Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[unclevlad]

4 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

A doomer reminder

 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/15/us/us-sea-level-rise-report-noaa-climate/index.html

 

The nay-sayers will downplay it, saying they change their projections every week.

So, while some things may be done, they'll be half-hearted at best, and nowhere near enough.

[TrickstaPriest]

14 hours ago, unclevlad said:

 

The nay-sayers will downplay it, saying they change their projections every week.

So, while some things may be done, they'll be half-hearted at best, and nowhere near enough.

 

Yep.  Nowhere near enough.

 

To be clear, global warming is a physics problem.  We about as certain of it as we are that a person thrown out of an airplane will fall.  We can argue about exactly what the person will land on - a bathtub, a bed, concrete, a car, a pool, but we are pretty sure about a few things - impact, whereish, the fact that they fall at all.

[Simon]

One of the more sobering pieces I've seen was a climate scientist being interviewed some months back, saying that it's not a matter of _if_ Florida will be lost, it's a matter of how quickly -- how much warning/time we'll have to move the population of an entire state.

[TrickstaPriest]

10 minutes ago, Simon said:

One of the more sobering pieces I've seen was a climate scientist being interviewed some months back, saying that it's not a matter of _if_ Florida will be lost, it's a matter of how quickly -- how much warning/time we'll have to move the population of an entire state.

 

Yeah.  We are literally going to have inter-state refugees.  That's beyond drought and floods, which will destroy food/farmland (Australia had both mudslides destroying so much farmland that they lost almost a million cows and then those terrible fires right after, both just a half a year of each other).  And of course, keep in mind sea level rise occurs because of the loss of ice - our most reflective/white surface of sunlight that our planet-tilt creates.  It also increases the ocean surface area, which is almost black from space.  This makes the physics of climate change even worse 😕

 

 

 

For the usual "climate cycles" criticism... it IS a physics driven thing, even if there are unpredictable factors that occur -because- of the physics-driven events => 

 

What's going to inevitably happen is governments are just going to stop providing services/help to affected areas.  It literally won't be worth the effort/finances to help a state that's been hit by a hurricane.  I already see some channels, like Beau, talk about how 'government services are going to be scaled back in the future'.  But corporate services have no financial interest in bailing out an entire state and rebuilding it.

[Pariah]

Climate science is largely the study of feedback loops. For example:

 

• Higher temperatures → greater evaporation of water → higher atmospheric capacity to store heat → higher temperatures
• Higher temperatures → loss of sea ice → reduced reflection of sunlight back to space → greater heat absorption at the surface → higher temperatures

 

...and so on.

[Lord Liaden]

16 hours ago, unclevlad said:

 

The nay-sayers will downplay it, saying they change their projections every week.

So, while some things may be done, they'll be half-hearted at best, and nowhere near enough.

 

I've come to believe there's a significant percentage of the human population -- which seems to be even higher among our political/economic elite -- who selfishly tell themselves that they'll be dead by then anyway, so why should they care, so long as they get everything they want while they're alive.

[Pariah]

If you can't win the game, change the rules to assure that the other person loses.

 

Former President Donald Trump and his allies have been privately lobbying Wyoming lawmakers to change the state’s election laws as part of an effort to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).

[DShomshak]

The other form of climate denial I've encountered from people who ought to know better, is that human CO2 emissions are small compared to volcanic eruptions and things like that, so they can't be significant. Maybe the climate activists should be trying to stop volcanic eruptions! <snerk>

 

They forget human CO2 emissions happen on top of those natural sources. Here's the comparison I've devised, though I haven't had a chance to try it on someone who claims to be scientifically literate and rational:

 

Imagine a swimming pool. There are numerous faucets pouring into it, ranging from fire hydrants to dribbling taps. There are also numerous drains, both large and small. Some taps and drains are open all the time; others open and shut on a regular schedule. But over time, inflows and outflows balance. The water level fluctuates little, if at all.

 

Then you turn on another tap, that's stayed shut all this time. There is no corresponding new drain. It doesn't matter how big or small the new inflow is, compared to the other taps. Fast or slow, the water level rises. Eventually, the pool overflows.

 

Fossil fuels are one such tap. There are others. As a percentage of Earth's total carbon cycles, they may be small -- but decade after decade, it adds up.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Pariah]

My favorite argument (if one can justify calling it that) is, "I don't believe that us puny humans can change the weather. We're not that powerful."*

 

My counterarguments:

 

1. Less than 20 miles from my classroom is a hole in the ground big enough to be seen from space. The leftover rock from that hole has been piled into geologic forms that have altered the mountains on that side of the valley. We've demonstrated that we're powerful enough to move mountains. It took a hundred years, but we did it. So why not the climate?

 

2. Could one puny human, in a single human lifetime, have a significant impact on the global climate (not weather)? No, of course not. But fifteen or twenty billion humans over the course of two and a half centuries? It would be foolish just to dismiss the possibility out of hand.

 

Again, the inability to think beyond one's own experience is telling.

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

They forget human CO2 emissions happen on top of those natural sources. Here's the comparison I've devised, though I haven't had a chance to try it on someone who claims to be scientifically literate and rational:

 

 

I don't believe that's the key.  Understand:  

--US gas consumption is ~300 million gallons.  

--a gallon of gas has about 5.5 pounds of carbon, therefore produces about 20 pounds of CO2.  (Oxygen has a higher molecular weight.)

 

So *every day in the US alone* about 3 MILLION TONS of CO2 get generated.  Just from burning gasoline, not from any of the other ways.  I mention that to note that people don't understand the scope.  Each and every day.

 

From USGS:

https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP/volcanoes-can-affect-climate

Quote

Do the Earth's volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities? No.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas and is the primary gas blamed for climate change. While sulfur dioxide released in contemporary volcanic eruptions has occasionally caused detectable global cooling of the lower atmosphere, the carbon dioxide released in contemporary volcanic eruptions has never caused detectable global warming of the atmosphere. In 2010, human activities were responsible for a projected 35 billion metric tons (gigatons) of CO2 emissions. All studies to date of global volcanic carbon dioxide emissions indicate that present-day subaerial and submarine volcanoes release less than a percent of the carbon dioxide released currently by human activities. While it has been proposed that intense volcanic release of carbon dioxide in the deep geologic past did cause global warming, and possibly some mass extinctions, this is a topic of scientific debate at present.

 

So fossil fuels aren't small.  Quite the opposite;  they are, I believe, THE LARGEST single factor.

 

This is a prime example of the ecological problem.  No, one person, 100 people, even 10,000 people don't have that much influence.  But there's 7 billion people.  And their cars, and industry, and animals.  

 

https://climatenexus.org/climate-issues/food/animal-agricultures-impact-on-climate-change/

 

Quote

Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock, a widely-cited 2013 report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), estimates about 14.5 percent of global GHG emissions, or 7.1 gigatons of CO2 equivalent, can be attributed to the livestock sector annually. This is broadly equivalent to the emissions from all the fuel burned by all the world’s transport vehicles, including cars, trucks, trains, boats and airplanes.

 

It's the scale that people can't comprehend.  

 

Now...forest fires?  The massive fires we've seen the last few years?  Not sure, but actually, it wouldn't surprise me that those are also worse than volcanoes, because not only do they emit massive amounts of CO2, they destroy a significant amount of carbon capture.  This is also a major concern with the rain forest destruction.

 

To Mr. P's point:  if you want the most obvious examples of how much man can do, it's probably the major dams like Hoover.  Lake Mead covers about 250 square miles.  Its overall impact on weather might be hard to say, but its creation *massively* impacted obviously the lake area, and the entire downstream area.  Granted, that isn't on a planetary scale;  it's one dam.  It can't have influence over that large an area.  

But people are everywhere...so they can.  

[unclevlad]

There's a classic story:  a king makes a deal with a man for a service.  The man takes out a chess board.  He puts 1 grain of rice on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the 3rd, and asks for double the number of grains each day, until the checkerboard is completed.  The king accepts gleefully...this service will cost him nothing.

 

Yes, welll...

 

There are about 7000 grains of rice per pound, according to Google.  On day 11...we're at 1000 grains.  On day 14, we're at 8000 grains...let's call that a pound.  So on day 25, we're up to a ton.  By 35, a kilonton.  By 45, a megaton.  By 55, a gigaton.  That's about double the entire world annual production.

 

Yes, some of this is showing how insane exponential growth is.  But it's also about how things add up.

 

Or, go back to basic calculus and infinite series.  Take 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + 1/6 + 1/7 + .....  As you keep on going, does this cap out?  is there a max value?  The full integral is 

 

integral (1 to infinity) of 1/x

 

and the answer is...the natural log of x, which is unbounded.

 

So there's lots and lots and lots of little tiny adders...but they all add up.

 

Simpler?  What would you rather have, $25M, or a penny from every man, woman, and child on the planet?  According to WorldOMeters, the latter is worth a bit under $80M.  And I just said a single stupid penny.  Heck, if I said just a dime from everyone in the US and Europe...it'd be notably over $100M.

[archer]

An interesting website here showing a map of Ukraine and stories as they are reported pinned on the map. A lot of the stories aren't big enough to make major news on western media sites. So there's a lot more incidents being shown than you'd get following only traditional sources.

 

https://liveuamap.com/en/2022/18-february-occupation-authorities-in-parts-of-donetsk-region

[Lord Liaden]

 

[Pariah]

Our old friend bunneh posted this yesterday:

 

"I'd like to congratulate Rush Limbaugh on one full year of sobriety!"

 

We'll, I suppose he's not wrong....

[wcw43921]

Remember when the tobacco industry was accused of marketing to kids?

[Lord Liaden]

Edited for unnecessary provocation.

[Grailknight]

8 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

Remember when the tobacco industry was accused of marketing to kids?

 

So whadda ya think Bob? Does the Skull & Crossbones with the mohawk and pacifier logo make it kiddy enough? Or should we go for pink and blue colors like our competitor's models?

 

(Yes, they make pink and blue guns for kids. My cousin used to work the gun counter at Academy and showed them to me when I went to meet him for lunch. Thankfully Lego got the people making the mod the that resembled their products to cease and desist.)

[DShomshak]

On 2/19/2022 at 7:44 AM, wcw43921 said:

Remember when the tobacco industry was accused of marketing to kids?

Five years ago, I would have sworn someone was mistaking an Onion article for reality.

 

Now... I'm too tired even to swear. Of *course* this is happening. How could it *not*?

 

Dean Shomshak

[Ragitsu]

It's oddly comforting - nay, reassuring - to know that even if the world goes to hell in a handbasket, we'll still be here to bitch about the state of affairs .

[Old Man]

4 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

It's oddly comforting - nay, reassuring - to know that even if the world goes to hell in a handbasket, we'll still be here to bitch about the state of affairs .

“If”?

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

It's oddly comforting - nay, reassuring - to know that even if the world goes to hell in a handbasket, we'll still be here to bitch about the state of affairs .

 

Dude, have you noticed the median age of folks around here?

 

Right now my fondest hope is to die before hell hits the handbasket.

[unclevlad]

20 years ago, I would've LOVED to be physically 18 again, while mentally retaining the things I'd learned.  

 

Now?  No way.  That hand basket is just too close.

[archer]

I'd settle for being the same age but healthy....

[archer]

 

Truth Social, a social media network developed by former president Donald Trump’s new media company, is now live on the iOS App Store in the US.

 

There appears to be some glitches downloading it but it is at least collecting people's names and emails at the moment.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/21/22944179/truth-social-launch-ios-donald-trump-twitter-platform

 

It'll be nice when this gets rolling so Trumpists will have less time to troll other forums I frequent.

[Lord Liaden]

If it works at all -- which goes against the precedent of other media Trump's attempted to create -- its focus will be on soliciting money for Trump's so-called "causes," which really amount to enriching himself.