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Carbon dioxide levels highest for 800,000 years.

Started by missing transmission, July 08, 2014, 02:01:50 PM

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: Yorkshire pud on July 28, 2014, 01:28:43 AM

Optimism and wishful thinking didn't make Santa Claus come down the chimney. That makes you think that in thirty years when it's too late, humans will have the ability to undo things that should have been done forty years previously?

Yes, but negativism is almost always wrong and makes for a shitty, angry, frightened life. We spend enormous amounts of money to study the earth's atmosphere and that of other planets, plans exist on just how one would go about terraforming a world like Mars. We already have natural and artificial carbon sinks. We already have technologies that will eliminate carbon dioxide emissions as they come into use over the next thirty years. Most of the predictions made for climate change are in the arena of a century or more before the effect is seen large scale, rather than decades. In fact, the one major prediction that was supposed to be short-term, an increase in the frequency and power of hurricanes, didn't pan out.

The earth's atmosphere is not magical. It is a system that can and will be understood entirely. That means it can be altered and manipulated any way we wish. We altered and manipulated it with carbon dioxide emissions already. None of this will be a problem on a timeframe of decades, and that's assuming that the proposed effects will be as bad as is claimed. They didn't seem to be 800,000 years ago, given that humans arose under those conditions and the earth seems to have removed a significant amount of carbon dioxide in those intervening years all on it's own leaving us with the pre-industrial conditions we so pine for now.

I would say that within ten years we will have a GMO phytoplankton that can absorb carbon dioxide hundreds of times more efficiently than natural species can, and do it without sunlight, which will transform the biological pump component of the oceans as carbon sinks from minimal to just as strong as the physical pump component. Make certain they can breed with other phytoplankton, program them to go extinct when the PPM of carbon dioxide drops to desirable levels, and viola the equation has been changed.

Of course I'm sure the negativists will be out protesting the phytoplankton and beating us over the head with laws that say we need to give up CFL bulbs in favor of LED, but that's just the usual hysterics of negativists.




SciFiAuthor

Quote from: Paper*Boy on July 28, 2014, 01:13:29 AM

If you are going to take away their reason to jack up Taxes and seize more of our Liberty, you ought to leave them with another excuse to do so.

You know what I love about all the settled-science liberals? They never seem to like the idea of solving the problem (if it turns out to be a problem) with technology. They always default on the idea that technology will always fail. So while they are happy to cite "settled science", they don't believe in "settled technology" even though the two are inherently related.

That kind of dichotomy is how you know you're fighting someone that's defending a faith-based doctrine and not a science.

WildCard

Setting aside climate change for the sake of discussion, don't you agree that it's incredibly primitive that we still rely on petroleum?
Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 28, 2014, 09:57:09 PM
I would say that within ten years we will have a GMO phytoplankton that can absorb carbon dioxide hundreds of times more efficiently than natural species can, and do it without sunlight, which will transform the biological pump component of the oceans as carbon sinks from minimal to just as strong as the physical pump component. Make certain they can breed with other phytoplankton, program them to go extinct when the PPM of carbon dioxide drops to desirable levels, and viola the equation has been changed.
I'd be concerned with unforeseen consequences but, that's actually a damned good idea.

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: WildCard on July 28, 2014, 10:41:10 PM
Setting aside climate change for the sake of discussion, don't you agree that it's incredibly primitive that we still rely on petroleum?

I do, yes. I think we've missed a lot of opportunities over the years to eliminate it. They were foiled both by big oil but also big green. Oil companies want to keep on pumping to oil-fired cars and power plants and big green went on a crusade against the best alternative: nuclear energy. Yes, nuclear accidents happen. Yes, nuclear waste is created. But those were solvable problems. We could have made electric cars viable decades ago as the price of oil rose, but it was simply not allowed to happen due to profit motives and the anti-humanist ideology of the environmentalists.

And just watch, both groups have come out against fusion energy already. Greenpeace releases anti-ITER statements and the protestors are showing up against it despite it being truly clean and safe energy. The "silver bullet" of solving the energy crisis is being killed while we screw around with wind farms (windmills are a bit more primitive than gasoline).

Oddly enough, I actually think it's even more primitive that we rely on steam for our electrical production. Most (not all!) sources of energy exist to make heat that turns water into steam that drives turbines. The concept of creating movement with steam is ancient, Heron of Alexandria did it 2000 years ago, and functional steam engines (the basic concept of a turbine) is entirely an 18th century idea. Yet that's how nuclear, oil, coal, etc. all fundamentally work. Given fusion development (if everyone stays out of the way) steam energy will be with us for centuries ahead.

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I'd be concerned with unforeseen consequences but, that's actually a damned good idea.

I'd say do a whole lot of research on the GMO phytoplankton before releasing it, and only then with global consent. Oceans are international after all. Hell, do 20 years of research in multiple countries to make sure we've got it right. But, yes, there is always the chance that they might not go extinct as designed and all the plant life dies because the phytoplankton ate all the carbon dioxide. In which case, we'll have start pumping and burning oil again. Gee, that will sure hurt. :)

That's not the only solution though. There's tons of them. Put a large stationary mylar solar shield in synchronous orbit with the earth to block a percentage of the sun's energy reaching the surface of the earth. Seed the atmosphere with reflective materials added to aircraft fuel. Build ultra-efficient artificial carbon sinks that can be turned off when needed. Build an artificially intelligent supercomputer that can model the atmosphere perfectly and invent a way to fix it that we haven't thought of (make no mistake, that sort of thing is well on it's way to reality).

Again, that's assuming that climate change is bad in the first place. It may be in certain cases, but no one ever talks about the positive effects of it. That's another big problem with it; all anyone wants to discuss are the negative effects. But, actually, there are positive effects too. It's been shown, for example, that the rise in carbon dioxide levels have increased crop yield globally. So, yeah, sea levels are rising, but the atmosphere has become more nutritious for the plant life.

SciFiAuthor

Incidentally I made a bad typo. I make lots of them, I don't have a lot of time to edit myself, but I meant "Make certain that they CAN'T breed with natural phytoplankton".

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 29, 2014, 12:38:54 AM
I do, yes. I think we've missed a lot of opportunities over the years to eliminate it. They were foiled both by big oil but also big green. Oil companies want to keep on pumping to oil-fired cars and power plants and big green went on a crusade against the best alternative: nuclear energy. Yes, nuclear accidents happen. Yes, nuclear waste is created. But those were solvable problems. We could have made electric cars viable decades ago as the price of oil rose, but it was simply not allowed to happen due to profit motives and the anti-humanist ideology of the environmentalists.

And just watch, both groups have come out against fusion energy already. Greenpeace releases anti-ITER statements and the protestors are showing up against it despite it being truly clean and safe energy. The "silver bullet" of solving the energy crisis is being killed while we screw around with wind farms (windmills are a bit more primitive than gasoline).

Oddly enough, I actually think it's even more primitive that we rely on steam for our electrical production. Most (not all!) sources of energy exist to make heat that turns water into steam that drives turbines. The concept of creating movement with steam is ancient, Heron of Alexandria did it 2000 years ago, and functional steam engines (the basic concept of a turbine) is entirely an 18th century idea. Yet that's how nuclear, oil, coal, etc. all fundamentally work. Given fusion development (if everyone stays out of the way) steam energy will be with us for centuries.

I'd say do a whole lot of research on the GMO phytoplankton before releasing it, and only then with global consent. Oceans are international after all. Hell, do 20 years of research in multiple countries to make sure we've got it right. But, yes, there is always the chance that they might not go extinct as designed and all the plant life dies because the phytoplankton ate all the carbon dioxide. In which case, we'll have start pumping and burning oil again. Gee, that will sure hurt. :)

That's not the only solution though. There's tons of them. Put a large stationary mylar solar shield in synchronous orbit with the earth to block a percentage of the sun's energy reaching the surface of the earth. Seed the atmosphere with reflective materials added to aircraft fuel. Build ultra-efficient artificial carbon sinks that can be turned off when needed. Build an artificially intelligent supercomputer that can model the atmosphere perfectly and invent a way to fix it that we haven't thought of (make no mistake, that sort of thing is well on it's way to reality).

Again, that's assuming that climate change is bad in the first place. It may be in certain cases, but no one ever talks about the positive effects of it. That's another big problem with it; all anyone wants to discuss are the negative effects. But, actually, there are positive effects too. It's been shown, for example, that the rise in carbon dioxide levels have increased crop yield globally. So, yeah, sea levels are rising, but the atmosphere has become more nutritious for the plant life.

It's a mixture of fantasy and wishful thinking your approach to real life isn't it? Mylar solar shields; invent this, invent that. No business plan to project how any of it will be paid for or by whom. But it's fine, because we can wait until it's too late and fear concentrates the mind. Rather than have 'liberals' try to make sure we don't have to be in that position..

Scenario: Would you like to be infected with Ebola virus on the chance that by the time you're about to die a vaccine would be discovered (Presumably by a non liberal scientist)  and available; or would you rather not be infected in the first place?


Oh it isn't just rising sea levels but temperature too; and that's a bad thing for all life. If you need to ask why, you're better sticking to Si-Fi.

onan

The problem with plankton that can eat large amounts of carbon is essentially the same problem we have now. It just becomes another carbon sink. large amounts of carbon eating bacteria... well there will be lots and lots of them with the food supply they will be grazing in. Then what? When those bacteria die, what happens to the carbon they have consumed? We now have a repository of excess carbon in the ocean. We get ocean acidification, which is already a problem. The issue at hand is we need to stop putting carbon into the atmosphere, it doesn't get any simpler than that.


SciFiAuthor

Quote from: Yorkshire pud on July 29, 2014, 12:47:30 AM
It's a mixture of fantasy and wishful thinking your approach to real life isn't it? Mylar solar shields; invent this, invent that. No business plan to project how any of it will be paid for or by whom. But it's fine, because we can wait until it's too late and fear concentrates the mind. Rather than have 'liberals' try to make sure we don't have to be in that position..

Wishful thinking is when you think you can convince China and India to hobble their economic growth and stop their growing production of carbon dioxide. You have no control over them, so token reduction of your own production ends up being just a socially expensive way for liberals to pat themselves on the back and act like they accomplished something. Here's the real truth: if the science is correct, it's overwhelmingly likely that it's already too late and has been for some time:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/risks-of-global-warming-rising/

As far as funding, you're being silly. We live in countries that will fund studies of the effects of cow flatulence on the atmosphere and you somehow think we would not fund a potential solution to climate change?

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Scenario: Would you like to be infected with Ebola virus on the chance that by the time you're about to die a vaccine would be discovered (Presumably by a non liberal scientist)  and available; or would you rather not be infected in the first place?

You have ebola. I'm handing you anti-viral drugs and you're dismissing them as voodoo.

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Oh it isn't just rising sea levels but temperature too; and that's a bad thing for all life. If you need to ask why, you're better sticking to Si-Fi.

Yes, a global rise of 1.53 degrees since 1880. At that rate, it will get uncomfortable, oh, sometime around 600 years from now. So I wouldn't be rushing out for that extra air conditioner just yet. That said, you better hope your ass off that a technological solution comes because you have no other solution now. 1995 called and wants it's climate change policy back, you should have demanded that the Kyoto accords not exempt developing nations. It was then that you could have dramatically cut carbon dioxide emissions, but funny enough the liberals of those days were whining about us being hypocrites for telling third world nations that they can't do what we did and industrialize.

I'm not worried. At no time in human history have we failed to solve a pressing issue. If it starts getting hot, then we will solve it with technology no matter how much it costs. There are plenty of potential ways to do it. Personally, I suspect the effects will be more mild than predicted based on, well, them being more mild than predicted so far and no one will want to give up all the new farmland that will be freed up by a warmer planet. Yeah, we'll lose the Maldives. But, you know, we lost Montserrat to a volcano. Things like that happen on a dynamic world.

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: onan on July 29, 2014, 04:18:46 AM
The problem with plankton that can eat large amounts of carbon is essentially the same problem we have now. It just becomes another carbon sink. large amounts of carbon eating bacteria... well there will be lots and lots of them with the food supply they will be grazing in. Then what? When those bacteria die, what happens to the carbon they have consumed? We now have a repository of excess carbon in the ocean. We get ocean acidification, which is already a problem. The issue at hand is we need to stop putting carbon into the atmosphere, it doesn't get any simpler than that.

Actually, ocean acidification is more a mechanical problem rather than a biological one. It's due to the ocean's absorption of carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and is the chief way, by far, of how the ocean absorbs CO2, i.e. the solubility pump. In the biological pump, it's my understanding that carbon remains sequestered either by being consumed by another animal or drops to the ocean floor to eventually mineralize. I imagine that some free carbon results, but it's not much, at least right now.

You could also solve ocean acidification with our trusty friend the GMO phytoplankton, just tweak him to eat free oceanic carbon dioxide and program him to go extinct when the acidity level reaches optimal levels. Nothing stops us from altering him to sequester 100 percent of his carbon intake if his climate change brother ends up producing too much acidity.

As I told Pud, we have no global way of reducing carbon emissions. There are simply too many developing countries that will not curb their development. It's also most likely too late already to rely on that route. Technology it is, and I have zero doubt, given the very long period of time we have to reverse it, that everything will be fine.

Eventually, again through emerging technologies, we will dramatically cut our carbon dioxide emissions on our own anyway. Electric cars and fusion reactors do not produce it and that's where we're headed.

So have a beer filled with CO2 bubbly goodness, fire up the grill and emit even more CO2 and admire the giant septic tank and its methane plume. It'll be alright. The engineers and scientists are working on it.

SciFiAuthor

Incidentally, we already do this sort of thing with oil spills. Release the Alcanivorax Borkumensis bacterium and the oil goes away. We now even have one that can live in arctic waters and be used to clean up oil spills there.

It was a major component of cleaning up the Deep Water Horizon spill, in fact.

I'll toss another one out there. There is a way to remove water from the ocean. To maintain our river channels we have to dredge truly herculean amounts of mud out of the channels. The boat that passes by my house dredges at a rate of 5000 cubic yards per hour. Dredging the ocean would not be feasible, however dredging sea ice and depositing it on land might be if you can do it at a fast enough rate to keep up with the rise in sea level, which is a very slow, gradual process.

Theoretically, you can also pump water directly and freeze it further inland in the arctic. We are a civilization that at our peak moved and consumed 85 million barrels of oil per day That's a lot of liquid moving around. Well . . . if you've got a hundred years to drop sea levels . . .

SciFiAuthor

No, this is not me. And no, this is not how I would do it. But it did make my jaw drop. That's one hell of a carbon credit for profit scheme.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering


Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 29, 2014, 08:46:29 PM
Incidentally, we already do this sort of thing with oil spills. Release the Alcanivorax Borkumensis bacterium and the oil goes away. We now even have one that can live in arctic waters and be used to clean up oil spills there.

It was a major component of cleaning up the Deep Water Horizon spill, in fact.

I'll toss another one out there. There is a way to remove water from the ocean. To maintain our river channels we have to dredge truly herculean amounts of mud out of the channels. The boat that passes by my house dredges at a rate of 5000 cubic yards per hour. Dredging the ocean would not be feasible, however dredging sea ice and depositing it on land might be if you can do it at a fast enough rate to keep up with the rise in sea level, which is a very slow, gradual process.

Theoretically, you can also pump water directly and freeze it further inland in the arctic. We are a civilization that at our peak moved and consumed 85 million barrels of oil per day That's a lot of liquid moving around. Well . . . if you've got a hundred years to drop sea levels . . .
This smacks of science.  Is it settled?  What do conservative think tanks and media outlets have to say about this?  Was anyone from East Anglia involved?  How can we trust your science, when you ask us to be "skeptical"?

Further more, what evidence is there that oil spills are bad for the environment?  Isn't it just carbon?  Aren't we all carbon based life forms?  It is shocking to me that you would endorse spending public funds on what is clearly a liberal based scheme to solve a problem that doesn't exist. 

Are you a commie, or a homosexual, or both?

albrecht

Quote from: RealCool Daddio on July 29, 2014, 10:22:31 PM
This smacks of science.  Is it settled?  What do conservative think tanks and media outlets have to say about this?  Was anyone from East Anglia involved?  How can we trust your science, when you ask us to be "skeptical"?
That is the whole point! Actual, incidents are ignored and problems are skipped over because some politicians and bankers what a new bubble scheme based on carbon trading. (Hopefully based here, at least initially, at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange but many others around the world.) Who cares about pollution! Who cares about nuclear waste! Who cares about over fishing! Heavy Metals! No, we need a international taxation scheme, ideally coupled with a financial futures market, to deal with things like "carbon" and especially CO2 which kills plants.

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: RealCool Daddio on July 29, 2014, 10:22:31 PM
This smacks of science.  Is it settled?  What do conservative think tanks and media outlets have to say about this?  Was anyone from East Anglia involved?  How can we trust your science, when you ask us to be "skeptical"?

Further more, what evidence is there that oil spills are bad for the environment?  Isn't it just carbon?  Aren't we all carbon based life forms?  It is shocking to me that you would endorse spending public funds on what is clearly a liberal based scheme to solve a problem that doesn't exist. 


Snarky, snarky, snarky.

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Are you a commie, or a homosexual, or both?

I would be a commie if it worked. It doesn't. I gave up homosexuality when Vaseline got expensive. It's a petroleum product you know.

SciFiAuthor

As an update to Russ George's shenanigan; Guujaaw isn't suing. It worked. 2013 salmon numbers defied all expectations, instead of an expected 50 million it turned out to be 223 million because the baby salmon ate George's 10,000 square kilometer (half the size of Massachusetts) bloom of carbon-absorbing plankton. As to the effects on carbon dioxide, I haven't seen any data on that.

Now, I would not use that method. It's reckless. I would want a scientifically done, peer-reviewed, well-tested GMO organism that targets the specifics and then goes extinct when it's no longer needed. We can make other GMO organisms to tackle the declining fish numbers if we need to, but keep that separate. That said:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/geoengineering-testing-the-waters.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Typical fucking human-hating environmentalist. Now, bear in mind that this is how ideas disseminate. It's how platforms form. For the conservative, it's conservative publications and radio programs that set the agenda. For liberals it's the media, so get ready for some changes in your views:

"But what concerns me, after researching the subject for two years for a forthcoming book on climate change, is that far more serious scientists, backed by far deeper pockets, appear poised to actively tamper with the complex and unpredictable natural systems that sustain life on earth â€" with huge potential for unintended consequences. "

(Scientists are bad now? Oh! A book plug sneaked in! Like I don't know how that scam works.)

Because ....

"all natural events can begin to take on an unnatural tinge. An absence that might have seemed a cyclical change in migration patterns or a presence that felt like a miraculous gift suddenly feels sinister, as if all of nature were being manipulated behind the scenes."

(What the fuck is this crap about sinister nature and miraculous gifts? Huh??? Become a Christian for fuck's sake if you want crap like that.)

Climate change alarmists DO NOT ADVOCATE SCIENCE. They advocate a single science, baselessly claiming that it's "settled" and use it to advance a pre-existent agenda to hold humanity back out of a misguided environmentalist position that we should not control or modify nature and that human activity and progress should be restrained. That's fucking stupid, nature is a mindless process that can be improved. We can take a rock and smelt it into a metal that does not freely exist naturally, aluminum, and then build a rocket and land men on the moon. Aluminum is wonderful. Well, if the negativists had their way throughout history we wouldn't have aluminum, iron, bronze, steam engines, Delta II rockets, vaccines, and anything else good. We'd have put moratoriums on the Wright Brothers's and Ford's research. We'd have classified Einstein's energy mass equivalency because it might result in a nuke and succumbed to the Nazi-Japanese Reich.

So PUD and ONAN. We're going to do a little experiment on anti-humanism. Guess what, 80-90 percent of cancer is now cured. Absolutely, wholly, entirely cured. It's been done via a class of virotherapy and immunotherapy drugs now in multiple clinical trials, one already approved for melanoma.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talimogene_laherparepvec

It works pretty good for melanoma, but demonstrated a 93% complete response in head and neck cancer, with the other 7% undergoing stable disease. Now, look closely: the trial for head and neck cancer was halted. I will bet you guys a pair of MV's week old skivvies to send George that this class of drugs will be purposely curtailed. I know you're thinking "yeah, drug companies don't like cures" but that won't be it. It will be the FDA or some other authority in government that mires it in red tape or requires reformulation to a less-effective form because we simply cannot have people living longer and burdening the system. It will then go into the arena of the UN, which will actively interfere with distribution because it's anti-population control. I've seen it before. And if you remind me, I'll periodically update you how humanity will be held back from a cure for cancer. It'll take five years, but I dare you.

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 30, 2014, 01:28:05 AM

It works pretty good for melanoma, but demonstrated a 93% complete response in head and neck cancer, with the other 7% undergoing stable disease. Now, look closely: the trial for head and neck cancer was halted. I will bet you guys a pair of MV's week old skivvies to send George that this class of drugs will be purposely curtailed. I know you're thinking "yeah, drug companies don't like cures" but that won't be it. It will be the FDA or some other authority in government that mires it in red tape or requires reformulation to a less-effective form because we simply cannot have people living longer and burdening the system. It will then go into the arena of the UN, which will actively interfere with distribution because it's anti-population control. I've seen it before. And if you remind me, I'll periodically update you how humanity will be held back from a cure for cancer. It'll take five years, but I dare you.

What is neck and head cancer? What other data do you have? What are you daring Onan and me about?

Edit: Yes, here's the reason it was halted for squamous cell cancer in neck and head...

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After Amgen acquired T-VEC in 2011, they halted the trial due to the "changing therapeutic landscape for patients with SCCHN"â€" presumably the discovery of HPV status as a major prognostic risk factor in SCCHN.[20]


You know what HPV is don't you?

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: Yorkshire pud on July 30, 2014, 02:39:18 AM
What is neck and head cancer? What other data do you have? What are you daring Onan and me about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_and_neck_cancer

Tumors in the head and neck. Basically squamous cell carcinomas in the head and neck, inherently related to squamous cell cancers linked to smoking related lung cancers. etc. And yes, one of the major risk factors for head and neck cancer is the HPV virus from oral sex with a woman. Eating pussy gives you neck cancer. Obviously we need a cure, fast. So, um, why would you worry about advances in HPV research when you're seeing a near 100% pathological response, but also a 100% stability response? Yeah, sure, you can tailor it differently and take a number of years to account for it and maybe make it an even better drug . . . but it really would be a good idea to get it out there ASAP and get everyone stable. Right?

But just watch how many bureaucratic things get in the way of that worldwide. You do not live in a world where someone invents something amazing and innovates the world like 50 years ago, you live in a world where only certain inventions are allowed and everything else gets lost in the politics and regulations. The world is not progressive even when run by people claiming to be progressives.

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 30, 2014, 02:55:40 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_and_neck_cancer

Tumors in the head and neck. Basically squamous cell carcinomas in the head and neck, inherently related to squamous cell cancers linked to smoking related lung cancers. etc. Oddly, one of the major risk factors for head and neck cancer is the HPV virus from oral sex with a woman. Eating pussy gives you neck cancer. Obviously we need a cure, fast. But just watch how many bureaucratic things get in the way of it worldwide. You do not live in a world where someone invents something amazing and innovates like 50 years ago, you live in a world where only certain inventions are allowed and everything else gets lost in the politics. The world is not progressive even when run by people claiming to be progressives.

You've misunderstood. The 'cure' has a prognostic high risk of HPV. In other words you'll have someone taking the cure and passing on HPV to sexual partners (male and female--it's not just oral sex with women only).

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: Yorkshire pud on July 30, 2014, 03:00:21 AM
You've misunderstood. The 'cure' has a prognostic high risk of HPV. In other words you'll have someone taking the cure and passing on HPV to sexual partners (male and female--it's not just oral sex with women only).

HPV is rampant already. You're saying that we shouldn't cure squamous cell-type cancers in favor of preventative spreading of HPV and the rarer risk it carries for cervical cancer (which may well also be curable by these sorts of drugs)? Quit injecting your politics into medicine please. We're talking about the advancement of the human race here. But I guarantee, and will bet on the reality that you will be successful in neutering the cure for cancer.

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 30, 2014, 03:06:39 AM
HPV is rampant already. You're saying that we shouldn't cure squamous cell-type cancers in favor of preventative spreading of HPV and the rarer risk it carries for cervical cancer (which may well also be curable by these sorts of drugs)? Quit injecting your politics into medicine please. We're talking about the advancement of the human race here. But I guarantee, and will bet on the reality that you will be successful in neutering the cure for cancer.

Nothing to do with politics. It's all to do with risk. If you think cervical cancer is a risk worth taking, you have no valid opinion. And how dare you accuse me of wanting to neuter a cure for cancer. I have lost family members because of it and a close friend came out of breast cancer treatment, who really didn't want to die.

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 30, 2014, 03:06:39 AM
Quit injecting your politics into medicine please. We're talking about the advancement of the human race here.
Typical liberal scare tactics, trying to create a problem where one doesn't exist, just to drive up the cost of health care so only the elite will have access to it.

Is it settled medicine? What are the confidence levels from the studies and clinical tests?  I remain skeptical of your claims, as they are not backed up by solid data or biblical references. 

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: Yorkshire pud on July 30, 2014, 03:47:29 AM
Nothing to do with politics. It's all to do with risk. If you think cervical cancer is a risk worth taking, you have no valid opinion. And how dare you accuse me of wanting to neuter a cure for cancer. I have lost family members because of it and a close friend came out of breast cancer treatment, who really didn't want to die.

Pud, this is a cancer treatment drug for end stage cancers not a new nasal spray. These people are going to die. I don't think they'll be too worried about an elevated risk of cervical cancer that may or may not show up 20 years later when without the drug they will die in two months from the squamous cell carcinoma in their lung. You're trying to burn the village in order to save it.

Jesus, I can see it now:

"I'm sorry that you're dying of lung cancer Mrs. Nusbaum. We have a cure, but we can't give it to you because it might give you cervical cancer in 20 years. It's probably best that you die now from a neutral cancer instead of a sexist one. Cheerio! Thank you for being a patron of the NHS."

But, yes, your thinking is like the establishment that will kill this. We're actually lucky that radiation oncology was ever allowed to get off the ground, it happened early enough to slip through. But, radiation also carries significant cancer risk and while it may shrink a tumor and put it into remission, the effects of the radiation itself can cause cancer again later. It's a small risk, but it's a risk none the less.

As far as politics, feminist liberal men are typically overly sensitive on the matter of female cancers. It's sort of like the liberals and HIV, HIV research was funded at levels of hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient, whereas heart disease (which can affect anyone) received less than $2000 per patient. The gender and sexuality specific diseases get priority, whereas the general diseases that anyone can get are neglected. I guess you want to make nature fair or whatever. But it also leads to logic flaws like the above. You would rather have someone die early from head and neck cancer than have them live a few more decades with a risk of developing cervical cancer (which is more treatable).

*shrugs* I don't get it. But I have little doubt some lawyers somewhere will and they'll kill it.

onan

I'm always a little put off with the position that more money is spent on HIV than, take your pick.

Although, I understand the concern.

But the money spent on HIV not only gave us treatment for that disease, but for many other viruses as well. Sort of like the money spent on getting us to the moon. We are a lot farther down the road with the likes of ebola due to the research on HIV. Also many new treatments for heart disease, cancer, diseases of the bone, and not to exclude immunotherapies and thus organ transplants. HIV may be a disease that has social stigma, but make no mistake all that research did a heck of a lot of good in other areas.

The General

Quote from: RealCool Daddio on July 29, 2014, 10:22:31 PM
This smacks of science.  Is it settled?  What do conservative think tanks and media outlets have to say about this?  Was anyone from East Anglia involved?  How can we trust your science, when you ask us to be "skeptical"?

Further more, what evidence is there that oil spills are bad for the environment?  Isn't it just carbon?  Aren't we all carbon based life forms?  It is shocking to me that you would endorse spending public funds on what is clearly a liberal based scheme to solve a problem that doesn't exist. 

Are you a commie, or a homosexual, or both?

Hey you do a pretty good imitation of me. 
I don't know if it's intentional, but still, I'm flattered. 
Buy yourself a Canadian beer and send me the bill.

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: onan on July 30, 2014, 08:53:22 PM
I'm always a little put off with the position that more money is spent on HIV than, take your pick.

Although, I understand the concern.

But the money spent on HIV not only gave us treatment for that disease, but for many other viruses as well. Sort of like the money spent on getting us to the moon. We are a lot farther down the road with the likes of ebola due to the research on HIV. Also many new treatments for heart disease, cancer, diseases of the bone, and not to exclude immunotherapies and thus organ transplants. HIV may be a disease that has social stigma, but make no mistake all that research did a heck of a lot of good in other areas.

Oh I don't have a problem with spending money on it, I'm all for curing AIDS just as much as I am for curing any disease, and, yes, you're right medical research does often yield results outside of the specifics of a single disease. I was just pointing out how politics, political correctness and social whim nefariously sneak into places they shouldn't. The research was so well-funded because it was so widely (and now wrongly) associated with homosexuality. And its ended up rather ugly; the western gay side of HIV still gets huge attention and funding, yet the African side of it gets relatively little attention.

Yorkshire pud

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on July 30, 2014, 11:30:07 PM
Oh I don't have a problem with spending money on it, I'm all for curing AIDS just as much as I am for curing any disease, and, yes, you're right medical research does often yield results outside of the specifics of a single disease. I was just pointing out how politics, political correctness and social whim nefariously sneak into places they shouldn't. The research was so well-funded because it was so widely (and now wrongly) associated with homosexuality. And its ended up rather ugly; the western gay side of HIV still gets huge attention and funding, yet the African side of it gets relatively little attention.

Wrong again. There's extensive work in Europe towards the African aspect. One of the main reasons (If not the main reason) it's stymied has nothing to do with investment from abroad, but the backward attitude of certain African leaders and superstition. The funding is there, the will to allow it to make a difference isn't.

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: Yorkshire pud on July 31, 2014, 12:46:00 AM
Wrong again. There's extensive work in Europe towards the African aspect. One of the main reasons (If not the main reason) it's stymied has nothing to do with investment from abroad, but the backward attitude of certain African leaders and superstition. The funding is there, the will to allow it to make a difference isn't.

It's more than that Pud; they don't trust Europe. My experience with Africans has been one of major distrust of Europe leftover from colonial days, but also the primitive attitudes and lack of education. But given the scope of the problem with AIDS in Africa, your funding isn't that high, and other than George W. Bush's funding from years ago, there's very little from here lately. They trust us Americans (one of the few people that do), but we don't care.

AIDS in Africa is a problem that's going to cost billions to fix. The EU allocates 22 million, then 126 million euros, etc. Those are your numbers. George W. Bush allocated 15 BILLION through PEPFAR. It wasn't enough. You're just not in the ballpark.


Hmmm... where does nearly all our electricity come from?


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