of major policies, but studies I have seen generally project modest decrease in GDP growth during an initial period. Studies generally project significant increase in jobs creation. The question for society is to understand how to structure policies such that individuals are minimally affected.



DrMike said:


> You mention military spending. That is lower than entitlement spending.


Military spending should be evaluated based on its costs and benefits. So should entitlement spending and climate change mitigation.



DrMike said:


> ...And how do you even switch completely to renewables without driving utility costs through the roof? Why is California, one of the biggest in leading the country in climate action, also strapped with such high utility costs? Is that what we can all look forward to? My mother lives alone in Northern California and spends over $500 per month on utilities. I spend less than half of that in the middle of Summer in Alabama with a family of 5. The only country I am aware of that had gone completely renewable is Iceland, and a lot of that is from geothermal, due to volcanic activity. How do you scale that up to a country the size of the U.S.?


I'm not an expert on power production, but I'm not aware that those who study renewable power production view increasing renewable power as an especially difficult problem. Do the experts you talk to say that it is?

I live in Northern California and pay less than $200/mo on average for gas and electric. If you are talking about combined gas and electric costs, I'm not sure why your mother pays so much.


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## mmsbls

This thread is about human environmental impacts. We're getting close to purely political posts so please try to make sure you discuss environmental impacts and do not drift to purely political comments.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I assume you don't read the same studies that I do. In general the studies project initial periods of increased costs followed by significant savings after that period. It's difficult to project the economic effect of major policies, but studies I have seen generally project modest decrease in GDP growth during an initial period. Studies generally project significant increase in jobs creation. The question for society is to understand how to structure policies such that individuals are minimally affected.
> 
> Military spending should be evaluated based on its costs and benefits. So should entitlement spending and climate change mitigation.
> 
> I'm not an expert on power production, but I'm not aware that those who study renewable power production view increasing renewable power as an especially difficult problem. Do the experts you talk to say that it is?
> 
> I live in Northern California and pay less than $200/mo on average for gas and electric. If you are talking about combined gas and electric costs, I'm not sure why your mother pays so much.


That is subtle. Yes, I have a panel of experts I call in on such occasions.

You talk short term. What is short term? A generation? Less? More? How long is the initial period? And since you dismiss my talk of costs and their size, and how we have to look at everything in relative terms, would it trouble you much to actually reveal the type of price tag that for you is an increased cost? What is a modest decrease in GDP?

These types of things always very cheerfully project tons of jobs. What is the net job change after ending non-renewable energy? New technology tends to be less labor intensive.

Sorry, but I couldn't get my experts on the phone to answer those questions for me.


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## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> ...In general the studies project initial periods of increased costs followed by significant savings after that period.


Unfortunately, such analyses are often made by proponents of the projects they favor. A good example is the California fast rail project, about which little more needs to be said.

Early in my career I did many analyses of waste-to-energy projects, most involving burning refuse-derived fuel. The air quality issues were largely ignored, and an expected healthy growth in oil costs made most appear attractive. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. I hope that some of these cooler heads are still around...

Another ruse often used by such analysts is the "indirect economic multiplier," which says that every dollar spent on a project generates (say) eight dollars in indirect economic activity since everybody, after all, takes in everybody else's laundry. A word to the wise: Beware!


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## Guest

Mmsbls - you'll forgive me, but you and your experts make it sound like switching to 100% renewable energy and drastically cutting out carbon is all just so simple and only marginally expensive. Your scenarios seem remarkably Rosy. Why doesn't that match with reality then? Is it just us nefarious skeptics that are thwarting your every move? The Scooby Doo scenario? We would have saved the planet, if it weren't for you meddlesome skeptics!


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## Strange Magic

There is a point of view that holds that almost any governmental activity (spending) to "promote the general welfare" is a waste of money, unless a way can be found to funnel vast sums of public money into the coffers of the already-wealthy. Exceptions for military spending, bailing out banks and failed savings-and-loan institutions, etc., other collapsed vanities of the rich and powerful. It has been called Socialism for the Rich; Free Enterprise for the Poor.

It's not a question of costs; it's a question of Who Pays; Who Benefits.


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## Strange Magic

Trump reconfirms US leadership in getting out of horrible idea of saving environment:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50165596


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## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Trump reconfirms US leadership in getting out of horrible idea of saving environment:
> 
> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50165596


When did the Senate ratify the Paris accord?


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Mmsbls - you'll forgive me, but you and your experts make it sound like switching to 100% renewable energy and drastically cutting out carbon is all just so simple and only marginally expensive. Your scenarios seem remarkably Rosy. Why doesn't that match with reality then? Is it just us nefarious skeptics that are thwarting your every move? The Scooby Doo scenario? We would have saved the planet, if it weren't for you meddlesome skeptics!


OK, so maybe let's get on the same page. Due to the nature of forums and the my responding to specific questions, you have the wrong impression of my views. I believe mitigating climate change is by far the most difficult problem humans have ever faced. The challenges are enormous. Those in my field work on two issues. First, what are the best technologies to reduce emissions, and can those technologies meet our goals? Second, how can we best transition to a future where we have met our goals taking into account economics, policy, and operations? Is the cost problematic? Are there showstoppers due to problems with how industry functions? Basically, we try to include all stakeholders in understanding what may work best.

The vast majority of us believe that the technical challenge is clearly doable. We know technologies today that can meet our goals. We work very hard on trying to find the best transition strategies. Some are easy, and others are extremely hard. I happen to work in one particularly difficult area - medium and heavy-duty vehicles. Next week I am hosting a workshop bringing together truck manufacturers, truck fleets, utilities, government agencies, and researchers in an effort to understand the issues surrounding a proposed zero emissions truck mandate proposed for California. The costs are high and the timeframe is very aggressive. All those groups must work together early enough to deal with potential problems. I wrote a position paper laying out some of the serious problems and trying to find potential solutions.

I'm skeptical that the world will meet our climate change goals. The closer we get, the less problems we will experience. I strongly believe that a future where we have not tried to mitigate the warming will be significantly worse than a future where the mitigation costs reduce GDP. The goal is to get to that future with the least economic hardship as possible.

On the issue of near to mid to long-term - I view near term as roughly 5 years, mid-term as 5-maybe 15 years, and long-term as 15 - 30 years (and ultimately longer). The study I mentioned about retrofitting buildings concluded that the lifecycle cost of retrofitting would be comparable to business as usual in 21 years so presumably the first 5-10 years incur excess costs and after that there are cost savings every year. My studies of cars show society would have excess costs over something like a 10 year timeframe and have cost savings after that period. Trucks are harder requiring longer time periods. In fact long-haul trucks (those that travel 100,000 miles per year or so) will likely not see cost savings in those time periods. Those studies have uncertainties that could make those timeframes longer or shorter.

In the area of transportation, I can tell you all the wonderful aspects of each alternative fuel (hydrogen, electricity, biofuels, etc.) as well as all the problems associated with that fuel. I can do the same with the technologies (fuel cell, batteries, hybrids, natural gas engines, etc.). I can do the same with conventional vehicles. My view is that alternative technologies and fuels are clearly superior to conventional transportation. We could transition by the end of the century, but we don't have the time. We must move sooner.


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## Johnnie Burgess

mmsbls said:


> OK, so maybe let's get on the same page. Due to the nature of forums and the my responding to specific questions, you have the wrong impression of my views. I believe mitigating climate change is by far the most difficult problem humans have ever faced. The challenges are enormous. Those in my field work on two issues. First, what are the best technologies to reduce emissions, and can those technologies meet our goals? Second, how can we best transition to a future where we have met our goals taking into account economics, policy, and operations? Is the cost problematic? Are there showstoppers due to problems with how industry functions? Basically, we try to include all stakeholders in understanding what may work best.
> 
> The vast majority of us believe that the technical challenge is clearly doable. We know technologies today that can meet our goals. We work very hard on trying to find the best transition strategies. Some are easy, and others are extremely hard. I happen to work in one particularly difficult area - medium and heavy-duty vehicles. Next week I am hosting a workshop bringing together truck manufacturers, truck fleets, utilities, government agencies, and researchers in an effort to understand the issues surrounding a proposed zero emissions truck mandate proposed for California. The costs are high and the timeframe is very aggressive. All those groups must work together early enough to deal with potential problems. I wrote a position paper laying out some of the serious problems and trying to find potential solutions.
> 
> I'm skeptical that the world will meet our climate change goals. The closer we get, the less problems we will experience. I strongly believe that a future where we have not tried to mitigate the warming will be significantly worse than a future where the mitigation costs reduce GDP. The goal is to get to that future with the least economic hardship as possible.
> 
> On the issue of near to mid to long-term - I view near term as roughly 5 years, mid-term as 5-maybe 15 years, and long-term as 15 - 30 years (and ultimately longer). The study I mentioned about retrofitting buildings concluded that the lifecycle cost of retrofitting would be comparable to business as usual in 21 years so presumably the first 5-10 years incur excess costs and after that there are cost savings every year. My studies of cars show society would have excess costs over something like a 10 year timeframe and have cost savings after that period. Trucks are harder requiring longer time periods. In fact long-haul trucks (those that travel 100,000 miles per year or so) will likely not see cost savings in those time periods. Those studies have uncertainties that could make those timeframes longer or shorter.
> 
> In the area of transportation, I can tell you all the wonderful aspects of each alternative fuel (hydrogen, electricity, biofuels, etc.) as well as all the problems associated with that fuel. I can do the same with the technologies (fuel cell, batteries, hybrids, natural gas engines, etc.). I can do the same with conventional vehicles. My view is that alternative technologies and fuels are clearly superior to conventional transportation. We could transition by the end of the century, but we don't have the time. We must move sooner.


Tell how the working poor would be able to have a car if we followed your ideas? Or would they be forced to use public transportation or walk?


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> OK, so maybe let's get on the same page. Due to the nature of forums and the my responding to specific questions, you have the wrong impression of my views. I believe mitigating climate change is by far the most difficult problem humans have ever faced. The challenges are enormous. Those in my field work on two issues. First, what are the best technologies to reduce emissions, and can those technologies meet our goals? Second, how can we best transition to a future where we have met our goals taking into account economics, policy, and operations? Is the cost problematic? Are there showstoppers due to problems with how industry functions? Basically, we try to include all stakeholders in understanding what may work best.
> 
> The vast majority of us believe that the technical challenge is clearly doable. We know technologies today that can meet our goals. We work very hard on trying to find the best transition strategies. Some are easy, and others are extremely hard. I happen to work in one particularly difficult area - medium and heavy-duty vehicles. Next week I am hosting a workshop bringing together truck manufacturers, truck fleets, utilities, government agencies, and researchers in an effort to understand the issues surrounding a proposed zero emissions truck mandate proposed for California. The costs are high and the timeframe is very aggressive. All those groups must work together early enough to deal with potential problems. I wrote a position paper laying out some of the serious problems and trying to find potential solutions.
> 
> I'm skeptical that the world will meet our climate change goals. The closer we get, the less problems we will experience. I strongly believe that a future where we have not tried to mitigate the warming will be significantly worse than a future where the mitigation costs reduce GDP. The goal is to get to that future with the least economic hardship as possible.
> 
> On the issue of near to mid to long-term - I view near term as roughly 5 years, mid-term as 5-maybe 15 years, and long-term as 15 - 30 years (and ultimately longer). The study I mentioned about retrofitting buildings concluded that the lifecycle cost of retrofitting would be comparable to business as usual in 21 years so presumably the first 5-10 years incur excess costs and after that there are cost savings every year. My studies of cars show society would have excess costs over something like a 10 year timeframe and have cost savings after that period. Trucks are harder requiring longer time periods. In fact long-haul trucks (those that travel 100,000 miles per year or so) will likely not see cost savings in those time periods. Those studies have uncertainties that could make those timeframes longer or shorter.
> 
> In the area of transportation, I can tell you all the wonderful aspects of each alternative fuel (hydrogen, electricity, biofuels, etc.) as well as all the problems associated with that fuel. I can do the same with the technologies (fuel cell, batteries, hybrids, natural gas engines, etc.). I can do the same with conventional vehicles. My view is that alternative technologies and fuels are clearly superior to conventional transportation. We could transition by the end of the century, but we don't have the time. We must move sooner.


Just as a way to compare this, how difficult would it be to implement this stuff in relation to the above mentioned 
rail that was supposed to connect LA with San Francisco? And is your position and funding coming from an industry that would benefit financially? I only ask because we on the other side are constantly accused of being in the picked of the oil and coal industries. 
I just cannot imagine a more permissive environment in this country for what you want than California, and I don't see it happening there in a timeframe that you believe is necessary.


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## Guest

mmsbls - on the trucking issue, that is actually something that is of some interest to me. My grandfather was a truck driver for most of his life. He purchased his own truck and would do private contracting. When you talk about a zero emissions mandate in California (he lived in California, and did most of his trucking in-state, living just north of Sacramento), what exactly does that look like? The private contractor - does he also have to meet that mandate? Requirements to convert his "fleet" to some new vehicle? Taxes if he doesn't? My grandfather lived almost his entire married life in the same army surplus house he purchased after WWII and had moved to a small town north of Sacramento. My father had helped do an addition on the house. He supplemented his income by running a feed store house and keeping bees and selling honey on the side. How does a zero emissions mandate look to someone like that?


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> The vast majority of us believe that the technical challenge is clearly doable. We know technologies today that can meet our goals. We work very hard on trying to find the best transition strategies. Some are easy, and others are extremely hard. I happen to work in one particularly difficult area - medium and heavy-duty vehicles. Next week I am hosting a workshop bringing together truck manufacturers, truck fleets, utilities, government agencies, and researchers in an effort to understand the issues surrounding a proposed zero emissions truck mandate proposed for California. *The costs are high and the timeframe is very aggressive*. All those groups must work together early enough to deal with potential problems. I wrote a position paper laying out some of the serious problems and trying to find potential solutions.


 High costs and aggressive timeframe. Well that sounds exactly like a government proposal. Everybody else must adhere to aggressive timeframes, just not government.



> I'm skeptical that the world will meet our climate change goals. The closer we get, the less problems we will experience. I strongly believe that a future where we have not tried to mitigate the warming will be significantly worse than a future where the mitigation costs reduce GDP. The goal is to get to that future with the least economic hardship as possible.


 As we have already covered, I'm less pessimistic for what the future holds. In 10, 20, 30 years from now, I think new variables will have entered the picture that we can't even imagine at this point - some good, some bad.



> On the issue of near to mid to long-term - I view near term as roughly 5 years, mid-term as 5-maybe 15 years, and long-term as 15 - 30 years (and ultimately longer). The study I mentioned about retrofitting buildings concluded that the lifecycle cost of retrofitting would be comparable to *business as usual in 21 years so presumably the first 5-10 years incur excess costs *and after that there are cost savings every year. My studies of cars show society would have excess costs over something like a 10 year timeframe and have cost savings after that period. Trucks are harder requiring longer time periods. In fact long-haul trucks (those that travel 100,000 miles per year or so) will likely not see cost savings in those time periods. Those studies have uncertainties that could make those timeframes longer or shorter.


 Excess costs for who? Government, or the individuals and businesses that will have to bear these costs? And how excessive, because a decade is a long time to bear excess costs. And not seeing benefits until 2 decades later? So what business do you imagine can withstand losses for 2 decades before they will finally see benefits. And does this also count for families retrofitting their homes? A decade is a full third of the standard 30-year mortgage. This may all sound doable in terms of generational planning, but right now we don't have all the money over those 2-3 decades. It may be desirable to do, but if you can't afford it, you can't afford it. You make it sound all so sterile - well, it works on paper!



> In the area of transportation, I can tell you all the wonderful aspects of each alternative fuel (hydrogen, electricity, biofuels, etc.) as well as all the problems associated with that fuel. I can do the same with the technologies (fuel cell, batteries, hybrids, natural gas engines, etc.). I can do the same with conventional vehicles. My view is that alternative technologies and fuels are clearly superior to conventional transportation. We could transition by the end of the century, but we don't have the time. We must move sooner.


Yes - converting all vehicles would be great. I think Teslas are cool. I can't afford one, and I make a decent living.


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## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Tell how the working poor would be able to have a car if we followed your ideas? Or would they be forced to use public transportation or walk?


Lower income individuals will continue to purchase (new or used) conventional vehicles for 20 years or so. By that time, zero emissions vehicles (ZEVs) are expected to be cheaper to own and operate than conventional vehicles. The capital costs have come down significantly and are expected to continue to decrease to roughly the same as conventional vehicles. Fuel and maintenance costs are much less for ZEVs. Once ZEVs are less expensive, there will be no economic penalty for buying them, and lower income people will benefit from owning them.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Just as a way to compare this, how difficult would it be to implement this stuff in relation to the above mentioned
> rail that was supposed to connect LA with San Francisco? And is your position and funding coming from an industry that would benefit financially? I only ask because we on the other side are constantly accused of being in the picked of the oil and coal industries.
> I just cannot imagine a more permissive environment in this country for what you want than California, and I don't see it happening there in a timeframe that you believe is necessary.


I know relatively little about the high speed rail so I can't compare the sectors. I'm not sure what you are asking about my position and funding. I believe the auto industry knows they must convert to electric vehicles because electric vehicles are ultimately superior in total cost of ownership, performance, and environmental issues. They might prefer a slower transition, but they are convinced that ZEVs are the future. Personally I believe regulatory agencies must finance some of the early transition period. Essentially, this means society must help fund that transition.

I also think reaching our goals will be difficult, but I believe we don't have a choice. The potential effects of climate change are too damaging not to push very hard.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> mmsbls - on the trucking issue, that is actually something that is of some interest to me. My grandfather was a truck driver for most of his life. He purchased his own truck and would do private contracting. When you talk about a zero emissions mandate in California (he lived in California, and did most of his trucking in-state, living just north of Sacramento), what exactly does that look like? The private contractor - does he also have to meet that mandate? Requirements to convert his "fleet" to some new vehicle? Taxes if he doesn't? My grandfather lived almost his entire married life in the same army surplus house he purchased after WWII and had moved to a small town north of Sacramento. My father had helped do an addition on the house. He supplemented his income by running a feed store house and keeping bees and selling honey on the side. How does a zero emissions mandate look to someone like that?


The present proposed mandate would not affect someone like him. The regulatory agency has told me that only fleets operating at least 50 trucks in California would be affected through 2030. Smaller fleets would be exempt from the mandate. After 2030 the mandate will presumably grow stricter, but it's not clear that owner operators would be required to purchase ZEVs. I assume your grandfather purchased used trucks, but I don't know what class trucks he operated. If an owner operator did purchase used trucks, s/he would eventually see that most or all of the used trucks are ZEVs. By that time, ZEVs could be cheaper to own and operate depending on the application. As I mentioned, I'm not sure how long-haul trucks will be less expensive.

In my position paper, I have argued strongly for incentive funding to be available for fleets to purchase ZEVs for some initial period. There is presently government funding for charging infrastructure, and I think that funding must continue for some time as well.


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## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> I know relatively little about the high speed rail so I can't compare the sectors...


The California High Speed Rail project was intended, in its Phase 1, to link Los Angeles and San Francisco via fast rail. The cost (2008) was estimated at $40 billion (as sold to voters), with estimated $55 one-way trips between LA and SF taking less than three hours, ready to roll by 2028.

As is common for transportation projects, costs ballooned. By 2018, costs had risen to as high as $98 billion (the upper end of a range) and completion had slipped to 2033. Few believed that this was the end of the bad news.

Early this year Gov. Newsom announced that the project was indefinitely delayed, and only the segment from Bakersfield to Merced would be built. Maybe you have to live in CA to understand how lame this sounds!

Meanwhile, the federal government is suing California to get its grants back, since they were given contingent on the project actually being built. Either way, your tax dollars are hard at work as always.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> High costs and aggressive timeframe. Well that sounds exactly like a government proposal. Everybody else must adhere to aggressive timeframes, just not government.


Governments are not like other entities so I'm not sure it makes sense to compare them. The job of governing is vastly harder than running businesses. Business can choose not to enter specific markets if they don't look promising. Governments don't have that luxury.



DrMike said:


> As we have already covered, I'm less pessimistic for what the future holds. In 10, 20, 30 years from now, I think new variables will have entered the picture that we can't even imagine at this point - some good, some bad.


Projections of climate change have uncertainties. It's possible the actual outcomes are less severe than the projections, but it's also possible actual outcomes are more severe. Why do you only consider optimistic outcomes rather than pessimistic ones as well? As far as anyone knows, both are equally likely.



DrMike said:


> Excess costs for who? Government, or the individuals and businesses that will have to bear these costs? And how excessive, because a decade is a long time to bear excess costs. And not seeing benefits until 2 decades later? So what business do you imagine can withstand losses for 2 decades before they will finally see benefits. And does this also count for families retrofitting their homes? A decade is a full third of the standard 30-year mortgage. This may all sound doable in terms of generational planning, but right now we don't have all the money over those 2-3 decades. It may be desirable to do, but if you can't afford it, you can't afford it. You make it sound all so sterile - well, it works on paper!


The excess cost is borne by society. Government must provide mechanisms for individuals and businesses to afford the near to mid-term excess costs. Banks provide the mechanisms for individuals to afford the excess costs of homes. Our government provides the mechanism for the US to afford the excess cost of the military. Luckily, in the case of climate change, the excess cost eventually becomes savings. This is unlike the military.

I view military spending and climate change mitigation as similar. Both involve potentially serious outside threats to our country (or our world in the case of climate change). Both require enormous funding. Fundamentally, you criticize climate change mitigation proposals because you do not view the problem as I do. If you did, I can't imagine you would be nearly as critical of the need to spend significant money on solutions.


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## KenOC

More on California transportation projects and their cost histories. The eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. No problem, estimates for fixing this were $250 million. However, it had a "final price tag of $6.5 billion, a 2,500% cost overrun". Californians just rolled their eyes again and went about their everyday lives. Thanks to *Wiki*!


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> More on California transportation projects and their cost histories. The eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. No problem, estimates for fixing this were $250 million. However, it had a "final price tag of $6.5 billion, a 2,500% cost overrun". Californians just rolled their eyes again and went about their everyday lives. Thanks to *Wiki*!


Similar to Boston's "Big Dig" project.

I remember the earthquake. I was outside cleaning my pool and it made the water slosh out all the way up in Yuba City.I didn't understand what was going on at the time.


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> More on California transportation projects and their cost histories. The eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. No problem, estimates for fixing this were $250 million. However, it had a "final price tag of $6.5 billion, a 2,500% cost overrun". Californians just rolled their eyes again and went about their everyday lives. Thanks to *Wiki*!


I am a Bear of Small Brain, so I am not sure what your thesis is here, regarding cost overruns, shoddy workmanship, etc. Is it that we should avoid big construction projects? No Panama Canal? No Hoover Dam? No transcontinental railroad? No Apollo Program? No Hubble Telescope? Is it that Americans can't do anything right--only the Swiss (maybe) can? Is it instead that we must be on guard against cronyism in the awarding of government contracts--that does sound like a good idea. How about careful and ongoing oversight of big projects (small projects too)? I'd also like a Buy American stricture. But this is your thesis--cost overruns, shoddy work, bad engineering. Please flesh it out for me as part of a coherent philosophy toward undertaking big public works projects.


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## Bwv 1080

Strange Magic said:


> I am a Bear of Small Brain, so I am not sure what your thesis is here, regarding cost overruns, shoddy workmanship, etc. Is it that we should avoid big construction projects? No Panama Canal? No Hoover Dam? No transcontinental railroad?


That was all before NIMBY and environmental lobbies.


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## Strange Magic

There has always been NIMBYism. Until recently (and still often today), perceived ugly or nasty things have been sited where the poor or otherwise politically weak groups live. We would also hope that lobbies of every sort--environmental, political, ideological--have their say but then somehow a governing body of wise people rise above the partisanship, query the most knowledgeable independent authorities on a project and its pluses and minuses, and makes the final decision. I find many Americans succumbing to a constant, terminal cynicism as a result of decades of increasingly dysfunctional governance and economic/fiscal policies funneling money and well-being always to the top, reaching a peak right now. A thorough housecleaning is in order.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Governments are not like other entities so I'm not sure it makes sense to compare them. The job of governing is vastly harder than running businesses. Business can choose not to enter specific markets if they don't look promising. Governments don't have that luxury.
> 
> Projections of climate change have uncertainties. It's possible the actual outcomes are less severe than the projections, but it's also possible actual outcomes are more severe. Why do you only consider optimistic outcomes rather than pessimistic ones as well? As far as anyone knows, both are equally likely.
> 
> The excess cost is borne by society. Government must provide mechanisms for individuals and businesses to afford the near to mid-term excess costs. Banks provide the mechanisms for individuals to afford the excess costs of homes. Our government provides the mechanism for the US to afford the excess cost of the military. Luckily, in the case of climate change, the excess cost eventually becomes savings. This is unlike the military.
> 
> I view military spending and climate change mitigation as similar. Both involve potentially serious outside threats to our country (or our world in the case of climate change). Both require enormous funding. Fundamentally, you criticize climate change mitigation proposals because you do not view the problem as I do. If you did, I can't imagine you would be nearly as critical of the need to spend significant money on solutions.


Fine. What, financially, are you willing to sacrifice to attain this? Because this whole line of discussion stemmed from my complaint that the costs aren't worth the benefits. If this is really as critical as you say, then we are talking a LOT of money. A lot. We currently are running $1 trillion deficits. If a Democrat wins, that won't go down. Medicare For All, alone, will add $34 trillion in new spending over that same 10 years. And that isn't the only proposed new spending plan by Democrats, even before you ever get to the environmental spending. That isn't sustainable. But nobody is willing to cut from anywhere else to achieve these things (except defense). They'll bluster about taxing the rich, but a wealth tax is likely to be found unconstitutional. Bernie is at least honest that his Medicare For All bill would raise taxes on the middle class. But that raises taxes already just to pay for M4A - that doesn't even address climate.

So I know you know how to propose spending money to enact this massive overhaul of our entire infrastructure. But now pay for it. That has always been my issue. I am perfectly fine with shifting to solar and wind if you can make it cost effective and able to survive without heavy government subsidy. I have nothing against electric vehicles - I'd love a Tesla, I hear they are great cars. But I can't afford them. And what I'm hearing from you is we have to have government heavily subsidize electric vehicles to get them one day to be affordable. I don't remember that being Henry Ford's model. Make them affordable the normal way, and make them practical. I'm sorry - if I have to do long-distance traveling, I don't want to take over an hour to recharge my vehicle.

You are talking about excess costs in California, where the cost of living is already prohibitively high. I grew up there, but don't ever envision moving back, because housing is so ridiculously expensive, in my line of work I'd have to live at least a 2-hour commute away from anywhere I could work to afford a house for my family of 5. My mom could sell her 3 BR 2.5 BA house in Yuba City, CA - the Prune Capitol of the World - and buy a 5 BR 3 BA home in a gated community here in the Birmingham, AL area. And you propose making it more expensive. How is that sustainable? You'll lower emissions in California by driving everybody out of the state because they can't afford it - except for the ultra-rich and the homeless, leaving San Francisco in an even more hellish landscape than it currently is.


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## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> That was all before NIMBY and environmental lobbies.


It should be noted the Panama Canal came in $23 million under budget. The transcontinental railroad was built in a mind staggering 5 years from 1864-1869, stretching from Omaha to Sacramento. In contrast, Boston's "Big Dig" took 15 years of actual construction. Here in Birmingham, AL, they are building a northern belt around the city. It is proposed to take decades - I'm doubtful I'll live to see the end of it. The Hoover Dam was finished 2 years ahead of schedule and under budget.

If we still had efficiency like that, I bet people would be more willing to see their tax dollars spent on those types of projects. But now we are talking about vastly higher costs and immensely larger time frames for much less impressive results. A high speed train from Bakersfield to Merced? Nobody wants that. According to Google Maps, that is a distance of 164 miles up CA Hwy 99, and will take you 2.5 hours to drive.


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## Strange Magic

"Installation Cost. The national average for installing a standard 240V electric vehicle charging station ranges between $436 and $986, while the median cost is $708 for a single one."

Now imagine a mandate that all gas stations install 440V charging stations capable in all likelihood of recharging an electric vehicle in somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour. Imagine that this costs each station $2500, just to pull a reasonable number out of the air. Imagine also that employers also set up charging facilities for their employees. Imagine that it is mandated that all electric roadworthy vehicles can charge at 120, 240, or 440V. Imagine then the number of electric cars in use will mushroom and their price will drop like a stone, all this happening at an essentially trivial national cost. It is not a matter of cost; it is a matter of the will to have it happen. ExxonMobil will not approve, dontcha know......

[Edit] There are approx. 111,000 gas stations in the US. Let's say there are 120,000. Let's say that, instead of costing $2500 per station, it will cost $5000. This totals $600 million, a trifling amount, pocket change, when compared with just about every other national expenditure. It is a matter of will, to make it happen.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Fine. What, financially, are you willing to sacrifice to attain this? Because this whole line of discussion stemmed from my complaint that the costs aren't worth the benefits. If this is really as critical as you say, then we are talking a LOT of money. A lot. We currently are running $1 trillion deficits. If a Democrat wins, that won't go down. Medicare For All, alone, will add $34 trillion in new spending over that same 10 years. And that isn't the only proposed new spending plan by Democrats, even before you ever get to the environmental spending. That isn't sustainable. But nobody is willing to cut from anywhere else to achieve these things (except defense). They'll bluster about taxing the rich, but a wealth tax is likely to be found unconstitutional. Bernie is at least honest that his Medicare For All bill would raise taxes on the middle class. But that raises taxes already just to pay for M4A - that doesn't even address climate.


I'm not sure how to answer this since I don't understand what you've written. The US spends roughly twice per capita what other OECD nations spend on health care. That stuns me. I accept that our system is somehow vastly less efficient than others. Based on various studies of changing to a single payer or Medicare for all system, I also accept that were the US to make the change we would not cut our spending in half. The studies seem to vary between saving maybe $1-2 trillion over 10 years to paying $1-2 trillion more over 10 years. So a Medicare for all system might actually save society money or maybe would be a bit more expensive. Of course, it would also provide health care for every American - an enormous benefit. It seems as though you are comparing a Medicare for all system to no health care at all which doesn't seem to make sense.

As I mentioned, I favor a Carbon Fee and Dividend policy. The policy is revenue neutral so it adds nothing to the deficit. Studies estimate that lower income Americans and a majority of Americans will benefit economically from the policy. The policy is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 50% in 20 years. That's not quite enough to mitigate climate change so we need more policies. I believe we will need ZEV mandates as well and likely some other policies. To pay for those I would make our tax system actually graduated. Today high income families pay a slightly higher tax rate (a few percent) than middle and low income families while extremely high income families pay a slightly lower rate (a few percent). I would increase tax rates on high income earners to be more in line with how graduated Americans would like our tax system to be.

So... Medicare for all could save money but let's assume it's neutral. Carbon fee and Dividend is neutral and will vastly lower carbon emissions. Making our tax system more in line with what Americans want will raise significant funds for the remaining policies. I don't know the actual numbers so policy researchers will have to model that. And no budget cuts!

Incidentally, a true comparison of policies has to look at climate change mitigation versus business as usual. Estimates of the social cost of carbon emissions vary from roughly $300/tonne of carbon to $1000/tonne. Based on the US emissions of carbon for 2017 (5,743 billion tonnes after sequestration), the social cost of a business as usual scenario would be at least $1.7 - $5.7 trillion/year (assuming no increase in emissions, which is extremely unlikely). If the emissions were reduced linearly starting in 2020 (likely a slight overestimate), a climate change mitigation scenario could prevent $0.85 - $2.85 trillion dollars per year of social costs over the next 30 years or $25 - $85 trillion over the next 30 years.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> I have nothing against electric vehicles - I'd love a Tesla, I hear they are great cars. But I can't afford them. And what I'm hearing from you is we have to have government heavily subsidize electric vehicles to get them one day to be affordable. I don't remember that being Henry Ford's model. Make them affordable the normal way, and make them practical. I'm sorry - if I have to do long-distance traveling, I don't want to take over an hour to recharge my vehicle.


Many experts believe battery electric vehicles (BEVs) will have a lower capital cost than conventional cars before 2030 (or even 2025). I'm not sure I believe that, but I do believe that BEVs will have a lower total cost of ownership than conventional vehicles by 2030 and possibly earlier. So you can look forward to buying a BEV and saving money in the not too distant future. If you want to drive long distance and not have to wait to charge your car, buy a plug in hybrid or a fuel cell car. The ranges and fuel times are comparable. And... you won't contribute anywhere near as much to making life for others much less enjoyable in the future.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> You are talking about excess costs in California, where the cost of living is already prohibitively high. I grew up there, but don't ever envision moving back, because housing is so ridiculously expensive, in my line of work I'd have to live at least a 2-hour commute away from anywhere I could work to afford a house for my family of 5. My mom could sell her 3 BR 2.5 BA house in Yuba City, CA - the Prune Capitol of the World - and buy a 5 BR 3 BA home in a gated community here in the Birmingham, AL area. And you propose making it more expensive. How is that sustainable? You'll lower emissions in California by driving everybody out of the state because they can't afford it - except for the ultra-rich and the homeless, leaving San Francisco in an even more hellish landscape than it currently is.


You have been discussing costs without looking at benefits. I don't know how to do that since it makes no sense to me. Would you eliminate the military because it costs so much (roughly $600/mo per family)? I don't think that makes sense.

Climate change is a huge problem that society must solve. I think it makes sense to work hard to find technologies and policies that can reduce emissions with the least impacts to society. We may have to pay more in the near to mid-term. Based on what I know, the excess seems within reason and affordable since low income and perhaps many middle income families should not have to bear the cost. The community of researchers, regulatory agencies, non-profits, and many businesses are working very hard to find the best solutions to fix the problem. Society has built enormous wealth by using resources in a manner that threatens the well-being of future humans. We can and should use some of that wealth to ensure a better future for them.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I'm not sure how to answer this since I don't understand what you've written. The US spends roughly twice per capita what other OECD nations spend on health care. That stuns me. I accept that our system is somehow vastly less efficient than others. Based on various studies of changing to a single payer or Medicare for all system, I also accept that were the US to make the change we would not cut our spending in half. The studies seem to vary between saving maybe $1-2 trillion over 10 years to paying $1-2 trillion more over 10 years. So a Medicare for all system might actually save society money or maybe would be a bit more expensive. Of course, it would also provide health care for every American - an enormous benefit. It seems as though you are comparing a Medicare for all system to no health care at all which doesn't seem to make sense.
> 
> As I mentioned, I favor a Carbon Fee and Dividend policy. The policy is revenue neutral so it adds nothing to the deficit. Studies estimate that lower income Americans and a majority of Americans will benefit economically from the policy. The policy is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 50% in 20 years. That's not quite enough to mitigate climate change so we need more policies. I believe we will need ZEV mandates as well and likely some other policies. To pay for those I would make our tax system actually graduated. Today high income families pay a slightly higher tax rate (a few percent) than middle and low income families while extremely high income families pay a slightly lower rate (a few percent). I would increase tax rates on high income earners to be more in line with how graduated Americans would like our tax system to be.
> 
> So... Medicare for all could save money but let's assume it's neutral. Carbon fee and Dividend is neutral and will vastly lower carbon emissions. Making our tax system more in line with what Americans want will raise significant funds for the remaining policies. I don't know the actual numbers so policy researchers will have to model that. And no budget cuts!
> 
> Incidentally, a true comparison of policies has to look at climate change mitigation versus business as usual. Estimates of the social cost of carbon emissions vary from roughly $300/tonne of carbon to $1000/tonne. Based on the US emissions of carbon for 2017 (5,743 billion tonnes after sequestration), the social cost of a business as usual scenario would be at least $1.7 - $5.7 trillion/year (assuming no increase in emissions, which is extremely unlikely). If the emissions were reduced linearly starting in 2020 (likely a slight overestimate), a climate change mitigation scenario could prevent $0.85 - $2.85 trillion dollars per year of social costs over the next 30 years or $25 - $85 trillion over the next 30 years.


Bernie Sanders, who wrote the damn M4A bill, says it will have to raise taxes. As we all know, Obamacare cost more than their rosy predictions. You are talking about bringing everybody under government Healthcare. Sure, no more premiums. You just pay in other ways. Always the way they deceive.

And I'm sorry, I don't buy your rosy predictions on climate action, either. Show me one modern government program that comes in at initial predicted costs. And quit comparing military spending. Unlike your plans for massive government intervention into every facet of how we live, the military is actually constitutionally supported.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Many experts believe battery electric vehicles (BEVs) will have a lower capital cost than conventional cars before 2030 (or even 2025). I'm not sure I believe that, but I do believe that BEVs will have a lower total cost of ownership than conventional vehicles by 2030 and possibly earlier. So you can look forward to buying a BEV and saving money in the not too distant future. If you want to drive long distance and not have to wait to charge your car, buy a plug in hybrid or a fuel cell car. The ranges and fuel times are comparable. And... you won't contribute anywhere near as much to making life for others much less enjoyable in the future.


So long as government heavily subsidized the whole thing?


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Bernie Sanders, who wrote the damn M4A bill, says it will have to raise taxes. As we all know, Obamacare cost more than their rosy predictions. You are talking about bringing everybody under government Healthcare. Sure, no more premiums. You just pay in other ways. Always the way they deceive.
> 
> And I'm sorry, I don't buy your rosy predictions on climate action, either. Show me one modern government program that comes in at initial predicted costs. And quit comparing military spending. Unlike your plans for massive government intervention into every facet of how we live, the military is actually constitutionally supported.


Obviously healthcare will have to be paid for, but The Doctor's post feigns a naïveté that is wonderful to behold. Everyone over the age of three understands that, with no premiums, deductibles, copays, etc. and full coverage for all (what a crazy idea that most of the rest of the civilized world has!), taxes will go up--for the middle class and, it is long overdue, for the wealthy, wealthier, and wealthiest who have fed at Republican troughs now for decades, and even now bloat on Trump's giveaways. The deficit sets new records hourly.

Regarding costs, my post covering hastening the transition to electric vehicles required only mandates that things be done, though modest government subsidies would certainly be fine, if warranted, especially to outfit the garages or other secure parking areas of low income groups. Meanwhile the $600 million (or whatever) "cost" of setting up secure roadside charging stations--at gas stations or wherever seems best--would be a boon to equipment manufacturers, electricians, and to the whole electric vehicle industry and all those employees. The Doctor's costs, over which he constantly wrings his hands, are often the very bread and butter of his fellow citizens. What is the cost of having him on the payroll of wherever it is he works?


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Obviously healthcare will have to be paid for, but The Doctor's post feigns a naïveté that is wonderful to behold. Everyone over the age of three understands that, with no premiums, deductibles, copays, etc. and full coverage for all (what a crazy idea that most of the rest of the civilized world has!), taxes will go up--for the middle class and, it is long overdue, for the wealthy, wealthier, and wealthiest who have fed at Republican troughs now for decades, and even now bloat on Trump's giveaways. The deficit sets new records hourly.
> 
> Regarding costs, my post covering hastening the transition to electric vehicles required only mandates that things be done, though modest government subsidies would certainly be fine, if warranted, especially to outfit the garages or other secure parking areas of low income groups. Meanwhile the $600 million (or whatever) "cost" of setting up secure roadside charging stations--at gas stations or wherever seems best--would be a boon to equipment manufacturers, electricians, and to the whole electric vehicle industry and all those employees. The Doctor's costs, over which he constantly wrings his hands, are often the very bread and butter of his fellow citizens. What is the cost of having him on the payroll of wherever it is he works?


So gas stations should be forced to add something that would put them out of business? We should force abortion clinics to add pro life to theirs as well.


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> So gas stations should be forced to add something that would put them out of business? We should force abortion clinics to add pro life to theirs as well.


No. If gas stations are mandated as one (there may/should be many others) of the places where drivers can recharge, then there is no reason why the stations can't charge for the service. In fact, there is no reason why there cannot be fees anywhere for such service. How do you come up with these amazing questions of yours?

Why not have Free Enterprise set up, along whatever routes they choose, charging stations linked with convenience stores and diners? If after driving 4 or 5 hours down Route Whatever, it'll be time to charge the battery and it will give drivers a chance to eat, stretch their legs, go to the bathroom, spend money. Capitalism!


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> So long as government heavily subsidized the whole thing?


There are currently government incentives available for electric vehicles. The actual incentives are a function of a number of things, but the maximum federal tax credit is $7,500. Once a manufacturer reaches 200,000 sales of EVs, the credit reduces to $0 over about 18 months. State incentives also would eventually be reduced to $0. So government would subsidize EVs in the near-term but stop well before significant number of EVs have been sold.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Bernie Sanders, who wrote the damn M4A bill, says it will have to raise taxes. As we all know, Obamacare cost more than their rosy predictions. You are talking about bringing everybody under government Healthcare. Sure, no more premiums. You just pay in other ways. Always the way they deceive.


OF course taxes would be raised. That has nothing to do with whether health care will be less or more expensive under Medicare for All. If health care would be less expensive and cover everyone, I would consider that a huge win.



DrMike said:


> And I'm sorry, I don't buy your rosy predictions on climate action, either. Show me one modern government program that comes in at initial predicted costs. And quit comparing military spending. Unlike your plans for massive government intervention into every facet of how we live, the military is actually constitutionally supported.


So maybe our discussion is not destined to go anywhere. You have stated that you think climate change will have almost no negative effects, and you are exceedingly skeptical of government actions. It would be ludicrous for you to favor any spending whatsoever to mitigate climate change. I believe climate change may be the greatest danger to humans in my lifetime, and I view government programs as often extremely beneficial. In the case of climate change I believe governments must act in major ways to mitigate climate change. I guess it's hard to see how we could differ more in considering this issue.


----------



## Strange Magic

The Preamble to the United States Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, *promote the general Welfare* and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Not only the military is constitutionally supported: the authors of the Constitution clearly authorized Government to--as it says--promote the general welfare. Resistance to the role of government in helping improve the lives of its citizens is rooted in a Libertarian/Randian economic ideology alien to American history and governance. Opposition to the findings and recommendations of not only American but global scientific organizations regarding the dangers or even the reality of AGW is also rooted in an ideology--one more deeply rooted than the bias against governmental programs to indeed "promote the general welfare".

So it is not difficult to understand the ultimate futility of thinking there can be a consensus reached on these issues when one of the participants is locked into the straitjacket of ideologies that short-circuit the concept of recognizing problems and then trying to solve them.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> The Preamble to the United States Constitution:
> 
> We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, *promote the general Welfare* and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
> 
> Not only the military is constitutionally supported: the authors of the Constitution clearly authorized Government to--as it says--promote the general welfare. Resistance to the role of government in helping improve the lives of its citizens is rooted in a Libertarian/Randian economic ideology alien to American history and governance. Opposition to the findings and recommendations of not only American but global scientific organizations regarding the dangers or even the reality of AGW is also rooted in an ideology--one more deeply rooted than the bias against governmental programs to indeed "promote the general welfare".
> 
> So it is not difficult to understand the ultimate futility of thinking there can be a consensus reached on these issues when one of the participants is locked into the straitjacket of ideologies that short-circuit the concept of recognizing problems and then trying to solve them.


That is why the blue and red states should peacefully separate. You can in blue state could go as liberal as you want. You can ban all guns and carbon based energy.


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> ..the authors of the Constitution clearly authorized Government to--as it says--promote the general welfare.


Most certainly the framers of the Constitution intended it to "promote the general Welfare". That was one of the aims underlying the way they organized the government and granted (or withheld) various powers and authorities among the branches of government.

The phrase is not a blank check allowing the government to do whatever it feels is in the people's interest at any point in time. Instead, it is a statement of intent - something the framers intended to accomplish by drafting the Constitution in the first place (read the preamble closely please). In fact, to a great extent the Constitution limits the federal government rather than enables it: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

You might do better by looking to the so-called "elastic clause":



> The Congress shall have Power ... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> Most certainly the framers of the Constitution intended it to "promote the general Welfare". That was one of the aims underlying the way they organized the government and granted (or withheld) various powers and authorities among the branches of government.
> 
> The phrase is not a blank check allowing the government to do whatever it feels is in the people's interest at any point in time. Instead, it is a statement of intent - something the framers intended to accomplish by drafting the Constitution in the first place (read the preamble closely please). In fact, to a great extent the Constitution limits the federal government rather than enables it: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."


As we know from our history, there is a since-the-beginning record of interaction/cooperation between both the governments of the states and the federal government and private enterprise in public works projects and other efforts to develop and improve commerce, transportation, agriculture, infrastructure, you name it. It is an often-cited example of the strength over centuries of the American social and economic experiment. The wording I quoted from the preamble predicated, endorsed, enshrined that interaction, despite the hand-waving protestations of ultra-Libertarian economic ideologues that defy our county's actual, lived past.


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> ...The wording I quoted from the preamble predicated, endorsed, enshrined that interaction, despite the hand-waving protestations of ultra-Libertarian economic ideologues that defy our county's actual, lived past.


No, the wording simply states why the Constitution is being "ordained and established", nothing more. That is quite exactly what it says it is. It is by no means a grant of authority or anything beyond its clearly stated purpose.


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> No, the wording simply states why the Constitution is being "ordained and established", nothing more. That is quite exactly what it says it is. It is by no means a grant of authority or anything beyond its clearly stated purpose.


Let's agree that it says what it says: ''In Order to....promote the general Welfare....". That's what it says. Centuries of subsequent use and history have resulted in the intermingling of government and private enterprise we enjoy today. Irrefutable, except to those who would have us believe that it should not mean either what it says or it should have ever been understood by generations of Americans to empower government to thus improve, remediate, elevate, enhance the lives of millions.

What shall we thus roll back?


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## KenOC

I much prefer the Constitution as written and amended to a Constitution encrusted with decades of "fashionable" thought. If the federal government needs new powers, for example the power to mandate how local school districts must label their toilet facilities, then by all means amend!

For that matter, I see no stated role of the government to "improve, remediate, elevate, enhance the lives of millions." Perhaps you can point out where in the Constitution I should be looking...


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> I much prefer the Constitution as written and amended to a Constitution encrusted with decades of "fashionable" thought. If the federal government needs new powers, for example the power to mandate how local school districts must label their toilet facilities, then by all means amend!
> 
> For that matter, I see no stated role of the government to "improve, remediate, elevate, enhance the lives of millions." Perhaps you can point out where in the Constitution I should be looking...


You could begin with the Preamble. The Founding Fathers did. You could instead consult the writings of The Mises Institute and the whole Austrian Economics School for concurrence with your implied critique of America's economic history. And, again, what shall we roll back? What structures, real or metaphorical, should we blow up?


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## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> You could begin with the Preamble. The Founding Fathers did.


As noted earlier, the Preamble defines no roles for government and grants no authorities. That's exactly the way the Founding Fathers wrote it.



Strange Magic said:


> You could instead consult the writings of The Mises Institute and the whole Austrian Economics School for concurrence with your implied critique of America's economic history. And, again, what shall we roll back? What structures, real or metaphorical, should we blow up?


I have no idea what all this is about. As for deconstructing government, I have a few ideas but they're not for discussion here!


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## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> As we know from our history, there is a since-the-beginning record of interaction/cooperation between both the governments of the states and the federal government and private enterprise in public works projects and other efforts to develop and improve commerce, transportation, agriculture, infrastructure, you name it. It is an often-cited example of the strength over centuries of the American social and economic experiment. The wording I quoted from the preamble predicated, endorsed, enshrined that interaction, despite the hand-waving protestations of ultra-Libertarian economic ideologues that defy our county's actual, lived past.


"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." - James Madison, Federalist 45, 1788

"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." - Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." - James Madison, Federalist 45, 1788
> 
> "I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787
> 
> "A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." - Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801


Wise and wonderful quotes from our Founding Fathers. And I look forward to learning of the physical and social structures that Ken's restructuring of our past several centuries will repudiate or eliminate. If my reference to the Austrian School of theorists does not register, let me recommend their thought, as you (Ken) will find yourself immediately at home with their notions about the proper role of government.


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## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Wise and wonderful quotes from our Founding Fathers. And I look forward to learning of the physical and social structures that Ken's restructuring of our past several centuries will repudiate or eliminate. If my reference to the Austrian School of theorists does not register, let me recommend their thought, as you (Ken) will find yourself immediately at home with their notions about the proper role of government.


First next years budget should be cut to 2.5 trillion down from 4.4 trillion. The department of education abolished. EPA only allowed to monitor no more enforcement of anything and for them to be disarmed.


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## Strange Magic

*Federal Aid to Texas for Hurricane Harvey: Unconstitutional?*

"The unprecedented destruction wrought by Hurricane Harvey was met with a major federal response and significant promises of federal aid.

Harvey was declared a major disaster on Aug. 25, 2017. Within 30 days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had provided 3 million meals and 3 million bottles of water to affected areas and assigned 28 urban search and rescue teams that rescued nearly 6,500 Texans. In all, about 31,000 federal employees from multiple agencies were engaged in the immediate response to Harvey.

On Sept. 8, the president signed into law a $15.3 billion measure providing federal aid for those affected by Hurricane Harvey, including $7.4 billion from FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund, $450 million from the Small Business Administration's (SBA's) Disaster Loan Program and $7.4 billion in community development block grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

According to FEMA, individual Texans and Texas businesses received about $1.5 billion in federal grants and loans in the first month after landfall. That included $571.8 million in FEMA funding to about 271,000 Texas households for needs such as temporary housing and emergency home repairs; $608 million in expedited claim payments through the National Flood Insurance Program; and $367 million in low-interest disaster loans from SBA for Texas businesses, homeowners and renters.

FEMA also provided $186 million to reimburse Texas state and local agencies for the cost of emergency protective measures and debris removal.

As of Sept. 22, about 792,000 households had applied for FEMA assistance. More than 24,000 Texas families were still living in hotel rooms paid for by FEMA, and another 2,100 remained in shelters."

I think a good case could be made by those repudiating a strong federal/state relationship that the example here is either unconstitutional or at least against their peculiar notion of the intent of the Founding Fathers. If so, this FEMA and associated aid should be returned to the federal government forthwith. Let Texas and Private Enterprise care for its own.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> OF course taxes would be raised. That has nothing to do with whether health care will be less or more expensive under Medicare for All. If health care would be less expensive and cover everyone, I would consider that a huge win.
> 
> So maybe our discussion is not destined to go anywhere. You have stated that you think climate change will have almost no negative effects, and you are exceedingly skeptical of government actions. It would be ludicrous for you to favor any spending whatsoever to mitigate climate change. I believe climate change may be the greatest danger to humans in my lifetime, and I view government programs as often extremely beneficial. In the case of climate change I believe governments must act in major ways to mitigate climate change. I guess it's hard to see how we could differ more in considering this issue.


We are fundamentally very far apart. I believe that climate change may very well be an important issue. I have serious doubts about how accurately, though, future events can be predicted. How we deal with it, though, is where we diverge. I dislike the jump to implementing ever more government programs that ultimately further limit individual liberty and responsibility in ways that our Constitution does not allow. I realize that the argument will be, "but this is for the good of all mankind, and the planet, and our posterity, etc." But as the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I firmly believe that most authoritarians at some place in their hearts believe they are acting in the best interests of all - many these days seem to think that it is worth it to give up more and more of their liberty in exchange for just having government do it all for them.

As I have said before, I'm all for measures that aren't coercive, or that result in massive government intrusions, spending, regulating. But I don't think either of us is convincing the other. So maybe this discussion is not destined to go anywhere.


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> We are fundamentally very far apart. I believe that climate change may very well be an important issue. I have serious doubts about how accurately, though, future events can be predicted. How we deal with it, though, is where we diverge. I dislike the jump to implementing ever more government programs that ultimately further limit individual liberty and responsibility in ways that our Constitution does not allow. I realize that the argument will be, "but this is for the good of all mankind, and the planet, and our posterity, etc." But as the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I firmly believe that most authoritarians at some place in their hearts believe they are acting in the best interests of all - many these days seem to think that it is worth it to give up more and more of their liberty in exchange for just having government do it all for them.
> 
> As I have said before, I'm all for measures that aren't coercive, or that result in massive government intrusions, spending, regulating. But I don't think either of us is convincing the other. So maybe this discussion is not destined to go anywhere.


I expect that within 30 years everyone will be able to see regional climates changing and even the casual observer will be able to extrapolate the dangerous trends. In weather alone, droughts, flooding, record cold outbreaks, stronger storms.

But you're right, I've been watching the data for many decades and, at this time, I 'wonder' whether I'm seeing climates change in the storm tracks Upper Midwest and NE US ...and the dryness of the Western States...and the warming of Alaska. ...and Australia's extremes. All these regions have the same weather windows that they used to have, but are the energy levels going up? to cause these headlines? Or is it the same coincidences and collisions and shifts that we've always been seeing?

It takes a lot of energy to break weather records that have been around for more than a century but the large scale collisions can do that. They should be rare.


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## Guest

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/
At this link to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, you can see average cost for electricity for all states, their net generation of energy, and net sales. 
While not the highest in the nation, California, with all their environmental policies, is certainly well north of the national average. Californians pay, on average, 16.06 cents/kWh. The national average is 10.48. My state of Alabama - thoroughly run by Republicans (they control both of the legislative houses and the governorship) is sitting at 9.83.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/
> At this link to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, you can see average cost for electricity for all states, their net generation of energy, and net sales.
> While not the highest in the nation, California, with all their environmental policies, is certainly well north of the national average. Californians pay, on average, 16.06 cents/kWh. The national average is 10.48. My state of Alabama -thoroughly run by Republicans (they control both of the legislative houses and the governorship) is sitting at 9.83.


And the point is.....?


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## Luchesi

Knee-jerk partisan-ism immediately has the opposite effect that we wish it would have. It's a downward spiral.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> Knee-jerk partisan-ism immediately has the opposite effect that we wish it would have. It's a downward spiral.


Yes. And unfortunately, climate is used as a political bludgeon. By both sides. It is used as a proxy for other battles - more entitlement spending, more government programs, revamping the political underpinnings, or on the other side as a way to point out how the other side just cynically wants to take more of your rights from you.

And the scientists have surrendered too much of the "explaining" of the climate to politicians and celebrities who really aren't particularly knowledgeable.


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## Strange Magic

> DrMike: "And the scientists have surrendered too much of the "explaining" of the climate to politicians and celebrities who really aren't particularly knowledgeable."


Yes. The scientists should more vigorously flex their powerful muscles and take command of the AGW discussions from the politicians and the celebrities. The Sleeping Giant that is Established Climate and Earth Chemistry and Ecological/Environmental Science is mighty indeed and has been lulled to sleep. .......The amazing stuff we read here on TC.


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## joen_cph

11,000 scientists world-wide have just signed a warning about the climate change and global warming being an emergency situation:

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806


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## Guest

I saw an article saying that weird ice spheres cover a beach in Finland and no one remembers such a thing happening before.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/finland-ice-balls-trnd/index.html

If this was in the Star Trek universe, they would turn out to be the eggs of some bizarre creature, which will try to slaughter the clueless humans who interfered with them. (Then Captain Kirk will fall in love with one of them.)


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## Strange Magic

joen_cph said:


> 11,000 scientists world-wide have just signed a warning about the climate change and global warming being an emergency situation:
> 
> https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806


Posted down in the Talk Science Group earlier, but secretly glad to see it up here. The 11,000 scientists made a point also of calling for global population stabilization and then reduction.


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## Open Book

Strange Magic said:


> Posted down in the Talk Science Group earlier, but secretly glad to see it up here. The 11,000 scientists made a point also of calling for global population stabilization and then reduction.


It's about time someone at least talks about this. The American political party that professes concern over climate change won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. The environmental groups are afraid of it, too, they decided years ago that it would alienate the average joe away from environmentalism.


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## Guest

Open Book said:


> It's about time someone at least talks about this. The American political party that professes concern over climate change won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. The environmental groups are afraid of it, too, they decided years ago that it would alienate the average joe away from environmentalism.


Who isn't talking about this? We just had the media falling all over themselves over the angry girl who rode the multi-million dollar yacht across the ocean to give Trump dirty looks at the UN.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Who isn't talking about this? We just had the media falling all over themselves over the angry girl who rode the multi-million dollar yacht across the ocean to give Trump dirty looks at the UN.


The ostrich, head buried deep in the sand, is unaware of things happening around it. Those who can see know that Open Book's post referenced population stabilization and eventual reduction. But there we are, back hammering away at Greta Thunberg--used little or no fossil fuel getting to the USA, but now her boat's all wrong!


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## Guest

Open Book said:


> It's about time someone at least talks about this. The American political party that professes concern over climate change won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. The environmental groups are afraid of it, too, they decided years ago that it would alienate the average joe away from environmentalism.


Democrats participated in a climate change town hall on CNN back in September. In it, Bernie Sanders talked about reducing birth rates in poor countries. It got a lot of press.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Democrats participated in a climate change town hall on CNN back in September. In it, Bernie Sanders talked about reducing birth rates in poor countries. It got a lot of press.


Let's go back to bashing Greta Thunberg! What else can we find wrong with the messenger? Let's get angry at the schoolchildren who disturb and frighten us by their speaking out, like Greta and the Parkland students, against things that disturb and frighten them.

The Doctor wanted the scientists to seize control of the AGW discussion away from the politicians and celebrities. And perhaps that is beginning, with the addition of resurrecting the population factor as a key agent in environmental degradation. He should be pleased. I know I am.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Let's go back to bashing Greta Thunberg! What else can we find wrong with the messenger? Let's get angry at the schoolchildren who disturb and frighten us by their speaking out, like Greta and the Parkland students, against things that disturb and frighten them.
> 
> The Doctor wanted the scientists to seize control of the AGW discussion away from the politicians and celebrities. And perhaps that is beginning, with the addition of resurrecting the population factor as a key agent in environmental degradation. He should be pleased. I know I am.


You mean like the people who gave death threats to mini aoc.


----------



## Luchesi

Johnnie Burgess said:


> You mean like the people who gave death threats to mini aoc.


An 8 yr old? Years ago parents were very different.


----------



## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> You mean like the people who gave death threats to mini aoc.


For those unfamiliar with Johnnie's reference to "mini aoc", an 8-year-old--as opposed to 16-year old Greta Thunberg--a 'discussion" can be found Downstairs in one of the Political Groups:

https://www.talkclassical.com/group...-politics--d1763-mini-aoc-receives-death.html


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## Open Book

DrMike said:


> Who isn't talking about this? We just had the media falling all over themselves over the angry girl who rode the multi-million dollar yacht across the ocean to give Trump dirty looks at the UN.


No one talks about population. No politician does.


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> No one talks about population. No politician does.


Really?

I beg to differ. In fact, one of the top 3 Democratic candidates for president did just that.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49601678

Did you miss that story?


----------



## Guest

There isn't such an urgent need to talk about population; when countries reach economically developed stage population naturally stabilizes, as women have more options and have control over their reproductive lives.


----------



## Guest

joen_cph said:


> 11,000 scientists world-wide have just signed a warning about the climate change and global warming being an emergency situation:
> 
> https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806


It's good that this is from scientists - but in perusing the list, I think they try to impress you with the number, but a lot of those don't have any particular expertise that lends weight to the issue. Pharmacists, students, unrelated fields (psychology) populate the list in no insignificant amount. It seems quite open for anybody and everybody to attach their name. In my quick skimming, I found one person that identified themself as a salesman.


----------



## Strange Magic

*Excellent and Useful Link!*



DrMike said:


> Really?
> 
> I beg to differ. In fact, one of the top 3 Democratic candidates for president did just that.
> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49601678
> 
> Did you miss that story?


Many thanks to The Doctor for posting the link to Bernie Sanders' remarks about population! The BBC story shows clearly just why it remains very difficult to discuss the population factor when talking about the ongoing environmental crisis--Sanders' remarks are perfectly clear, and should be read carefully. The link also makes clear that the AGW-deniers and Far-Right ideologues demonstrably stoop to the most absurd hyperbole in a desperate attempt to make any such discussion impossible to pursue. But since The Doctor is on record as being strongly supportive of scientists--and surely not just scientists-- seizing again the initiative when discussing AGW and related issues, I know he will join with me in both encouraging a vigorous discussion in the public forum of the population issue (as we have done _ad infinitum_ here on TC), and applauding Sanders' efforts to bring the issue to the widest possible audience. Bravo, Doctor!


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Many thanks to The Doctor for posting the link to Bernie Sanders' remarks about population! The BBC story shows clearly just why it remains very difficult to discuss the population factor when talking about the ongoing environmental crisis--Sanders' remarks are perfectly clear, and should be read carefully. The link also makes clear that the AGW-deniers and Far-Right ideologues demonstrably stoop to the most absurd hyperbole in a desperate attempt to make any such discussion impossible to pursue...


Yes, Sanders' remarks about women throughout the world getting access to birth control is spun as advocacy for genocide of brown babies. That's the level of discussion we can expect.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> It's good that this is from scientists - but in perusing the list, I think they try to impress you with the number, but a lot of those don't have any particular expertise that lends weight to the issue. Pharmacists, students, unrelated fields (psychology) populate the list in no insignificant amount. It seems quite open for anybody and everybody to attach their name. In my quick skimming, I found one person that identified themself as a salesman.


I too examined the list of signatories and urge interested parties to do likewise. Unlike The Doctor, I was struck by the very large percentage of signatories in the life sciences and other sciences very well qualified to judge both of the accuracy and the seriousness of the report. While I will not attempt it, perhaps The Doctor will compile and post a full accounting of the 11,000-plus signers, with their qualifications; we can then weed out the ringers, including that salesman.


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I too examined the list of signatories and urge interested parties to do likewise. Unlike The Doctor, I was struck by the very large percentage of signatories in the life sciences and other sciences very well qualified to judge both of the accuracy and the seriousness of the report. While I will not attempt it, perhaps The Doctor will compile and post a full accounting of the 11,000-plus signers, with their qualifications; we can then weed out the ringers, including that salesman.


On the other hand, science is not determined by voting, it is determined by consensus. The state of affairs is that there is very strong consensus in the field (as strong as you will ever find in science) that a dramatic change in the climate is in progress, more rapid than has ever been observed in the past, and that it is connected with industrial activity. How it will unfold in the next year is known with high certainty. How it will unfold in the next decade, century, millennium becomes progressively more uncertain. The final result - will it drive the human race to the brink of extinction, or will it be possible to adapt and avoid severe consequences - is far off and very uncertain.

In any scientific study evaluation of uncertainty is fundamental. In politics only certainty drives action. It seems that calls for action have to be based on what is happening right now, and not on projections far into the future.


----------



## Strange Magic

^^^^You will find that The Doctor's notions of consensus stop at the borders of his own specialty; he does not extend the idea of the validity of scientific consensus to many areas of science beyond his own, especially where powerful ideologies lie athwart agreement with the consensus.


----------



## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> On the other hand, science is not determined by voting, it is determined by consensus. The state of affairs is that there is very strong consensus in the field (as strong as you will ever find in science) that a dramatic change in the climate is in progress, more rapid than has ever been observed in the past, and that it is connected with industrial activity. How it will unfold in the next year is known with high certainty. How it will unfold in the next decade, century, millennium becomes progressively more uncertain. The final result - will it drive the human race to the brink of extinction, or will it be possible to adapt and avoid severe consequences - is far off and very uncertain.
> 
> In any scientific study evaluation of uncertainty is fundamental. In politics only certainty drives action. It seems that calls for action have to be based on what is happening right now, and not on projections far into the future.


While not emergent yet in elected officials, many on the right side of the political spectrum actually have come to accept, to some degree or another, that there is truth in climate change findings. But the problem lies in what is proposed. Like you said, I am highly skeptical that the ability to explain what has happened up until now means you can accurately predict future conditions beyond anything but a short timeframe, quite simply because we don't know what the variables will be going forward. Referring to the famed Ehrlich- Simon wager, had conditions remained constant going forward from when the wager was made, Ehrlich would have won the bet. But the world is not really a closed system. New variables are virtually guaranteed to arise.

But my biggedt issue is that so many proposed strategies for combating climate change bear remarkably striking resemblance to radical leftist policy wish lists. Funding abortions globally (and no, I don't think Bernie was racist in his proposal, but it seems like a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences and what his intentions were will be small comfort when, in practice, it leads to the massive slaughter of brown babies), restructuring economic systems on Marxist and socialist principles, radical new intrusions by governments into even more areas of our lives. The future climate is not very certain. But we do have a pretty good idea what these types of radical changes can do to nations and societies.

So I'm okay with scientists telling us what the data means. I don't trust their policy proposals.


----------



## Guest

The air in New Delhi is a health emergency. Other large cities in emerging nations such as Beijing are not much better. Clean air regulations in the U.S. including car emission standards, car efficiency standards, renewable energy investment and other restrictions on pollutants resulted in dramatically improved air quality in the U.S. even as the economy dramatically expanded. Is it really a "liberal wishlist" and not good sense for the U.S. to become a leader in renewable energy, which the entire world will be demanding based on urgent need (climate change scenarios notwithstanding)? Is it more profitable to society as a whole to pursue a policy of "bring back coal," opening former National Monuments to mining, allowing logging in old growth forest, etc, and concede the renewable energy market to China?


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Baron Scarpia said:


> On the other hand, science is not determined by voting, it is determined by consensus.


There is no science of consensus . It is a spiritual matter , implying everyone is respected . Sometimes there is the condition of consensus-minus-one . The council will expend themselves unto exasperation in trying to get agreement from that one last objector .


----------



## Luchesi

Baron Scarpia said:


> On the other hand, science is not determined by voting, it is determined by consensus. The state of affairs is that there is very strong consensus in the field (as strong as you will ever find in science) that a dramatic change in the climate is in progress, more rapid than has ever been observed in the past, and that it is connected with industrial activity. How it will unfold in the next year is known with high certainty. How it will unfold in the next decade, century, millennium becomes progressively more uncertain. The final result - will it drive the human race to the brink of extinction, or will it be possible to adapt and avoid severe consequences - is far off and very uncertain.
> 
> In any scientific study evaluation of uncertainty is fundamental. In politics only certainty drives action. It seems that calls for action have to be based on what is happening right now, and not on projections far into the future.


Questions about climate change will be answered in a few decades, so this debate will solve itself (unlike other scientific debates). Which scientists do we want to believe? The ones who are warning us or the ones who are saying don't worry about it? Which trends should we use at this juncture?


----------



## Strange Magic

Luchesi said:


> Questions about climate change will be answered in a few decades, so this debate will solve itself (unlike other scientific debates). Which scientists do we want to believe? The ones who are warning us or the ones who are saying don't worry about it? Which trends should we use at this juncture?


I know my answer. The boy may cry "Wolf" and be ignored. But in the story, the wolf does come.

(Third time, at least, I invoke this metaphor in these discussions, yet it's a good one. The Doctor similarly repeats about Left-Wing Plots to impose Socialism and Compulsory Abortion upon everybody. We're all broken records by this point.)


----------



## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> I know my answer. The boy may cry "Wolf" and be ignored. But in the story, the wolf does come.
> 
> (Third time, at least, I invoke this metaphor in these discussions, yet it's a good one. The Doctor similarly repeats about Left-Wing Plots to impose Socialism and Compulsory Abortion upon everybody. We're all broken records by this point.)


Okay, so why do you think the planet isn't cooling -- or won't cool in time to rescue us?


----------



## Strange Magic

Luchesi said:


> Okay, so why do you think the planet isn't cooling -- or won't cool in time to rescue us?


Is that a serious "I-expect-an-answer" question you pose to me? Is "Why do you think the planet isn't cooling?" the same question as "Why do you think the planet is warming?". If so, I'll go with the consensus about CO2 and methane accumulating in the atmosphere and the resulting ''greenhouse" effect. I am not aware of rapidly-manifesting global climate cooling phenomena being recently discovered that appear likely to "rescue" us. Perhaps you are and can share. But I find your questions oddly worded.


----------



## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> Is that a serious "I-expect-an-answer" question you pose to me? Is "Why do you think the planet isn't cooling?" the same question as "Why do you think the planet is warming?". If so, I'll go with the consensus about CO2 and methane accumulating in the atmosphere and the resulting ''greenhouse" effect. I am not aware of rapidly-manifesting global climate cooling phenomena being recently discovered that appear likely to "rescue" us. Perhaps you are and can share. But I find your questions oddly worded.


It's how deniers ask me - during our projects. These deniers are physicists piggy-backing their experiments on our high level platform. 
Winters are more helpful in learning about regional climate changes than other seasons. I hope I can find a trend this winter (in house) that will convince these deniers when they ask.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> I know my answer. The boy may cry "Wolf" and be ignored. But in the story, the wolf does come.
> 
> (Third time, at least, I invoke this metaphor in these discussions, yet it's a good one. The Doctor similarly repeats about Left-Wing Plots to impose Socialism and Compulsory Abortion upon everybody. We're all broken records by this point.)


If you would sign an legal document stating that you would pay any higher cost to switch to renewable energy costs for me, then we could do that. I do not want to pay any higher energy prices based on left wing climate change crap, and if you do not like that I do not care.


----------



## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> The air in New Delhi is a health emergency. Other large cities in emerging nations such as Beijing are not much better. Clean air regulations in the U.S. including car emission standards, car efficiency standards, renewable energy investment and other restrictions on pollutants resulted in dramatically improved air quality in the U.S. even as the economy dramatically expanded. Is it really a "liberal wishlist" and not good sense for the U.S. to become a leader in renewable energy, which the entire world will be demanding based on urgent need (climate change scenarios notwithstanding)? Is it more profitable to society as a whole to pursue a policy of "bring back coal," opening former National Monuments to mining, allowing logging in old growth forest, etc, and concede the renewable energy market to China?


First, just because some policies were successful in the past in no way guarantees that other policies will be equally successful. There is a conceit in the climate change movement that only their ideas are valid, and it is a purely binary choice - either you agree with them 100% or you must just want to live in a dirty world that will be dead in a few decades. I reject that notion. I also reject the notion that someone who is good at interpreting climate data is also a policy genius and knows exactly how to fix it all.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> First, just because some policies were successful in the past in no way guarantees that other policies will be equally successful. There is a conceit in the climate change movement that only their ideas are valid, and it is a purely binary choice - either you agree with them 100% or you must just want to live in a dirty world that will be dead in a few decades. I reject that notion. I also reject the notion that someone who is good at interpreting climate data is also a policy genius and knows exactly how to fix it all.


I had no idea the "climate change movement" was a monolithic bloc, to be agreed with 100%. I also had no idea that anyone necessarily postulated that interpreters of climate data were, or were expected, to be policy geniuses. I had the notion that climate change action would and should come from a collaboration of a range of informed scientists, perhaps working through the NAS, the Royal Society, or, better and more likely, a specially formed body, in conjunction with a range of political/governmental and managerial experts, all working together in a manner reminiscent of the Manhattan Project, though without the secrecy and for a much more uplifting goal.

Not sure anyone would seriously challenge the first sentence in the quoted post; again I don't know who believes that past successful policies guarantee that other policies will be successful. Surely we can hope. The success of The New Deal in bringing improvement and hope to America during the Great Depression of the 1930s was the FDR's administration's willingness to experiment with new policies, seeking for what worked regardless of ideological constraints and limitations.


----------



## joen_cph

Luchesi said:


> *Questions about climate change will be answered in a few decades,* so this debate will solve itself (unlike other scientific debates). Which scientists do we want to believe? The ones who are warning us or the ones who are saying don't worry about it? Which trends should we use at this juncture?


Why would a few more decades mean much. I'm sure there'll be continued denial or looking away anyway, from a tiny scientific minority as well as other, conservative, profit-seeking or generally disinterested layers.


----------



## mmsbls

I have removed several personal posts from the thread.


----------



## Strange Magic

We've posted about the ''promise" of fusion power on this thread earlier--it is between 5 and 30 years away at any given year (or decade). But exciting news! It is now between 5 and 20 years away. Whole new ball game.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50267017


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> It's good that this is from scientists - but in perusing the list, I think they try to impress you with the number, but a lot of those don't have any particular expertise that lends weight to the issue. Pharmacists, students, unrelated fields (psychology) populate the list in no insignificant amount. It seems quite open for anybody and everybody to attach their name. In my quick skimming, I found one person that identified themself as a salesman.


I basically agree with this. A list of 100,000 excellent, physical scientists advocating action to mitigate climate change would mean much less to me than the consensus of active scientists doing research in the field of climate change.


----------



## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> If you would sign an legal document stating that you would pay any higher cost to switch to renewable energy costs for me, then we could do that. I do not want to pay any higher energy prices based on left wing climate change crap, and if you do not like that I do not care.


That's equivalent to a liberal saying they don't want to pay more for the military based on right-wing defense crap. We live in a society that _collectively_ decides how to meet the challenges we face.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> But my biggedt issue is that so many proposed strategies for combating climate change bear remarkably striking resemblance to radical leftist policy wish lists. ...
> 
> So I'm okay with scientists telling us what the data means. I don't trust their policy proposals.


I think we had this exchange earlier. I work in the field of climate change mitigation in California where many of the cutting edge policies are discussed an enacted. Climate scientists do research on the science of climate not on policy. There are a significant number of well trained experts who investigate and propose policies. Those policy experts work with climate scientists and other researchers to understand which policies can meet our climate change goals. The timeframe, costs, effects on society and specific industries, economic impact, and overall effectiveness are all investigated in detail trying to find the policies that meet our goals with the fewest negative consequences.

The policies of interest include the low carbon fuel standard (similar to a very specific cap and trade), carbon fees (possibly with dividends), and fuel or vehicle mandates. One huge issue is that everyone I know in these fields strongly believes that more conventional policies will have vastly too little effects in the necessary timeframes. It's not industry's job to mitigate climate change. That falls on the government because they are the only group who can effect the necessary change.


----------



## joen_cph

1) 
A very big Danish food company says today that they have almost finished work with a substance that, when added to a cow's nourishment, will literally eliminate a cow's production of methane gas, which tends to be much more damaging than CO2. If true, and they are usually right, this can be a rather important scientific step¨

2)
Apparently as the first country in the world (?), Italy has made climate teaching obligatory in the schools, specifically for 1 hour each week, incorporating the subject in other disciplines as well.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I think we had this exchange earlier. I work in the field of climate change mitigation in California where many of the cutting edge policies are discussed an enacted. Climate scientists do research on the science of climate not on policy. There are a significant number of well trained experts who investigate and propose policies. Those policy experts work with climate scientists and other researchers to understand which policies can meet our climate change goals. The timeframe, costs, effects on society and specific industries, economic impact, and overall effectiveness are all investigated in detail trying to find the policies that meet our goals with the fewest negative consequences.
> 
> The policies of interest include the low carbon fuel standard (similar to a very specific cap and trade), carbon fees (possibly with dividends), and fuel or vehicle mandates. One huge issue is that everyone I know in these fields strongly believes that more conventional policies will have vastly too little effects in the necessary timeframes. It's not industry's job to mitigate climate change. That falls on the government because they are the only group who can effect the necessary change.


Actual legislative proposal:
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Recognizing_the_duty_of_the_Federal_Government_to_create_a_Green_New_Deal


----------



## Guest

joen_cph said:


> 1)
> A very big Danish food company says today that they have almost finished work with a substance that, when added to a cow's nourishment, will literally eliminate a cow's production of methane gas, which tends to be much more damaging than CO2. If true, and they are usually right, this can be a rather important scientific step¨
> 
> 2)
> Apparently as the first country in the world (?), Italy has made climate teaching obligatory in the schools, specifically for 1 hour each week, incorporating the subject in other disciplines as well.


Is that additive cyanide?


----------



## joen_cph

The researchers and the company call it "X" in the provided information so far. There are no details about its composition until now. But it has been acknowledged by the EU food authority of EFSA. It is considered much better than previous similar, Australian attempts, that were apparently poisonous. A mild version, reducing methane by about 32 %, is likely to be introduced within a couple of years.

(I've only seen info in Danish yet
https://finans.dk/erhverv/ECE11741799/landbruget-og-arla-taet-paa-kaempe-klimagennembrud/?ctxref=ext )


----------



## Luchesi

joen_cph said:


> Why would a few more decades mean much. I'm sure there'll be continued denial or looking away anyway, from a tiny scientific minority as well as other, conservative, profit-seeking or generally disinterested layers.


Only recently have we had the data available in a timely manner for checking the subtle changes in regional climates. Therefore a few more decades will add a large chunk of data compared to what little we already have.

Yes, there will always be people automatically saying no, just like there are today with religious claims that argue against scientific findings. They only care about what they want to care about..


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

mmsbls said:


> That's equivalent to a liberal saying they don't want to pay more for the military based on right-wing defense crap. We live in a society that _collectively_ decides how to meet the challenges we face.


That is why I think it time for the red and blue states peacefully separate. The blue states can pass all kind of liberal laws.


----------



## Guest

joen_cph said:


> The researchers and the company call it "X" in the provided information so far. There are no details about its composition until now. But it has been acknowledged by the EU food authority of EFSA. It is considered much better than previous similar, Australian attempts, that were apparently poisonous. A mild version, reducing methane by about 32 %, is likely to be introduced within a couple of years.
> 
> (I've only seen info in Danish yet
> https://finans.dk/erhverv/ECE11741799/landbruget-og-arla-taet-paa-kaempe-klimagennembrud/?ctxref=ext )


Reminds me of the WOW chips they introduced here in the U.S. Several years back. They were going to be revolutionary! Potato chips that would be virtually fat free, because they used an oil that was not absorbed in humans, so it would simply pass through. And boy did it! Straight through! Enjoy your fat free chips with a side of intestinal distress and diarrhea. I like a lot of these novel scientific things, but this seems like it is messing with the basic way that food is processed, and I'm highly skeptical.


----------



## joen_cph

Luchesi said:


> Only recently have we had the data available in a timely manner for checking the subtle changes in regional climates. Therefore a few more decades will add a large chunk of data compared to what little we already have.
> 
> Yes, there will always be people automatically saying no, just like there are today with religious claims that argue against scientific findings. They only care about what they want to care about..


Your evaluation of the validity of the scientific data is not shared by many here in Denmark, including for example the professor in climatology Carsten Rahbek in a newspaper interview today, who says that he never signs petitions otherwise & that data and problems have been showing up since the 70s. He also says that the general political acknowledgment and attention is now growing, with a few exceptions, but that the phase of more concrete steps must be taken.


----------



## joen_cph

DrMike said:


> Reminds me of the WOW chips they introduced here in the U.S. Several years back. They were going to be revolutionary! Potato chips that would be virtually fat free, because they used an oil that was not absorbed in humans, so it would simply pass through. And boy did it! Straight through! Enjoy your fat free chips with a side of intestinal distress and diarrhea. I like a lot of these novel scientific things, but this seems like it is messing with the basic way that food is processed, and I'm highly skeptical.


Of course, but the EFSA-factor and the reputation of those involved are positive signs at least. Btw the potato thing sounds awful. Regulations in Europe tend to be more strict overall in the food industry, from what I've heard.


----------



## Guest

Johnnie Burgess said:


> That is why I think it time for the red and blue states peacefully separate. The blue states can pass all kind of liberal laws.


If we didn't let something as horrible as slavery permanently divide this country, why does this seem like a good idea? Besides, what is red and blue today may not be tomorrow. In my lifetime, California has gone from red to blue. Alabama went from blue to red. There are numerous states we can do this with. So are you going to reshuffle the deck every decade or so? Remember Reagan won 49 states? Your solution allows politicians to be lazy and not have to work to convince people. Lazy politicians who are guaranteed their seats because the electorate is ideologically identical is what you have in California. You think that would be good just because it was red? I live in Alabama, the reddest of red states. Republicans control every major statewide office, both legislative houses. If it weren't for the stupidity of running Roy Moore, both of our senators would be republican. And they still do some stupid things here I can't stand.

No. Don't split the country. That is incredibly politically short-sighted.


----------



## Guest

joen_cph said:


> Of course, but the EFSA-factor and the reputation of those involved are positive signs at least. Btw the potato thing sounds awful. Regulations in Europe tend to be more strict overall in the food industry, from what I've heard.


It was a horrible idea. From the Wikipedia article:


> Lay's WOW Chips were fat-free potato chips produced by Frito-Lay containing Olestra. They were first introduced in 1998, and were marketed using the Lay's, Ruffles, Doritos, and Tostitos brands. Although initially popular, charting sales of $400 million in their first year, they subsequently dropped to $200 million by 2000. As Olestra caused "abdominal cramping, diarrhea, fecal incontinence ["**** leakage"], and other gastrointestinal symptoms" in some customers,[1] warnings were required to be included on the packaging, with the WOW bag bearing a warning that read, "This Product Contains Olestra. Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools. Olestra inhibits the absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients. Vitamins A, D, E, and K have been added."[2]


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Actual legislative proposal:
> https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Recognizing_the_duty_of_the_Federal_Government_to_create_a_Green_New_Deal


It is not legislation; it is a congressional resolution. I read it, and wholeheartedly support its broadly-spelled out proposals, each of which--if we're lucky--will be crafted into proper legislation. Then, given both presidential leadership and a program of fully educating the general public, a new burst of hope for a viable future will translate into energy and action. It will probably take several election cycles to clear the dead wood out of the legislative branch, after a leadership president is sworn in. The spirit of Theodore Roosevelt joined to that of Franklin Roosevelt--the best of both political parties! Exciting times ahead!


----------



## Guest

Johnnie Burgess said:


> That is why I think it time for the red and blue states peacefully separate. The blue states can pass all kind of liberal laws.


Let's give it another five years for Texas to turn blue and I might take you up on that. :lol:


----------



## Strange Magic

> DrMike: ''Alabama went from blue to red."


Alabama went, not from blue to red, but from White Supremacy and Right-Wing politics under Democrats to White Supremacy and Right-Wing politics under Republicans--the final fruit of Nixon's Southern Strategy.


----------



## Luchesi

joen_cph said:


> Your evaluation of the validity of the scientific data is not shared by many here in Denmark, including for example the professor in climatology Carsten Rahbek in a newspaper interview today, who says that he never signs petitions otherwise & that data and problems have been showing up since the 70s. He also says that the general political acknowledgment and attention is now growing, with a few exceptions, but that the phase of more concrete steps must be taken.


High profile climatologists should warn people. No argument there.

It's my fault I didn't talk about the data we need. We need more data from 9000 to 11000 meters MSL, and where the patterns influence the well-studied regions such as the UK or the Gulf of Mexico.


----------



## Luchesi

Johnnie Burgess said:


> That is why I think it time for the red and blue states peacefully separate. The blue states can pass all kind of liberal laws.


What about all the people in red states who disagree with you?


----------



## joen_cph

How exactly would you establish the exact, rather scattered borders? 

How would you organize customs, including those related to trade - or would you try to prohibit any such set up of regulations?


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

A green and perfect new city would be nice - yep , just build one . Would everyone's poop get composted ? The revolution should make a claim upon some public land , defend it , and do it . Hmm ... defend it with wizards of Heyoke I suppose . They can make authority weep .


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## Johnnie Burgess

Luchesi said:


> What about all the people in red states who disagree with you?


They would be free to leave. A lot would leave after laws are changed. Illegals would leave after they woulb be bared from any government aid. Their kids would be bared from all schools.


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## Larkenfield

I see climate change as a reality and that there’s little to be done at this point in time to stop it. I see massive migrations of the population in the coming years and believe that the best use of funds, gov’t or private, is to spend on these necessary and inevitable changes. But I see little effort in this direction because people think that climate change can be stopped. How can one stop the melting of the icebergs that are raising the water level and already causing flooding in certain countries? At this stage in history it seems that one can only deal with the consequences of that and it will eventually end up costing trillions of dollars around the world, though some minor gains may still be made in the catastrophic pollution of the land, sea, and air. Mankind has spoiled its own nest and doesn’t seem capable of doing anything about it because they believe it would be economic suicide to get off something as poisonous to the earth’s protective atmosphere as fossil fuels... I foresee a BIG TRAIN coming ‘round the bend for humanity.


----------



## Luchesi

Johnnie Burgess said:


> They would be free to leave. A lot would leave after laws are changed. Illegals would leave after they woulb be bared from any government aid. Their kids would be bared from all schools.


You or someone you care about will probably need government aid someday.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Luchesi said:


> You or someone you care about will probably need government aid someday.


Then come here legally, otherwise do not expect help that should go to citizens and legal immigrants first. All veterans should get help before the first illegal immigrant gets a penny.


----------



## Luchesi

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Then come here legally, otherwise do not expect help that should go to citizens and legal immigrants first. All veterans should get help before the first illegal immigrant gets a penny.


Do you know about veterans?


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Luchesi said:


> Do you know about veterans?


Yes?, I am one.


----------



## Strange Magic

Here's a current story of interest to veterans:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50338236


----------



## Guest

People who decry the uncertainty of climate change predictions have a point. The effects have been felt much faster and much harder than was predicted 10 or more years ago.

*How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong*

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/...l?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage


----------



## Strange Magic

Baron Scarpia said:


> People who decry the uncertainty of climate change predictions have a point. The effects have been felt much faster and much harder than was predicted 10 or more years ago.
> 
> *How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong*
> 
> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/...l?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage


Excellent article. And some 15 years before those first early 1975 warnings about CO2 and climate change, Nuclear physicist Edward Teller was warning the Oil Industry about the dangers of fossil fuels pumping dangerous levels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and causing AGW:

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-warned-the-oil-industry-about-global-warming


----------



## Guest

Johnnie Burgess said:


> They would be free to leave. A lot would leave after laws are changed. Illegals would leave after they woulb be bared from any government aid. Their kids would be bared from all schools.


A one party nation where ideological purity is enforced and dissent is not allowed? It is bad when it was the USSR, or the DDR, or China, or North Korea. What makes you think it is a good idea just because everybody will think like you? And what about when you disagree with others in your nation? Are you telling me you like everything the GOP does?


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

DrMike said:


> A one party nation where ideological purity is enforced and dissent is not allowed? It is bad when it was the USSR, or the DDR, or China, or North Korea. What makes you think it is a good idea just because everybody will think like you? And what about when you disagree with others in your nation? Are you telling me you like everything the GOP does?


I would not call for just one party. But if you enter a country illegally dont expect to get any government help.


----------



## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> People who decry the uncertainty of climate change predictions have a point. The effects have been felt much faster and much harder than was predicted 10 or more years ago.
> 
> *How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong*
> 
> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/...l?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage


How the heel do you measure a rose in Ocean levels of 2 one hundredth of an inch as they talk about at the beginning of the article? Does anybody know how you can actually measure that ridiculously small of an increase? Did the waves come 2/100 of an inch further up the shore than ever before? Was someone diving in their favorite spot and notice it took them swimming an extra 2/100 of an inch to reach the bottom? How do you measure that with any kind of statistical certainty?


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

DrMike said:


> How the heel do you measure a rose in Ocean levels of 2 one hundredth of an inch as they talk about at the beginning of the article? Does anybody know how you can actually measure that ridiculously small of an increase? Did the waves come 2/100 of an inch further up the shore than ever before? Was someone diving in their favorite spot and notice it took them swimming an extra 2/100 of an inch to reach the bottom? How do you measure that with any kind of statistical certainty?


Accuracy is not as important as forcing people to go green no matter if causes them hardships.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> How the heel do you measure a rose in Ocean levels of 2 one hundredth of an inch as they talk about at the beginning of the article? Does anybody know how you can actually measure that ridiculously small of an increase? Did the waves come 2/100 of an inch further up the shore than ever before? Was someone diving in their favorite spot and notice it took them swimming an extra 2/100 of an inch to reach the bottom? How do you measure that with any kind of statistical certainty?


The 0.02 inches mentioned in the NY Times article was not a measurement. That estimate came from a model that projects sea level rise. Actual measurements come from tide gauge records starting in ~ 1700 and from the satellite altimeter record starting in 1993. Combining several different satellite records, the sea level rise is measured as 3.2 +/- 0.4 mm per year from 1993 - 2012. That rate has increased from the estimated 1.7 +/- .02 mm per year from 1901 - 2010. You can find more information in this IPCC document along with links to the detailed papers.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> The 0.02 inches mentioned in the NY Times article was not a measurement. That estimate came from a model that projects sea level rise. Actual measurements come from tide gauge records starting in ~ 1700 and from the satellite altimeter record starting in 1993. Combining several different satellite records, the sea level rise is measured as 3.2 +/- 0.4 mm per year from 1993 - 2012. That rate has increased from the estimated 1.7 +/- .02 mm per year from 1901 - 2010. You can find more information in this IPCC document along with links to the detailed papers.


So did the measurements match the projection? Because the article does not present that information as a projection, but as a fact. Did 40 billion tons of ice actually melt and did sea levels actually rise by .02 inches?


----------



## KenOC

Wiki estimates slightly more than an inch a decade, or a foot per century (based on 1993-2017 data). This is quite manageable given the normal renewal intervals of oceanfront structures. My impression is that most of the sea level rise so far is caused by a combination of ice melt and water expansion from somewhat higher temperatures. Not a huge problem unless the process speeds up.

Of course the press is full of stories of people in low-lying places fleeing the “rising oceans,” almost all of which are certifiable BS. These stories almost invariably describe:

- The normal process of seas nibbling away at the edges of land masses
- Land subsidence due to excessive pumping of groundwater
- Failure of silt-depositing annual floods at river deltas due to upstream flood control projects (Mississippi and Mekong Rivers for instance)


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> Wiki estimates slightly more than an inch a decade, or a foot per century (based on 1993-2017 data). This is quite manageable given the normal renewal intervals of oceanfront structures. My impression is that most of the sea level rise so far is caused by a combination of ice melt and water expansion from somewhat higher temperatures. Not a huge problem unless the process speeds up.


Yes, ice melt and sea water expansion are the two dominant causes. The rate of sea level rise is apparently increasing (see Neren paper). The estimate for the increase is roughly 2/3 meter by 2010. A large concern is the potential for greater rise due to a variety of processes such as increased ocean temperatures melting of supporting ice beneath Antarctic ice shelves.

Here's a paper that estimates costs for damage from sea level rise through 2100. Assuming a 1.5 C rise in temperatures causing 0.52 meter of sea level rise (we reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050), the damage would be US$10.2 trillion/year (1.8% of global GDP). Assuming a 2.0 C increase causing a 0.63 meter sea level rise (we reduce carbon emissions 80% from 1990 values by 2050), the damage would increase to US$11.6 trillion/year (2.05% of global GDP). Without significant attempts to reduce emissions the values would be higher - one scenario reaching 2.8% of global GDP.

The above costs do not include adaptation. I'm not sure exactly what that includes or how much it would cost, but the paper states that adaptation could reduce costs by roughly a factor of 10.


----------



## Luchesi

mmsbls said:


> Yes, ice melt and sea water expansion are the two dominant causes. The rate of sea level rise is apparently increasing (see Neren paper). The estimate for the increase is roughly 2/3 meter by 2010. A large concern is the potential for greater rise due to a variety of processes such as increased ocean temperatures melting of supporting ice beneath Antarctic ice shelves.
> 
> Here's a paper that estimates costs for damage from sea level rise through 2100. Assuming a 1.5 C rise in temperatures causing 0.52 meter of sea level rise (we reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050), the damage would be US$10.2 trillion/year (1.8% of global GDP). Assuming a 2.0 C increase causing a 0.63 meter sea level rise (we reduce carbon emissions 80% from 1990 values by 2050), the damage would increase to US$11.6 trillion/year (2.05% of global GDP). Without significant attempts to reduce emissions the values would be higher - one scenario reaching 2.8% of global GDP.
> 
> The above costs do not include adaptation. I'm not sure exactly what that includes or how much it would cost, but the paper states that adaptation could reduce costs by roughly a factor of 10.


"The estimate for the increase is roughly 2/3 meter by 2010."

2100

So maybe they have a good trendline now. We can just extend the line without considering accelerations and feedbacks -- and anyone in Florida and NYC etc. can look at it.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> So did the measurements match the projection? Because the article does not present that information as a projection, but as a fact. Did 40 billion tons of ice actually melt and did sea levels actually rise by .02 inches?


The measurements do not have the accuracy to measure a rise of 0.02 inches. I assume the 40 billion tons was also estimated using models, and I highly doubt scientists can measure world-wide ice loss with that precision.


----------



## Luchesi

This thread had me thinking this morning. Fooling with mother nature, but the Many Worlds cosmology is fooling with us, as we’re confined to one timeline.

For me the most helpful explanation of reality is the simple description of decoherence in quantum mechanics. Everything that happens, down to the tiniest phenomenon, is actually a new timeline, a new universe, in the sense that there's no going back to the initial entanglement (another physics term).

Reality does fool us because we can't easily conceive of this complexity. As a consequence, we consider the Observer to be part of the cause-and-effect process, but that's an illusion. What are we actually seeing? 

We can't see every possibility (quantum probability) because we're already moving in that timeline, ...we can only see the one outcome.

Why is it this way? How else could it be?


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> The measurements do not have the accuracy to measure a rise of 0.02 inches. I assume the 40 billion tons was also estimated using models, and I highly doubt scientists can measure world-wide ice loss with that precision.


Then you'll forgive me if I vent my frustration at the publication of articles like this that spread the alarm and for the "example" of just how much we are underestimating the impact of global warming - and it is all based on a prediction that they haven't even verified, and can't verify? I mean hell, I was impressed about raising the entire area level around the globe by 0.02 inches.

So how many other alarm bells are just predictions based on some computer model and not actual fact? I realize it is still possible that projection may come to pass. But that is not the same as actual fact. And predictions also have the distinct possibility of NOT happening. But the article doesn't say that. It presents this as a known fact that has already happened.

And you wonder why people don't trust this stuff?


----------



## Varick

DrMike said:


> Then you'll forgive me if I vent my frustration at the publication of articles like this that spread the alarm and for the "example" of just how much we are underestimating the impact of global warming - and it is all based on a prediction that they haven't even verified, and can't verify? I mean hell, I was impressed about raising the entire area level around the globe by 0.02 inches.
> 
> So how many other alarm bells are just predictions based on some computer model and not actual fact? I realize it is still possible that projection may come to pass. But that is not the same as actual fact. And predictions also have the distinct possibility of NOT happening. But the article doesn't say that. It presents this as a known fact that has already happened.
> 
> And you wonder why people don't trust this stuff?


I have yet to see a computer model for the past 30-40 years become a reality. EVERY SINGLE ONE has been wrong. But let's keep touting them as if they have any good validity. How about this article that chronicles 50 years of things that never came true:

https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions

I'm not saying that the globe isn't getting warmer. It may be. There is certainly more carbon in the atmosphere, but almost all of the proposed "remedies" of this issue are not viable, and will do so much damage. I like environmentalist like Bjorn Lomborg who believes that the globe is warming, believes it's anthropogenic, but believes that almost every "solution" coming out of environmental organizations and the UN will do more damage than good, a colossal waste of money, and will damage and prevent many third world nations from elevating themselves out of third world conditions they are in now.

He proposes common sense solutions. Many environmental groups reject him because he doesn't subscribe to radical, extreme sky-is-falling, hysteria and panic that promotes the "We have to turn our world upside down in every which way or we will all die in 10-12 years" mentality.

V


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

The hollywood elites who want to force everyone to go green, should lead the way. Lets see them downsize their houses and give up nice cars.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Then you'll forgive me if I vent my frustration at the publication of articles like this that spread the alarm and for the "example" of just how much we are underestimating the impact of global warming - and it is all based on a prediction that they haven't even verified, and can't verify? I mean hell, I was impressed about raising the entire area level around the globe by 0.02 inches.
> 
> So how many other alarm bells are just predictions based on some computer model and not actual fact? I realize it is still possible that projection may come to pass. But that is not the same as actual fact. And predictions also have the distinct possibility of NOT happening. But the article doesn't say that. It presents this as a known fact that has already happened.
> 
> And you wonder why people don't trust this stuff?


Generally people don't trust climate change for the same reason they don't trust evolution, vaccines, or GMOs. They are misled (intentionally or unintentionally) to believe what they prefer to believe. I tell everyone I know to never pay attention to TV programs, newspaper articles, or magazine articles on climate change. Even single scientists who have expertise in an area can have views that are outside the consensus view (e.g. Einstein on quantum mechanics). Unfortunately, that leaves refereed journal articles or consensus publications (e.g. the IPCC reports), and many people can't understand them. One has to be very careful where one gets science news.

I'm pretty sure there has never been a prediction based on fact. We can't time travel. Many predictions have a high probability of coming true (e.g. planetary motion, computer models of particle production in colliders such as CERN, models of near term weather forecasts). Models have uncertainties, and generally only those experts who build and use the models understand the uncertainties. The rest of us have to rely on the scientists to publish and communicate their best assessment of the results of their models.

Incidentally, I did not view the NY Times article as presenting the prediction as fact. They said "according to" with a link to a facebook post that clearly stated the melting as a prediction and not a fact. I would have written the article differently because they didn't clearly indicate they were talking about a model prediction. The article itself focused on how the scientific climate change community is conservative in predictions since they generally require consensus. I think they showed that people ought to believe that.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Generally people don't trust climate change for the same reason they don't trust evolution, vaccines, or GMOs. They are misled (intentionally or unintentionally) to believe what they prefer to believe. I tell everyone I know to never pay attention to TV programs, newspaper articles, or magazine articles on climate change. Even single scientists who have expertise in an area can have views that are outside the consensus view (e.g. Einstein on quantum mechanics). Unfortunately, that leaves refereed journal articles or consensus publications (e.g. the IPCC reports), and many people can't understand them. One has to be very careful where one gets science news.
> 
> I'm pretty sure there has never been a prediction based on fact. We can't time travel. Many predictions have a high probability of coming true (e.g. planetary motion, computer models of particle production in colliders such as CERN, models of near term weather forecasts). Models have uncertainties, and generally only those experts who build and use the models understand the uncertainties. The rest of us have to rely on the scientists to publish and communicate their best assessment of the results of their models.
> 
> Incidentally, I did not view the NY Times article as presenting the prediction as fact. They said "according to" with a link to a facebook post that clearly stated the melting as a prediction and not a fact. I would have written the article differently because they didn't clearly indicate they were talking about a model prediction. The article itself focused on how the scientific climate change community is conservative in predictions since they generally require consensus. I think they showed that people ought to believe that.


Fair enough. It wasn't a scientific paper. But it's not like I cherry picked that article either. That article was posted on here by someone who fully believes, and heartily seconded by another ardent supporter. And it was printed in the NY Times, perhaps the most prestigious newspaper in this nation, not some niche publication. So fine. There are people who don't believe in global warming because they are misled. That doesn't mean the other side isn't also misleading people. The two aren't mutually exclusive. You know why some people also might not trust global warming? Because they have been misled too many times. I know you tend to dismiss my criticism that global warming policy has been so wrapped up in left wing politics, but things like that only reinforce such notions in my head. They want to totally revamp our entire economy and are willing to mislead people in major media outlets by misrepresenting global warming data, presenting predictions and models as fact to scare people and to push that agenda.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Fair enough. It wasn't a scientific paper. But it's not like I cherry picked that article either. That article was posted on here by someone who fully believes, and heartily seconded by another ardent supporter. And it was printed in the NY Times, perhaps the most prestigious newspaper in this nation, not some niche publication.


As I mentioned, I think the important point of the NY Times article is the conservative nature of scientific writing on climate change due to the "requirement" of consensus. As time has progressed, more data and understanding have generally increased the estimates of warming. I agree that the initial example was a poor choice given the individual nature of the projection.



DrMike said:


> So fine. There are people who don't believe in global warming because they are misled. That doesn't mean the other side isn't also misleading people. The two aren't mutually exclusive. You know why some people also might not trust global warming? Because they have been misled too many times.


Very few people on both sides really understand the science of climate change. I know quite a bit compared to most, but I'm not an expert. I accept the consensus of the climate change community (i.e. the results of the IPCC reports). I really don't know how much misinformation exists since I don't pay attention to sources outside technical articles or blogs such as realclimate.org. So yes, I assume many people are misled.



DrMike said:


> I know you tend to dismiss my criticism that global warming policy has been so wrapped up in left wing politics, but things like that only reinforce such notions in my head. They want to totally revamp our entire economy and are willing to mislead people in major media outlets by misrepresenting global warming data, presenting predictions and models as fact to scare people and to push that agenda.


I think you and I view policy differently in that I only include specific proposals rather than general ones. For example, my understanding of the Green New Deal is that it is a set of proposals to study various aspects of the problem and determine the best policy to reduce emissions in different sectors. I thought there are no specific policies outlined in it, and because of that, I'm not particularly happy with it.

I've mentioned that I know many of the people who have devised the policies California has enacted or considered enacting (which are the strictest in the world). They have no desire to revamp the economy but rather only wish to reduce emissions to levels believed acceptable by the climate science community. They consider very specific policies such as the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which creates tradeable credits for fuels with prices based on real world results. I've seen no evidence that anyone involved in those policies intentionally misleads people.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Tell that to the democrat party. Aoc's plan will cost 100 trillion dollars. They say they want to wipe out millions of jobs in coal and oil. If it turns out the predictions are wrong would you or your family give money and resources to the ones who suffer?


----------



## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Tell that to the democrat party. Aoc's plan will cost 100 trillion dollars. They say they want to wipe out millions of jobs in coal and oil. If it turns out the predictions are wrong would you or your family give money and resources to the ones who suffer?


What is the democrat party? Could you give a cost breakdown of AOC's plan by sector and a rough timeline? Also what is the cost difference between that plan and business as usual? Our analysis of a California scenario to reduce on-road transportation carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 shows total spending of roughly US$4 trillion from 2015 - 2050 saving roughly US$10 billion over the BAU scenario during that period. Savings past 2050 would increase significantly. That result does not include social cost estimates. Obviously varying the assumptions can vary the result.

I don't know if I understand your question. I consider a social safety net critical to the well being of Americans and all people. Whether the predictions are correct or not or whether we even embark on something remotely like that plan, I would always want to give money to those who've suffered from, for example, a carbon reduction plan, capitalism in general, or fighting wars. Who wouldn't?


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Have you reduced your carbon footprint? Or are you like the hollwood stars?


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> As I mentioned, I think the important point of the NY Times article is the conservative nature of scientific writing on climate change due to the "requirement" of consensus. As time has progressed, more data and understanding have generally increased the estimates of warming. I agree that the initial example was a poor choice given the individual nature of the projection.
> 
> Very few people on both sides really understand the science of climate change. I know quite a bit compared to most, but I'm not an expert. I accept the consensus of the climate change community (i.e. the results of the IPCC reports). I really don't know how much misinformation exists since I don't pay attention to sources outside technical articles or blogs such as realclimate.org. So yes, I assume many people are misled.
> 
> I think you and I view policy differently in that I only include specific proposals rather than general ones. For example, my understanding of the Green New Deal is that it is a set of proposals to study various aspects of the problem and determine the best policy to reduce emissions in different sectors. I thought there are no specific policies outlined in it, and because of that, I'm not particularly happy with it.
> 
> I've mentioned that I know many of the people who have devised the policies California has enacted or considered enacting (which are the strictest in the world). They have no desire to revamp the economy but rather only wish to reduce emissions to levels believed acceptable by the climate science community. They consider very specific policies such as the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which creates tradeable credits for fuels with prices based on real world results. I've seen no evidence that anyone involved in those policies intentionally misleads people.


Most people in this world will not read a scientific paper. That is not a criticism of them. As someone who has written and read scientific papers, I know of what I speak. They are written in highly technical jargon. They use terminology that someone not educated in the field will not be familiar with. They simply aren't accessible to those outside of the specific field.

So we rely on the summaries of others. That usually means the press that covers climate science. And they love to sensationalize it. A lot. So in this case, a tweet about a projection based solely on the temperature over Greenland turns into a near certainty that 40 billion tons of ice melted in a super short period of time and raised global sea levels 0.02 inches. I have re-read the tweet numerous times, and there are still things in it I don't understand (like what, specifically, the abbreviation "resp." means in the context of the tweet).

So what have I called for before? The scientists to take some responsibility for the irresponsible reporting on their work. Call out the misleading articles. Tell us when the reporting is wrong. But no - they only pipe up when they want to ramp up the fear, like the article with 11,000 "scientists" signing on. And they never take responsibility for the false predictions. It never ceases to amaze me how incredible a career Paul Ehrlich has had being wrong as much as he has. Al Gore's predictions proving not to have happened (wasn't the Arctic supposed to be ice-free by now?) doesn't dampen the love the climate community has for him.

I know that scientists won't always be right. In fact, a lot of science is running down a rabbit hole only to find out that your hypothesis didn't pan out. I have piles of notebooks containing data that will never see the light of day because an experiment didn't work, or the difference between the control group and the test group was statistically insignificant. And I don't issue an apology for every disproven hypothesis. At the same time, I also don't have my hypotheses and predictions shouted from the rooftops as foregone conclusions. You can't judge climate science the same way as most other science because it isn't propagated as most other science. It seems that people are flinging their findings out onto places like Twitter and to Scientific American before they can write it down, send it off to get peer reviewed and judged by an editor. My initial findings get shown at weekly lab meetings first, for my immediate peers to scrutinize. Maybe once I have some more data, and a cohesive story, I'll present it at a conference or publish it.

That is utter garbage, that climate scientists are too cautious. What crap. All scientists should be cautious with what they say. They aren't all knowing. And sometimes the confirmation bias does immense damage. There are scientific discoveries out there that were delayed, not because nobody saw them, but because somebody initially reported them but they didn't fit the consensus. In my own field, their is a population of white blood cells called regulatory T cells that have been proven to be highly important in most immune responses and even in regular host homeostasis. They really rose to prominence in the early 2000s. But people had known about them longer - over a decade before they had been reported, labeled as "suppressor T cells" but they didn't fit with the consensus, so many dismissed them.

Paul Ehrlich has never been cautious with his predictions. And he has been fabulously wrong. It isn't the job of scientists to rush out with the most fantastic claims ASAP. It is their job to do due diligence and to report the information that they can actually verify with reproducible data and proper vetting and review.

I know you only consider the specific policies. But you are ignoring the bigger issues. It isn't all about your narrow niche of specific innovations. It is about how much tax money will pay for all of that. It is about what activities will be restricted by government fiat to reach those goals. It is about decisions that impact farmers and the water they can use in California. It is about decisions that cause higher energy prices for people (and I know you claim your power bill is not that large, but I've shown on here the data that California is, in fact, one of the higher energy cost states in the nation). It is about decisions to restrict usage of available resources that can provide energy right now in favor of technology that is still catching up, and does not yet have the generating capacity to meet the needs of our modern society. It's about people who rail at me for not being more supportive of throwing vast sums of money at wind and solar, and then dismiss me when I say what about nuclear? I'm not talking about your specific area of trying to make long-haul trucking less polluting.

I know the experts you cite like the solutions you like. Can you at least admit to some confirmation bias? I have no doubt that economists and others who push for things like carbon taxes and tradeable credits fully believe they are the solutions we need - otherwise why would they recommend them? But I don't accept as gospel just because they say it. I believe the provable data about what has happened with climate. I have less faith in the predictions going forward, especially when the sources I have to rely on are so willing to mislead me, and the scientists can't be bothered to correct the record.


----------



## Strange Magic

But in the story, the wolf does come.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Most people in this world will not read a scientific paper.


Yes, I know, and I don't criticize anyone for that. I'm not sure how best to get the information out. I agree that it would be great if scientists helped more. We have a policy institute where I work, and they require policy briefs on some of my projects. I hate writing them but recognize that they are very useful.



DrMike said:


> I have re-read the tweet numerous times, and there are still things in it I don't understand (like what, specifically, the abbreviation "resp." means in the context of the tweet).


I don't know either. Nothing I think of makes sense.



DrMike said:


> That is utter garbage, that climate scientists are too cautious. What crap. All scientists should be cautious with what they say.


I think I didn't explain what I meant well. When an IPCC report comes out every 5 years, the results in the report are conservative compared to what most climate scientists think at the time because the report aims for consensus. If there is a spread in thinking, the lower levels of sea level rise or warming will be included rather than an "average" of the scientists views.



DrMike said:


> I know you only consider the specific policies. But you are ignoring the bigger issues.


I understand your thoughts here. It's a very difficult, complex issue. I do think the biggest difference between your view and mine is that you do not have as high confidence as I do about the dangers of climate change. The only other world-wide problem remotely similar to this was the lessening of the ozone layer, and in that case, there was already a reasonably inexpensive substitute for chlorofluorocarbons in aerosols. The solution was apparent, relatively easily doable, and agreed upon by all parties quickly. That is hardly the case with climate change.



DrMike said:


> I know the experts you cite like the solutions you like. Can you at least admit to some confirmation bias? I have no doubt that economists and others who push for things like carbon taxes and tradeable credits fully believe they are the solutions we need - otherwise why would they recommend them?


I think there are 2 issues here. The _types_ of policies are not specific to climate change. Economists like credits and taxes because, as I understand it, those solutions seem to have the fewest unintended consequences. Essentially, they are equivalent to companies paying for all their costs instead of having some costs free. The credits are tradeable to give companies more options in how they comply. The economic idea of "internalizing the externalities" has been around for longer than climate change.

The detailed policies are structured to hopefully yield the desired goal (lower emissions to a specific point at a specific time). This part is obviously hard to get right.


----------



## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Have you reduced your carbon footprint? Or are you like the hollwood stars?


If you were addressing me, of course I have.


----------



## Luchesi

I have my past data all ready this year to find global warming in this winter's patterns. I think I'll see it this year. But I probably won't be able to show anyone else. 
There's a guy I talk with at the University of Arizona and he's been doing this as long as I have. I probably won't be able to 'show' even him! This is very difficult.

I think until we see is scary disruption it will continue to be difficult.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Yes, I know, and I don't criticize anyone for that. I'm not sure how best to get the information out. I agree that it would be great if scientists helped more. We have a policy institute where I work, and they require policy briefs on some of my projects. I hate writing them but recognize that they are very useful.
> 
> I don't know either. Nothing I think of makes sense.
> 
> I think I didn't explain what I meant well. When an IPCC report comes out every 5 years, the results in the report are conservative compared to what most climate scientists think at the time because the report aims for consensus. If there is a spread in thinking, the lower levels of sea level rise or warming will be included rather than an "average" of the scientists views.
> 
> I understand your thoughts here. It's a very difficult, complex issue. I do think the biggest difference between your view and mine is that you do not have as high confidence as I do about the dangers of climate change. The only other world-wide problem remotely similar to this was the lessening of the ozone layer, and in that case, there was already a reasonably inexpensive substitute for chlorofluorocarbons in aerosols. The solution was apparent, relatively easily doable, and agreed upon by all parties quickly. That is hardly the case with climate change.
> 
> I think there are 2 issues here. The _types_ of policies are not specific to climate change. Economists like credits and taxes because, as I understand it, those solutions seem to have the fewest unintended consequences. Essentially, they are equivalent to companies paying for all their costs instead of having some costs free. The credits are tradeable to give companies more options in how they comply. The economic idea of "internalizing the externalities" has been around for longer than climate change.
> 
> The detailed policies are structured to hopefully yield the desired goal (lower emissions to a specific point at a specific time). This part is obviously hard to get right.


Yes, we have different ideas regarding how much government should be able to do. I don't buy the idea of blowing through limitations of government power. I think we end up ceding too much liberty to government. And I think that is why those misleading like to compare this to war, where liberties are frequently violated in pursuit of the "greater good." I have never had anything against advances in technology that can both improve our standard of living and make our planet better. How that comes about though - whether by natural innovation or government coercion - is the key sticking point for me.

And no - I'm not as convinced about just how dire the future actually is. Maybe I'm just a little too gun shy about how bad previous predictions have been and the utter lack of humility going forward. When I point out errors of the past, I'm ridiculed by many, like the fact that climate scientists have been fabulously wrong in the past is utterly irrelevant.


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## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Yes, we have different ideas regarding how much government should be able to do. I don't buy the idea of blowing through limitations of government power. I think we end up ceding too much liberty to government. And I think that is why those misleading like to compare this to war, where liberties are frequently violated in pursuit of the "greater good." I have never had anything against advances in technology that can both improve our standard of living and make our planet better. How that comes about though - whether by natural innovation or government coercion - is the key sticking point for me.


I just want to understand you view: Do you think the EPA and the FDA should not exist or at least should have vastly less power?



DrMike said:


> And no - I'm not as convinced about just how dire the future actually is. Maybe I'm just a little too gun shy about how bad previous predictions have been and the utter lack of humility going forward. When I point out errors of the past, I'm ridiculed by many, like the fact that climate scientists have been fabulously wrong in the past is utterly irrelevant.


Are you talking about predictions of cooling or other things?


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I just want to understand you view: Do you think the EPA and the FDA should not exist or at least should have vastly less power?
> 
> Are you talking about predictions of cooling or other things?


I am no big fan of these massive nanny state alphabet soup agencies - that being said, I recognize that some role is needed, and they aren't going away. So I accept them. But they go too far in places, and have little and less accountability.

For one, when we declare carbon dioxide a pollutant that the government can regulate, a natural bi-product of human respiration, that is absurd. When the EPA can control ponds on private property, that is absurd. And it is exactly why I don't like the idea of giving them ever more control. And exactly how much punishment and responsibility was given the EPA when they polluted that river? When a company screws up that bad, they can get sued out of existence. When the government does, you're lucky if, at most, some mid-level bureaucrat is allowed to retire early with full benefits.

I'm not just talking about predictions of cooling. I'm talking of the sum total. Do you know how many times we've been told the sky is falling? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Al Gore was a co-recipient of the Nobel prize, along with the IPCC. Like I already mentioned, didn't he predict the Arctic should have been ice free by now, with all those poor polar bears drowning to death? He's apologized, right? James Hanson has made some doozy of predictions in the past - he admitted his errors when they didn't come to pass, right?


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## Strange Magic

If the regulation of CO2, both a natural product of human respiration, and of the oxidation of the accumulated carbon of hundreds of millions of years in the geological twinkling of an eye, is "absurd", then it is time to shut the doors and send everybody home. What this statement says is: "There is no such thing as AGW; it's all a Chinese hoax". Case closed.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> I'm not just talking about predictions of cooling. I'm talking of the sum total. Do you know how many times we've been told the sky is falling? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Al Gore was a co-recipient of the Nobel prize, along with the IPCC. Like I already mentioned, didn't he predict the Arctic should have been ice free by now, with all those poor polar bears drowning to death? He's apologized, right? James Hanson has made some doozy of predictions in the past - he admitted his errors when they didn't come to pass, right?


Apparently Gore said in his Nobel acceptance speech, "One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years." Technically he didn't predict the year it would be gone (at least in that speech), but he suggested that it could be gone. Scientists reading papers likely would understand the uncertainty in such predictions, but statements from non-scientists to the public can certainly give rise to misunderstandings. I don't know about Hansen's pronouncements. I've read some articles and a book, and in those he sounds like a scientist giving results with caveats or uncertainties.


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## Strange Magic

By coincidence a BBC article referencing a National Academy of Sciences paper on ongoing loss of Arctic polar albedo as ice and snow are replaced by rain. A positive feedback loop (yet another) accelerating AGW.......

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50381328


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## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> But in the story, the wolf does come.


The technical people I talk to (chemists, physicists) will argue other points. but they acknowledge that the last 30 years has been in a warming trend. 30 years is a good sample in climatology. If there's not a 30 year cooling trend soon then there's no reason to deny that our great grandchildren will have expensive problems.

What did our great grandparents worry about for our lives?


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> The technical people I talk to (chemists, physicists) will argue other points. but they acknowledge that the last 30 years has been in a warming trend. 30 years is a good sample in climatology. If there's not a 30 year cooling trend soon then there's no reason to deny that our great grandchildren will have expensive problems.
> 
> What did our great grandparents worry about for our lives?


They worried about their children dying in infancy. They worried about smallpox and measles and polio. My grandparents worried about Nazis and Russians. They worried about whatever the seemingly insurmountable problem of the day was, and they solved it


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> They worried about their children dying in infancy. They worried about smallpox and measles and polio. My grandparents worried about Nazis and Russians. They worried about whatever the seemingly insurmountable problem of the day was, and they solved it


I meant worries about the environment of their great grandchildren.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> I meant worries about the environment of their great grandchildren.


The environmentalist movement is relatively new. The current global warming concern dates back to the 1980s. Environmentalism in general probably goes back to the 60s, with catalysts such as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."

Before that, stretching back past the 20th century, you had things like Malthus' prediction of food scarcity and mass starvation, but we have already talked about that. And given the more difficult spreading of information, I don't know how widespread such fears would have been.


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> The environmentalist movement is relatively new. The current global warming concern dates back to the 1980s. Environmentalism in general probably goes back to the 60s, with catalysts such as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."
> 
> Before that, stretching back past the 20th century, you had things like Malthus' prediction of food scarcity and mass starvation, but we have already talked about that. And given the more difficult spreading of information, I don't know how widespread such fears would have been.


What do you expect your great grandchildren will think of what you've written about their climatological conditions? If you're correct they will think highly of your convictions.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> What do you expect your great grandchildren will think of what you've written about their climatological conditions? If you're correct they will think highly of your convictions.


Given that it is impossible to predict how future generations will view us, that is a pointless question. The best I can do is to live my life in the best way I know how and to let the chips fall where they may. I'm sure, though, if I'm proven wrong, then there will be plenty of individuals fully happy to rub it in my face in ways they would never allow those on their side to be attacked if I'm proven right. Hence Ehrlich is still viewed as a prophet in spite of his numerous false predictions, while every small, incremental bit of evidence that contradicts my beliefs is viewed as proof that I am a climate "denier" on the same moral level as a Holocaust denier.


----------



## Strange Magic

^^^^My post #9 in this thread gave an example from the 1920s of concern then about environmental despoilation, with a sharper focus on desertification. Also, I wonder where the idea that being an AGW denier is of the same character as being a Holocaust denier came from. Hyperbole, surely.


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## Guest

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/chinas-holocaust-of-children/
Actual example of policy to control population size. What typically happens? Boys are prized more than girls. And atrocities ensue. Show me an actual situation where directed efforts at human population control didn't go this way.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/chinas-holocaust-of-children/
> Actual example of policy to control population size. What typically happens? Boys are prized more than girls. And atrocities ensue. Show me an actual situation where directed efforts at human population control didn't go this way.


Thanks for the article. It helps again to fix in people's minds enthusiasm for sensible and humane proposals to fully liberate women; guarantee their legal, intellectual, moral equality so they no longer are regarded as a lesser species or mere breedstock; and to grant them access to effective and fully confidential contraception. Full support for the Equal Rights Amendment would help move things forward in the USA, along with a vigorous campaign for women's rights and access to contraception world-wide. These measures are quietly at work in allowing people to control their family size throughout much of the developed world, with population reduction a useful byproduct. I join with the above poster in also affirming clearly that no one posting on the population issue here on TC has ever endorsed the sort of anti-woman policies discussed in the NR article. Only an _agent provocateur_ would attempt to suggest such an inference, though some will pick up any weapon at hand.


----------



## Guest

The population control crowd claims they would only enact benign proposals that would be for the good of all - education, contraception, etc. But we have seen this before. A big push for population control has been in the making for a long time. Margaret Sanger saw that as one of her initial goals, and had high-minded ideals at first, dealing with giving women options. But soon she aligned herself with the eugenics movement, and started endorsing forced sterilizations. With Ehrlich's Population Bomb, the government got involved. Both Presidents Johnson and Nixon started tying foreign aid to countries like India with mandatory population control measures. People started testing solutions like involuntarily implanting IUDs in women. It all started out benign. But when nobody was following the counsel, people started to get impatient, and so more coercive measures were viewed as necessary - no doubt why Hardin in his Tragedy of the Commons rejected the notion of voluntary population control as a foolish notion that would not work, and that coercive measures would be needed.

You can read a summary of this history here, which reviews a book published by Harvard University Press by Matthew Connelly, entitled, "Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population."
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2009/11/23/the-dark-past-of-population-confrom/


----------



## Guest

Also from that article:


> Connelly describes the Indian campaign of as an undeclared "war against the poor.""Sterilisation became a condition not just for land allotments, but for irrigation water, electricity, ration cards, rickshaw licences, medical care, and rises and promotions," he writes.
> 
> "Everyone from senior government officials to train conductors to policemen, was given a sterilisation quota. This created a nationwide market, in which people bought and sold, sometimes more than once, the capacity to reproduce. Of course, for the very poorest, with no money and nothing else to sell, sterilisation in such conditions was not really a choice."
> 
> Connelly cites figures from the state of Uttar Pradesh. People from lowest caste made up "29% of the population, but were 41% of those vasectomised".
> 
> Government officials soon discovered that offering incentives and disincentives was not enough to meet the ever-rising sterilisation targets set. More repressive measures became common.


The poor will be victimized. Coercion is virtually guaranteed. When we have seen efforts at real population control - India, China - it has ended up being utterly barbaric. Forced sterilization. Government coercion. The poorest targeted. No doubt they all started with the best of intentions.



> "*The great tragedy of population control, the fatal misconception, was to think that one could know other people's interests better than they know it themselves*", Connelly concludes.
> 
> "But if the idea of planning other people's families is now discredited, this very human tendency is still with us. The essence of population control, whether it targeted migrants, the 'unfit', or families that seemed either too big or too small, was to make rules for other people without having to answer to them.
> 
> "It appealed to the rich and powerful because, with the spread of emancipatory movements and the integration of markets, it began to appear easier and more profitable to control populations than to control territory. *That's why opponents were correct in viewing it as another chapter in the unfinished history of imperialism*."


----------



## Strange Magic

We have it all here, in the above posts: the linking of women's equality and the resulting stabilization and often slow reduction in the size of the populations of advanced counties with high living standards, with nightmare scenarios--real and imaginery--where "population control" measures were enacted in countries like India and China. The errors of Margaret Sanger are invoked, probably to discredit the concept of contraception itself. And the twin hell-fiends--Ehrlich and Hardin--are shown to have exerted their malignant and powerful control over government by bringing attention to the part mushrooming population growth plays in aggravating environmental degradation. Perhaps right here in America we'll soon have "forced sterilization. Government coercion. The poorest targeted" like India and China past. The "slippery-slope" argument on steroids. Though not likely, given the almost total amnesia about runaway population growth's role in AGW, demonstrated by the entire media--right, left, and center--for the past three decades at least, and only now beginning again to be recognized.

This constant repetition of the attempt to link the emancipation of women and the often concomitant and welcome ability of free women to control the size of their families, with repudiated, repugnant policies held by no one on record in this discussion makes me rethink my idea that no malice or urge to deceive or derail the push toward full equality for 50% of the human race has been shown repeatedly in this thread. Instead, we are seeing a doubling-down on the part of an _agent provocateur_ whipped to a lather of zealotry.


----------



## Guest

Given the evidence of the past that I've described here, in spite of initially intending to help and promote the well-being of the planet and women and children, population control plans almost always lead to abuse, victimization of the poor, patronizing of the Southern hemisphere, and have led to a form of Western imperialism. Only a truly horrid misanthrope who refuses to learn the lessons of history could be so ideologically blinkered to still wish, once again, to repeat the horrible mistakes of the past.


----------



## Strange Magic

^^^^Who would disagree with this convincing demolition of TC straw men? Well done! The truly horrid misanthropes have been driven in disarray from the field, leaving only awe and wonder......


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## Guest

History has shown us that capitalism combined with liberal pluralistic society is the greatest driver of innovation and the improvement of human life in the history of this planet. The rise of population is due more to the impressive advances of medical sciences and higher standard of living that many in the Western World now enjoy. And in those countries, the birth rate has now declined. We need to help the undeveloped nations experience this economic growth and lower birth rates will follow, rather than attempt to impose artificial population control measures on them. Such strategies are patronizing, and are not much different than missionary efforts to "civilize the heathen" of past centuries that had so many bad unintended consequences, in addition to many bad intended consequences. The progressive conceit that you can perfect man on Earth if you just let the "experts" drive the bus is sheer folly.


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## Strange Magic

^^^^But no one here is advocating imposing "artificial population controls" on the undeveloped nations, except for the Straw Men. And they've been routed. It is true that the US under the current administration has been cutting back on humanitarian aid, for instance threatening or actually withholding aid to the Central American countries suffering under the most dire conditions. And maybe the reference to "artificial" population control measures refers to contraception--hard to tell based on the general tenor of this fusillade of attacks on positions nobody on TC is holding. I do that sort of venting down in the Groups where it belongs.
.
"Trump Drops Bid to Slash Foreign Aid after Congress Objects"

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...eign-aid-after-congress-objects-idUSKCN1VC285


----------



## KenOC

In an increasingly crowded world, where environmental degradation and population pressures are causing mass migrations and conflicts among nations and peoples, it’s amusing that some here believe their personal moralities and ideologies have more significance than a fart in a windstorm. If history teaches anything, it’s that Darwin will have his way.


----------



## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> In an increasingly crowded world, where environmental degradation and population pressures are causing mass migrations and conflicts among nations and peoples, it's amusing that some here believe their personal moralities and ideologies have more significance than a fart in a windstorm. If history teaches anything, it's that Darwin will have his way.


You're a little older than me, and Strange is a little older than you. This is why.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> In an increasingly crowded world, where environmental degradation and population pressures are causing mass migrations and conflicts among nations and peoples, it's amusing that some here believe their personal moralities and ideologies have more significance than a fart in a windstorm. If history teaches anything, it's that Darwin will have his way.


I'm sorry, but where are the mass migrations and conflicts that are caused by environmental degradation and population pressures?


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> I'm sorry, but where are the mass migrations and conflicts that are caused by environmental degradation and population pressures?


Have you looked at Europe lately? California? This is only the beginning.

People from sub-Saharan Africa are dying by the hundreds and thousands trying to get to Europe by boat and "touch base." But the supply seems limitless.
​


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Have you looked at Europe lately? California? This is only the beginning.
> 
> People from sub-Saharan Africa are dying by the hundreds and thousands trying to get to Europe by boat and "touch base." But the supply seems limitless.
> ​


I'm not aware of those being due to environmental or population issues, rather due to violence and poverty from bad governance.


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> I'm not aware of those being due to environmental or population issues, rather due to violence and poverty from bad governance.


As you wish, but I think you're drawing a false distinction. Unless you believe that "violence and poverty from bad governance" are likely to improve.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> As you wish, but I think you're drawing a false distinction. Unless you believe that "violence and poverty from bad governance" are likely to improve.


I believe violence from bad governments and people fleeing for a better life elsewhere was a concern back before the industrial revolution and anthropogenic climate change, and was a problem even way back when the population was at levels that even some on here would find acceptable. Are you trying to claim that these things you reference are unique and wouldn't occur but for climate change and overpopulation? Because I don't think there is any evidence to support that contention.


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## Strange Magic

Population growth and environmental degradation, including AGW, are multipliers of social unrest and the resulting mass migrations. There are of course in addition the usual drivers: gang violence, drug cartels, religious zealotry, ethnic hatreds--all leveraged by global population growth. America's appetite for drugs and its shipment of a constant stream of guns south of the border from our own gun-saturated society certainly accounts for much of the violence and unrest in Central America.


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> I believe violence from bad governments and people fleeing for a better life elsewhere was a concern back before the industrial revolution and anthropogenic climate change, and was a problem even way back when the population was at levels that even some on here would find acceptable. Are you trying to claim that these things you reference are unique and wouldn't occur but for climate change and overpopulation? Because I don't think there is any evidence to support that contention.


I agree, but it's quite scary because we can imagine how bad it's going to be when we get a few more degrees of warming.

The weather systems of the planet are formed and directed/propelled by the planetary waves, which in turn are patterned by the temperature levels (global circulation energy levels). The lifecycles and intensities of the weather systems are the predictable results of the ever-changing coincidental combinations of the planetary waves. This is what we try to forecast. Over the longer-term the regional climates are formed and sustained by the specific air masses they predictively receive (due to the large pattern - patterns within patterns). How fast can these resulting 'situations' change? Scary stuff..

One obvious example, with a little more energy the polar air will be pushed down upon Florida and the citrus industry will suffer more and more.


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> I agree, but it's quite scary because we can imagine how bad it's going to be when we get a few more degrees of warming.
> 
> The weather systems of the planet are formed and directed/propelled by the planetary waves, which in turn are patterned by the temperature levels (global circulation energy levels). The lifecycles and intensities of the weather systems are the predictable results of the ever-changing coincidental combinations of the planetary waves. This is what we try to forecast. Over the longer-term the regional climates are formed and sustained by the specific air masses they predictively receive (due to the large pattern - patterns within patterns). How fast can these resulting 'situations' change? Scary stuff..
> 
> One obvious example, with a little more energy the polar air will be pushed down upon Florida and the citrus industry will suffer more and more.


Yeah, yeah. This was all predicted in Ehrlich's Population Bomb. Didn't happen then. Not happening now. People are fleeing places for pretty much the same reasons they always have. We get upticks in emigration when there is violence in an area. I'm not aware of any evidence that climate or overcrowding is a contributing factor. Speculation that it might occur in the future is just that - speculation.

As far as population density goes, that just doesn't hold up. South and Central America and Africa and the Middle East - the regions from which the vast majority of emigration is occurring - are nowhere near the most densely populated on this planet. They have a fraction of the population density of, say, India, or Bangladesh, or China. Are we seeing mass immigration from those places? Are the Middle East and South and Central America currently experiencing major shifts in their lifestyle from global warming?


----------



## Strange Magic

^^^^The above post, a reply to Luchesi's post about meteorological and climatological issues, suggests that Paul Ehrlich made all sorts of detailed planetary climate/weather predictions in _The Population Bomb_. I do not recall Ehrlich's utterances on these matters, but my memory may be failing me. AGW was not a front-and-center focus of discussion at that time. Perhaps we can have a clarification.

The issue is not necessarily one of population density _per se_; it is one of whether populations exceed the carrying capacity of local conditions, especially as local conditions of weather, precipitation, etc. deteriorate.


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> ...The issue is not necessarily one of population density _per se_; it is one of whether populations exceed the carrying capacity of local conditions, especially as local conditions of weather, precipitation, etc. deteriorate.


I think it's a mistake to think these things have to be absolute, that people need to be starving to death before they move. In a world with total and instantaneous communication, it soon becomes apparent to folks living in what our president lovingly calls "s**thole countries" that there's some primo real estate just over those hills, where they can have far better lives. So they put on their Nikes and set out, a supremely rational thing to do.

Of course the quality of life in some of these countries is likely impacted by environmental degradation and insufficient resources resulting from too-dense populations. Consider, for instance, that the population of the African continent has increased almost six-fold since 1950.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> I think it's a mistake to think these things have to be absolute, that people need to be starving to death before they move. In a world with total and instantaneous communication, it soon becomes apparent to folks living in what our president lovingly calls "s**thole countries" that there's some primo real estate just over those hills, where they can have far better lives. So they put on their Nikes and set out, a supremely rational thing to do.
> 
> Of course the quality of life in some of these countries is likely impacted by environmental degradation and insufficient resources resulting from too-dense populations. Consider, for instance, that the population of the African continent has increased almost six-fold since 1950.


It may have increased that much since 1950, but it is still less than or equal to 250 people per square mile which still puts them among the least dense nations on the planet. The failure to thrive there send a lot more linked to low development and poor government than any environment explanation. Your environmental explanation sounds plausible, but is not really borne out by any evidence I have heard of. Do you have any evidence beyond your gut feeling?


----------



## Strange Magic

If one Googles "Desertification Africa", one will be offered many dozens of sources, links, references to the ongoing decline in the agricultural potential of much of Africa due to increasing desertification. Here is a link to an informative United States Department of Agriculture article on the subject:

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/soils/use/?cid=nrcs142p2_054025

Here is the opening abstract:

"Vulnerability to desertification in Africa is assessed using the information on soils, climate, and the previously evaluated land resource stresses. Desertification is, "land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities". Excluded in the definition are areas that have a hyper-arid or a humid climate. The GIS Desertification Vulnerability map was coupled to an interpolated population density map to obtain estimates of the number of persons affected by desertification. Desertification processes affect about 46% of Africa. The significance of this large area becomes evident when one considers that about 43% of the continent is characterized as extreme deserts (the desert margins represent the areas with very high vulnerability). Only about 11% of the land mass is humid and by definition is excluded from desertification processes. There are about 2.5 million km2 of land under low risk, 3.6 million km2 under moderate risk, 4.6 million km2 under high risk, and 2.9 million km2 under very high risk. The region that has the highest propensity is located along the desert margins and occupies about 5% of the land mass. It is estimated that about 22 million people (2.9% of the total population) live in this area. The low, moderate, and high vulnerability classes occupy 14, 16, and 11% respectively and together impact about 485 million people."


----------



## joen_cph

"*Venice council flooded moments after rejecting climate crisis plan"*









https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...d-moments-after-rejecting-climate-crisis-plan
http://www.today.it/politica/aula-consigliare-veneto-sommersa-acqua.html


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## Larkenfield

joen_cph said:


> "*Venice council flooded moments after rejecting climate crisis plan"*
> 
> View attachment 126688
> 
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...d-moments-after-rejecting-climate-crisis-plan
> http://www.today.it/politica/aula-consigliare-veneto-sommersa-acqua.html


Tragic! Venice is one of the areas where the rising lagoon levels are being keenly felt, and the city is one of the great treasures in Italy. I do not see the attempts to prevent climate change being effective but that more millions, perhaps even billions, must be allocated to deal with its inevitable consequences to prevent flooding, if at all possible. The problem is that Venice may not have the funds to do so and that's one of the inevitable tragedies of climate change as an obvious reality that cannot be stopped because it's already too late for some of the countries and cities. Since the cost may be too high for certain cities, I foresee the eventual need for a_ global fund_ to protect an incredible city and treasure such as Venice. But stopping climate change at this point in time? I don't think so and more emphasis should be placed on dealing with its consequences to guard against the destruction of the rising water levels.


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## Strange Magic

Because the flooding of Venice results from both sea level rise and land subsidence, the solution lies in a massive sea wall around the city. The Dutch are the experts and should be put in charge. Venice is a prototypical "Disneyland" city now, and must charge a robust fee for entry that will allow it, with additional funding if necessary, to finance its own salvation. If the city cannot find the political will, the Italian government should seize control. Change or die.


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Yeah, yeah. This was all predicted in Ehrlich's Population Bomb. Didn't happen then. Not happening now. People are fleeing places for pretty much the same reasons they always have. We get upticks in emigration when there is violence in an area. I'm not aware of any evidence that climate or overcrowding is a contributing factor. Speculation that it might occur in the future is just that - speculation.
> 
> As far as population density goes, that just doesn't hold up. South and Central America and Africa and the Middle East - the regions from which the vast majority of emigration is occurring - are nowhere near the most densely populated on this planet. They have a fraction of the population density of, say, India, or Bangladesh, or China. Are we seeing mass immigration from those places? Are the Middle East and South and Central America currently experiencing major shifts in their lifestyle from global warming?


We really hope the denier outlook is correct.
Here's another prediction. We hope it's wrong;

"  What happens when warming water releases pent-up gas from the sea bed: First, a small disturbance drives a gas-saturated parcel of water upwards. As it rises, bubbles begin to appear, as dissolved gas fizzles out with reducing pressure - just as a bottle of lemonade overflows if the top is taken off too quickly. These bubbles make the parcel of water still more buoyant, accelerating its rise through the water. As it surges upwards, reaching explosive force, it drags surrounding water up with it. At the surface, water is shot hundreds of metres into the air as the released gas blasts into the atmosphere. Shockwaves propagate outwards in all directions, triggering more eruptions nearby.   The eruption is more than just another positive feedback in the quickening process of global warming. Unlike CO2, methane is flammable. Even in air-methane concentrations as low as 5%, the mixture could ignite from lightning or some other spark and send fireballs tearing across the sky. The effect would be much like that of the fuel-air explosives used by the US and Russian armies - so-called "vacuum bombs" that ignite fuel droplets above a target. According to the CIA, those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringes are likely to suffer many internal injuries, including burst eardrums, severe concussion, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness." Such tactical weapons, however, are squibs when set against methane-air clouds from oceanic eruptions. Scientists calculate that they could "destroy terrestrial life almost entirely (251m years ago, only one large land animal, the pig-like lystrosaurus, survived). It has been estimated that a large eruption in future could release energy equivalent to 108 megatonnes of TNT - 100,000 times more than the world's entire stockpile of nuclear weapons. It is not too difficult to imagine the ultimate nightmare, with oceanic methane eruptions near large population centres wiping out billions of people - perhaps in days. Imagine a 'fuel-air explosive' fireball racing towards a city - London, say, or Tokyo - the blast wave spreading out from the explosive centre with the speed and force of an atomic bomb. Buildings are flattened, people are incinerated where they stand, or left blind and deaf by the force of the explosion. Mix Hiroshima with post-Katrina New Orleans to get some idea of what such a catastrophe might look like: burnt survivors battling over food, wandering far and wide from empty cities."


----------



## KenOC

Luchesi said:


> ...It has been estimated that a large eruption in future could release energy equivalent to 108 megatonnes of TNT - 100,000 times more than the world's entire stockpile of nuclear weapons...


Something not quite right with the math there.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> I think it's a mistake to think these things have to be absolute, that people need to be starving to death before they move. In a world with total and instantaneous communication, it soon becomes apparent to folks living in what our president lovingly calls "s**thole countries" that there's some primo real estate just over those hills, where they can have far better lives. So they put on their Nikes and set out, a supremely rational thing to do.
> 
> Of course the quality of life in some of these countries is likely impacted by environmental degradation and insufficient resources resulting from too-dense populations. Consider, for instance, that the population of the African continent has increased almost six-fold since 1950.


You've absolutely nailed this with a hole-in-one; almost all those (mostly) male 'refugees' are carrying smart phones. What worries me is that, from past documentaries and TV public affairs programs, we see ruthless criminals exploiting the people in their own countries. These are the people who can afford to pay smugglers to get to Europe and blindly ideological people don't have the worldliness, sophistication or intelligence to understand any of that. Many of these 'refugees' end up working for the mafia, since crime is the stock in trade of many of them. I observed this to my spouse some time ago after seeing programs about criminal gangs, extortion and exploitation in the countries of origin. Do you think these people would choose to remain in their countries of origin with their 'victims' once having the money to escape to Europe? It's daft to suggest that the profile of the modern 'refugee' from Africa, Pakistan or anywhere else is as pure as the driven snow and motivated by the need to survive. They all look very well fed to me!!

More facts and data and less emotion will help with understanding that one of the prime drivers of uncontrolled migration is the idea that the west has pots of gold. Meanwhile, back in their countries (described by Trump) somebody needs to fight for the freedom of the people from despotic rulers and their violence. The women and children are being left there to their own devices. Imagine if the French had abandoned Europe at the time of the Revolution? Where would Europe be now? Imagine if England didn't defend Poland in 1939 and let the Germans have the territory? Does anybody imagine that the cost of freedom could be bought in Europe for less than the loss of 55 million lives and, if so, how? Liberation costs; freedom costs; human dignity costs. Running away is cowardice.

Somebody is trying to fool somebody else. Let's be clear; the majority of these 'asylum seekers' are expedients and the people of the UK have had enough of it. What remains enigmatic to me is why they tolerated it as long as they did.


----------



## joen_cph

It certainly takes a priviliged position to hold those views.


----------



## Jacck

^^except that Trump's friend Putin has been orchestrating the refugee waves to Europe, because it helps to destabilize Europe. Of course there are some silly politicians like Merkel who invited to refugees to come. And the Russians took the message and purposefully spread it, and orchestrated many wars in Syria and elsewhere to drive to refugees to Europe. 
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/02/putin-weaponizing-migrant-crisis-to-hurt-europe.html
I wonder when the west is going to wake up and take this criminal out. The US is paralyzed by the stable genius and the Russia friendly republican party (Moscow Mitch and others), and EU politicans are impotent. The German and British politicians have been largely schroederized, so that the Germans even build this Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Probably to finance Putin's war again themselves. And Macron is pompous fool who is courting Putin too. A sad state of affairs, when the Western elites have lost the will to defend themselves and their nations.


----------



## Guest

joen_cph said:


> It certainly takes a priviliged position to hold those views.


As opposed to magical thinking. Sure.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Jacck said:


> ^^except that Trump's friend Putin has been orchestrating the refugee waves to Europe, because it helps to destabilize Europe. Of course there are some silly politicians like Merkel who invited to refugees to come. And the Russians took the message and purposefully spread it, and orchestrated many wars in Syria and elsewhere to drive to refugees to Europe.
> https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/02/putin-weaponizing-migrant-crisis-to-hurt-europe.html
> I wonder when the west is going to wake up and take this criminal out. The US is paralyzed by the stable genius and the Russia friendly republican party (Moscow Mitch and others), and EU politicans are impotent. The German and British politicians have been largely schroederized, so that the Germans even build this Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Probably to finance Putin's war again themselves. And Macron is pompous fool who is courting Putin too. A sad state of affairs, when the Western elites have lost the will to defend themselves and their nations.


You would think it smart to try to take out Putin given the fact that he has nuclear weapons?


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> We really hope the denier outlook is correct.
> Here's another prediction. We hope it's wrong;
> 
> "  What happens when warming water releases pent-up gas from the sea bed: First, a small disturbance drives a gas-saturated parcel of water upwards. As it rises, bubbles begin to appear, as dissolved gas fizzles out with reducing pressure - just as a bottle of lemonade overflows if the top is taken off too quickly. These bubbles make the parcel of water still more buoyant, accelerating its rise through the water. As it surges upwards, reaching explosive force, it drags surrounding water up with it. At the surface, water is shot hundreds of metres into the air as the released gas blasts into the atmosphere. Shockwaves propagate outwards in all directions, triggering more eruptions nearby.   The eruption is more than just another positive feedback in the quickening process of global warming. Unlike CO2, methane is flammable. Even in air-methane concentrations as low as 5%, the mixture could ignite from lightning or some other spark and send fireballs tearing across the sky. The effect would be much like that of the fuel-air explosives used by the US and Russian armies - so-called "vacuum bombs" that ignite fuel droplets above a target. According to the CIA, those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringes are likely to suffer many internal injuries, including burst eardrums, severe concussion, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness." Such tactical weapons, however, are squibs when set against methane-air clouds from oceanic eruptions. Scientists calculate that they could "destroy terrestrial life almost entirely (251m years ago, only one large land animal, the pig-like lystrosaurus, survived). It has been estimated that a large eruption in future could release energy equivalent to 108 megatonnes of TNT - 100,000 times more than the world's entire stockpile of nuclear weapons. It is not too difficult to imagine the ultimate nightmare, with oceanic methane eruptions near large population centres wiping out billions of people - perhaps in days. Imagine a 'fuel-air explosive' fireball racing towards a city - London, say, or Tokyo - the blast wave spreading out from the explosive centre with the speed and force of an atomic bomb. Buildings are flattened, people are incinerated where they stand, or left blind and deaf by the force of the explosion. Mix Hiroshima with post-Katrina New Orleans to get some idea of what such a catastrophe might look like: burnt survivors battling over food, wandering far and wide from empty cities."


Could you direct me to someone sources you used for building this scenario? I'm guessing the gases currently are trapped down in the deeper regions of the ocean, or not? And if so, wouldn't these occurrences tends to happen further out to sea as opposed to, say, right next to a well-populated coastline?


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> ^^except that Trump's friend Putin has been orchestrating the refugee waves to Europe, because it helps to destabilize Europe. Of course there are some silly politicians like Merkel who invited to refugees to come. And the Russians took the message and purposefully spread it, and orchestrated many wars in Syria and elsewhere to drive to refugees to Europe.
> https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/02/putin-weaponizing-migrant-crisis-to-hurt-europe.html
> I wonder when the west is going to wake up and take this criminal out. The US is paralyzed by the stable genius and the Russia friendly republican party (Moscow Mitch and others), and EU politicans are impotent. The German and British politicians have been largely schroederized, so that the Germans even build this Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Probably to finance Putin's war again themselves. And Macron is pompous fool who is courting Putin too. A sad state of affairs, when the Western elites have lost the will to defend themselves and their nations.


And how do you propose they take Putin out, exactly? Militarily? No, thank you. We've seen the fate of people who try to invade Russia. What exactly do you propose? The U.S. had had to jump into Europe for 2 major world wars and some other smaller conflicts (Bosnia) to rid you of murderous thugs. The U.S. is defending itself. Why Europeans yet again seem to be rolling over for the latest autocratic thug is beyond me. Maybe had they made investments to their militaries like they promised under their NATO treaties they might have appeared to be more of a threat.


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Could you direct me to someone sources you used for building this scenario? I'm guessing the gases currently are trapped down in the deeper regions of the ocean, or not? And if so, wouldn't these occurrences tends to happen further out to sea as opposed to, say, right next to a well-populated coastline?


Here's a non-primary source reference to catastrophic combustion of sub-sea methane clathrates:

https://www.sciencealert.com/under-the-gun

The entire subject of methane release is under intense review, with several different time scales being offered for the various different sources of methane: livestock emissions, fossil fuel emissions, melting of permafrost, release of methane from sub-sea clathrates. Too early to draw significant conclusions but the scenarios, whatever the timeframe, suggest the need for vigorous investigation of the permafrost and clathrate sources and for strong attempts to reduce the livestock and fossil fuel inputs.

Here is a broad overview:

https://www.scientistswarning.org/wiki/methane-emergency/


----------



## KenOC

Luchesi said:


> ... Such tactical weapons, however, are squibs when set against methane-air clouds from oceanic eruptions. Scientists calculate that they could "destroy terrestrial life almost entirely (251m years ago, only one large land animal, the pig-like lystrosaurus, survived). It has been estimated that a large eruption in future could release energy equivalent to 108 megatonnes of TNT - 100,000 times more than the world's entire stockpile of nuclear weapons....


The more I look into this information the more suspect it seems - the careless math was mentioned earlier. The example here concerns the Permian-Triassic extinction event, whose cause is unknown. Methane release is purely speculative. "Potential causes for those pulses include one or more large meteor impact events, massive volcanic eruptions, and climate change brought on by large releases of underwater methane or methane-producing microbes." (Wiki)

And Lystrosaurus was not the only large terrestrial animal to survive the event. Others survived as well, including the much larger Moschorhinus.


----------



## Strange Magic

^^^^I agree that it is a distraction to speculate on the causes of the Great Permo-Triassic extinction event when another Great Extinction Event is ongoing all around us. The greenhouse effect of methane appears well-documented, and efforts to more fully understand sources of methane and to reduce or eliminate such sources should be vigorously pursued. It is, though, always good to have possibly extreme scenarios of catastrophe examined early on so that their probability can be assessed to either drastically change our priorities or to settle onto prudent amelioration. I am reminded of Edward Teller's early back-of-the-envelope calculation that the detonation of an atomic bomb might cause the detonation of the entire atmosphere of the Earth; later quickly shown to be wrong. It made everyone feel "better".


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> We really hope the denier outlook is correct.
> Here's another prediction. We hope it's wrong;
> 
> "  What happens when warming water releases pent-up gas from the sea bed: First, a small disturbance drives a gas-saturated parcel of water upwards. As it rises, bubbles begin to appear, as dissolved gas fizzles out with reducing pressure - just as a bottle of lemonade overflows if the top is taken off too quickly. These bubbles make the parcel of water still more buoyant, accelerating its rise through the water. As it surges upwards, reaching explosive force, it drags surrounding water up with it. At the surface, water is shot hundreds of metres into the air as the released gas blasts into the atmosphere. Shockwaves propagate outwards in all directions, triggering more eruptions nearby.   The eruption is more than just another positive feedback in the quickening process of global warming. Unlike CO2, methane is flammable. Even in air-methane concentrations as low as 5%, the mixture could ignite from lightning or some other spark and send fireballs tearing across the sky. The effect would be much like that of the fuel-air explosives used by the US and Russian armies - so-called "vacuum bombs" that ignite fuel droplets above a target. According to the CIA, those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringes are likely to suffer many internal injuries, including burst eardrums, severe concussion, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness." Such tactical weapons, however, are squibs when set against methane-air clouds from oceanic eruptions. Scientists calculate that they could "destroy terrestrial life almost entirely (251m years ago, only one large land animal, the pig-like lystrosaurus, survived). It has been estimated that a large eruption in future could release energy equivalent to 108 megatonnes of TNT - 100,000 times more than the world's entire stockpile of nuclear weapons. It is not too difficult to imagine the ultimate nightmare, with oceanic methane eruptions near large population centres wiping out billions of people - perhaps in days. Imagine a 'fuel-air explosive' fireball racing towards a city - London, say, or Tokyo - the blast wave spreading out from the explosive centre with the speed and force of an atomic bomb. Buildings are flattened, people are incinerated where they stand, or left blind and deaf by the force of the explosion. Mix Hiroshima with post-Katrina New Orleans to get some idea of what such a catastrophe might look like: burnt survivors battling over food, wandering far and wide from empty cities."


You are quoting this from someplace. Can you provide the source?


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> You are quoting this from someplace. Can you provide the source?


It was sent to me years ago in an email. Using keywords I found it here;

http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> And Lystrosaurus was not the only large terrestrial animal to survive the event. Others survived as well, including the much larger Moschorhinus.


This is most reassuring.


----------



## philoctetes

Jacck said:


> ^^except that Trump's friend Putin has been orchestrating the refugee waves to Europe, because it helps to destabilize Europe. Of course there are some silly politicians like Merkel who invited to refugees to come. And the Russians took the message and purposefully spread it, and orchestrated many wars in Syria and elsewhere to drive to refugees to Europe.


Merkel is "silly" (OK) but Putin is a villain for purposefully spreading her message. And this "Trump's friend" business again... as if Trump is more responsible for global instability than players who have been in the war game long before 2016, or did Trump's hotel business cause that too.

"And Macron is pompous fool who is courting Putin"

OK right on about Macron but... again it's Putin you villify while Macron is just a fool. What's up with that? Why should we suffer such "silly fools" for world leaders? Why not "take out" Macron and all the rest of em? Mmm, could it be it would start the next World War?

No big consequences, I mean it would really fix the instability in the world to take out Putin, yeah sure. I can see the celebrations in the streets now...


----------



## Strange Magic

^^^^What is the Greek Chorus ever for? For what does it advocate? What enthuses it? Are Putin and Macron really interchangeable? Trump and Obama? One never knows with The Chorus, and, it seems, can never know......


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> It was sent to me years ago in an email. Using keywords I found it here;
> 
> http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm


Okay, that is an unsourced document that someone has simply put up on the internet. It may be a knowledgeable prediction of possible outcomes, or it may be someones rejected screenplay for the next Roland Emmerich disaster film.


----------



## Guest

Here is my big question, drawn from my experience in science.
In my particular field, it is viewed with extreme skepticism to directly compare data collected in different ways. Using two different types of assays to measure something is entirely valid, but comparing data from both doesn't usually fly, other than to compare trends - i.e. two different ways of validating a phenomenon. But you couldn't directly compare absolute results. And some assays are just more sensitive than others.

Okay, jump to climate science. Am I right to assume that the way they have been measuring atmospheric carbon levels is different than how they measured historical carbon levels? I'm assuming now they have highly specific ways of directly measuring those levels, while we are limited to indirect measurements for historical data - levels of carbon trapped in various things, such as rocks, etc. What is the level of sensitivity between the two? And if they are using different ways of measuring, is it entirely fair to count them all as one continuous data set? For example, on Nasa's website, they have this graphic:
https://climate.nasa.gov/system/content_pages/main_images/203_co2-graph-061219.jpg
It compares ice core data to direct measurements. I'm assuming they have some formula for correcting for what they find in the ice cores versus what that would mean was in the atmosphere (I'm assuming atmospheric and ice-trapped carbon dioxide are not identical). If that is the case, going back hundreds of thousands of years, do we really know that carbon dioxide was trapped in ice the way it would have been 10,000 years ago, 100 years ago? Is it legitimate to compare extrapolated data to direct measurements?
2nd question - is direct measurement simply drastically more sensitive than indirect measurement? My gut feeling says yes. Since 1950, according to that graphic, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have only been climbing. But throughout the history, it shows numerous instances of prolonged, presumably centuries-long unbroken climbs in carbon dioxide levels. Were we to go back then with our new, more sensitive measurement techniques, would we find those levels climbing well north of 300ppm as well? In other words, while there are certainly human explanations for the current spike, is it also somewhat artificial due to new sensitive methods? In my field, at least, as new, better technology emerges, our level of resolution is increased. Maybe a better question is when did we begin the new, more sensitive direct measurement of atmospheric carbon dioxide? Where does it fall on that timeline - at what point were we relying on direct measurement, and before which we have had to look at indirect data?

I am not claiming here that any of these questions will drastically change the data. I'm sure that these issues have been discussed and debated. But I notice that data does not have error bars, and I can't really believe that data from 800 millenia ago is that accurate.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> Here is my big question, drawn from my experience in science.
> In my particular field, it is viewed with extreme skepticism to directly compare data collected in different ways. Using two different types of assays to measure something is entirely valid, but comparing data from both doesn't usually fly, other than to compare trends - i.e. two different ways of validating a phenomenon. But you couldn't directly compare absolute results. And some assays are just more sensitive than others.
> 
> Okay, jump to climate science. Am I right to assume that the way they have been measuring atmospheric carbon levels is different than how they measured historical carbon levels? I'm assuming now they have highly specific ways of directly measuring those levels, while we are limited to indirect measurements for historical data - levels of carbon trapped in various things, such as rocks, etc. What is the level of sensitivity between the two? And if they are using different ways of measuring, is it entirely fair to count them all as one continuous data set? For example, on Nasa's website, they have this graphic:
> https://climate.nasa.gov/system/content_pages/main_images/203_co2-graph-061219.jpg
> It compares ice core data to direct measurements. I'm assuming they have some formula for correcting for what they find in the ice cores versus what that would mean was in the atmosphere (I'm assuming atmospheric and ice-trapped carbon dioxide are not identical). If that is the case, going back hundreds of thousands of years, do we really know that carbon dioxide was trapped in ice the way it would have been 10,000 years ago, 100 years ago? Is it legitimate to compare extrapolated data to direct measurements?
> 2nd question - is direct measurement simply drastically more sensitive than indirect measurement? My gut feeling says yes. Since 1950, according to that graphic, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have only been climbing. But throughout the history, it shows numerous instances of prolonged, presumably centuries-long unbroken climbs in carbon dioxide levels. Were we to go back then with our new, more sensitive measurement techniques, would we find those levels climbing well north of 300ppm as well? In other words, while there are certainly human explanations for the current spike, is it also somewhat artificial due to new sensitive methods? In my field, at least, as new, better technology emerges, our level of resolution is increased. Maybe a better question is when did we begin the new, more sensitive direct measurement of atmospheric carbon dioxide? Where does it fall on that timeline - at what point were we relying on direct measurement, and before which we have had to look at indirect data?
> 
> I am not claiming here that any of these questions will drastically change the data. I'm sure that these issues have been discussed and debated. But I notice that data does not have error bars, and I can't really believe that data from 800 millenia ago is that accurate.


This site may be useful. The method for measuring is slightly different given that we can't directly measure the atmosphere from thousands of years ago. Basically, they measure air trapped inside ice cores. Once they have a core sample, they use basically the same method for measuring the concentration inside the core as they do for air samples. The uncertainties seem to be a few parts per million by volume.

A very much more detailed discussion can be found here. Several of the graphs have error bars.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> This site may be useful. The method for measuring is slightly different given that we can't directly measure the atmosphere from thousands of years ago. Basically, they measure air trapped inside ice cores. Once they have a core sample, they use basically the same method for measuring the concentration inside the core as they do for air samples. The uncertainties seem to be a few parts per million by volume.
> 
> A very much more detailed discussion can be found here. Several of the graphs have error bars.


Yes, my understanding has been that it is mechanically trapped gas which gets buried with each subsequent year snow fall. Once it's in that ice matrix it isn't going anywhere. It occurred to me that some thought has to be put into the fact that there might be gas dissolved in the water/ice (in addition to the air bubbles) or that there might be a greater or lesser tendency of CO2 to be trapped due to gas properties. Those might skew things, but would be constant over time. I also imagined that over long periods of time gas could diffuse in the ice. That might blur things in the older samples. I assume the people who analyze this data are aware of the potential effects.


----------



## Strange Magic

Here is another excellent reference to the correlation of ice core to atmospheric CO2 levels.

https://www.co2.earth/co2-ice-core-data

The paragraphs below from that reference discuss coring taking place such that air captured within the cores could be analyzed for CO2 content while directly correlating with near-contemporaneous atmospheric CO2 levels.

"Three ice cores drilled at Law Dome, East Antarctica from 1987 to 1993 resulted in atmospheric CO2 records from 1006 A.D. to 1978 A.D.

The records extend into recent decades for which instrument measurements of atmospheric CO2 levels occured. This was enabled because of the high rate of snow accumulation at the Law Dome drill sites. Scientists reported that the air enclosed in the three ice cores have unparralleled age resolution.

Uncertainty in the data is 1.2 parts per million (ppm). Pre-industrial CO2 levels range from 275 to 284 ppm. Lower levels occured between 1550 and 1800 A.D. These ice cores show major growth in atmospheric CO2levels in the industrial period except 1935-1945 A.D. when levels stabilized or decreased slightly."

It would appear that paleoclimatologists have satisfied themselves that ice core data is consistent and valid as a source for determining past CO2 levels, sufficient that sound conclusions can be drawn.


----------



## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> Yes, my understanding has been that it is mechanically trapped gas which gets buried with each subsequent year snow fall. Once it's in that ice matrix it isn't going anywhere. It occurred to me that some thought has to be put into the fact that there might be gas dissolved in the water/ice (in addition to the air bubbles) or that there might be a greater or lesser tendency of CO2 to be trapped due to gas properties. Those might skew things, but would be constant over time. I also imagined that over long periods of time gas could diffuse in the ice. That might blur things in the older samples. I assume the people who analyze this data are aware of the potential effects.


My thought was that gases go into liquids at different rates at different temperatures - can you accurately predict one without the other? So, for example, if the temperatures were warmer, would you see more of the available carbon dioxide trapped in the ice, and less if the temperatures were colder, and so the actual carbon dioxide levels might have been higher during the colder times but you wouldn't see it reflected as much in the ice because less got trapped? And now that we can directly measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we don't have to guess or make corrections based on assumptions?


----------



## KenOC

DrMike said:


> My thought was that gases go into liquids at different rates at different temperatures - can you accurately predict one without the other? So, for example, if the temperatures were warmer, would you see more of the available carbon dioxide trapped in the ice, and less if the temperatures were colder, and so the actual carbon dioxide levels might have been higher during the colder times but you wouldn't see it reflected as much in the ice because less got trapped? And now that we can directly measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we don't have to guess or make corrections based on assumptions?


I would think the air was trapped in the ice when it froze. That would be a constant temperature regardless of broader climatic conditions, so the CO2 readings should support long-term trend analysis from year to year without corrections (required due to climate change, at least).


----------



## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> My thought was that gases go into liquids at different rates at different temperatures - can you accurately predict one without the other? So, for example, if the temperatures were warmer, would you see more of the available carbon dioxide trapped in the ice, and less if the temperatures were colder, and so the actual carbon dioxide levels might have been higher during the colder times but you wouldn't see it reflected as much in the ice because less got trapped? And now that we can directly measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we don't have to guess or make corrections based on assumptions?


The article referenced below gives important information on the correlation of ice core CO2 levels and temperatures over time. it also clearly states that the CO2 is measured in the air bubbles trapped within the ice--there is no discussion of gases "going into liquids" in the mechanism by which the air becomes trapped within the ice.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ice-core-data-help-solve/


----------



## Luchesi

mmsbls said:


> This site may be useful. The method for measuring is slightly different given that we can't directly measure the atmosphere from thousands of years ago. Basically, they measure air trapped inside ice cores. Once they have a core sample, they use basically the same method for measuring the concentration inside the core as they do for air samples. The uncertainties seem to be a few parts per million by volume.
> 
> A very much more detailed discussion can be found here. Several of the graphs have error bars.


What will old air tell us about AGW?


----------



## mmsbls

Luchesi said:


> What will old air tell us about AGW?


I'm not sure what you are asking. Did you mean to ask me that?


----------



## Luchesi

mmsbls said:


> I'm not sure what you are asking. Did you mean to ask me that?


What will the ice core data tell us about AGW?


----------



## mmsbls

Luchesi said:


> What will the ice core data tell us about AGW?


DrMike wanted to know how scientists measured CO2 concentrations in historical data and what the uncertainties were for that data. My response was an attempted answer. I'm not sure to what extent climate scientists use that data in projecting present warming. I assume some modelers might use that data to help calibrate or validate their models.


----------



## KenOC

The Law Dome ice cores tell us the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere for the last millenium, evidently with good accuracy and precision. Average terrestrial tempratures are known over the same period, perhaps less precisely. Correlating the two time series can suggest whether they are related. Any relationship potentially will have both a confidence level and confidence interval (i.e., "error bars"). Of course a relationship doesn't establish causation. That's another story.

However, if a relationship is found, and if increases in CO2 precede higher temperatures, then causation may be suspected -- that increased CO2 causes higher temps. Any human-caused CO2 increase is likely to cause warming.

I have seen the suggestion, though, that historically changes in CO2 concentration _follow _temperature changes. If so, things get a lot more murky.


----------



## Strange Magic

^^^^The _Scientific American_ link I referenced in Post #1345 discusses the relationship in the timing between CO2 concentrations in ice cores and temperatures. Many of the links that have been posted on this issue in the most recent exchanges are quite valuable and informative and could be examined to good effect by those wishing to learn more about the subject.


----------



## Strange Magic

Luchesi said:


> What will the ice core data tell us about AGW?


One thing the ice core data tell us is that the current spike in CO2 is without precedent in abruptness and magnitude.


----------



## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> One thing the ice core data tell us is that the current spike in CO2 is without precedent in abruptness and magnitude.


Yes, it's history but AGW is a new phenomenon according to the warmists opposing the deniers' stabs at the theory (predictions) of AGW.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> Yes, it's history but AGW is a new phenomenon according to the warmists opposing the deniers' stabs at the theory (predictions) of AGW.


If you can use the term denier, can I use the term alarmist? Denier has very negative connotations, including the association with other "deniers" like Holocaust deniers. I am not a denier, I am a skeptic. As I have said repeatedly, it isn't the interpretation of existing data with which I take issue, rather the predictions of future events.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> DrMike wanted to know how scientists measured CO2 concentrations in historical data and what the uncertainties were for that data. My response was an attempted answer. I'm not sure to what extent climate scientists use that data in projecting present warming. I assume some modelers might use that data to help calibrate or validate their models.


I'm not a chemist, so a lot of this science isn't intuitive to me. I wonder how permanent CO2 concentrations are in ice over millenia. Within the last 1000 years I'm sure we can have a higher level of certainty. But I still come back to wondering whether ice core data going further back is less reliable - does any carbon dioxide escape from the ice once it is trapped? And how does it simply get trapped in the ice? As snow falls, it doesn't fall in one solid sheet and immediately trap everything in it, and is initially quite porous - couldn't air trapped in it escape?

What I'm trying to get at here is whether there actually may have been higher spikes in carbon dioxide in the past to levels we are currently seeing, but that long term that ice has a much lower saturation point, particularly the more dense and compact it gets, such that going back more than a millenium, you can't really store more than 300ppm carbon dioxide in highly compressed ice? That certainly wouldn't change whether or not there are very high levels now and are likely due to mankind's activity, but if, in fact, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were higher numerous times in the past, it might mitigate a lot of the doomsday scenario predictions if it turned out such high levels were not quite so unprecedented. Is there an infinite amount of carbon dioxide that can be stored in such a way? 300 ppm clearly. 700? 900? 1000? 5000? Is there an upper limit beyond which you will no longer see representative amounts trapped in the ice, particularly over time as the ice becomes more and more compressed by the weight of subsequent layers?


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> If you can use the term denier, can I use the term alarmist? Denier has very negative connotations, including the association with other "deniers" like Holocaust deniers. I am not a denier, I am a skeptic. As I have said repeatedly, it isn't the interpretation of existing data with which I take issue, rather the predictions of future events.


It's alarming to think about a century or two from now. This is what experts are warning about. Not a few degrees of temperature on human skin, but the immense amount of energy in each degree that the planet warms or cools. Everyone in science is skeptical. The way I see it, deniers deny that there's anything to worry about. This is an extreme stance.

With very few exceptions everything that humans do - warms the planet. This is not 'sustainable'. The huge balances seem to be unsteady, and worse yet, dangerous long-term feedbacks are being investigated.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> It's alarming to think about a century or two from now. This is what experts are warning about. Not a few degrees of temperature on human skin, but the immense amount of energy in each degree that the planet warms or cools. Everyone in science is skeptical. The way I see it, deniers deny that there's anything to worry about. This is an extreme stance.
> 
> With very few exceptions everything that humans do - warms the planet. This is not 'sustainable'. The huge balances seem to be unsteady, and worse yet, dangerous long-term feedbacks are being investigated.


Quoting to us ridiculously pessimistic absolute worst case imaginable scenarios based more on pure speculation, to me, also seems to be an extreme stance. I don't think my ideas are quite as far out on the fringes of the bell curve as some of the extreme scenarios you have proposed on here (massive fireballs erupting from the floor of the ocean and wiping out London or Tokyo).


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Quoting to us ridiculously pessimistic absolute worst case imaginable scenarios based more on pure speculation, to me, also seems to be an extreme stance. I don't think my ideas are quite as far out on the fringes of the bell curve as some of the extreme scenarios you have proposed on here (massive fireballs erupting from the floor of the ocean and wiping out London or Tokyo).


What will rescue us?


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> I'm not a chemist, so a lot of this science isn't intuitive to me. I wonder how permanent CO2 concentrations are in ice over millenia. Within the last 1000 years I'm sure we can have a higher level of certainty. But I still come back to wondering whether ice core data going further back is less reliable - does any carbon dioxide escape from the ice once it is trapped? And how does it simply get trapped in the ice? As snow falls, it doesn't fall in one solid sheet and immediately trap everything in it, and is initially quite porous - couldn't air trapped in it escape?


Water contains a certain amount of dissolved air, which will come out of solution as water freezes. Thus ice naturally has air bubbles. Absent unusual local conditions, the air in these bubbles has about the same proportions of elements and compounds as exist in the atmosphere at the time of freezing.

SFAIK neither compressing the ice nor the passage of time will change those proportions. Even if air bubbles were to "escape" the proportions in the bubbles remaining would be unchanged. Maybe somebody here knows better, but I can imagine no mechanism by which the proportions could change.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Water contains a certain amount of dissolved air, which will come out of solution as water freezes. Thus ice naturally has air bubbles. Absent unusual local conditions, the air in these bubbles has about the same proportions of elements and compounds as exist in the atmosphere at the time of freezing.
> 
> SFAIK neither compressing the ice nor the passage of time will change those proportions. Even if air bubbles were to "escape" the proportions in the bubbles remaining would be unchanged. Maybe somebody here knows better, but I can imagine no mechanism by which the proportions could change.


Fair enough. It is amazing how much info you can get from an ice cube.


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> What will rescue us?


From the massive fireball? I don't know - a giant fire extinguisher?


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Water contains a certain amount of dissolved air, which will come out of solution as water freezes. Thus ice naturally has air bubbles. Absent unusual local conditions, the air in these bubbles has about the same proportions of elements and compounds as exist in the atmosphere at the time of freezing.
> 
> SFAIK neither compressing the ice nor the passage of time will change those proportions. Even if air bubbles were to "escape" the proportions in the bubbles remaining would be unchanged. Maybe somebody here knows better, but I can imagine no mechanism by which the proportions could change.


It is true that different gasses have different solubility in water and that if the gas being measured were dissolved in the water/ice that was deposited it would be necessary to take that into account. However, the mechanism is typically described as "bubbles trapped under the snow," which would make the different solubilities moot.

I'm willing to accept that the people who have been doing this for decades and who publish their results in refereed scientific journals have taken these considerations into account, especially in view of the fact that the ice core samples overlap with actual atmospheric measurements in the last ~100 years and can be readily checked. I see no mechanism where the constituents of the older samples can change after the ice is laid. There is no where for the gas to go, and if there were any chemical reactions taking place the reaction products would be there.


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## Bwv 1080

Continuing to fool with Mother Nature, the bitch



> For the first time, doctors in the U.S. have used the powerful gene-editing technique CRISPR to try to treat a patient with a genetic disorder.
> 
> "It is just amazing how far things have come," says Victoria Gray, 34, of Forest, Miss. "It is wonderful," she told NPR in an exclusive interview after undergoing the landmark treatment for sickle cell disease.


https://www.npr.org/sections/health...-is-volunteering-for-landmark-gene-editing-st


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## Guest

Bwv 1080 said:


> Continuing to fool with Mother Nature, the bitch
> 
> https://www.npr.org/sections/health...-is-volunteering-for-landmark-gene-editing-st


And thank goodness they are. Mother Nature screwed up here. This is just correcting the mistake. This is very similar to an organ transplant, except in this case, instead of using a mostly suitable donor (and waiting for someone to die), here they are your own cells, perfectly matched to you.


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> And thank goodness they are. Mother Nature screwed up here. This is just correcting the mistake. This is very similar to an organ transplant, except in this case, instead of using a mostly suitable donor (and waiting for someone to die), here they are your own cells, perfectly matched to you.


Of course if somebody has genes that make them ugly, or less than startlingly intelligent, some may say this also is Mother Nature screwing up. Time for a CRISPR call! I speak, of course, of a most slippery slope...


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Of course if somebody has genes that make them ugly, or less than startlingly intelligent, some may say this also is Mother Nature screwing up. Time for a CRISPR call! I speak, of course, of a most slippery slope...


I hate the slippery slope claim - in most cases it is invalid.
Changing your appearance is significantly more difficult than treating sickle cell - the former would likely need to be implemented in a test tube. After that point might be too late. Besides - people already undergo plastic surgery to alter their appearance. As with any technology, there will likely always be some possibility for abuse. But for treating something like sickle cell disease, it seems like a no-brainer. If a person is born with a cleft palate, we see no problem in correcting that genetic defect through surgical means. A congenic heart defect? Also frequently surgically repaired. When someone has a blood cell cancer, like leukemia, we will do bone marrow transfers from a sufficiently compatible host. All this does is takes the person's own cells, fixes the problems in them, and puts them back into the same person. We aren't playing Frankenstein here, or anything else unnatural. I think you all are letting the science be more scary here than it actually is. This isn't human cloning, or creating designer babies. This is helping people with a debilitating disease that may very well end their lives prematurely. You'd really deny them a treatment that does not hurt anybody, and used in this way does not abuse anything?


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## KenOC

It is, indeed a slippery slope. Gene editing is becoming more powerful and reliable every year. And many parents will be willing to spend huge amounts if money for better quality offspring, however they want to define that. The development of self-willed evolution among our species is unstoppable, unless we collapse as a technological world (which might actually be for the best).


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> It is, indeed a slippery slope. Gene editing is becoming more powerful and reliable every year. And many parents will be willing to spend huge amounts if money for better quality offspring, however they want to define that. The development of self-willed evolution among our species is unstoppable, unless we collapse as a technological world (which might actually be for the best).


Where is your evidence this is happening? That is a matter for legislation to decide. Just because something can be used for improper purposes doesn't mean it is, in and of itself, bad. The same technology that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki can also power cities. The same tool that can defend your life can also be used for murder. Organ donation is a wonderful thing that can save lives. But we know that there is also a black market of illegally, or immorally obtained tissues. Does that mean we should eliminate all organ transplantation?

Human DNA replication has a high degree of fidelity - not only are errors relatively rare, but there are also proofreading mechanisms to correct most of those. Nevertheless, mistakes do occur, particularly given how often it happens in a single organism. Sometimes those errors are perpetuated in the germ line, resulting in offspring that suffer the consequences of those errors. These are problems that will follow those people their entire life. And your argument is that we shouldn't allow it because somebody might use the technology to try to engineer the genetically "ideal" child?

Right now, I don't know how you even craft "better quality offspring." Appearance? How? Intelligence? How? Simply lacking genetic defects? What would be bad with that? Look, in vitro fertilization is already really expensive. Add into that the additional cost of going through and having to gene edit every possible embryo, without there being a guarantee that it will result in a viable pregnancy - only the super-rich would be able to afford that. And if they are already super-rich, exactly how much additional advantage in life would those children have that wasn't already made possible by the immense wealth of their parents?

This isn't self-willed evolution. Evolution is not directed as you imply. How do you predict what mutation will be beneficial and which will not. In fact, in many cases, that can change. Sickle cell disease was beneficial to individuals living in malaria-endemic regions because it made them more resistant than healthy people, so it provided a benefit in that sense - less likely to die from malaria. Now that we have treatments for malaria and the ability to control mosquito populations that carry the malaria parasite, we don't need a deleterious mutation that now does more harm than good. So now it is definitely not a beneficial mutation. "Planned" or "self-willed" evolution is no more realistic or effective than Stalin's 5-year plans.

And besides, by your logic we should just abandon all medical care - after all, sickness is just natural selection's way of weeding out the unfit, so why interfere? Who are we to say who should and shouldn't survive?

I suspect you might have a different perspective if you were the one suffering from sickle cell disease. Speaking as someone who suffers from a disease that has a genetic component, I pray for the day when I can rely on something other than a battery-operated pump connected to a tube stuck in my body to deliver insulin to keep my blood sugar under control.


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## Guest

There are a limited number of genetic conditions, generally rare, that can be traced back to one defective gene. Sickle cell requires two copies of the same defective gene, which is said to offer protection from malaria if inherited in only one copy. Hopefully this new therapy will work; there certainly have been examples of experimental gene therapies that have killed patients instead of curing them.

I'm not as concerned about the slippery slope as some. Any nontrivial attribute such as intelligence is the result of the interaction of many genes and we are no where near understanding the relationship. Even in the case of psychiatric disease there has been little progress in understanding the genetic basis. Manipulating genes is the easy part, knowing what to manipulate is the hard part and I think the slippery slope is a long way off.

My main source of concern is that while wildly complicated and expensive therapies are being developed, the price of some prosaic drugs such as insulin and epi-pens has been rising dramatically, pricing people with limited means out out lifesaving therapies. The health care market, such as it is, seems to be optimizing profit at the expense of medical outcomes for the largest group of people.


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> ...And besides, by your logic we should just abandon all medical care - after all, sickness is just natural selection's way of weeding out the unfit, so why interfere? Who are we to say who should and shouldn't survive?
> 
> I suspect you might have a different perspective if you were the one suffering from sickle cell disease.


Odd, I don't remember recommending we abandon health care entirely, or even current treatments for genetically-based disorders. I must not have been paying attention!

In any event, it seems certain that our understanding of genes and our ability to manipulate them, even many genes at a time, will continue to grow. We will gain increasing abilities to tie these manipulations to various outcomes, in far more complex ways than we can today. Would anybody here have thought, 50 years ago, that smart phones could ever exist and even become ubiquitous?

At the same time, the technologies involved in gene manipulation will be driven by vast amounts of money. We've already seen big dollars spent and illegal acts undertaken to get kids into Harvard. I guarantee that the rich will spend far, far more to ensure their offspring will be among the "better" humans and will have a real leg up in the Darwinian slugfest that all living creatures participate in. Pass all the laws you want -- they won't stop this.

If things go as I expect, civilizations will stratify much in the way that Aldous Huxley foresaw. And that stratification will be hard to fight, since it will be based on real and important heritable differences in capacities among genetic groups. And, as always, the advantage will go to the rich.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Odd, I don't remember recommending we abandon health care entirely, or even current treatments for genetically-based disorders. I must not have been paying attention!
> 
> In any event, it seems certain that our understanding of genes and our ability to manipulate them, even many genes at a time, will continue to grow. We will gain increasing abilities to tie these manipulations to various outcomes, in far more complex ways than we can today. Would anybody here have thought, 50 years ago, that smart phones could ever exist or even become ubiquitous?
> 
> At the same time, the technologies involved in gene manipulation will be driven by vast amounts of money. We've already seen big dollars spent and illegal acts undertaken to get kids into Harvard. I guarantee that the rich will spend far, far more to ensure their offspring will be among the "better" humans and will have a real leg up in the Darwinian slugfest that all living creatures participate in.
> 
> If things go as I expect, civilizations will stratify much in the way that Aldous Huxley foresaw. And that stratification will be hard to fight, since it will be based on real and important differences in capacities among genetic groups. And, as always, the advantage will go to the rich.


Previous attempts at building the master race have always ended in failure. Somehow I doubt that the reason was that the technology just wasn't good enough.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> At the same time, the technologies involved in gene manipulation will be driven by vast amounts of money. We've already seen big dollars spent and illegal acts undertaken to get kids into Harvard. I guarantee that the rich will spend far, far more to ensure their offspring will be among the "better" humans and will have a real leg up in the Darwinian slugfest that all living creatures participate in. Pass all the laws you want -- they won't stop this.


Just this week I heard a podcast (can't remember which) about extremely wealthy parents shopping for doctors to administer human growth hormone to their below-average-height progeny. According to standard practice, the extremely expensive hormone is only supposed to be given to people with a medically dangerous deficiency, not to people who are just not very tall, despite having adequate production of the hormone.


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## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> Just this week I heard a podcast (can't remember which) about extremely wealthy parents shopping for doctors to administer human growth hormone to their below-average-height progeny. According to standard practice, the extremely expensive hormone is only supposed to be given to people with a medically dangerous deficiency, not to people who are just not very tall, despite having adequate production of the hormone.


I'd throw those parents in jail for child abuse and child endangerment. I know people whose kids have to take those, and we have looked into them for our daughter who was extremely small. There are significant health complications that come with the tradeoff - not worth the risk if you don't need them.


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## KenOC

Factoid: In the US, Democrats rank climate change as the fifth most important issue facing the country. Among Republicans, it doesn’t even make the top ten. Strong action seems unlikely!


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> From the massive fireball? I don't know - a giant fire extinguisher?


You're an intelligent skeptic. I think you're representative. I'd like to know what your outlook is for AGW?


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> You're an intelligent skeptic. I think you're representative. I'd like to know what your outlook is for AGW?


Ah - that's clever. But no. My contention has been that I don't think you can really predict the future like that. So I won't do so. I think it will be somewhere between no impact and the worst predictions, and nobody can reliably claim to know where on that spectrum it will actually fall.


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## BobBrines

I am a degree holding meteorologist. I entered the game in the late 60's. The scare back then was the coming ice age. Crops would fail, we would all starve to death,, yada, yada. Then one day, global warming. By the turn of the century the ice caps would be gone and Florida and New Your City would be under water. 

Here's why there are sceptics. The alarmists have been cooking the books from day one. The United States changed the way climatological data is recorded that bumped up the average temperatures by nearly a degree. All of the predictive modeling have been proven grossly exaggerated. 

As recently as 13000 years ago the entirety of Canada and the Great Lakes were under ice. The Earth has been warming ever since. We know that paleological temperatures were from time to time much higher than today. How much of the current trend is background and how much is man-made? I don't know. Perhaps a realistic study not driven by fanaticism might help.


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## Strange Magic

BobBrines said:


> I am a degree holding meteorologist. I entered the game in the late 60's. The scare back then was the coming ice age. Crops would fail, we would all starve to death,, yada, yada. Then one day, global warming. By the turn of the century the ice caps would be gone and Florida and New Your City would be under water.
> 
> Here's why there are sceptics. The alarmists have been cooking the books from day one. The United States changed the way climatological data is recorded that bumped up the average temperatures by nearly a degree. All of the predictive modeling have been proven grossly exaggerated.
> 
> As recently as 13000 years ago the entirety of Canada and the Great Lakes were under ice. The Earth has been warming ever since. We know that paleological temperatures were from time to time much higher than today. How much of the current trend is background and how much is man-made? I don't know. Perhaps a realistic study not driven by fanaticism might help.


You might find the link below interesting. It is the most recent statement of the American Meteorological Society on anthropogenic climate change, sometimes referred to as AGW. The non-scientist citizen has a choice: listen to and ponder the consensus statement of the American Meteorological Society, and you, and then decide what would be a prudent choice as to a source of guidance.

https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/a...atements-of-the-ams-in-force/climate-change1/

From that statement:

*Executive Summary*

Research has found a human influence on the climate of the past several decades. Its manifestation includes the warming of the atmosphere and oceans, intensification of the heaviest precipitation over continental areas, increasing upper-ocean acidity, increasing frequency and intensity of daily temperature extremes, reductions in Northern Hemisphere snow and ice, and rising global sea level. The latitudinal and seasonal observations of the surface warming and the observed warming of the troposphere and cooling of the stratosphere are consistent with theoretical expectations from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.

The increase in global average surface temperature over the past half-century cannot be fully explained by natural climate variability, e.g., responses to Earth's orbital changes over thousands of years, or natural climate forcing such as from solar or volcanic variability. The observed warming rate varies from place to place and from decade to decade because of natural climate variations, such as natural swings between El Niño and La Niña on time scales of two to seven years, and variations in ocean circulation in the Pacific and Atlantic basins on decadal to multi-decadal timescales. The influence of these relatively short-period fluctuations is factored into climate change analyses. These natural fluctuations have neither the magnitude nor the spatial characteristics to explain the observed warming of Earth's average surface temperature over the past several decades. The IPCC (2013), USGCRP (2017), and USGCRP (2018) indicate that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century.

Proxies, which are indirect measurements of past temperature obtained from archives, such as tree rings, corals, ice cores, lake and marine sediments, and cave stalagmites, reveal that the rate and magnitude of the current global temperature change is likely exceptional in the context of the last two thousand years. Global temperatures were last on par with the present ones in the previous Interglacial Period (125,000 years ago), when sea level was 6-9 m (20-30 ft) higher than today. Projected warming over the next century will likely place global temperatures in a range not seen in millions of years of geologic history.


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## BobBrines

Right. Believe anything and everything that the AMS publishes. Ignore the fact that their forecasts for the last half century have been exaggerated. I do not deny that human actions have increased the rate of warming. I simply do not know because the "evidence" presented is unreliable. Publish a believable study and I will be happy to buy in.


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## Strange Magic

I repeat: what would be the prudent decision on the part of a concerned non-scientist citizen--attend to the consensus view and declaration of the organized body of professional meteorologists? Or instead to an isolated iconoclast? DrMike constantly and correctly warns us to pay no attention to the ravings and mutterings of the anti-immunization crowd and instead to rely upon the consensus expertise of the immunological and public health communities. You should take a leaf from his book.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> I repeat: what would be the prudent decision on the part of a concerned non-scientist citizen--attend to the consensus view and declaration of the organized body of professional meteorologists? Or instead to an isolated iconoclast? DrMike constantly and correctly warns us to pay no attention to the ravings and mutterings of the anti-immunization crowd and instead to rely upon the consensus expertise of the immunological and public health communities. You should take a leaf from his book.


Not quite. I appeal to the overwhelming evidence of the record on immunizations. I don't have to say, "believe in vaccines because someday they may save your life," when I can say, "look at how much disease and death from disease has actually plummeted because of vaccinations." There is a difference there. And I can actually point to real data - not extrapolations - that show no link between vaccines and autism.


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Not quite. I appeal to the overwhelming evidence of the record on immunizations. I don't have to say, "believe in vaccines because someday they may save your life," when I can say, "look at how much disease and death from disease has actually plummeted because of vaccinations." There is a difference there. And I can actually point to real data - not extrapolations - that show no link between vaccines and autism.


We both know the data showing both a secular rapid warming of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans and also an unprecedented spike in CO2 and methane releases and levels, and showing the links between these phenomena. Extrapolation into the future via modeling numerous scenarios slightly altering variables is what predictive sciences do, especially those that impinge directly upon human (and environmental) welfare. What you appear to propose, always, in these situations that directly involve public policy, is to abandon extrapolation and instead wait quietly "to see what happens", lest some pet political or economic or ''philosophical" enthusiasm is endangered. That, I submit, is folly.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> We both know the data showing both a secular rapid warming of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans and also an unprecedented spike in CO2 and methane releases and levels, and showing the links between these phenomena. Extrapolation into the future via modeling numerous scenarios slightly altering variables is what predictive sciences do, especially those that impinge directly upon human (and environmental) welfare. What you appear to propose, always, in these situations that directly involve public policy, is to abandon extrapolation and instead wait quietly "to see what happens", lest some pet political or economic or ''philosophical" enthusiasm is endangered. That, I submit, is folly.


I know what the data shows - unprecedentedly high carbon dioxide levels, higher than the highest levels we have seen in ice core samples going back hundreds of thousands of years. My question is are we now at unprecedentedly high temperatures, much higher than the records suggest for the past several hundreds of thousands of years? The highest sea levels going back hundreds of thousands of years? I don't think those things track.

But it is a different way of doing science. We have direct studies to show actual observational data that if you give vaccines, you get protection from disease. Not extrapolations. Not predictions. The predictions occurred much earlier in the experimental phase, before anything was done large scale. Experiments are done on small scale, and then a vast series of clinical trials must be conducted before a vaccine gets introduced to the general public. What you are asking for here are vast alterations to infrastructure and the economy based on extrapolations. That is not the same thing.


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## Strange Magic

> DrMike: "I know what the data shows - unprecedentedly high carbon dioxide levels, higher than the highest levels we have seen in ice core samples going back hundreds of thousands of years. My question is are we now at unprecedentedly high temperatures, much higher than the records suggest for the past several hundreds of thousands of years? The highest sea levels going back hundreds of thousands of years? I don't think those things track".


Is that, in your opinion, what we must see now--much higher temperatures, much higher sea levels--right now--than we have seen in the paleoclimatotological record for the past several hundreds of thousands of years? Do you understand that there will be a time lag in the imposition of these new levels as the heat sink of the oceans continues to absorb and buffer both the increasing CO2 levels and the rising temperature? These are some of the sorts of scenarios that predictive climate science are modeling. Your reply demonstrates the need to rely upon the consensus of the scientists actually working in the fields relating to heat flows, chemistry of atmospheres and oceans, climate, and links between biological processes and longterm changes in land use. Waiting to see what happens, as a choice, I repeat, guarantees the selection of the worst path forward.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Is that, in your opinion, what we must see now--much higher temperatures, much higher sea levels--right now--than we have seen in the paleoclimatotological record for the past several hundreds of thousands of years? Do you understand that there will be a time lag in the imposition of these new levels as the heat sink of the oceans continues to absorb and buffer both the increasing CO2 levels and the rising temperature? These are some of the sorts of scenarios that predictive climate science are modeling. Your reply demonstrates the need to rely upon the consensus of the scientists actually working in the fields relating to heat flows, chemistry of atmospheres and oceans, climate, and links between biological processes and longterm changes in land use. Waiting to see what happens, as a choice, I repeat, guarantees the selection of the worst path forward.


Sure, ocean levels would lag. But temperatures? Are we at record high temperatures much higher than anything that has been seen in the past several hundreds of thousands of years?


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> Sure, ocean levels would lag. But temperatures? Are we at record high temperatures much higher than anything that has been seen in the past several hundreds of thousands of years?


Do you understand that the global ocean is a heat sink? The polar ice sheets and all glaciers are also heat sinks. By ocean levels, it is not clear whether you refer to sea level or to the level (amount) of CO2 so far absorbed by the global ocean. In all cases, the results of increased atmospheric CO2 are being felt in the slow rise of both sea level and of oceanic acidity.

I find that the prudent path is to rely upon the consensus judgement of the actual experts in these fields.


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## Open Book

DrMike said:


> Sure, ocean levels would lag. But temperatures? Are we at record high temperatures much higher than anything that has been seen in the past several hundreds of thousands of years?


What does it matter how things were in the distant past? Humans weren't here during the most terrifically hostile climate and couldn't have survived then. We're here now and we have to continue.

If your obsession with the past is to prove the climate changes we are experiencing are entirely natural just because harsh climate has precedent, that's merely a hope of yours. Climate experts would know if the changes were completely natural.

The same thing gets said to justify apathy about biological extinctions. "There have been mass extinctions in the past". So what? Human weren't here then, so it didn't affect us when the dinosaurs died (what killed them would have killed us, too). Extinctions today do affect us. And they are overwhelmingly man-made, unlike in the past.

If it's man-made and it's doing harm, we need to control it.


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## Bwv 1080

Looks like Greenpeace has failed in its valiant 20 year fight to keep the population of third world children in check:



> Approval of golden rice could finally end vitamin A deficiency deaths
> Genetically modified golden rice finally seems set for approval where it is needed to address vitamin A deficiency, but anti-scientific misinformation campaigns continue


https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ould-finally-end-vitamin-a-deficiency-deaths/


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## KenOC

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases once again reached new highs in 2018. Some excerpts from the *BBC story*:

"Using data from monitoring stations in the Arctic and all over the world, researchers say that in 2018 concentrations of CO2 reached 407.8 parts per million (ppm), up from 405.5ppm a year previously. 
This increase was above the average for the last 10 years and is 147% of the "pre-industrial" level in 1750…

"Methane is now at 259% of the pre-industrial level and the increase seen over the past year was higher than both the previous annual rate and the average over the past 10 years…

"What concerns scientists is the overall warming impact of all these increasing concentrations. Known as total radiative forcing, this effect has increased by 43% since 1990, and is not showing any indication of stopping.

" 'There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere despite all the commitments under the Paris agreement on climate change,' said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas… 'It is worth recalling that the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was three to five million years ago. Back then, the temperature was 2-3C warmer, sea level was 10-20m higher than now,' said Mr Taalas."


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> What does it matter how things were in the distant past? Humans weren't here during the most terrifically hostile climate and couldn't have survived then. We're here now and we have to continue.
> 
> If your obsession with the past is to prove the climate changes we are experiencing are entirely natural just because harsh climate has precedent, that's merely a hope of yours. Climate experts would know if the changes were completely natural.
> 
> The same thing gets said to justify apathy about biological extinctions. "There have been mass extinctions in the past". So what? Human weren't here then, so it didn't affect us when the dinosaurs died (what killed them would have killed us, too). Extinctions today do affect us. And they are overwhelmingly man-made, unlike in the past.
> 
> If it's man-made and it's doing harm, we need to control it.


No. My point is this: we are at historically high carbon dioxide levels, higher than anything in the ice core record going back hundreds of thousands of years. We are told this will lead to disastrous things. But what else is actually at unprecedented levels? I know there will be some lag, but are we at or anywhere near the highest temperature levels in the last several hundreds of thousands of years? The highest sea levels? Is anything, other than carbon dioxide levels, at unprecedentedly high levels? Is it possible that the actual outcomes might not be as dire as you all seem absolutely certain of?

"Climate experts would know if the changes were completely natural." I've never argued otherwise. When will you all be honest about my claims? I'm not arguing with the record, I'm skeptical of the predictions. Climate experts may very well know a lot about the past and present. But if history has taught us anything, it is that mankind is stupendously bad at predicting the future.


----------



## Larkenfield

*Why carbon dioxide matters*



> Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: a gas that absorbs heat. Warmed by sunlight, Earth's land and ocean surfaces continuously radiate thermal infrared energy (heat). Unlike oxygen or nitrogen (which make up most of our atmosphere), greenhouse gases absorb that heat and release it gradually over time, like bricks in a fireplace after the fire goes out. Without this natural greenhouse effect, Earth's average annual temperature would be below freezing instead of close to 60°F. But increases in greenhouse gases have tipped the Earth's energy budget out of balance, trapping additional heat and raising Earth's average temperature.
> 
> Carbon dioxide is the most important of Earth's long-lived greenhouse gases. It absorbs less heat per molecule than the greenhouse gases methane or nitrous oxide, but it's more abundant and it stays in the atmosphere much longer. And while carbon dioxide is less abundant and less powerful than water vapor on a molecule per molecule basis, it absorbs wavelengths of thermal energy that water vapor does not, which means it adds to the greenhouse effect in a unique way. _Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide are responsible for about two-thirds of the total energy imbalance that is causing Earth's temperature to rise._ [unquote]
> ---
> These increases are _human-produced_ greenhouse emissions. So without our natural greenhouse effect, Earth's average annual temperature would be below freezing instead of close to 60°F. _"But increases in greenhouse gases have tipped the Earth's energy budget out of balance, trapping additional heat and raising Earth's average temperature."_
> 
> This _strongly_ suggests that this aspect of climate change is not natural at all. Through the continuing insane addiction and dependency on fossil fuels, humans are seriously harming their own eco-systems now and for future generations.
> 
> https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> No. My point is this: we are at historically high carbon dioxide levels, higher than anything in the ice core record going back hundreds of thousands of years. We are told this will lead to disastrous things. But what else is actually at unprecedented levels? I know there will be some lag, but are we at or anywhere near the highest temperature levels in the last several hundreds of thousands of years? The highest sea levels? Is anything, other than carbon dioxide levels, at unprecedentedly high levels? Is it possible that the actual outcomes might not be as dire as you all seem absolutely certain of?
> 
> "Climate experts would know if the changes were completely natural." I've never argued otherwise. When will you all be honest about my claims? I'm not arguing with the record, I'm skeptical of the predictions. Climate experts may very well know a lot about the past and present. But if history has taught us anything, it is that mankind is stupendously bad at predicting the future.


Despite several explanatory posts, the Good Doctor still entirely fails to grasp the concept of the time lag between the introduction of greenhouse gases (especially CO2) into the atmosphere, and the concomitant much slower rise of global temperatures and of oceanic uptake of CO2. The latter phenomena are being observed, advancing ominously year by year, but they are not at the fantastic levels The Doctor insists we should be seeing right now if the phenomenon of AGW is real. The literature on this issue (global oceanic and ice sheet buffering of temperature and CO2 levels) is ubiquitous on the Internet--he needs only to examine it.

https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/ocean-warming


----------



## Guest

Larkenfield said:


> *Why carbon dioxide matters*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: a gas that absorbs heat. Warmed by sunlight, Earth's land and ocean surfaces continuously radiate thermal infrared energy (heat). Unlike oxygen or nitrogen (which make up most of our atmosphere), greenhouse gases absorb that heat and release it gradually over time, like bricks in a fireplace after the fire goes out. Without this natural greenhouse effect, Earth's average annual temperature would be below freezing instead of close to 60°F. But increases in greenhouse gases have tipped the Earth's energy budget out of balance, trapping additional heat and raising Earth's average temperature.
> 
> Carbon dioxide is the most important of Earth's long-lived greenhouse gases. It absorbs less heat per molecule than the greenhouse gases methane or nitrous oxide, but it's more abundant and it stays in the atmosphere much longer. And while carbon dioxide is less abundant and less powerful than water vapor on a molecule per molecule basis, it absorbs wavelengths of thermal energy that water vapor does not, which means it adds to the greenhouse effect in a unique way. _Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide are responsible for about two-thirds of the total energy imbalance that is causing Earth's temperature to rise._ [unquote]
> ---
> These increases are _human-produced_ greenhouse emissions. So without our natural greenhouse effect, Earth's average annual temperature would be below freezing instead of close to 60°F. _"But increases in greenhouse gases have tipped the Earth's energy budget out of balance, trapping additional heat and raising Earth's average temperature."_
> 
> This _strongly_ suggests that this aspect of climate change is not natural at all. Through the continuing insane addiction and dependency on fossil fuels, humans are seriously harming their own eco-systems now and for future generations.
> 
> https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
> 
> 
> 
> Why is it an insane addiction? That's like saying in the 1700s we had an insane addiction to horse-powered travel. As if we had numerous options and picked the worst one. Honestly, how recent had it been that we have actually had alternatives that are viable for the energy needed to sustain a modern life? Should we have remained at a pre-industrial stage indefinitely until we were able to technologically simply leap frog over carbon-based energy and jump to advanced technology? It isn't an insane addiction. In fact, it was a very logical fuel source, and it had made life infinitely better. In addition to the amazing amount of energy trapped in such a small volume, consider also just how important plastics are. And yes, when entire countries are set up to run on one type of energy, it takes a long time and an insane amount of money to completely convert. And let's not pretend the alternatives are completely risk free panacaeas. Again, it's not like we had numerous choices and simply picked the wrong one. Quit judging the past based on today's technology.
Click to expand...


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> No. My point is this: we are at historically high carbon dioxide levels, higher than anything in the ice core record going back hundreds of thousands of years. We are told this will lead to disastrous things. But what else is actually at unprecedented levels? I know there will be some lag, but are we at or anywhere near the highest temperature levels in the last several hundreds of thousands of years? The highest sea levels? Is anything, other than carbon dioxide levels, at unprecedentedly high levels? Is it possible that the actual outcomes might not be as dire as you all seem absolutely certain of?
> 
> "Climate experts would know if the changes were completely natural." I've never argued otherwise. When will you all be honest about my claims? I'm not arguing with the record, I'm skeptical of the predictions. Climate experts may very well know a lot about the past and present. But if history has taught us anything, it is that mankind is stupendously bad at predicting the future.


Feedbacks take time. We'll probably get there.


----------



## Open Book

DrMike said:


> Larkenfield said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Why carbon dioxide matters*
> 
> Why is it an insane addiction? That's like saying in the 1700s we had an insane addiction to horse-powered travel. As if we had numerous options and picked the worst one. Honestly, how recent had it been that we have actually had alternatives that are viable for the energy needed to sustain a modern life? Should we have remained at a pre-industrial stage indefinitely until we were able to technologically simply leap frog over carbon-based energy and jump to advanced technology? It isn't an insane addiction. In fact, it was a very logical fuel source, and it had made life infinitely better. In addition to the amazing amount of energy trapped in such a small volume, consider also just how important plastics are. And yes, when entire countries are set up to run on one type of energy, it takes a long time and an insane amount of money to completely convert. And let's not pretend the alternatives are completely risk free panacaeas. Again, it's not like we had numerous choices and simply picked the wrong one. Quit judging the past based on today's technology.
> 
> 
> 
> I understand your resistance to certain rhetoric but you shouldn't let the hysterical rhetoric color your your judgment. I don't like the way certain things are expressed either, and I don't like the idea of heedless, headlong plunging into quick fixes. Nor the fact that the issue has been used as a political football (by both sides). I don't think any young people should be committing suicide over global climate change as if we have no future at all. The effects are probably not going to kill us all, at least not right away, but they will make life much harder and will shorten life expectancy. Maybe you won't feel it, but some people will. Life has always been hard - technology has improved our lives, as you keep pointing out, but that doesn't mean certain technologies can't have nefarious side-effects. When they do, we've got to change them or try to develop new technologies.
> 
> I don't understand your contentedness to simply wait to see what happens despite the predictions rather than err on the side of caution. Do you do this with other aspects of your life? If there are warnings that an activity is unsafe do you let your kids participate in it and just see what happens or do you err on the side of caution and keep them away from it? Waiting on this issue is a bad idea, things can happen that will be hard to undo the more time that passes.
Click to expand...


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> DrMike said:
> 
> 
> 
> I understand your resistance to certain rhetoric but you shouldn't let the hysterical rhetoric color your your judgment. I don't like the way certain things are expressed either, and I don't like the idea of heedless, headlong plunging into quick fixes. Nor the fact that the issue has been used as a political football (by both sides). I don't think any young people should be committing suicide over global climate change as if we have no future at all. The effects are probably not going to kill us all, at least not right away, but they will make life much harder and will shorten life expectancy. Maybe you won't feel it, but some people will. Life has always been hard - technology has improved our lives, as you keep pointing out, but that doesn't mean certain technologies can't have nefarious side-effects. When they do, we've got to change them or try to develop new technologies.
> 
> I don't understand your contentedness to simply wait to see what happens despite the predictions rather than err on the side of caution. Do you do this with other aspects of your life? If there are warnings that an activity is unsafe do you let your kids participate in it and just see what happens or do you err on the side of caution and keep them away from it? Waiting on this issue is a bad idea, things can happen that will be hard to undo the more time that passes.
> 
> 
> 
> Another fallacy - just because I don't side with the extremists doesn't mean I am opposed to all action. I support action. I just oppose some of the proposed means of action. I don't like the idea of surrendering more liberty and more power to centralized governments who will pass that power off to unelected bureaucracies who (and I know everybody claims this means heightened accountability, but it really doesn't). I don't want to give more power to people who pollute a river and face no consequences, or who go after a Wyoming family to the tune of $75,000/day for building a stock pond on their own property.
> 
> I do support doing things. I don't support government picking and choosing who gets money based on political decisions (e.g. Solyndra). But I have proposed elsewhere being amenable to a government grant system, similar to that for funding biological sciences, in which companies can make proposals for government grants to cover the initial cost-prohibitive expenses incurred in new technology research. So rather than congressman X getting money for his district, or President Y diverting money to some wealthy donor, those companies can write up proposals to obtain that money, and have it be reviewed by someone who won't benefit politically from their choice.
> 
> I support new technology. I'd love to get off fossil fuels for numerous reasons in addition to making the environment cleaner. I'd love to completely cut the knees out from the Middle East and Russia by eliminating our dependence on oil which helps prop up these regimes. If oil were no longer essential, the price would plummet and we'd no longer have to tip-toe around the sensibilities of autocratic and dictatorial thugs.
> 
> But I know we aren't there yet, and I oppose people who want to start slamming on additional costs as if the average person has not gone carbon neutral because they just love polluting so damn much, and need to be punished. I'm all for solar and wind and nuclear and geothermal and hydroelectric - but is it really ready for primetime? How large of areas are we going to have to blanket with solar panels with current technology to power Los Angeles, let alone the entire continent? How many acres of windmills (and all the resulting deaths of birds)? So we stop stripping the land of trees - but, unless I'm mistaken, solar and wind farms require a whole lot more acreage than your standard coal-powered energy plant or nuclear reactor. Where do those go?
> 
> But you know what? All anybody on here will see is that I don't kiss the feet of St. Greta Thunberg and build a shrine to the IPCC, so therefore I must just be a denier.
> 
> Of course I want my children to inherit a better world - but just like everything else, some security is worth the expense, but there is a tipping point where I don't think the cost is justified. I buy auto insurance and homeowner's insurance and life insurance and medical insurance because I know they help me and my family. If I really wanted to, I'm sure I could spend even more money and insure just about every single facet of my life, but to what point? The cost is no longer worthwhile because the risk is so low. I'm willing to fund research to a point to make this world a better place, but not fund every single proposal out there to prevent absolutely every potential predicted outcome. I think the money can be better spent, and I think government reaches, very quickly, a point of vanishing returns when we give it money, to where we are spending more on the bureaucracy than on the actual benefits they promise - then all you get is even more mid-level government workers going out and telling Joe Blow he can't put a pond on his property to give a water source for his animals.
Click to expand...


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## Guest

Listen to this precious little effete asking a planetary sized brain about climate change!!


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## Guest

Christabel said:


> Listen to this precious little effete asking a planetary sized brain about climate change!!


I know Jordan Peterson is the new hot thing - I'm pretty agnostic about him. Some of his stuff makes sense - his answer here, I think at its core, is right. This climate change issue is not going to unite anybody. Too many of the biggest voices on the issue are trying to harness it to use as a cudgel to accomplish progressive/socialist policies under the concept of "wartime" exegency. The concept of never let a disaster go to waste.


----------



## Strange Magic

Christabel said:


> Listen to this precious little effete asking a planetary sized brain about climate change!!


Good old Jordan Peterson! Just the sort of superficial understanding of the issues of climate change and environmental degradation that a clinical psychologist with a cult following would bring to the subject. The "issues" he raised about storage of electricity generated by solar and wind are all eminently solvable given serious leadership and commitment. He joins the select ranks of cornucopian economists, free-market libertarian ideologues, and assorted other non-experts in advising that doing nothing is better than doing something. But he does repeat another gem, this time regarding the premise that if we, through improved childhood nutrition (who is against that?), get ten million more geniuses, maybe some of them will figure out what to do about climate change. The entirety of Peterson's presentation is priceless material, and I urge everyone to watch it complete. Thanks to Christabel for making it available! Again the case is made instead for the prudent non-scientist citizen to attend to the consensus of the scientific community familiar with these issues.


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Open Book said:
> 
> 
> 
> Another fallacy - just because I don't side with the extremists doesn't mean I am opposed to all action. I support action. I just oppose some of the proposed means of action. I don't like the idea of surrendering more liberty and more power to centralized governments who will pass that power off to unelected bureaucracies who (and I know everybody claims this means heightened accountability, but it really doesn't). I don't want to give more power to people who pollute a river and face no consequences, or who go after a Wyoming family to the tune of $75,000/day for building a stock pond on their own property.
> 
> I do support doing things. I don't support government picking and choosing who gets money based on political decisions (e.g. Solyndra). But I have proposed elsewhere being amenable to a government grant system, similar to that for funding biological sciences, in which companies can make proposals for government grants to cover the initial cost-prohibitive expenses incurred in new technology research. So rather than congressman X getting money for his district, or President Y diverting money to some wealthy donor, those companies can write up proposals to obtain that money, and have it be reviewed by someone who won't benefit politically from their choice.
> 
> I support new technology. I'd love to get off fossil fuels for numerous reasons in addition to making the environment cleaner. I'd love to completely cut the knees out from the Middle East and Russia by eliminating our dependence on oil which helps prop up these regimes. If oil were no longer essential, the price would plummet and we'd no longer have to tip-toe around the sensibilities of autocratic and dictatorial thugs.
> 
> But I know we aren't there yet, and I oppose people who want to start slamming on additional costs as if the average person has not gone carbon neutral because they just love polluting so damn much, and need to be punished. I'm all for solar and wind and nuclear and geothermal and hydroelectric - but is it really ready for primetime? How large of areas are we going to have to blanket with solar panels with current technology to power Los Angeles, let alone the entire continent? How many acres of windmills (and all the resulting deaths of birds)? So we stop stripping the land of trees - but, unless I'm mistaken, solar and wind farms require a whole lot more acreage than your standard coal-powered energy plant or nuclear reactor. Where do those go?
> 
> But you know what? All anybody on here will see is that I don't kiss the feet of St. Greta Thunberg and build a shrine to the IPCC, so therefore I must just be a denier.
> 
> Of course I want my children to inherit a better world - but just like everything else, some security is worth the expense, but there is a tipping point where I don't think the cost is justified. I buy auto insurance and homeowner's insurance and life insurance and medical insurance because I know they help me and my family. If I really wanted to, I'm sure I could spend even more money and insure just about every single facet of my life, but to what point? The cost is no longer worthwhile because the risk is so low. I'm willing to fund research to a point to make this world a better place, but not fund every single proposal out there to prevent absolutely every potential predicted outcome. I think the money can be better spent, and I think government reaches, very quickly, a point of vanishing returns when we give it money, to where we are spending more on the bureaucracy than on the actual benefits they promise - then all you get is even more mid-level government workers going out and telling Joe Blow he can't put a pond on his property to give a water source for his animals.
> 
> 
> 
> "I don't like the idea of surrendering more liberty and more power to centralized governments who will pass that power off to unelected bureaucracies..."
> 
> If you're wrong about the future danger imagine how bad this will get.
Click to expand...


----------



## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Good old Jordan Peterson! Just the sort of superficial understanding of the issues of climate change and environmental degradation that a clinical psychologist with a cult following would bring to the subject. The "issues" he raised about storage of electricity generated by solar and wind are all eminently solvable given serious leadership and commitment. He joins the select ranks of cornucopian economists, free-market libertarian ideologues, and assorted other non-experts in advising that doing nothing is better than doing something. But he does repeat another gem, this time regarding the premise that if we, through improved childhood nutrition (who is against that?), get ten million more geniuses, maybe some of them will figure out what to do about climate change. The entirety of Peterson's presentation is priceless material, and I urge everyone to watch it complete. Thanks to Christabel for making it available! Again the case is made instead for the prudent non-scientist citizen to attend to the consensus of the scientific community familiar with these issues.


Yes, he's superficial. Sadly he doesn't have your intellectual heft and prescience. But there's still time...


----------



## Strange Magic

Christabel said:


> Yes, he's superficial. Sadly he doesn't have your intellectual heft and prescience. But there's still time...


Glad we agree.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> I know Jordan Peterson is the new hot thing - I'm pretty agnostic about him. Some of his stuff makes sense - his answer here, I think at its core, is right. This climate change issue is not going to unite anybody. Too many of the biggest voices on the issue are trying to harness it to use as a cudgel to accomplish progressive/socialist policies under the concept of "wartime" exegency. The concept of never let a disaster go to waste.


You have frequently commented on how people use climate change as an issue to accomplish progressive or socialist policies. Maybe some do. I have spent much of the past 10 years working with those who make the most aggressive climate change mitigation policies in the world (i.e. in California). I have never encountered anyone who is trying to further progressive/socialist policies in relation to climate change. I'm not even sure how to do such a thing. The people I work with are simply trying to implement what they think will work to reduce the negative consequences of climate change.

Some of the policies may not work as planned and may have unanticipated and negative consequences, but of course, that's true for all attempts to solve problems. This world would be horribly worse if we never tried to fix problems. I'm perfectly happy to implement a less than perfect plan _as long as it is better than the alternative of doing nothing_. The last part is critically important.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> You have frequently commented on how people use climate change as an issue to accomplish progressive or socialist policies. Maybe some do. I have spent much of the past 10 years working with those who make the most aggressive climate change mitigation policies in the world (i.e. in California). I have never encountered anyone who is trying to further progressive/socialist policies in relation to climate change. I'm not even sure how to do such a thing. The people I work with are simply trying to implement what they think will work to reduce the negative consequences of climate change.
> 
> Some of the policies may not work as planned and may have unanticipated and negative consequences, but of course, that's true for all attempts to solve problems. This world would be horribly worse if we never tried to fix problems. I'm perfectly happy to implement a less than perfect plan _as long as it is better than the alternative of doing nothing_. The last part is critically important.


I don't know what to tell you, and why you don't seem to see the political motives in the environmentalist movement. Perhaps the fact that you live in a single-party monopolistic state where there really is no more opposition has blinkered you on the matter, in a state that enacts the most far-reaching environmental legislation at will. You don't see what it is like elsewhere where people still debate the matter. But if you see it all as people purely working for altruistic motives to save the planet, then I suggest you cast your gaze just a little wider. I'm not talking about the immediate people you work with. Things like the Green New Deal, which so many Democratic presidential candidates at least gave lip-service to, is an aspirational plan to fundamentally change our economy and consolidate even more power in the government's hands. So many international plans have been rightly condemned as nothing more than massive transfers of wealth to poorer nations. Hell, right on here you have SM and his fellow neo-Malthusians hoping to harness this movement to implement their dreams of global population control. So quit telling me you don't see this movement as a way to further progressive/socialist policies, because that seems like willful blindness. I'm not denying there are good people working simply for the good of the planet. But the two are not mutually exclusive, and it isn't the well-intentioned people who worry me, except for the fact that they may play the role of useful idiots to those who seek to harness the movement for political ends.

I don't mind trying things that are better than doing nothing, but yours and my definitions of where that boundary lies seem to differ quite a bit. I'm not prepared to surrender ever more liberty and self-government to faceless executive level agencies that only answer to the president, while Congress surrenders ever more power, with statements like, "the Secretary of X shall be given power to enact such regulations as they see fit . . . " See, I can vote out a Congressman or a Senator if I don't like what they are doing. But, as Ronald Reagan once said, there is nothing quite so permanent as a temporary government agency. And I can't vote the bureaucrats out. And they fight tooth and nail against accountability (mind telling me how many people were punished at the EPA for that river polluting disaster? I'm sure they were simply attempting to solve problems and to implement what they think will work to reduce the negative consequences of climate change.).


----------



## Guest

Luchesi said:


> "I don't like the idea of surrendering more liberty and more power to centralized governments who will pass that power off to unelected bureaucracies..."
> 
> If you're wrong about the future danger imagine how bad this will get.


Well, then as they say, better to die on your feet than to live on your knees kow-towing to obscenely powerful bureaucrats who can fine you $75,000/day for building a pond on your private property to give water to your livestock.


----------



## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Well, then as they say, better to die on your feet than to live on your knees kow-towing to obscenely powerful bureaucrats who can fine you $75,000/day for building a pond on your private property to give water to your livestock.


Here in the West water issues are very different than in other parts of the country.


----------



## mmsbls

First, DrMike, thank you for suggesting I'm blinkered on the matter and may be a useful idiot. There are several issues here, but the two main ones are first, I'm talking about climate change policy whereas you are talking in vastly more general terms about environmental policy, and second, you and I differ greatly on our views of climate science.



DrMike said:


> But if you see it all as people purely working for altruistic motives to save the planet, then I suggest you cast your gaze just a little wider. I'm not talking about the immediate people you work with.


You don't understand that I _am_ talking about the people I work with who _are the same people making climate change policy in California._ These are the people discussing the science, debating policy, _and voting on policy_. They're not some general environmental types spewing socialist goals. They're scientists and others trained in both science and policy discussing actual policies with stakeholders including, for example, truck OEMs, fleet operators, enforcement agencies, and utilities. This group creates a policy that is then voted on by people like a friend whom I've known for 25 years.

Were you in the room at the California Air Resources Board workshop when several of us were discussing the suggestions of environmental groups that did not properly factor in real world considerations? I know many who work for those groups, and I know they are not motivated by socialist considerations. Still, I think they sometimes push a bit too hard. No, DrMike, the people who _actually_ enact the most aggressive climate change policies in the world are not intent on destroying the economy and punishing all rich people.



DrMike said:


> Things like the Green New Deal, which so many Democratic presidential candidates at least gave lip-service to, is an aspirational plan to fundamentally change our economy and consolidate even more power in the government's hands.


Are you really so certain that the plan is fundamentally about changing our economy and giving government power rather than simply trying to prevent serious hard to future generations?



DrMike said:


> So quit telling me you don't see this movement as a way to further progressive/socialist policies, because that seems like willful blindness.


What movement? I'm talking about the group of people seriously discussing climate change, debating policies to prevent serious consequences, and enacting regulations to that end. What do progressive or socialist ideas have to do with that issue? Are carbon fees, which internalize certain externalities, progressive? They are mainstream economic ideas. Again, when you talk about vaccines, are you furthering your conservative agenda?



DrMike said:


> (mind telling me how many people were punished at the EPA for that river polluting disaster? I'm sure they were simply attempting to solve problems and to implement what they think will work to reduce the negative consequences of climate change.).


Are you talking about the waste water released into the Animus River? What did that have to do with climate change?

I'll discuss the second issue below.


----------



## mmsbls

DrMike said:


> I don't mind trying things that are better than doing nothing, but yours and my definitions of where that boundary lies seem to differ quite a bit. I'm not prepared to surrender ever more liberty and self-government to faceless executive level agencies that only answer to the president, while Congress surrenders ever more power, with statements like, "the Secretary of X shall be given power to enact such regulations as they see fit . . . "


You say you are not prepared to surrender liberties ("better to die on your feet than to live on your knees kow-towing to obscenely powerful bureaucrats"). Well, OK. I still believe much of the difference between your views on _what should be done about climate change_ depends significantly on our differing views of climate science.

You stated that you think the actual impact of climate change may be similar to Y2k. You suggest the effects are much smaller than predictions. Why are you not equally concerned that the effects will be larger? The uncertainties go in both directions. I'm personally worried that the effects may be larger given the personal views of climate scientists I've talked to or read about.

You are so skeptical that you have questioned me twice about Climategate. The first time I explained what actually happened, why it had nothing to do with bad climate science, and maybe most importantly, why no scientist should believe otherwise even if they don't understand climate science. My explanation had little effect since you mentioned it a second time. Why? You mention all the poor predictions. I'm not aware of them. As far as I can tell, climate change models generally seem to reasonably match data, and in some cases make very clear predictions showing strong evidence for AGW.

So we both know that I believe there is a significant chance that the basic predictions of climate change _scientists _(not the others that seem to concern you so much) will occur while you believe they likely will not. Fine. _If you did believe the warnings from these scientists_, what policies would you favor? Remember reducing carbon emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050 requires enormous changes, and reducing those levels 100% requires even more stringent policies.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Luchesi said:


> Here in the West water issues are very different than in other parts of the country.


Why does California not build more reservoirs how many gallons of water flow to the ocean each year from the snow melt off each spring that could be saved?


----------



## Strange Magic

If the nagging cough and the spot on the X-ray suggest the possibility of future surgery and maybe painful chemo, then some choose to ignore the symptoms and soldier on in the hope that it's just a touch of bronchitis. Similarly, if powerful ideologies--political, economic, philosophical (religious)--prevent one from considering just how well-documented, dangerous, and ongoing environmental degradation currently is, then there is a strong compulsion to downplay the symptoms and hope that somehow it's all just either a bad dream or a fiendish plot by socialist scientists to seize power and make everybody unhappy. A clumsy analogy might be the interlude between World Wars One and Two when Japan, Italy, and Germany were arming or rearming, and beginning to help themselves to their neighbors' territory, and everybody else chose to look away. It subsequently required a whole lot of compulsory social organization by the Allies to ensure then that we lived on our feet and did not die on our knees.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> If the nagging cough and the spot on the X-ray suggest the possibility of future surgery and maybe painful chemo, then some choose to ignore the symptoms and soldier on in the hope that it's just a touch of bronchitis. Similarly, if powerful ideologies--political, economic, philosophical (religious)--prevent one from considering just how well-documented, dangerous, and ongoing environmental degradation currently is, then there is a strong compulsion to downplay the symptoms and hope that somehow it's all just either a bad dream or a fiendish plot by socialist scientists to seize power and make everybody unhappy. A clumsy analogy might be the interlude between World Wars One and Two when Japan, Italy, and Germany were arming or rearming, and beginning to help themselves to their neighbors' territory, and everybody else chose to look away. It subsequently required a whole lot of compulsory social organization by the Allies to ensure then that we lived on our feet and did not die on our knees.


But when the doctor gives you predictions that repeatedly are wrong why would you continue to go to that doctor?


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> But when the doctor gives you predictions that repeatedly are wrong why would you continue to go to that doctor?


Johnnie, why not go to a doctor who will retouch (Photoshop) the X-rays (old joke!)


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Johnnie, why not go to a doctor who will retouch (Photoshop) the X-rays (old joke!)


You still did not answer why would you go to a doctor who keeps getting predictions wrong. Why would you want to follow someone wanting to radically change our way off life and none of their predictions has hit the mark?


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> You still did not answer why would you go to a doctor who keeps getting predictions wrong. Why would you want to follow someone wanting to radically change our way off life and none of their predictions has hit the mark?


Which doctors did you have in mind? Doctors of Clinical Psychology? This is fun--we could go on back and forth for days! Always a pleasure.


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## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Which doctors did you have in mind? Doctors of Clinical Psychology? This is fun--we could go on back and forth for days! Always a pleasure.


And a total waste like liberals are.


----------



## Open Book

Strange Magic said:


> Good old Jordan Peterson! Just the sort of superficial understanding of the issues of climate change and environmental degradation that a clinical psychologist with a cult following would bring to the subject. The "issues" he raised about storage of electricity generated by solar and wind are all eminently solvable given serious leadership and commitment. He joins the select ranks of cornucopian economists, free-market libertarian ideologues, and assorted other non-experts in advising that doing nothing is better than doing something. But he does repeat another gem, this time regarding the premise that if we, through improved childhood nutrition (who is against that?), get ten million more geniuses, maybe some of them will figure out what to do about climate change. The entirety of Peterson's presentation is priceless material, and I urge everyone to watch it complete. Thanks to Christabel for making it available! Again the case is made instead for the prudent non-scientist citizen to attend to the consensus of the scientific community familiar with these issues.


Peterson doesn't believe human overpopulation is even a "thing". Maybe it's easier to believe that when you live in a low density country like Canada. He says the more people the better, because the more people we have the more geniuses we will have, and one might be the next Einstein. Other conservatives think the same way. They are afraid to confront population reduction but not afraid of the effects of overpopulation, including wars over increasingly scarce resources.

We don't need more geniuses, we have enough geniuses to raise us up. They are mostly anonymous and don't get publicity for their innovations. We don't need more people nor more celebrity geniuses.

It's true that renewable energy technologies aren't perfect, but tell me this: Why are those who are so critical of and hopeless about new energy technologies always the same people who have uncritical blind faith in agricultural technology to be able to feed growing populations indefinitely?


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## Open Book

However I have to add that I think Peterson is right about a few things on this topic.

People in countries with a high standard of level are going to be asked to lower their standard of living by cutting down on the use of technologies. Like cars, heating, cooling. Don't own a house, live in apartments (more efficient). Are they prepared for that?

Climate change _is _being used by a few politicians to try to unite us. If I name any of them, my post will be removed.

Greater cooperation is required to solve this problem and greater government control. Both of these things are associated with socialism for conservatives.

I think the problem is going difficult to solve because there will not be the required worldwide cooperation and participation, and there will not be enough population reduction, the root cause of environmental problems. There are governments and cultures that still live in the Dark Ages and want nothing to do with us and our goals. They will emerge as causing the most pollution as advanced technologies become more efficient. We can't control them, we can only try to persuade them.


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## Open Book

Climate change _is _being used by a few politicians to try to unite us. If I name any of them, my post will be removed.
But think ...iconoclastic politicians from New York who want drastic changes immediately, everything torn down and rebuilt ...


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## mmsbls

Open Book said:


> People in countries with a high standard of level are going to be asked to lower their standard of living by cutting down on the use of technologies. Like cars, heating, cooling. Don't own a house, live in apartments (more efficient). Are they prepared for that?


I don't know what policies will be suggested in the future if, by then, we are experiencing more severe consequences of climate change. At present, the state with the most stringent policies in no way has envisioned requiring the reduction of car usage, heating, or cooling. Yes, the California Air Resources Board would like to see reductions in vehicle miles traveled (VMT). They have tried to think of ways to make traveling fewer miles something that people would prefer, but so far they have not succeeded. The current plan is to transition to zero emissions vehicles (battery electric or fuel cell) using renewable power (wind, solar, hydro). If all our power comes from renewable technologies and we use zero emission vehicles, there will be no carbon emissions from driving. Similarly, heating and cooling would be carbon neutral (no emissions).



Open Book said:


> Greater cooperation is required to solve this problem and greater government control. Both of these things are associated with socialism for conservatives.


I agree about cooperation and government control. I don't see a path to lower carbon emissions significantly in the timeframe required without both of those.

People generally consider the situation and then decide how to proceed. If the government told almost everyone in the country what profession to follow and that policy led to the largest number of deaths per year ever, I would guess that many would view that policy as strongly negative. Yet, during WWII that's exactly what the US (and other countries) did, and conservatives and liberals alike supported the policy. Of course, without a threat such as existed during WWII, no one in their right mind would support that policy. It depends on how one views the threat. Threats that are serious enough will convince almost everyone that significant external control (government policy) is necessary.


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## Johnnie Burgess

A report on the horrors in Africa by the children who mine the cobalt for electric cars:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4764208/Child-miners-aged-four-living-hell-Earth.html

"His name is Dorsen and he is one of an army of children, some just four years old, working in the vast polluted mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where toxic red dust burns their eyes, and they run the risk of skin disease and a deadly lung condition. Here, for a wage of just 8p a day, the children are made to check the rocks for the tell-tale chocolate-brown streaks of cobalt - the prized ingredient essential for the batteries that power electric cars"

Wonder if this will change anything.


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## Johnnie Burgess

mmsbls said:


> I don't know what policies will be suggested in the future if, by then, we are experiencing more severe consequences of climate change. At present, the state with the most stringent policies in no way has envisioned requiring the reduction of car usage, heating, or cooling. Yes, the California Air Resources Board would like to see reductions in vehicle miles traveled (VMT). They have tried to think of ways to make traveling fewer miles something that people would prefer, but so far they have not succeeded. The current plan is to transition to zero emissions vehicles (battery electric or fuel cell) using renewable power (wind, solar, hydro). If all our power comes from renewable technologies and we use zero emission vehicles, there will be no carbon emissions from driving. Similarly, heating and cooling would be carbon neutral (no emissions).
> 
> I agree about cooperation and government control. I don't see a path to lower carbon emissions significantly in the timeframe required without both of those.
> 
> People generally consider the situation and then decide how to proceed. If the government told almost everyone in the country what profession to follow and that policy led to the largest number of deaths per year ever, I would guess that many would view that policy as strongly negative. Yet, during WWII that's exactly what the US (and other countries) did, and conservatives and liberals alike supported the policy. Of course, without a threat such as existed during WWII, no one in their right mind would support that policy. It depends on how one views the threat. Threats that are serious enough will convince almost everyone that significant external control (government policy) is necessary.


I do not believe there is anywhere near the level of threats is that high. When you keep seeing dates for the US to suffer famines and millions die predicted for the 1980's and that did not happen, why believe other predictions?


----------



## KenOC

Johnnie Burgess said:


> A report on the horrors in Africa by the children who mine the cobalt for electric cars:


*Lithium *(for all those batteries) is another problem that raises similar issues. "Over half of the world's lithium reserves are held in South America in the Andes' otherworldly, high-altitude salt flats formed from lakes of lithium-rich brine. Mining companies remove that and transport it to massive evaporation ponds to sit in the sun for months or even years. As the water evaporates it leaves behind magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium and-the main prize-lithium, a white powder sometimes called "white gold." [The process] requires massive amounts of water in some of the driest places on earth, with single companies using as much as 1,700 litres per second. This drain has disrupted ecosystems around the lakes and cut off freshwater access for indigenous communities in the so-called lithium triangle countries of Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile."

So again, we can feel virtuous driving our Teslas while the poor elsewhere suffer. This reminds me of our dedicating vast swathes of farmland to growing corn to pour into our fuel tanks as ethanol, smugly virtuous once again, rather than adding to the global food supply and reducing food costs for poor people everywhere.


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## Johnnie Burgess

KenOC said:


> *Lithium *(for all those batteries) is another problem that raises similar issues. "Over half of the world's lithium reserves are held in South America in the Andes' otherworldly, high-altitude salt flats formed from lakes of lithium-rich brine. Mining companies remove that and transport it to massive evaporation ponds to sit in the sun for months or even years. As the water evaporates it leaves behind magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium and-the main prize-lithium, a white powder sometimes called "white gold." [The process] requires massive amounts of water in some of the driest places on earth, with single companies using as much as 1,700 litres per second. This drain has disrupted ecosystems around the lakes and cut off freshwater access for indigenous communities in the so-called lithium triangle countries of Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile."
> 
> So again, we can feel virtuous driving our Teslas while the poor elsewhere suffer. This reminds me of our dedicating vast swathes of farmland to growing corn to pour into our fuel tanks as ethanol, smugly virtuous once again, rather than adding to the global food supply and reducing food costs for poor people everywhere.


Which is why we should use saw grass for ethanol. The use of corn has caused the price of beef and chicken to go up because it costs more to feed them. It also takes a lot of water in the making of ethanol.


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## Strange Magic

Some excellent arguments above for A) reducing the global population back down to 10% of its current (and constantly growing) peak, now closing in on 8 billions; and B) for phasing out the allocaton of cropland for biofuels and eventually eliminating biofuels along with fossil fuels.

I have discussed _ad infinitum_ my proposal for such population reduction as the byproduct, almost universally observed, of granting women full control over their reproductive functions as part and parcel of full female equality and self-determination. I have also affirmed that the reduction to 10% may take as much as approx. 250 years to achieve, the same time it took to increase the population tenfold. I fully expect, though, to read here in reply the ritual denunciations of said population reduction as really a call for massive governmental coercion, compulsory abortion, sterilization of whole populations, etc.--my critics cannot help themselves......


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## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Some excellent arguments above for A) reducing the global population back down to 10% of its current (and constantly growing) peak, now closing in on 8 billions; and B) for phasing out the allocaton of cropland for biofuels and eventually eliminating biofuels along with fossil fuels.
> 
> I have discussed _ad infinitum_ my proposal for such population reduction as the byproduct, almost universally observed, of granting women full control over their reproductive functions as part and parcel of full female equality and self-determination. I have also affirmed that the reduction to 10% may take as much as approx. 250 years to achieve, the same time it took to increase the population tenfold. I fully expect, though, to read here in reply the ritual denunciations of said population reduction as really a call for massive governmental coercion, compulsory abortion, sterilization of whole populations, etc.--my critics cannot help themselves......


There is no way to reduce the current population level down to 10% of what it is now.


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> There is no way to reduce the current population level down to 10% of what it is now.


Well, that's settled.


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## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> Well, that's settled.


How would it be done. If each woman has 2 kids the population will not drop by billions.


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## KenOC

Johnnie Burgess said:


> There is no way to reduce the current population level down to 10% of what it is now.


Naturally-occurring "diebacks" in nature may cause reductions of this magnitude, or more. There may be advantages to such diebacks. Smaller populations can adopt beneficial mutations more readily; they tend to be damped out in larger populations.

So in general, when a species finds its environment changed in a way that doesn't suit it, the consequent reduction in population makes it more likely to be able to adapt to its new circumstances. Some hope, but no guarantee!


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## mikeh375

Elon Musk will save us and the planet, anyone for Mars? Then on to Titan..there is enough real estate in our solar system if we are clever and can get there in time ...a _big_ if mind. (I'm only half joking really)
If we don't have the option to move off planet in the future, then ironically (and all things considered equal), I think one of the the biggest threats to us all (among several) is improving health care - no one is going to turn that down. If increased longevity becomes the norm there'll be some tough decisions to be made on behalf of us and the planet - of which we'll either need a new one or change our ways....or am I reading too much scifi?


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## mmsbls

The question of whether and how much to use biofuels (ethanol, renewable diesel, renewable natural gas) is extremely complex. Simple models show potential for significant reductions in CO2 equivalent emissions through the use of biofuels, but more detailed analysis including indirect land use change (iLUC) shows that emissions reductions may have a high uncertainty. The feedstock used has a large effect on the emissions reductions and cost. Using landfill gas or municipal solid waste streams to produce renewable natural gas is likely cost effective and would largely reduce emissions, but the potential production volumes are far too small to significantly reduce overall emissions. Using energy crops to produce ethanol or renewable diesel can produce a very high volume of biofuels, but the future cost and iLUC effects are not well known. In addition, as some have mentioned, using cropland to produce energy has other negative effects. 

Many analysts believe we need to use biofuels because we can't ramp up battery electric or fuel cell vehicles (ZEVs) fast enough, because the transition to ZEVs is too expensive near to mid-term, or because there are applications such as long-haul trucks and air travel where it's more difficult to electrify. There are some that believe using energy crops to produce hydrogen or electricity and sequestering the carbon, thus actually realizing negative carbon emissions, is a particularly valuable path. I think that could have potential, but I'd be rather wary of relying to much on that production pathway.


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## Johnnie Burgess

mmsbls said:


> The question of whether and how much to use biofuels (ethanol, renewable diesel, renewable natural gas) is extremely complex. Simple models show potential for significant reductions in CO2 equivalent emissions through the use of biofuels, but more detailed analysis including indirect land use change (iLUC) shows that emissions reductions may have a high uncertainty. The feedstock used has a large effect on the emissions reductions and cost. Using landfill gas or municipal solid waste streams to produce renewable natural gas is likely cost effective and would largely reduce emissions, but the potential production volumes are far too small to significantly reduce overall emissions. Using energy crops to produce ethanol or renewable diesel can produce a very high volume of biofuels, but the future cost and iLUC effects are not well known. In addition, as some have mentioned, using cropland to produce energy has other negative effects.
> 
> Many analysts believe we need to use biofuels because we can't ramp up battery electric or fuel cell vehicles (ZEVs) fast enough, because the transition to ZEVs is too expensive near to mid-term, or because there are applications such as long-haul trucks and air travel where it's more difficult to electrify. There are some that believe using energy crops to produce hydrogen or electricity and sequestering the carbon, thus actually realizing negative carbon emissions, is a particularly valuable path. I think that could have potential, but I'd be rather wary of relying to much on that production pathway.


What about the ecological problems created by the mining of cobalt and lithium. In Africa the areas where cobalt is mined is killing the birds, fish and making the area unsafe.


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## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> How would it be done. If each woman has 2 kids the population will not drop by billions.


Actually, we can make a few assumptions and show that if each woman has 2 children on average (i.e. fertility rate of 2.0), then the population will decrease steadily. Assume overall population reaches 10 billion in 2100 with longevity essentially stable by that time. Further assume generations are 30 years on average. Also assume that replacement fertility rate remains at 2.1 (some women do not have children due to dying early, not getting married, etc.). If the fertility rate were 2.0, each generation would replace 95% of itself so populations would decline by 5% each generation. In a little over 60 years, the population would decrease by 1 billion to a little below 9 million. In roughly 400 years the population would decrease by 5 billion to half the 2100 population.


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## Johnnie Burgess

mmsbls said:


> Actually, we can make a few assumptions and show that if each woman has 2 children on average (i.e. fertility rate of 2.0), then the population will decrease steadily. Assume overall population reaches 10 billion in 2100 with longevity essentially stable by that time. Further assume generations are 30 years on average. Also assume that replacement fertility rate remains at 2.1 (some women do not have children due to dying early, not getting married, etc.). If the fertility rate were 2.0, each generation would replace 95% of itself so populations would decline by 5% each generation. In a little over 60 years, the population would decrease by 1 billion to a little below 9 million. In roughly 400 years the population would decrease by 5 billion to half the 2100 population.


But nowhere near strange's idea of the population of 10% of what it is now.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Naturally-occurring "diebacks" in nature may cause reductions of this magnitude, or more. There may be advantages to such diebacks. Smaller populations can adopt beneficial mutations more readily; they tend to be damped out in larger populations.
> 
> So in general, when a species finds its environment changed in a way that doesn't suit it, the consequent reduction in population makes it more likely to be able to adapt to its new circumstances. Some hope, but no guarantee!


Not with medical technology what it is now. No, to cut the population by 90% would require drastic actions, most likely coerced.


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> But nowhere near strange's idea of the population of 10% of what it is now.


A number of western developed countries--Italy, for example, and also Japan, show more rapid declines--real and potential--than mmsbls' hypothetical but useful analysis. There are mutterings in a number of countries, including China, of feared reduction of populations from the perspective of the ratio of young workers to older non-workers; also of being overwhelmed by your neighbor's teeming millions or billions. This is like worrying about sweating when someone is threatening to set you on fire.


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## Johnnie Burgess

Strange Magic said:


> A number of western developed countries--Italy, for example, and also Japan, show more rapid declines--real and potential--than mmsbls' hypothetical but useful analysis. There are mutterings in a number of countries, including China, of feared reduction of populations from the perspective of the ratio of young workers to older non-workers; also of being overwhelmed by your neighbor's teeming millions or billions. This is like worrying about sweating when someone is threatening to set you on fire.


And what will happen to those countries that do not have enough young workers. Will the older workers be forced to work enen longer?


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## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> But nowhere near strange's idea of the population of 10% of what it is now.


With the simplified model, that would take roughly 1500 years to reach 10% of the current population.


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## Johnnie Burgess

mmsbls said:


> With the simplified model, that would take roughly 1500 years to reach 10% of the current population.


Strange wants to hit that mark in 250 years read post 1424. Do think post 1424 is possible?


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## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> What about the ecological problems created by the mining of cobalt and lithium. In Africa the areas where cobalt is mined is killing the birds, fish and making the area unsafe.


Clearly we need to reduce the problems mining cobalt and lithium. But simply pointing to problems with one scenario (e.g. increased battery electric vehicles) does not help in understanding how we ought to proceed. Any analysis of scenarios (e.g. business as usual versus high ZEV market penetration) must compare _both scenarios_. Presently air pollution primarily from fossil fuels cause over 1 million deaths per year in China. The Health Effects Institute estimates that roughly 6 million people per year die from air pollution. Not all those deaths are caused by burning oil products, but fossil fuels contribute enormously to those numbers. These numbers do not include projected problems due to climate change.

So yes, we should examine all negative effects of new technologies to reduce them if possible, but we shouldn't loos track of the problems with the present system. The whole reason so many people are working to reduce fossil fuel usage is that the present system has enormous present and projected problems.


----------



## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Strange wants to hit that mark in 250 years read post 1424. Do think post 1424 is possible?


It's clearly possible, but presumably you are asking if there would be too many serious side effects. I don't know, My simple model suggests that fertility rates would have to fall below 1.6 worldwide. I think the average fertility rate in Europe is slightly under that presently. I suspect society would see rather major changes if that rate continued worldwide for hundreds of years. Would the negative effects outweigh the positive effects? Likely for some yes, but others no.


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## Johnnie Burgess

mmsbls said:


> It's clearly possible, but presumably you are asking if there would be too many serious side effects. I don't know, My simple model suggests that fertility rates would have to fall below 1.6 worldwide. I think the average fertility rate in Europe is slightly under that presently. I suspect society would see rather major changes if that rate continued worldwide for hundreds of years. Would the negative effects outweigh the positive effects? Likely for some yes, but others no.


There is a big difference between 1500 years of going down to 10% of the current population and 250 years.


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## Johnnie Burgess

https://scitechdaily.com/wind-farms-cause-more-environmental-impact-than-previously-thought/

"For wind, we found that the average power density - meaning the rate of energy generation divided by the encompassing area of the wind plant - was up to 100 times lower than estimates by some leading energy experts," said Miller, who is the first author of both papers. "Most of these estimates failed to consider the turbine-atmosphere interaction. For an isolated wind turbine, interactions are not important at all, but once the wind farms are more than five to 10 kilometers deep, these interactions have a major impact on the power density."

So the predicted power output was 100 times lower than what they thought is was going to be. How can you trust something if it is off that much.


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## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> https://scitechdaily.com/wind-farms-cause-more-environmental-impact-than-previously-thought/
> 
> "For wind, we found that the average power density - meaning the rate of energy generation divided by the encompassing area of the wind plant - was up to 100 times lower than estimates by some leading energy experts," said Miller, who is the first author of both papers. "Most of these estimates failed to consider the turbine-atmosphere interaction. For an isolated wind turbine, interactions are not important at all, but once the wind farms are more than five to 10 kilometers deep, these interactions have a major impact on the power density."
> 
> So the predicted power output was 100 times lower than what they thought is was going to be. How can you trust something if it is off that much.


Actually, the paper's estimated power density of wind power fell inside the range of estimates of realizable generation rates. The high end of that range was almost 100 times larger while the low end was 40% lower.

The bar is set at numbers such as 6 million premature deaths per year worldwide, $US10s/trillion per year societal costs, etc. That is what advanced technologies are trying to change. Yes, there will be problems with new technologies, but that bar is awfully high.


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## Johnnie Burgess

mmsbls said:


> Actually, the paper's estimated power density of wind power fell inside the range of estimates of realizable generation rates. The high end of that range was almost 100 times larger while the low end was 40% lower.
> 
> The bar is set at numbers such as 6 million premature deaths per year worldwide, $US10s/trillion per year societal costs, etc. That is what advanced technologies are trying to change. Yes, there will be problems with new technologies, but that bar is awfully high.


How many birds and bats will have to die because of the wind farms.


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## Strange Magic

Johnnie Burgess said:


> https://scitechdaily.com/wind-farms-cause-more-environmental-impact-than-previously-thought/
> 
> "For wind, we found that the average power density - meaning the rate of energy generation divided by the encompassing area of the wind plant - was up to 100 times lower than estimates by some leading energy experts," said Miller, who is the first author of both papers. "Most of these estimates failed to consider the turbine-atmosphere interaction. For an isolated wind turbine, interactions are not important at all, but once the wind farms are more than five to 10 kilometers deep, these interactions have a major impact on the power density."
> 
> So the predicted power output was 100 times lower than what they thought is was going to be. How can you trust something if it is off that much.


An excellent article! The Harvard study is an example of the need for continuing, ongoing research on how best to deal with the problem of climate change. We need the right mix of wind, solar, wave, tidal, hydro and any other sorts of power generation to best achieve the necessary reduction in GHGs that is needed to stop and then reverse AGW. The important thing is that the cure be better than the disease, and the disease is dire. The article also is yet more impetus for reducing the global population down to sustainable levels. So many of these seemingly intractable environmental problems dwindle away as the populations requiring massive fluxes of energy and materials also are reduced. A hundred years, 250 years, 1500 years: large-scale population reduction is the best guarantee that both our species and the planet have a long future before them.

Just saw the remake of _The Lion King_ on DVD, with computer-generated animals of the African veldt. This is likely the only legacy of a once-teeming ecosystem that our grandchildren will see. They will turn to us and say What Happened? Biodiversity? Who needs it?


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Clearly we need to reduce the problems mining cobalt and lithium. But simply pointing to problems with one scenario (e.g. increased battery electric vehicles) does not help in understanding how we ought to proceed. Any analysis of scenarios (e.g. business as usual versus high ZEV market penetration) must compare _both scenarios_. Presently air pollution primarily from fossil fuels cause over 1 million deaths per year in China. The Health Effects Institute estimates that roughly 6 million people per year die from air pollution. Not all those deaths are caused by burning oil products, but fossil fuels contribute enormously to those numbers. These numbers do not include projected problems due to climate change.
> 
> So yes, we should examine all negative effects of new technologies to reduce them if possible, but we shouldn't loos track of the problems with the present system. The whole reason so many people are working to reduce fossil fuel usage is that the present system has enormous present and projected problems.


Is there even enough of these other metals to produce the number of batteries necessary to convert all automobiles on this planet to ZEV? Or do we also need to discuss government making the decision who gets approved to buy a car, like the good old Soviet days?


----------



## Jacck

In possible climate breakthrough, Israel scientists engineer bacteria to eat CO₂
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-po...rael-scientists-engineer-bacteria-to-eat-co₂/


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Actually, the paper's estimated power density of wind power fell inside the range of estimates of realizable generation rates. The high end of that range was almost 100 times larger while the low end was 40% lower.
> 
> The bar is set at numbers such as 6 million premature deaths per year worldwide, $US10s/trillion per year societal costs, etc. That is what advanced technologies are trying to change. Yes, there will be problems with new technologies, but that bar is awfully high.


I have issue with those estimates. But setting that aside, the population control people would see 6 million less people as a boon to the environment and thus actually reducing the costs of climate problems. I don't think you can really put a price on the value of a human life, at least not without disastrous consequences. Because once you assign a monetary value to something, people start viewing it as a commodity and start making decisions about how much of that commodity they really want.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Actually, the paper's estimated power density of wind power fell inside the range of estimates of realizable generation rates. The high end of that range was almost 100 times larger while the low end was 40% lower.


Wish I could get my proposals funded with that kind of variability. Must be nice.


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## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> How many birds and bats will have to die because of the wind farms.


What difference do you think the answer will make? Is there any reasonable number that would change people's views of trying to save millions of human lives and many trillions of dollars? The issues you raise should be taken seriously, and people will ultimately address them. But the issues we face are so vastly greater than the ones you raise. So, yes, spraying water on a fire will damage somethings in the house, but no one would use that as a reason not to try saving the house.



DrMike said:


> Is there even enough of these other metals to produce the number of batteries necessary to convert all automobiles on this planet to ZEV? Or do we also need to discuss government making the decision who gets approved to buy a car, like the good old Soviet days?


An interesting question, but the last phrase in your comment seems like you are not serious. If you wish to ridicule scientists and a whole field of scientific study, fine. I don't see much value in that for you or me.


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## Johnnie Burgess

mmsbls said:


> What difference do you think the answer will make? Is there any reasonable number that would change people's views of trying to save millions of human lives and many trillions of dollars? The issues you raise should be taken seriously, and people will ultimately address them. But the issues we face are so vastly greater than the ones you raise. So, yes, spraying water on a fire will damage somethings in the house, but no one would use that as a reason not to try saving the house.
> 
> An interesting question, but the last phrase in your comment seems like you are not serious. If you wish to ridicule scientists and a whole field of scientific study, fine. I don't see much value in that for you or me.


But if everyone is forced to buy electric cars and there is not enough lithium and cobalt for everyone to have one would force the people who can not get an electric car to give up their car?


----------



## mmsbls

Johnnie Burgess said:


> But if everyone is forced to buy electric cars and there is not enough lithium and cobalt for everyone to have one would force the people who can not get an electric car to give up their car?


I know of no policy to force people to buy electric cars. I expect everyone will want to buy them because they will be cheaper, have much better performance, be quieter, and save the environment. Also if lithium, cobalt, nickel, or aluminum become too costly, people will just drive even cooler fuel cell vehicles.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I know of no policy to force people to buy electric cars. I expect everyone will want to buy them because they will be cheaper, have much better performance, be quieter, and save the environment. Also if lithium, cobalt, nickel, or aluminum become too costly, people will just drive even cooler fuel cell vehicles.


You mean like how government didn't force us all to stop buying incandescent light bulbs? Or how we didn't force people to stop buying alcohol? Or how numerous Democratic candidates want to force us to give up private insurance and only get the government's insurance? Or the individual mandate in Obamacare, that sought to force everybody to buy insurance?

You're right - what possible reason would we have to think that the government might try to force us to buy a particular kind of vehicle? I'm sure they wouldn't, in so many words, do that. They'll just tax gas-powered cars up to levels that nobody could afford them.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> An interesting question, but the last phrase in your comment seems like you are not serious. If you wish to ridicule scientists and a whole field of scientific study, fine. I don't see much value in that for you or me.


 Oh, I was totally serious there. I would not put something like that past a President Sanders or a President Warren. I'm not ridiculing the scientists. I'm ridiculing the politicians who actually make policy. Scientists make cool things like ZEV. Politicians look at how they can exert more control over our lives. Didn't they ration all kinds of things back during WWII? And don't you all want to treat this like an existential crisis on the level of another World War?


----------



## Guest

Yesterday I was talking to friends at an early Christmas function. One said he'd read in the paper (a well known masthead) that the seas would be virtually boiling in 200 years if emissions continue. I said that I didn't read that paper because of its hysteria and doom-laden old Testament fire and brimstone and that long before that a viral pandemic would wipe out large swathes of the population as it had done many times in the past. Population being out of control is the elephant in the room in much of this Climate Catastropharian religion and nobody wants to talk about it. Just use the other biblical phrases about storm and pestilence, famine and disease and you'll get the picture.


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## Strange Magic

Christabel said:


> Yesterday I was talking to friends at an early Christmas function. One said he'd read in the paper (a well known masthead) that the seas would be virtually boiling in 200 years if emissions continue. I said that I didn't read that paper because of its hysteria and doom-laden old Testament fire and brimstone and that long before that a viral pandemic would wipe out large swathes of the population as it had done many times in the past. Population being out of control is the elephant in the room in much of this Climate Catastropharian religion and nobody wants to talk about it. Just use the other biblical phrases about storm and pestilence, famine and disease and you'll get the picture.


I've read this post several times and still can form no idea of what is being attempted to be enunciated here. For my benefit, can you reword the post so it clearly states something that even I could grasp? For instance, is or is not population an important issue for you? I just can't sort out what you really think. Any help will be appreciated!


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## Luchesi

deleted..........


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## Open Book

DrMike said:


> Not with medical technology what it is now. No, to cut the population by 90% would require drastic actions, most likely coerced.


Or it would just require a lot of time.
This would have to happen all over the world and it won't unless cultures change. Right now the mentality is, if country X keeps growing, their rivals want to grow to keep up with them. It would take so much cooperation.
I'm not sure why population needs to get down to 10% of today's, it would be great just to stop it from ever increasing. 
Think what a decrease to 10% would do to property values, though. There will be abandoned houses. Real estate will no longer be a good investment. I'm fine with that, it's better for the environment.


----------



## Strange Magic

Open Book said:


> Or it would just require a lot of time.
> This would have to happen all over the world and it won't unless cultures change. Right now the mentality is, if country X keeps growing, their enemies want to grow to keep up with them. It would take so much cooperation.
> I'm not sure why population needs to get down to 10% of today's, it would be great just to stop it from ever increasing.
> Thinks what a decrease to 10% would do to property values, though. There will be abandoned houses. Real estate will no longer be a good investment. I'm fine with that, it's better for the environment.


Nothing inherently better about the 10% figure; it is a convenient peg to hang an argument upon that asserts that great and wonderful things and ideas and people can be all around us at a population of some 750 millions, the estimated figure for the mid-18th century, AKA The Age of Enlightenment. Just check the Wikipedia entry on the Enlightenment and imagine access to thinkers and artists of that caliber while enjoying the health and conveniences of modern life. Imagine also much of the natural world reclaimed by and for our fellow creatures sharing the planet with us. A dream worth pursuing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment


----------



## mmsbls

Strange Magic said:


> Nothing inherently better about the 10% figure; it is a convenient peg to hang an argument upon that asserts that great and wonderful things and ideas and people can be all around us at a population of some 750 millions, the estimated figure for the mid-18th century, AKA The Age of Enlightenment. Just check the Wikipedia entry on the Enlightenment and imagine access to thinkers and artists of that caliber while enjoying the health and conveniences of modern life. Imagine also much of the natural world reclaimed by and for our fellow creatures sharing the planet with us. A dream worth pursuing.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment


I read a book awhile ago that tried to determine the optimal population for Earth. I don't remember enough about the criteria and methodology. I just remember that the number was 2 billion. I think there's probably enough analysis of declining populations over the past several decades to make useful policy suggestions for managing a decreasing worldwide population. I would like to see several papers identifying goals for reduced populations along with policies to mitigate the worst side effects of fewer people.


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## KenOC

I keep seeing the idea that maybe we can find a new planet and move there, and everything will be fine. Aside from there apparently being no such planet in reach, there are other problems as well.

One, often overlooked, is that we have about 7.75 billion people right now. And our population is growing by about 223 thousand a day. This means that just moving enough people to that new planet to keep our population from growing further will require firing about 9,300 people into space every hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That doesn't count the infrastructure they'll need on their new planet to survive - which will likely double, at least, the number of rocket firings needed.

But not to worry about the cost! One candidate says that Karl Marx will provide, and another says it'll be sufficient to tax the rich to pay for it.

There's an interesting world population clock *here*.


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## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> But not to worry about the cost! One candidate says that Karl Marx will provide, and another says it'll be sufficient to tax the rich to pay for it.


Are these Democratic candidates for the presidency saying we should move significant numbers of people to another planet? Who are they? Or am I misunderstanding you?

I read that Amazon owner, Jeff Bezos believes, "We have to go to space to save the earth." Basically he wants, "to get all people off the Earth and see it turned into a huge national park."


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> Are these Democratic candidates for the presidency saying we should move significant numbers of people to another planet? Who are they? Or am I misunderstanding you?


Sorry, just being snide about a couple of candidates with wildly unrealistic views (and promises). So far as I know, neither has suggested moving people off-planet _en masse_. But some might suggest that they themselves be moved off-planet, if they're not already there.


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## Strange Magic

^^^^Jeff Bezos would be among my first choices to be blasted off the planet.......

Also, I'll stick with my 10%/750 million figure until someone comes up with a compelling argument for another number. My figures give us both all the intellectual and artistic horsepower we need for an exciting, productive civil society, plus the possibility of returning much of the Earth to an Edenic luxuriance of biodiversity. What's not to like?


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## mmsbls

Strange Magic said:


> ^^^^Jeff Bezos would be among my first choices to be blasted off the planet.......
> 
> Also, I'll stick with my 10%/750 million figure until someone comes up with a compelling argument for another number. My figures give us both all the intellectual and artistic horsepower we need for an exciting, productive civil society, plus the possibility of returning much of the Earth to an Edenic luxuriance of biodiversity. What's not to like?


Paul Ehrlich says about 1.5-2.0 billion.

A UN report concludes that most estimates of the carrying capacity (different than the optimal value) are between 8-16 billion.

This article gives results from several studies that vary from 1.5-3 billion.

Other studies varied depending on their assumptions, but the figures 1-3 billion seemed most common.


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## Strange Magic

mmsbls said:


> Paul Ehrlich says about 1.5-2.0 billion.
> 
> A UN report concludes that most estimates of the carrying capacity (different than the optimal value) are between 8-16 billion.
> 
> This article gives results from several studies that vary from 1.5-3 billion.
> 
> Other studies varied depending on their assumptions, but the figures 1-3 billion seemed most common.


Thanks for the references and your input. I would be ecstatic at 1.5, 2, 3 billions! The world was at 1.5 billion around 1900; at 2 billion around 1930; 3 billion in 1960. Looking at that 2 billion number of 1930 and making some extremely crude simplifications regarding what global areas were driving the world toward "modernity" at that time (for both good and ill), we see Europe at 534 millions and North America at 130 millions, for a total of 664 millions. This again demonstrates to me that a viable, sustainable, yet technologically advanced global civilization could be maintained at well under a billion people, given universal thorough education and the opportunity for full expression of potential. As I have posted before--and been mocked for it by the profoundly cynical--I see our species--_sapiens_: The Wise--as curators of a museum planet, the only planet we know of with its characteristics as the place that birthed us and all the other creatures with whom we share the ride. It will be a shame if we ruin it.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/other/worldpop.html


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## Guest

There would be societal collapse long before any off these scenarios occur. I don't see how you can maintain the types of government programs and funding and social welfare programs with an ever decreasing tax base. What, are you all projecting excessively optimistic scenarios where only the best and brightest are pay off that reduced population? The United States alone already had so many unfunded mandates because succeeding generations since the baby boomer generation have been smaller. If you continue to have smaller successive generations, you can't depend on a program like Social Security, which was built on the premise that you would have more workers paying in than retirees drawing from it.

I predict that if you all get your wishes, then there will also be all kinds of unsavory questions asked. Like now that we've controlled population, let's talk about how long we should be allowing people to live? And if we have to live with only a fraction of the population, but need to make sure we can maintain, or even expand our current level of technology, maybe we need to be much more selective in our breeding. After all, if we only have 10% of the current population, the need for highly skilled people is going to be much more acute.


----------



## Jacck

DrMike said:


> There would be societal collapse long before any off these scenarios occur. I don't see how you can maintain the types of government programs and funding and social welfare programs with an ever decreasing tax base. What, are you all projecting excessively optimistic scenarios where only the best and brightest are pay off that reduced population? The United States alone already had so many unfunded mandates because succeeding generations since the baby boomer generation have been smaller. If you continue to have smaller successive generations, you can't depend on a program like Social Security, which was built on the premise that you would have more workers paying in than retirees drawing from it.
> 
> I predict that if you all get your wishes, then there will also be all kinds of unsavory questions asked. Like now that we've controlled population, let's talk about how long we should be allowing people to live? And if we have to live with only a fraction of the population, but need to make sure we can maintain, or even expand our current level of technology, maybe we need to be much more selective in our breeding. After all, if we only have 10% of the current population, the need for highly skilled people is going to be much more acute.


I have long been advocating that social welfare programs for the elderly should be tied to the amount of taxes that are collected each year, ie if there is a good year and an economic conjuncture they can get more pensions etc, and get less in a time of crises. Such as system would not create burdens and debts for future generations. We in Central Europe have also problems with the boomer generation. They are people whose mentality was largely shaped during communism, and they are easily manipulated by Russian propaganda and then vote for authoritarian populist politicians who promise then increases in pensions etc. So the central European oligarchs such as Orban, Babiš etc. who milk the EU
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/03/world/europe/eu-farm-subsidy-hungary.html
are their thanks the boomers.


----------



## Strange Magic

Wikipedia has an interesting entry on population reduction: both the negative and positive aspects--

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline#Contemporary_decline_by_country

From the Wikipedia article:

"Conversely, the effects of a declining population can be positive. The single best gauge of economic success is the growth of GDP per person, not total GDP. GDP per person is a rough proxy for average living standards. A country can both increase its average living standard and grow total GDP even though its population growth is low or even negative. The economies of both Japan and Germany went into recovery around the time their populations began to decline (2003-2006). In other words, both the total and per capita GDP in both countries grew more rapidly after 2005 than before. Russia's economy also began to grow rapidly from 1999 onward, even though its population had been shrinking since 1992-93. Many Eastern European countries have been experiencing similar effects to Russia. Such renewed growth calls into question the conventional wisdom that economic growth requires population growth, or that economic growth is impossible during a population decline.

More recently (2009-2017) Japan has experienced a higher growth per capita than the United States, even though its population declined over that period. In the United States, the relationship between population growth and growth per capita has been found to be empirically insignificant. All of this is further proof that individual prosperity can grow during periods of population decline.

Predictions of the net economic (and other) effects from a slow and continuous population decline (e.g. due to low fertility rates) are mainly theoretical since such a phenomenon is a relatively new and unprecedented one. A recent meta-study found no relationship between population growth and economic growth."

The short-term effects of population decline can have and likely will have serious social and economic repercussions--no one can dispute that. But the long-term consequences of adding billions more to our global human population will be profoundly more dire and destructive and we must somehow deal with them. The question in this little TC discussion is who is offering the long view and who is worried merely about next week. The rational, "scientific" if you like, approach is to extrapolate into the future from what we know and make long-term plans appropriately. The wolf does come.


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## KenOC

More quite unavoidable environmental degradation: Germany will *close all its nuclear power plants* by 2022.

"Where do you safely bury more than 28,000 cubic meters -- roughly six Big Ben clock towers -- of deadly radioactive waste for the next million years? … Experts are now hunting for somewhere to bury almost 2,000 containers of high-level radioactive waste. The site must be beyond rock-solid, with no groundwater or earthquakes that could cause a leakage.

"The technological challenges -- of transporting the lethal waste, finding a material to encase it, and even communicating its existence to future humans -- are huge."

Lots of interesting info in the story.


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Glad we agree.


Of course, he doesn't use Wiki - but there's still time for that too.


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> More quite unavoidable environmental degradation: Germany will *close all its nuclear power plants* by 2022.
> 
> "Where do you safely bury more than 28,000 cubic meters -- roughly six Big Ben clock towers -- of deadly radioactive waste for the next million years? … Experts are now hunting for somewhere to bury almost 2,000 containers of high-level radioactive waste. The site must be beyond rock-solid, with no groundwater or earthquakes that could cause a leakage.
> 
> "The technological challenges -- of transporting the lethal waste, finding a material to encase it, and even communicating its existence to future humans -- are huge."
> 
> Lots of interesting info in the story.


The Germans will eventually have to permanently dispose of their spent radioactive materials out-of-country in the Baltic Shield crustal province--its oldest and most stable part in Finland. This is a geologically very old and stable area, like the Canadian Shield, where soil cover is thin, topography is subdued, population is small, and the rocks are both very old and tectonic activity is in the remote geologic past. The area is slowly rising isostatically due to rebound from the melting of the former shield icecap but this is not a serious hindrance.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00206819209465599?journalCode=tigr20


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## Jacck

Strange Magic said:


> The Germans will eventually have to permanently dispose of their spent radioactive materials out-of-country in the Baltic Shield crustal province--its oldest and most stable part in Finland. This is a geologically very old and stable area, like the Canadian Shield, where soil cover is thin, topography is subdued, population is small, and the rocks are both very old and tectonic activity is in the remote geologic past. The area is slowly rising isostatically due to rebound from the melting of the former shield icecap but this is not a serious hindrance.
> 
> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00206819209465599?journalCode=tigr20


if the states weren't engaged in constat external and internal warfare, humankind could have already built the space elevator  and then shoot the radioactive waste into the sun from orbit.


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## Jacck

'The Amazon Is Completely Lawless': The Rainforest After Bolsonaro's First Year
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/world/americas/amazon-fires-bolsonaro-photos.html


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## geralmar

Eleven minutes before eruption of White Island volcano, New Zealand. Insets show tourist walking on crater rim:



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...leaves-dozens-Australians-feared-missing.html


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## Open Book

geralmar said:


> Eleven minutes before eruption of White Island volcano, New Zealand. Insets show tourist walking on crater rim:
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...leaves-dozens-Australians-feared-missing.html


Scientists monitor volcanoes and know when they are going to erupt. I'm sure warnings were issued for this one. I doubt that tourist got to share photos and talk about his experience.


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## Luchesi

An international audience shares airplane sanitary facilities. A new study hypothesized the corresponding sewage acts as fuel for spreading antibiotic resistance around the world.

https://www.techexplorist.com/airpl...tm_source=BNA&utm_medium=BNA&utm_campaign=BNA


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## Guest

Luchesi said:


> An international audience shares airplane sanitary facilities. A new study hypothesized the corresponding sewage acts as fuel for spreading antibiotic resistance around the world.
> 
> https://www.techexplorist.com/airpl...tm_source=BNA&utm_medium=BNA&utm_campaign=BNA


I'm not sure what this means from a public safety standpoint. All of it ends up in wastewater treatment facilities, where measures are taken to eliminate or filter out the bacteria which is not reliant on antibiotics. So the antibiotic resistance wouldn't provide an advantage in that context. It is interesting, but not exactly earth-shattering or counter-intuitive. I think it is predictable that a diverse population is going to have a much more diverse flora of bacteria than a static population, where things tend to equilibrate. Is this a means for spreading antibiotic resistance? I suppose, if wastewater treatment were not adequate. Presumably in Germany it is.


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## Open Book

DrMike said:


> I'm not sure what this means from a public safety standpoint. All of it ends up in wastewater treatment facilities, where measures are taken to eliminate or filter out the bacteria which is not reliant on antibiotics. So the antibiotic resistance wouldn't provide an advantage in that context. It is interesting, but not exactly earth-shattering or counter-intuitive. I think it is predictable that a diverse population is going to have a much more diverse flora of bacteria than a static population, where things tend to equilibrate. Is this a means for spreading antibiotic resistance? I suppose, if wastewater treatment were not adequate. Presumably in Germany it is.


The article says that when they're in proximity, the diverse bacteria can exchange DNA with each other, including DNA for the resistant traits. This allows species of bacteria that were not resistant to gain resistance to antibiotics.

Do these treatment plants totally eliminate bacteria or does some of it get back into the environment? I don't know the answer.


----------



## Luchesi

Open Book said:


> The article says that when they're in proximity, the diverse bacteria can exchange DNA with each other, including DNA for the resistant traits. This allows species of bacteria that were not resistant to gain resistance to antibiotics.
> 
> Do these treatment plants totally eliminate bacteria or does some of it get back into the environment? I don't know the answer.


I assumed that the paper was gong to talk about viruses mutating -- and viruses would get out of treatment plants? We'll have to ask DrMike..

I was one of the few people going for a career in science who didn't find biology classes anything but drudgery. I'll take fluid dynamics and its large-scale VISIBLE effects over the hidden complexities of living things.


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## Guest

Bacteria usually contain one chromosome in the form of a large loop of DNA. A bacteria can also contain small loops of DNA called plasmids. A plasmid can contain one or more genes that encode proteins in addition to those encoded in the main chromosome. Under certain conditions a bacteria can emit a plasmid into its environment, or take up a plasmid floating around in the environment. The plasmid will typically recruit the cellular machinery to allow its protein to be expressed. A plasmid can, for instance, encode a protein that protects a bacteria from an antibiotic. 

So a person infected with penicillin resistant tuberculosis who contracts strep throat may generate a Penicillin resistant strain of strep bacteria if a plasmid conferring penicillin resistance is transferred from the tuberculosis bacteria to the strep bacteria. The same can happen if different bacteria coexist in other environments.


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## Jacck

How to Halt Global Warming for $300 Billion
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/how-to-halt-global-warming-for-300-billion


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## DaveM

Regarding the risks secondary to the increasing Earth population, after reading the latest book on Chernobyl, recently hearing about the risks of the misuse of the loosely controlled Cesium 137 used in the medical field and getting the impression that some in high places think that a limited nuclear war might be doable, not to mention the spread of nuclear weapons into the hands of autocratic regimes, I’m not optimistic about the survival of the human race.

The modern human race is estimated to be about 200,000 years old. Dinosaurs apparently roamed the earth for circa 165 million years and were wiped out by a relatively small asteroid (as asteroids go). We are now messing with the reverse of forces that created the universe after only a blip on the radar screen of existence on this planet. Increasing population may be the least of our worries.


----------



## Luchesi

DaveM said:


> Regarding the risks secondary to the increasing Earth population, after reading the latest book on Chernobyl, recently hearing about the risks of the misuse of the loosely controlled Cesium 137 used in the medical field and getting the impression that some in high places think that a limited nuclear war might be doable, not to mention the spread of nuclear weapons into the hands of autocratic regimes, I'm not optimistic about the survival of the human race.
> 
> The modern human race is estimated to be about 200,000 years old. Dinosaurs apparently roamed the earth for circa 165 million years and were wiped out by a relatively small asteroid (as asteroids go). We are now messing with the reverse of forces that created the universe after only a blip on the radar screen of existence on this planet. Increasing population may be the least of our worries.


 reverse of forces that created the universe?


----------



## Room2201974

DaveM said:


> Regarding the risks secondary to the increasing Earth population, after reading the latest book on Chernobyl, recently hearing about the risks of the misuse of the loosely controlled Cesium 137 used in the medical field and getting the impression that some in high places think that a limited nuclear war might be doable, not to mention the spread of nuclear weapons into the hands of autocratic regimes, I'm not optimistic about the survival of the human race.
> 
> The modern human race is estimated to be about 200,000 years old. Dinosaurs apparently roamed the earth for circa 165 million years and were wiped out by a relatively small asteroid (as asteroids go). We are now messing with the reverse of forces that created the universe after only a blip on the radar screen of existence on this planet. Increasing population may be the least of our worries.


Here, let me give you reasons to feel better and more optimistic:


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## mmsbls

Jacck said:


> How to Halt Global Warming for $300 Billion
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/how-to-halt-global-warming-for-300-billion


I spend my time focusing on technical solutions to transportation greenhouse gases. I tend to know vastly less about the effect of other sectors. Maybe more importantly, I know relatively little about potential solutions coming from those others sectors. Land use is a huge issue that is not well understood in terms of biomass for vehicles fuels. If it's truly possible to reclaim wasteland in an effective manner, that would be a valuable step in mitigating climate change. Thanks for the article.


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## DaveM

Luchesi said:


> reverse of forces that created the universe?


Below is a quote describing the initial formation of the universe. Of course, according to current theory.
_
Within the first second after the Big Bang, the temperature had fallen considerably, but was still very hot - about 100 billion Kelvin (1011 K). *At this temperature, protons, electrons and neutrons had formed, but they moved with too much energy to form atoms*. Even protons and neutrons had so much energy that they bounced off each other. However, neutrons were being created and destroyed as a result of interactions between protons and electrons. *There was enough energy that the protons and the much lighter electrons combined together with enough force to form neutrons*. But some neutrons "decayed" back into a positive proton and a negative electron1.

As the Universe expanded, the temperature fell. At this point the protons and electrons no longer had enough energy to collide to form neutrons. Thus, the number of protons and neutrons in the Universe stabilized, with protons outnumbering neutrons by 7:1. At about 100 seconds after the Big Bang, the temperature had fallen to one billion degrees Kelvin (109 K). *At this temperature the neutrons and protons could now hit each other and stick together. The first atomic nuclei formed at this point.*_

Simplistically, and I mean simplistically, one could say that in a fission nuclear explosion, energy that originally bound the nucleus is now released.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> ...Simplistically, and I mean simplistically, one could say that in a fission nuclear explosion, energy that originally bound the nucleus is now released.


An interesting subject. I have read that the energy released by splitting one U235 nucleus is sufficient to make a grain of sand visibly jump. That's a lot of energy from one atom!


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## Luchesi

How did the energy get in there for it to be 'released'? It comes right out the inflaton field. There's no reversal early on in creation. It all gets boosted to the top of the energy sombrero by the change of force states at the very very improbable inflation event.


----------



## DaveM

Luchesi said:


> How did the energy get in there for it to be 'released'? It comes right out the inflaton field. There's no reversal early on in creation. It all gets boosted to the top of the energy sombrero by the change of force states at the very very improbable inflation event.


Did someone say there was a reversal early on in creation?


----------



## Luchesi

DaveM said:


> Did someone say there was a reversal early on in creation?


What does this mean?

"We are now messing with the reverse of forces that created the universe after only a blip on the radar screen of existence on this planet."


----------



## DaveM

Luchesi said:


> What does this mean?
> 
> "We are now messing with the reverse of forces that created the universe after only a blip on the radar screen of existence on this planet."


I explained what I meant above. Not up to getting into a discussion of nuclear/astro physics right now.


----------



## KenOC

Interesting article from _The Guardian_: *Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming - and save the planet*

"…We are on the cusp of the biggest economic transformation, of any kind, for 200 years. While arguments rage about plant- versus meat-based diets, new technologies will soon make them irrelevant. Before long, most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants, but from unicellular life. After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation."


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Interesting article from _The Guardian_: *Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming - and save the planet*
> 
> "…We are on the cusp of the biggest economic transformation, of any kind, for 200 years. While arguments rage about plant- versus meat-based diets, new technologies will soon make them irrelevant. Before long, most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants, but from unicellular life. After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation."


 Sounds tasty! We talking something like those different colored cubes they are in the original Star Trek series?


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## Guest

Soylent Green. Depressingly prescient.


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## Bwv 1080

Luchesi said:


> How did the energy get in there for it to be 'released'? It comes right out the inflaton field. There's no reversal early on in creation. It all gets boosted to the top of the energy sombrero by the change of force states at the very very improbable inflation event.


The energy came from fusion, which with elements heavier than Iron consumes, rather than produces energy. The force was put there by a supermassive star then the elements were distributed from its supernova


----------



## Bwv 1080

KenOC said:


> Interesting article from _The Guardian_: *Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming - and save the planet*
> 
> "…We are on the cusp of the biggest economic transformation, of any kind, for 200 years. While arguments rage about plant- versus meat-based diets, new technologies will soon make them irrelevant. Before long, most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants, but from unicellular life. After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation."


There already is synthetic milk available

https://www.perfectdayfoods.com/


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## KenOC

Bwv 1080 said:


> There already is synthetic milk available
> 
> https://www.perfectdayfoods.com/


Thanks, that sounds exactly like what the Guardian's article is describing.


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## Jacck

KenOC said:


> Interesting article from _The Guardian_: *Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming - and save the planet*
> 
> "…We are on the cusp of the biggest economic transformation, of any kind, for 200 years. While arguments rage about plant- versus meat-based diets, new technologies will soon make them irrelevant. Before long, most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants, but from unicellular life. After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation."


this will even further liquidate the rural communities. The villages are dying out already and young people are moving to the cities. One of the main reasons of the farming subsidies in the EU is that the rural workers get paid and stay cultivating the land and the villages. But it will be certainly needed to feed humankind in the future.


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## Luchesi

Bwv 1080 said:


> The energy came from fusion, which with elements heavier than Iron consumes, rather than produces energy. The force was put there by a supermassive star then the elements were distributed from its supernova


That's millions of years later.


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## Jacck

Luchesi said:


> That's millions of years later.


First, God wrote the laws of physics, set entropy to 0, then hit enter and started Universe.exe and then Big Bang happened. And now he is sitting in his armchair and enjoying the show.


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## philoctetes

But entropy can't be zero if the laws are already written... 

That old chicken before the egg thang again...


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## Jacck

philoctetes said:


> But entropy can't be zero if the laws are already written...
> 
> That old chicken before the egg thang again...


Could God create a rock so heavy He could not lift it? God is Ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail


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## Bwv 1080

Luchesi said:


> That's (b)illions of years later.


Exactly, that is correct


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## philoctetes

Jacck said:


> Could God create a rock so heavy He could not lift it? God is Ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail


If there is an anti-verse where the laws are the exact opposite, and the laws of both cancel out... then God lifts the rock in one and (shall not be named) drops it in the other...


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## Jacck

philoctetes said:


> If there is an anti-verse where the laws are the exact opposite, and the laws of both cancel out... then God lifts the rock in one and (shall not be named) drops it in the other...


for God to be able to create the universe, his entropy needed to be lower than the entropy of the universe at the Big Bang. And this God needed to be created by another God above him with an even lower entropy. And then another God above. So we get an infinite progession of gods of lower and lower negentropy. And maybe at the point at infinity, God was created ex nihilo.


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## Room2201974

Jacck said:


> Could God create a rock so heavy He could not lift it? God is Ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail


I don't know if he can heat a burrito so hot that even be couldn't eat it, but apparently he is incapable of creating legal tender!


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## Luchesi

Room2201974 said:


> I don't know if he can heat a burrito so hot that even be couldn't eat it, but apparently he is incapable of creating legal tender!


Speaking of making money, Jim Bakker had on a bible guy who said the world would end on September 23, 2017 (Jewish holiday arithmetic). Bakker was selling a large line of survival products. The video is still up, but it's been edited all around the bible guy. He's gone.


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## Guest

Scratch a "free thinker" and you are virtually guaranteed to find a petty religion basher. I expend less than 0.01% of my thinking time trying to come up with straw men arguments to fling at atheists. Apparently you all can't say the opposite.


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## Luchesi

DrMike said:


> Scratch a "free thinker" and you are virtually guaranteed to find a petty religion basher. I expend less than 0.01% of my thinking time trying to come up with straw men arguments to fling at atheists. Apparently you all can't say the opposite.


DrMike, we can believe in God, whatever you think that means, and still be very very critical of believers.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> Scratch a "free thinker" and you are virtually guaranteed to find a petty religion basher. I expend less than 0.01% of my thinking time trying to come up with straw men arguments to fling at atheists. Apparently you all can't say the opposite.


I have no need for religion bashing, and I do not consider myself an atheist, though my beliefs are much closer to taoism (if I have to give a label) than any of the 3 abrahamic religions (christianity, islam, judaism)


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## Room2201974

Brahms is God. It's been confirmed in a previous thread. Telltale characteristics: 

* Developing variation technique creates something out of nothing.
* Large white beard - dead giveaway.
* Ein Deutsches Requiem.
* Hung out with prostitutes - a sure sign of religiosity, especially in today's modern world.

I KNOW Brahms is God because I feel it in my heart. Besides, remember my criteria above, "must be able to make legal tender?" Well, Brahms never took a commission, yet also never ran out of money!!!!! Coincidence? I believe not.


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## Luchesi

Contest in a girl's college: write a short story which contains religion, sex and mystery. 


Winner's story: "Oh god, I'm pregnant, I wonder who did it.."


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## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> Brahms is God. It's been confirmed in a previous thread. Telltale characteristics:
> 
> * Developing variation technique creates something out of nothing.
> * Large white beard - dead giveaway.
> * Ein Deutsches Requiem.
> * Hung out with prostitutes - a sure sign of religiosity, especially in today's modern world.
> 
> I KNOW Brahms is God because I feel it in my heart. Besides, remember my criteria above, "must be able to make legal tender?" Well, Brahms never took a commission, yet also never ran out of money!!!!! Coincidence? I believe not.


Probably he never gave up his side-hustle of playing piano in a brothel.


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## Luchesi

Baron Scarpia said:


> Probably he never gave up his side-hustle of playing piano in a brothel.


Yes, the people who write books about this say that if we humans didn't have obsessive thoughts about the gods and what they do, we wouldn't be here to ruminate about it. Ironic.


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## Jacck

'This is not how sequoias die. It's supposed to stand for another 500 years' 
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...s-supposed-to-stand-for-another-500-years-aoe
I always wanted to see the iconic American sequoia. I hope they will not all die. We had similar calamities with the bark beetles here and they also killed a lot of coniferous forests during last couple of years.


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## KenOC

Jacck said:


> 'This is not how sequoias die. It's supposed to stand for another 500 years'
> https://www.theguardian.com/environ...s-supposed-to-stand-for-another-500-years-aoe
> I always wanted to see the iconic American sequoia. I hope they will not all die. We had similar calamities with the bark beetles here and they also killed a lot of coniferous forests during last couple of years.


"For the first time in recorded history, tiny bark beetles emboldened by the climate crisis have started to kill giant sequoia trees, according to a joint National Park Service and US Geological Survey study set to be published later this year. Twenty-eight have gone since 2014."

That's about six trees a year! Regardless of whether or not it's a sign of things to come, there's not likely to be any significant change in California's Sequoia forests in your lifetime or mine. But you won't see them unless you come over here (and they're certainly worth seeing).


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> "For the first time in recorded history, tiny bark beetles emboldened by the climate crisis have started to kill giant sequoia trees, according to a joint National Park Service and US Geological Survey study set to be published later this year. Twenty-eight have gone since 2014."
> 
> That's about six trees a year! Regardless of whether or not it's a sign of things to come, there's not likely to be any significant change in California's Sequoia forests in your lifetime or mine. But you won't see them unless you come over here (and they're certainly worth seeing).


I'm sure Iran and North Korea have done impressive sites as well. But then it means you have to go to Iran and North Korea! (I kid, I kid!)


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> I'm sure Iran and North Korea have done impressive sites as well. But then it means you have to go to Iran and North Korea! (I kid, I kid!)


Could someone explain what this post means?


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> Could someone explain what this post means?


I see, since it wasn't meant as an angry response, it probably confuses you. It was a good-natured joke comparing the political environment of California to those countries - there might be cool things to see there, but not worth the hassle. But he likely knows I joke, knowing I have repeatedly admitted I am from California.


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## Jacck

DrMike said:


> I see, since it wasn't meant as an angry response, it probably confuses you. It was a good-natured joke comparing the political environment of California to those countries - there might be cool things to see there, but not worth the hassle. But he likely knows I joke, knowing I have repeatedly admitted I am from California.


I think you have misconceptions and prejudices about Iran. I have long wanted to visit Iran, and I have some friends who have been there and they all said that is was a great country with very hospitable nice people. Through I would be hesitant to visit the country now. My brother was in North Korea (for some folk music festival) and that country is significantly worse than Iran, they basically did not allow them to leave the hotel. That country is absolutely not recommended for travel. 
I would like to visit California one day, but it is a little far away from here for a comfortable flight. Then there is the problem that all the distances in the US are so huge and public transportation is underdeveloped, so that you basically need to rent a car, and you spend a lot of time from your vacation in the car moving between the various sights. I guess a minimum of 3 week would be required for a holiday in the US


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## Strange Magic

DrMike said:


> I see, since it wasn't meant as an angry response, it probably confuses you. It was a good-natured joke comparing the political environment of California to those countries - there might be cool things to see there, but not worth the hassle. But he likely knows I joke, knowing I have repeatedly admitted I am from California.


It did confuse me. It made no sense at all. Your explanation does add another layer of confusion.


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## KenOC

Jacck said:


> ...Then there is the problem that all the distances in the US are so huge and public transportation is underdeveloped, so that you basically need to rent a car, and you spend a lot of time from your vacation in the car moving between the various sights. I guess a minimum of 3 week would be required for a holiday in the US


A rental car and three weeks would be great for exploring the West Coast from Northern Oregon down through Big Sur to San Diego (with the redwoods midway) including trips inland to Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Death Valley and so forth. Two weeks might be enough but three would definitely be better.


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## Jacck

KenOC said:


> A rental car and three weeks would be great for exploring the West Coast from Northern Oregon down through Big Sur to San Diego (with the redwoods midway) including trips inland to Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Death Valley and so forth. Two weeks might be enough but three would definitely be better.


and an obligatory side trip to the Sonoran desert to listen to Carter's first string quartet there while drinking some cactus brandy.


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## Guest

The biggest of the giant sequoias are at Kings Canyon, a three to four hour drive East from Cambria or Paso Robles. On the way you’ll pass the site of the legendary John Dean wreck.

If you do go there you’ll also get to see the stumps of the enormous giant sequoias cut down by loggers before the tree huggers got their way.


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## KenOC

Baron Scarpia said:


> ...If you do go there you'll also get to see the stumps of the enormous giant sequoias cut down by loggers before the tree huggers got their way.












Note that there are two types of giant sequoia trees in California - quotes from Wiki:

"The native habitat of Sequoiadendron giganteum trees is only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada range of California." These groves include the biggest trees by volume and weight. As the Baron mentioned, King's Canyon National Park is a good place to visit these trees. The largest is the General Sherman tree with a trunk volume of almost 1,500 cubic meters and a weight estimated at 2,100 tonnes. It is the largest known living single stem tree in the world.

"The native habitat of Sequoia sempervirens trees is only in the Northern California coastal forests ecoregion, on the Northern California coast and several miles into Oregon." These are probably more famous and more visited, and their groves include the tallest trees - the tallest being the Hyperion tree at 116 meters or 380 feet. It is the tallest known tree on earth, and by a good margin.


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## Luchesi

Jacck said:


> I think you have misconceptions and prejudices about Iran. I have long wanted to visit Iran, and I have some friends who have been there and they all said that is was a great country with very hospitable nice people. Through I would be hesitant to visit the country now. My brother was in North Korea (for some folk music festival) and that country is significantly worse than Iran, they basically did not allow them to leave the hotel. That country is absolutely not recommended for travel.
> I would like to visit California one day, but it is a little far away from here for a comfortable flight. Then there is the problem that all the distances in the US are so huge and public transportation is underdeveloped, so that you basically need to rent a car, and you spend a lot of time from your vacation in the car moving between the various sights. I guess a minimum of 3 week would be required for a holiday in the US


Chopin was going to come to the US, but something came up (probably something in Poland).


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> A rental car and three weeks would be great for exploring the West Coast from Northern Oregon down through Big Sur to San Diego (with the redwoods midway) including trips inland to Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Death Valley and so forth. Two weeks might be enough but three would definitely be better.


Let's add another week and start in the San Juan Islands, and do Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks while we're at it; also a trip into eastern Oregon & back--lovely country!


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## philoctetes

Right now is a great time to ski in the Sierras, barring avalanches...

I have never been to the Ojai Music Festival and it's on my list, maybe not this year though...


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Note that there are two types of giant sequoia trees in California - quotes from Wiki:
> 
> "The native habitat of Sequoiadendron giganteum trees is only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada range of California." These groves include the biggest trees by volume and weight. As the Baron mentioned, King's Canyon National Park is a good place to visit these trees. The largest is the General Sherman tree with a trunk volume of almost 1,500 cubic meters and a weight estimated at 2,100 tonnes. It is the largest known living single stem tree in the world.
> 
> "The native habitat of Sequoia sempervirens trees is only in the Northern California coastal forests ecoregion, on the Northern California coast and several miles into Oregon." These are probably more famous and more visited, and their groves include the tallest trees - the tallest being the Hyperion tree at 116 meters or 380 feet. It is the tallest known tree on earth, and by a good margin.


More contemporary, I was there two years ago.









The really enormous trees seem to be concentrated in a few groves where conditions were perfect for them to survive thousands of years.

What really struck me was what we saw when we went up to overlooks over Hume lake and other parts of Kings Canyon. Trees near the lake looked healthy, but on the mountain sides it seemed like upwards of one in five trees was dead. Looking back at the photos there are a lot of trees that show the progression described in the article, trees dying from the top down, possible indicating bark beetle attacking trees weakened by drought. It seems like a forest fire under those conditions could be catastrophic. A lot of the enormous sequoias have visible fire damage, having survived numerous fires during their long lives. Whether they will survive conditions to come is a legitimate question.

But back to the original topic, it is well worth taking the trouble to see them, if a car trip into the Sierra Nevada mountains could be considered "trouble."


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## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> Let's add another week and start in the San Juan Islands, and do Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks while we're at it; also a trip into eastern Oregon & back--lovely country!


There's been studies done as to why we think some countrysides are lovely. It's a very primal reaction.


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## Strange Magic

Luchesi said:


> There's been studies done as to why we think some countrysides are lovely. It's a very primal reaction.


I recollect reading about a study suggesting that grasslands at the foothills of mountains (the location specifically being discussed was certain terrains in the state of Montana) were particularly appealing because they were like the African savanna environment where our genus acquired an earthbound lifestyle, coming down from an arboreal past. Yet it may be just what one has grown up in--the inhabitants of deep jungle, high mountains, the taiga or tundra--may feel perfectly happy and at home where they are, and the idea of living in another terrain is entirely alien to them.


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## Jacck

Strange Magic said:


> Let's add another week and start in the San Juan Islands, and do Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks while we're at it; also a trip into eastern Oregon & back--lovely country!


the problem with traveling is to find a balance between wanting to see too much or too little. If you pack too many places, you will spend much of your time just moving from one place to another place without having time to enjoy it. And spending the whole vacation in one place is boring. It is best to pick 4 destinations and spend some time in each, like doing a trek in the sequoia forests


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## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> I recollect reading about a study suggesting that grasslands at the foothills of mountains (the location specifically being discussed was certain terrains in the state of Montana) were particularly appealing because they were like the African savanna environment where our genus acquired an earthbound lifestyle, coming down from an arboreal past. Yet it may be just what one has grown up in--the inhabitants of deep jungle, high mountains, the taiga or tundra--may feel perfectly happy and at home where they are, and the idea of living in another terrain is entirely alien to them.


Long ago, needing safety for ourselves and especially for our children and finding food - are so important that they became connected in our emotional lives. Why do landscape painters paint parklike scenes, open woodlands? Why are views of swamps and jungles and deserts 'ugly' to us - initially and down deep, before we have time to think rationally about them?

It 'feels' to me that it's actually from a time before we were large enough and organized enough to benefit from the savannah environment.


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## Strange Magic

^^^^Are views of swamps and jungles and deserts "ugly" to us? Perhaps what is most appealing are depictions of ecotones--the biologically rich boundaries between vegetative and other terrains: seashores, river banks, clearings in the jungle or hummocks in the swamp, etc. More study would help. Many landscape paintings of great beauty have been rendered of a whole array of terrains.


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## Open Book

Strange Magic said:


> ^^^^Are views of swamps and jungles and deserts "ugly" to us? Perhaps what is most appealing are depictions of ecotones--the biologically rich boundaries between vegetative and other terrains: seashores, river banks, clearings in the jungle or hummocks in the swamp, etc. More study would help. Many landscape paintings of great beauty have been rendered of a whole array of terrains.


Sierra Club calendars feature scenes of swamps and jungles and deserts. They are raw but exciting and beautiful.

I agree we are most comforted by nature scenes that are half tamed and park-like, like clearings. And even civilized - depictions of old fashioned farms were once popular art. I don't know why, since farming was a difficult way of life.


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## KenOC

Open Book said:


> I agree we are most comforted by nature scenes that are half tamed and park-like, like clearings. And even civilized - depictions of old fashioned farms were once popular art. I don't know why, since farming was a difficult way of life.


Farming is an attractive and romantic way of life, so long as somebody else is doing it! Where I live there are quite a few avocado farmers. They buy land in the hills and have big houses built up on top. Then they use most of their land to grow avocados. Well, more accurately, they hire growing companies to grow and harvest their avocados. Aside from whatever residual cash the "farmers" receive, the use of their land for agriculture earns them huge tax breaks. So nice to be close to the land! :lol:


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## Jacck

World's consumption of materials hits record 100bn tonnes a year 
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-of-materials-hits-record-100bn-tonnes-a-year
though the cornucopians will be in denial, world resources are limited
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/forecast-when-well-run-out-of-each-metal/


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> World's consumption of materials hits record 100bn tonnes a year
> https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-of-materials-hits-record-100bn-tonnes-a-year
> though the cornucopians will be in denial, world resources are limited
> https://www.visualcapitalist.com/forecast-when-well-run-out-of-each-metal/


The elephant in this room is POPULATION.


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## Guest

Christabel said:


> The elephant in this room is POPULATION.


I agree! Those most concerned need to lead the way by completely abstaining from all reproductive sexual activity to set the example for the rest of the world. It is the only way to be sure. The environmentalists should focus all their efforts on sexual abstinence!


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## philoctetes

Yes, coronavirus is our new friend huh?


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## Guest

To the neo-Malthusians, quite possibly. Their real beef is with modern technology and science that has made life expectancy so much higher. Back when we had ridiculously high infant mortality, when a bacterial infection could be a life sentence, when vaccinations were unknown, then we had nice natural limitations to population growth. Our damn endeavor to alleviate human suffering, though, is going to kill our planet! We are violating Darwin's laws! With modern medicine, it is not only survival of the fittest, but also quite a few of the not so fit, or even downright unfit.


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## Strange Magic

_Forbes_, which used to proudly call itself "Capitalist Tool" and maybe still does, reports highest CO2 levels recorded yet in the modern era, and again reminds us why we need to worry about it. 2019 was the 2nd warmest year recorded. These facts, along with rising temperatures and acidity levels in the increasingly plastic-waste-filled oceans, and the rapidly growing input of methane into the atmosphere through release from peat, permafrost, and animal sources, indicate that Earth (our planet--we live here) cannot absorb the exhalations and waste of a population of 7-plus billions. As the population soars to 11 billions of those increasingly"enjoying"--while it lasts--a materials-rich lifestyle, Earth's inability to cope with the debris and detritus will become ever more obvious. Obvious, that is, to normal folks. Ideologues preaching endless growth and ''improvement" will cling to their certainties longer. Mark their bright eye and brisk cheeriness--as good as things are now, they can only get better as populations grow.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevor...ecorded-levels-in-human-history/#64c3a24c7299


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## KenOC

It's nice that the ocean absorbs all that CO2, but… *The Pacific Ocean is now so acidic that it's dissolving crabs' shells*


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## Guest

DrMike said:


> I agree! Those most concerned need to lead the way by completely abstaining from all reproductive sexual activity to set the example for the rest of the world. It is the only way to be sure. The environmentalists should focus all their efforts on sexual abstinence!


Haven't you noticed that western European birth rates are now below replacement levels and that immigrants have to be invited in by the thousands?


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## philoctetes

Seems timely for a bump just to remind where we all stood before depopulation became a more immediate threat...


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## starthrower

Republican senators voted to kill the paid sick leave amendment added to the Coronavirus response bill signed by Trump. Public health plays second fiddle to the lobbying efforts of McDonald's and other corporations.


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## philoctetes

starthrower said:


> Republican senators voted to kill the paid sick leave amendment added to the Coronavirus response bill signed by Trump. Public health plays second fiddle to the lobbying efforts of McDonald's and other corporations.


This is a complicated subject when it comes to cash payouts... details are important. Not saying the Senate is correct but ... we have a huge wave of forced unemployment, not necessarily sick, coming that has to be accommodated... and small businesses don't have either the lobby or survival power of MacD's etc...

Besides, if the idea is to make it easier for MacD's to close, where are you going to get your MacMuffin for breakfast?


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## starthrower

philoctetes said:


> This is a complicated subject when it comes to cash payouts... details are important. Not saying the Senate is correct but ... we have a huge wave of forced unemployment, not necessarily sick, coming that has to be accommodated... and small businesses don't have either the lobby or survival power of MacD's etc...
> 
> Besides, if the idea is to make it easier for MacD's to close, where are you going to get your MacMuffin for breakfast?


I don't eat that junk. But I posted this in the wrong place by mistake. Is was meant for the virus thread.


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## KenOC

Back to the original topic:

'*Wildlife populations have fallen* by more than two-thirds in less than 50 years, according to a major report by the conservation group WWF. The report says this "catastrophic decline" shows no sign of slowing. And it warns that nature is being destroyed by humans at a rate never seen before.

'Wildlife is "in freefall" as we burn forests, over-fish our seas and destroy wild areas, says Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF.'


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## Open Book

We constantly appropriate new land for human use. I'm sure the building of new homes and commercial buildings has caused more habitat loss than any other activity, but it hardly ever gets singled out for blame. 

Too many people and the population is still growing.


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## Jacck

Open Book said:


> We constantly appropriate new land for human use. I'm sure the building of new homes and commercial buildings has caused more habitat loss than any other activity, but it hardly ever gets singled out for blame.
> 
> Too many people and the population is still growing.


actually, its mostly agriculture


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## Bwv 1080

Open Book said:


> We constantly appropriate new land for human use. I'm sure the building of new homes and commercial buildings has caused more habitat loss than any other activity, but it hardly ever gets singled out for blame.
> 
> Too many people and the population is still growing.


Nope, its agriculture by a huge margin

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

and its use may be peaking:

Supporters of the peak farmland theory argue that even with the growing world population, the need for more farmland is decreasing, as food production yields per acre of farmland are rising faster than the global demand for food.[3] This is supported by the fact that the area dedicated to farmland in some countries, both developed (e.g. Finland) and developing (e.g. India, China), has already begun to decline.[4][5] Globally, while the total amount of arable land is still increasing, the area of permanent pasture has been in decline since 1998, with at least 60 million hectares no longer grazed.[6] It is argued that other countries, such as the United States, are at their peak farmland now.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_farmland


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## KenOC

Open Book said:


> We constantly appropriate new land for human use. I'm sure the building of new homes and commercial buildings has caused more habitat loss than any other activity, but it hardly ever gets singled out for blame...


Maybe not the building of new homes, but perhaps another reason. From the original post in this thread: "Land use is the major driver of the biodiversity collapse, with 70% of agriculture related to meat production."


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## Jacck

Bwv 1080 said:


> Nope, its agriculture by a huge margin
> 
> https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
> 
> and its use may be peaking:
> 
> Supporters of the peak farmland theory argue that even with the growing world population, the need for more farmland is decreasing, as food production yields per acre of farmland are rising faster than the global demand for food.[3] This is supported by the fact that the area dedicated to farmland in some countries, both developed (e.g. Finland) and developing (e.g. India, China), has already begun to decline.[4][5] Globally, while the total amount of arable land is still increasing, the area of permanent pasture has been in decline since 1998, with at least 60 million hectares no longer grazed.[6] It is argued that other countries, such as the United States, are at their peak farmland now.[7]
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_farmland


Europe is likely already past the peak and getting greener (more wooded)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/
but it is mostly because food is imported from developing countries. Indonesia and Brasil still continue with massive deforestation


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## Open Book

I was about to amend my post and add "agriculture" because I knew you jabronis would all jump on that omission. But I have other things to do.

Home building has had a big impact on me because I've seen it first hand. My town was a backwater when we moved here and it built up with new homes so that we reached "build-out", as the town moderator called it, in only 10 years. It was shocking. And other towns are next on the chopping block.

It doesn't matter what the use is. Once land is cleared and used for humans, it has very little chance of going back to its natural state. That's a net loss of land for all the other species on the planet.


----------

