Climate change

[Juan]

The climate thing was a bit of a sneaky uppity thing as I seem to remember. It began as I remember with Al Gore;

You don't have enough history.  Earth Day began in 1969 and heat pollution/thermal pollution, as it was called then, was a big part.  The activists wanted to shut down nuke plants, electric plants, etc. just as they do now and making the same arguments.  I remember well my Ecology and Evolution professor telling us that only a dictatorship could save the earth.  That was a common position among people we would call greens now.

[Unquenchable Angst]

Climate change is the biggest political football ever.

Changing your light bulbs to CFLs isn't going to do squat when China builds a new coal fired plant each week.
Taxing your airline ticket (for carbon offset) isn't going to change a thing.   

This is all about power and money.

Exactly, all about empowering the elite to steal everything from everyone. Advance fear in the meantime the elite buy out and or kill off people that are trying to solve energy problems and the elite whole paradigm is to control energy and not  release their control of energy and or their control of everyone. The planet will warm or cool no matter what. It is all up to living near the Sun. Face it shit happens  and has happened many times even before man was here. All these climate studies were done with weather station instruments that were in cities or close to cities or at airports. kinda slanting the warming thing. Follow the money.
Plant a tree specially native to your area or nut trees ,something you can or the critters can use. .
F..K 'em all, work to get yourselves out of debt, into self sufficiency......

[West of the Rockies]

Uh-- WestOf, you know that for you, I have nothing but posting love.  But this is something I always wonder about with your perpetual tone of "both/all sides do it and are totally equal."  In your example of the plane spotting: do you allow for the possibility than any observer(s) could actually be objectively correct and the remainder objectively incorrect?
I mean, just checking:  because (and maybe this is just me thinking too much) you even made it seem like "there is no correct answer" --as if trying to avoid judgment of and offense to even imaginary persons-- with your not providing an initial "factual" description of the plane the observers saw.

Oh, hell, yeah!  There is an objectively correct answer.  I DO think we all see things through our filters, of course, but I also believe there is an objective truth, too.  Sometimes, the answer is a bit muddy, but with effort and honesty, we can usually find an answer. 

Now, for something like a solution to global warming, I don't know that there is a crystal-clear path forward.  The U.S. and other developed countries can cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, but if China and India do nothing, will we have accomplished any useful good?  Will it really do us an wonderful good to eliminate certain kinds of lightbulbs if we continue to allow battalions of leaf blowers, Humvees, coal plants, and such to keep doing business as usual? 

There are very clean energy alternatives, but with them come certain drawbacks, too.  Okay, so some migratory fowl will be killed by giant wind turbines.  Are we talking about possible exctinction of a species or just a loud of feathery gore?  What would the cost of extinction be?  What would the cost of status quo pollution production be? 

Some people dump on Obama for taking his time and seeking other opinions when making decisions.  To me, that is the hallmark of intelligence.

[Ben Shockley]

...I remember well my Ecology and Evolution professor telling us that only a dictatorship could save the earth.  That was a common position among people we would call greens now.

And presumably he/she was referring to a political-legal-bureaucratic "dictatorship" -- a.k.a. the "one-world government," enacting law for (by definition) planet-saving purposes.
On the other hand, someone somewhere is apparently arguing (successfully) that only an industrial-economic-political "dictatorship" --a.k.a. "global corporatist capitalism"-- can well and truly rape this filthy bitch of a planet like she needs raping.

Which is scarier?

[Yorkshire pud]

You don't have enough history.  Earth Day began in 1969 and heat pollution/thermal pollution, as it was called then, was a big part.  The activists wanted to shut down nuke plants, electric plants, etc. just as they do now and making the same arguments.  I remember well my Ecology and Evolution professor telling us that only a dictatorship could save the earth.  That was a common position among people we would call greens now.

Well maybe it's what is needed? We have 7.5 Billion humans on this round marble flying through space, and sooner or later they'll kill it. Maybe it does need a dictatorship to say exactly what is wanted? Clearly there is the prospect of it happening being zero; not least of all because the biggest producer (China) isn't stopping anytime soon. I'm a dad; I don't want my son looking back and asking why the fuck his father;s generation did jack to stop his planet dying.

[Juan]

Which is scarier?

What's the difference who does the raping?

[Yorkshire pud]

What's the difference who does the raping?

Well no. One (The second option) does the raping; The first puts the brakes on us killing the planet.

[Juan]

Well no. One (The second option) does the raping; The first puts the brakes on us killing the planet.

So the first rapes us while the second rapes the planet.

You (generic) need to realize that neither governments nor corporations do anything.  It's the controlling people who run each, and its the same people in each.

[Ben Shockley]

I don't want my son looking back and asking why the fuck his father;s generation did jack to stop his planet dying.

Well, if he does, just tell him: the Americans were in the global driver's seat and they BLEW IT!

See, the Repubs got miffed when for 4 years a certifiable dolt named Dan Quayle, who had been named as Vice-President by George H.W. Bush (in a brilliant piece of anti-assassination self-defense), was rightfully ridiculed every time he opened his clueless trap.
So, in a lust for revenge, Limbaugh et al decided that the succeeding VP, Al Gore, had to be equally excoriated with or without cause.  He was; and the rightist authoritarian drones heeded the signal.  Anything Gore was associated with was lambasted in hopes of dealing measure-for-measure how the Repubs' little Fair-Haired "I'm Like Jack Kennedy" Dolt had been ridiculed for 4 years.  The besmirching of anything Gore-ish extended to his pet subjects, including activism toward climate change.
Of course, never being keen on "nuance," the rightie rank-and-file continued the Pavlovian Gore-bashing after he was out of office.  Duly conditioned, they kept answering appeals to address climate change with well-reasoned choruses of "Haw, haw! Al Gore is fat!"  And their symbiont Republican "representatives" in the U.S. government --themselves whores for energy-extractive capitalism-- were saved the effort of having to address "climate change" because they could always point to their constituents, throw up their hands in helplessness, and say "my people won't support it," then promptly go on TV or radio and meticulously lay out false cases for why people shouldn't support it.
And the rightie rank-and-file could go to bed each night secure in the knowledge that that smarty-pants Al Gore would never by god take away their SUV!

Then of course, there were the religious nuts, who believed that "climate change" couldn't be real because it wasn't described in the Old Testament, and in any case, 1) man was powerless to alter God's creation, -BUT- 2) man should hasten to destroy the planet as fast as possible in order to bring Jesus back so he could be the True Believers' elevator operator to Heaven, said planet destruction being thus the duty and the sign of a "True Believer."

There were others who contributed to the death of the planet, but I've named the 2 most-culpable bunches of American idiots, and anyway, I doubt if you or Pud Jr. will be able to breathe well enough to even get this far into the explanation.

[Ben Shockley]

So the first rapes us while the second rapes the planet.

Why, of course!  See folks, Juan lays it out for us!
There is no way that humans can exist without destroying the planet.  Just can't be done.  Any effort to bring human activity in line with "sustainability" will of necessity and probably in short order lead to concentration (or death-) camps, or --gasp-- even worse, Americans having to make some kind of sacrifice in regard to material consumption.  Planetary death before any form of humility, baby!

Remember, Pud -- we were writing about WW2 a few days ago.  The Americans of today could never win --hell, would never get involved in-- that war, as it was conducted back then.  We could never field the military we did back then.  Corpulent comfortable types like Juan would refuse to make any sacrifice and would destroy any government that asked them to.

[RealCool Daddio]

I swear that the regular posters here on these god-forsaken political threads could all be standing on the street together watching a plane fly by.  When asked to report what we saw, three of us would say a single-engine jet.  Three would say it was a twin-engine prop plane.  One would insist it was a glider.  Another would say he saw nothing.  If we could then review the digitally-recorded evidence of the flyby, no one would change their views.  Someone would argue the recording had been tampered with while another would insist it showed a different plane in a different location.

Has anyone here ever really and truly changed your views based on something you read here?

You forgot the members who would say "whatever Fox News tells me it was".

[Sambo]

Ok fuck climate change or whatever name you want to give it? How about we focus on water and air quality?

Any of you tossing your batteries in to the regular garbage is dumb.

[PB the Deplorable]

You don't have enough history.  Earth Day began in 1969 and heat pollution/thermal pollution, as it was called then, was a big part.  The activists wanted to shut down nuke plants, electric plants, etc. just as they do now and making the same arguments.  I remember well my Ecology and Evolution professor telling us that only a dictatorship could save the earth.  That was a common position among people we would call greens now.

Except then they were insisting the 'Settled Science' was global cooling - the coming man-made Ice Age

This is all about shutting down industry

[RealCool Daddio]

Except then they were insisting the 'Settled Science' was global cooling - the coming man-made Ice Age

This is all about shutting down industry

Right, cause all scientists dream of a world without industry.  Buy a clue.

[Ben Shockley]

This is all about shutting down industry

Right, cause all scientists dream of a world without industry.  Buy a clue.

Exactly.  You have to wonder if any of these righties think beyond the bumper-sticker ideas (obvious answer: no).  What is the supposed conspiracy to "shut down industry" meant for?  How and why are all these people in on it?  What can the paranoid righties offer for a rationale, other than "You know, man-- fucking Al Gore!" as they shake their head, Bogart their cig, and walk away cussing sotto voce.
When poor ol' Al and George Soros are dead, who will these freaks point to to explain anything they can't understand or don't like?  Easy answer: whoever Limbaugh's by-then successor discovers and tells them to blame.  The poor dumb bastards just can't see how they are carrying the water for people who wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.
Or as I'm frankly becoming more and more convinced, they may see it but are so filled with nihilistic hate and resentment that they don't care: let the country go to hell and the planet die, just so long as they (the nihilistic righties) don't have to admit that the people who for the past 50 years have promoted not only environmentalism, but also change in the arenas that the righties really care about have been right.

[Sambo]

 filled with nihilistic hate and resentment

That's one part of it. I think the other has something to do with a feeble attempt to not feel helpless when it comes to perceived intangibles

[Ben Shockley]

something to do with a feeble attempt to not feel helpless when it comes to perceived intangibles

In other words, avoidance?
I may find that the least "satisfactory" answer of the ones we have here.

If they truly believe what the capitalists are filling them with --that's ignorance, so inaction is understandable if they truly don't know or believe that anything significant is happening.  Totally "rational" in a cost v. benefit sense in that they see no chance of loss of valued resources.

If they know but actively repress concern so that they will not have to believe that their actions are influenced by people they resent for other reasons --that's preservation of self-worth, thus self-defense of a sort, and also understandable.  "Rational" (cost v. benefit) in that while they gain nothing, they also lose nothing highly-valued (i.e., self-esteem/worth) in the process.  This behavior is most likely among people who are low in material and power resources, and/or who place a disproportionate value on prestige resources.  In fact, benefit may be positive, and the behavior more self-rewarding, if these people perceive a prestige boost from the larger society's recognizing them as holdouts against resented (scientific) orthodoxy.

A similar scenario to that but which I didn't address above is the truly "nihilistic" part of what I am terming "vengeful nihilism" as a constellation of attitudes and behaviors.  In this, some have bought into an apocalyptic vision where they see their lives as hopeless and they want to see the whole joint burn down so that, at least, all the people they resent will be brought down too.  That too seems like de facto preservation of relative self-worth, via the negation of "superiors'" worth (assumed to be based more in wealth and power), and is also "self-defense" of a sort.  This actually seems the most-"rational" denialist behavior in that they lose nothing AND perceive a guaranteed gain relative to others who do lose material, power, and prestige.
So far, all seem "rational," bizarre as they may also seem.

But what do they gain by pure avoidance?  By definition, they know a problem is coming, but choose to do nothing.  The problem will still happen, but they gain nothing when it does.  At best, it's "rational" (cost v. benefit) in the short term, in that, as they suppress the impulse to do anything, they expend no material resources, but they also ultimately lose -- and implicitly know that they will-- for a net "wash" (at best, and maybe a horrendous loss, depending on how serious they subconsciously believe the problem to be).

[Sambo]

Populism works great when you've been on the ground and taking licks for generations.

I don't know what to say right now. I'm tired.

Another psych 101 that comes to mind is Escalation of Commitment

[PB the Deplorable]

Right, cause all scientists dream of a world without industry.  Buy a clue.

Well, again, whether you want to believe it or not these scientists aren't analyzing the data and producing the results, East Anglia is.  They then believe the 'results' that originate with the fraudsters at East Anglia, just as you do.  And why not - it's what all the cool kids are doing.

The real powers behind this then come up with their 'solutions' which - surprise surprise - turn out to be the same old attacks on the West.

How many lies, errors, dramatically missed predictions and white paper 'typos' do we need to catch these people in before we don't automatically believe the next pile they shove our way?

[Sambo]

Sorry that science and critical thinking tends to favor the left. It has sort of always been a part of its vocabulary. That is until lobbying and marketing became a big profit boon.

You really think the Earth will thrive with acidic oxygen depleted oceans full of plastic particulate, and with desert wastelands to live on?

Wake up. Why are you defending entities that don't give a rats ass about your existence?

[Ben Shockley]

One more type of "rational" denialist-- the paid shill.   Just came to me for some reason; go figure~~

They may be profoundly ignorant people who figure any short-term benefit is a great deal since nothing is going to happen anyway (same as the "plain ignorant" I described above, except these figure they can make a buck, or something, off all the hoopla they don't understand).
Or they may be people with low resources now, who figure any benefit in the short term is better than their long-term prospects with or without a global catastrophe (same as the nihilists I described above, except that they aren't necessarily looking for anyone else's downfall).
Or they may be plain sociopaths, who also work for short-term gain regardless of social cost, but not out of desperation born of low social resources.  Right-wing denialist media figures would seem to fit in this category.

[Ben Shockley]

Wake up. Why are you defending entities that don't give a rats ass about your existence?

Sambo, you already cited my best short-form answer: filled with nihilistic hate and resentment that overpower mundane interests like survival.
For instance, don't you sense something personal in the way P*Boy attacks them goddamn smarty-pants crooked scientists?

[PB the Deplorable]

Sorry that science and critical thinking tends to favor the left. It has sort of always been a part of its vocabulary. That is until lobbying and marketing became a big profit boon.

You really think the Earth will thrive with acidic oxygen depleted oceans full of plastic particulate, and with desert wastelands to live on?

Wake up. Why are you defending entities that don't give a rats ass about your existence?

No one is arguing about pollution.  There are plenty of serious issues that we should be addressing, including the plastic 'islands' in the oceans, deforestation, loss of habitat, groundwater pollution, coral reefs, overpopulation, oil spills, extinctions, and plenty more.

This thread is specifically about Man Made Global Warming.   

[Sambo]

I don't know why this needs to be dabated then. It's a very disingenuous way to feel important. You must know full well that whenever the issue is taking center stage other real issues are not. 

[Yorkshire pud]

The real powers behind this then come up with their 'solutions' which - surprise surprise - turn out to be the same old attacks on the West.

The USA has 4.5% of the worlds population yet produces 25% of the CO2 fossil fuel pollution. Incredibly (and it surprised me), that's more than China, India and Japan combined..Although Japan I think is mainly dependent on non fossil fuel energy generation. 

That is the raw statistic; Now you can take the view that you don't give a shit, and have a "I'm alright Jack, I'm an American and I have an absolute right to do what the fuck I like irrespective on how it affects anyone else, fuck em".

You might think the figures are made up to bring down Western (Read: USA) civilisation, but those are the facts. They might, but it will be the cause of the statistics that do, not the figures themselves.

Or; You might take a step back and take stock. And realise you're merely a custodian. The planet (or indeed America) doesn't belong to you. It's a land mass. It could just as easily have not been English speaking, it could have been Portuguese or Spanish or even Polynesian. We borrow this planet. That's all. You can say you pay your taxes, you can say you work hard to pay those taxes, and that in some way gives you 'ownership' of the country. It doesn't. It just gives you ownership of the now. When you and I are long gone, this planet will still be going around the Sun, how it will be is another matter. Do you want to chance it?

Do you really want to take the risk and assume (And we all know what assumption can lead to) it'll all be okay, or do we take a long hard look and take on board what is happening and shouldn't be happening if we wish to have a supportive planet for our kids and their kids?

[PB the Deplorable]

The USA has 4.5% of the worlds population yet produces 25% of the CO2 fossil fuel pollution. Incredibly (and it surprised me), that's more than China, India and Japan combined..Although Japan I think is mainly dependent on non fossil fuel energy generation. 

That is the raw statistic; Now you can take the view that you don't give a shit, and have a "I'm alright Jack, I'm an American and I have an absolute right to...

It's true we are self indulgent in many ways, but I'm not sure we use more energy - as individuals - than the rest of the West does, unless it's because we are a much larger country and people tend to commute further.


Anyway, here are a few more facts:

Farming and food production use an enormous amount of energy.  Not to mention transportation.  The US feeds much of the world.

The US also creates a considerable amount of the manufactured goods in certain categories that the world uses, we develop new medicines, computing and communications.  It all takes energy.


In China 4/5ths of the people are poor farmworkers working mostly by hand.  Using shit for fertilizer.  It's true they aren't using a lot of fossil fuels.  Same with much of India, Africa, Latin America, the rest of Asia - are you suggesting this for the rest of us?

[PB the Deplorable]

The USA has 4.5% ...

By the way, I wonder how much Al Gore's massive carbon footprint skews the stats...

When I hear about 'man made' global warming, I can't help but wonder if choosing sad sack Al Gore as their front man is a signal they aren't serious.  A serious movement would publicly ostracize him and use him as a symbol of everything that's wrong, including the hypocrisy.

[Yorkshire pud]

In China 4/5ths of the people are poor farmworkers working mostly by hand.  Using shit for fertilizer.  It's true they aren't using a lot of fossil fuels.  Same with much of India, Africa, Latin America, the rest of Asia - are you suggesting this for the rest of us?

PB, I'm not having a go at the USA, we're all in this. Cows produce 14% of methane production..Again something I wasn't aware of. There are no easy answers, and each one throws up even more questions and problems to overcome. Something has to give though. I agree unless China and India also wise up and see they're part of the problem nothing will be solved. But I do see how after decades of not having anything, they're now going to grasp it with both hands..pretty much where most of Europe and the USA were fifty years ago-perhaps much more. If you can get it over there, I highly recommend you try and watch Top Gears trip to China. It is frankly staggering the progress they've made in the last five years, sure most of it is copied from us, but they don't let niceties such as copyright spoil their parade.

We (all of us) need to think smart. We need to realise we're the problem and we'll make it worse if we don't pull together on this. Not as 7 billion individual running around like headless chickens, but for the goal of leaving this planet in a good shape.

[SciFiAuthor]

I love it. The world is so beyond brainwashed. Less is better. Yes, lets cut back civilization. Won't that be nice. No, it will result in a lower standard of living and ultimately the complete erasure of an entire generation of progress all over a claim that does not currently appear to be following the projected models put forth just a few years ago.

Cutting consumerism = cutting the economy.
Cutting consumption = cutting the economy.
Cutting the economy = You poorer, and the third world starving.

Of course it's wrapped up in nicer words like "green" and "more environmentally friendly" but such things must have mechanisms in order to work, and those mechanisms aren't pretty.

Do we have a climate model that projects backwards and forwards precisely the effect of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions into the earth's atmosphere? Nope, nothing close. Seems a shit basis to make everyone accept to be poorer to me. Come back with proven science in two or three decades, and then we can fix it. 

[Yorkshire pud]

Come back with proven science in two or three decades, and then we can fix it.

What if it's too late then? Three decades from now I'm likely to be dead so won't make much difference to me personally.