Climate Change

[Atlanticmike]

Really?

Possibly, I guess you would have to call Sally Struthers to find out. Do you have her number or do you want me to give it to you?

Chap: "Atlanticmike just says a lot of crap about people without being able or willing to back it up."

Poster: "Really?"

Chap: "Possibly, I guess you would have to call Atlanticmike to find out. Do you have his number or do you want me to give it to you?"

Hey dumb dumb!! Did you read the opening post? ""Are republicans still doing their best to deny climate change?"" This thread was not started so we could have a meaningful debate about climate change. Look! You guys are in a fxxxing cult. You have been TAUGHT by your prophets to see every subject either correct because it's "liberal leaning, or incorrect because it's "conservative". You're brainwashed!! For fxxx sake, you might as well become an Orthodox Mormon again because you're still letting certain people tell you what to believe.

Here's the truth and there's a 100% chance your brain won't let you consider what I'm about to say as truth because you're too far gone, you're beyond help. Ready!! In about 50 years, the human race will come to realize that global warming is a positive, not a negative. Again!! Pollution bad, global warming good! Again! Pollution bad, global warming good!

I'm more of an environmentalist than anyone on this board. I raise my own meat. Hunt for meat. Fish for meat. I don't like any fast food joints and never go to them except to go in to steal condiments like ketchup mustard or relish. When I buy a vehicle I drive it til it can't move anymore. I rebuild engines and transmissions in my vehicles so I can get another 100,000 miles out of them. All the lights, TV's, computers run off solar in my house. And much more!!

What do you do to help Mother Earth? Do you support the meat industry by eating fast food? You ever raised and harvested your own meat? Do you trade in your vehicle and by a new one while it still has plenty of life in it? If so! You're part of the problem ding-a-ling! Do you realize how many factories it takes to build the 1000s of parts on a vehicle? Do you spray weed killer on your lawn? Come on man! Instead of Googling articles from the Progressive Bible, tell me what you actually do to help Mother Earth.

And lastly! If you're one of those men that wake up and can't see your penis because you're overweight, guess what, you're part of the problem because you consume to much. If you drive a new car and don't drive it till it can't move, you're part of the problem. If you go through drive-thrus to eat on a weekly basis, you're part of the problem because you're supporting the meat industry instead of raising your own meat. So to anyone who has supplied "information" from the Google Bible on this thread, if you aren't doing your part to help Mother Earth, take your articles and "proof" and shove it up your ass!

[Chap]

Do you support the meat industry by eating fast food? You ever raised and harvested your own meat?

I don't actually eat a lot of meat.

Do you trade in your vehicle and by a new one while it still has plenty of life in it? If so! You're part of the problem ding-a-ling! Do you realize how many factories it takes to build the 1000s of parts on a vehicle?

My rather small car dates from over twenty years back. Thanks to good maintenance and low mileage (I bicycle and use public transport a lot) it will be good for a few years until I go all electric. I expect that vehicle will last as long as I need one, and then others can drive it. I am looking forward to driving something that needs hardly any maintenance at all - as a taxi driver pointed out to me yesterday, almost all the time when he uses the brake pedal on his all electric vehicle, the motor just functions as a generator to push energy back into the battery - the brake pads are only for emergencies, so there is hardly any wear there. And so on.

Do you spray weed killer on your lawn?

Nope.

Here's the truth and there's a 100% chance your brain won't let you consider what I'm about to say as truth because you're too far gone, you're beyond help. Ready!! In about 50 years, the human race will come to realize that global warming is a positive, not a negative.

I have a science degree from a world-leading university, and I have instant online free access to a number of major scientific publications - would you kindly refer me to a few recent peer-reviewed publications that support your point of view that "global warming is a positive, not a negative"?

By the way, how long will it take before ice caps stop melting and start refreezing so that sea levels stop rising and start falling again, and Pacific island nations and low-lying countries like Bangladesh can stop worrying about being washed away? They need that to happen pretty soon ...

[Chap]

a list of A-Mike's contributions to the climate change discussion:

- boasts of burning a lot of wood to pollute the air in order to "offend progressives"
- climate change is a religion led by a young woman with aspergers who had a few viral posts a while back
- climate change is a religion led by rich people who use lots of energy
- climate change is a religion because chemistry is hard to understand
- finally: a scientific argument. Trees need C02. Therefore we should flood the earth with C02
- a liberal thirty years ago said on TV that eating more than the enough means starvation in Africa

On the other hand, Chap, Physic's Guy, Gunner and even poor Panny have presented loads of scientific considerations.

According to A-Mike, this place is a progressive echo chamber that required his disruption in order to improve the quality of thought. While group-think is certainly a possibility we should bear in mind any time agreement is easily found, I'm not sure A-Mike has lived up to his promises as a disrupter.

I also have to wonder if perhaps A-Mike is the one with the indoctrination problem as he doesn't seem to know much about the subject, nor does he believe one can know about the subject because it's complicated. God is the one to blame for making our planet complicated, not the scientists trying to understand it.

Yes to this - especially the bolded part.

[Gunnar]

a list of A-Mike's contributions to the climate change discussion:

- boasts of burning a lot of wood to pollute the air in order to "offend progressives"
- climate change is a religion led by a young woman with aspergers who had a few viral posts a while back
- climate change is a religion led by rich people who use lots of energy
- climate change is a religion because chemistry is hard to understand
- finally: a scientific argument. Trees need C02. Therefore we should flood the earth with C02
- a liberal thirty years ago said on TV that eating more than the enough means starvation in Africa

On the other hand, Chap, Physic's Guy, Gunner and even poor Panny have presented loads of scientific considerations.

According to A-Mike, this place is a progressive echo chamber that required his disruption in order to improve the quality of thought. While group-think is certainly a possibility we should bear in mind any time agreement is easily found, I'm not sure A-Mike has lived up to his promises as a disrupter.

I also have to wonder if perhaps A-Mike is the one with the indoctrination problem as he doesn't seem to know much about the subject, nor does he believe one can know about the subject because it's complicated. God is the one to blame for making our planet complicated, not the scientists trying to understand it.

Yes to this - especially the bolded part.

Yes. It's like I said before. He simply can't fathom the possibility that anyone who disagrees with him on this, however well educated, might know more about it than he does.

[Gadianton]

Please show me where A-Mike tried to disagree with any of the science Chap presented.

He's allowed to disagree; I personally allow it. However, he refuses to. Instead, he brings up all kinds of social-media circulating politics that's barely related.

A-Mike is into health and nutrition and certainly must acknowledge that there are some core truths to nutritional science even though understanding the details at a biochemical level is absurdly complicated. The world of nutrition is filled with scams, mal-incentives, and its also very possible that a leading nutritional scientist out there ate at McDonalds all the time. It's also true that the public school system scares kids about fast food and cancer risks just like they do about global warming. Big government's four food groups oversold the value bread to support the American grain industry. Somewhere out there, a rich person who promotes nutrition is a hypocrite. None of that means that there is no such thing as cancer or that there is no science to nutrition and you can eat whatever you want just like you can burn whatever you want in whatever quantities you want.

Politics might be in everything, but everything isn't politics. A-Mike on most topics seems to believe that everything can be figured out by political memes.

[Gunnar]

Carl Sagan Predicted The Mess 2021 Would Be 25 years Ago

Astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan managed to predict a lot of the things the challenges America faces in the year 2021 all the way back in 1995 when he was writing a book published just before his death in 1996. MSNBC's Brian Williams shares the details.

[ceeboo]

Good morning, Gad

Politics might be in everything, but everything isn't politics.

While I understand your point here, I think you may be missing a rather important ingredient to said point. That missing ingredient being human beings. Just like livers, or eyes, or feet, human beings have political ideologies and these ideologies are a part of who we are. These ideologies, many times, is what prevents serious discussion, sincere engagement, problem solving, rational agreements, and potential solutions from ever getting past the tremendous amounts of toxic rhetoric and intentional road blocks that clearly exist - and they clearly exists because of politics. This is the result, no doubt about it, when every challenging and complex topic is brought to the table (gun control, border, abortion, heath care, immigration, climate change, taxes, etc.) When one of these kinds of topics are brought to the table, it is extremely rare and exceedingly difficult for any of us to take off our political masks/armor and actually discuss what is before us. Rather, it is quite easy and way too common to simply weaponize these things and use them to beat others over the head - under the perceived protection and comfort of being "a good person" and perhaps much more important, not a "wicked" person.

This very thread - Including the OP - is just another example of this.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

[Chap]

These ideologies, many times, is what prevents serious discussion, sincere engagement, problem solving, rational agreements, and potential solutions from ever getting past the tremendous amounts of toxic rhetoric and intentional road blocks that clearly exist - and they clearly exists because of politics. This is the result, no doubt about it, when every challenging and complex topic is brought to the table (gun control, border, abortion, heath care, immigration, climate change, taxes, etc.) When one of these kinds of topics are brought to the table, it is extremely rare and exceedingly difficult for any of us to take off our political masks/armor and actually discuss what is before us.

Your post is clearly well-intentioned, but I must question the apparent implication that here and now, in late 2021, opposing positions on issues of climate change are yet another example of equally valid ideologies that just need to talk respectfully to one another and all will be well. That is simply no longer the case, if it ever was. The kind of discussion that sone of us are having with (say) Atlantickmike is like a discussion on truck engine function and efficiency between people who have taken the trouble to find out how truck engines actually work and need to be maintained, and someone who has just seen some trucks driving past on the road and has developed strong opinions not based on hard facts. Moreover, thinking about global heating is not simply split on political/ideological lines - there are plenty of people with conservative political beliefs, and strong religious beliefs, who have come to accept, on the basis of overwhelming scientific evidence, that global heating is real, and is very largely caused by human activity releasing large amounts of CO2 from fossil fuels into the atmosphere.

In such a case, disagreement between the two sides is far from being a question of "He says, she says, how you gonna decide?".

I do agree however that simple abuse is not a useful contribution to any discussion of such an issue. In this connection, I would offer this as a (slightly shortened) specimen of such abuse, addressed to myself by Atlanticmike upthread:

Hey dumb dumb!! Did you read the opening post? ""Are republicans still doing their best to deny climate change?"" This thread was not started so we could have a meaningful debate about climate change. Look! You guys are in a fxxxing cult. You have been TAUGHT by your prophets to see every subject either correct because it's "liberal leaning, or incorrect because it's "conservative". You're brainwashed!! For fxxx sake, you might as well become an Orthodox Mormon again because you're still letting certain people tell you what to believe.

Here's the truth and there's a 100% chance your brain won't let you consider what I'm about to say as truth because you're too far gone, you're beyond help. Ready!! In about 50 years, the human race will come to realize that global warming is a positive, not a negative. Again!! Pollution bad, global warming good! Again! Pollution bad, global warming good!

[...]

And lastly! If you're one of those men that wake up and can't see your penis because you're overweight, guess what, you're part of the problem because you consume to much. If you drive a new car and don't drive it till it can't move, you're part of the problem. If you go through drive-thrus to eat on a weekly basis, you're part of the problem because you're supporting the meat industry instead of raising your own meat. So to anyone who has supplied "information" from the Google Bible on this thread, if you aren't doing your part to help Mother Earth, take your articles and "proof" and shove it up your ass!

This kind of stuff does not typically come from those who follow the huge scientific consensus that global heating is man made, is already having disastrous consequences for humanity, and will have much worse consequences as time passes. So please address your rebukes to those who need them, not to those who mostly stick to simple reason and evidence.

[Chap]

Carl Sagan Predicted The Mess 2021 Would Be 25 years Ago

Astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan managed to predict a lot of the things the challenges America faces in the year 2021 all the way back in 1995 when he was writing a book published just before his death in 1996. MSNBC's Brian Williams shares the details.

This quote from Sagan's The Demon-haunted World in that clip nails it - and not just for America:

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

Didn't Trump say 'I love the poorly educated'?

[ceeboo]

This conversation is a gem. It starts out with some generic and non-substantive maligning of Republicans

So far you are spot on.

and now we have Chap whining about people just not believing like Moksha and how that is so wrong while pretending that this was a conversation about climate change.

Still doing great!

..... because... feelings and self-righteousness.

Precisely!

Beautiful.

And an encore to boot!