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Thread: Important climate change warning

  1. #91
    Modding this sack of shit BehindBlueI's's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by misanthropist View Post
    You know, I don't doubt that climate change that results directly from the burning of fossil fuels is real. In fact, I'm fairly convinced that the amount of heat energy that can be stored in the atmosphere does increase when you increase the CO2 content, and that the resulting increase in stored energy will have complicated results that include a subtle general rise in temperature, and more energetic storm behaviour, while still allowing for localized cooling trends that might confound people looking for a clear pattern. I get all that and I don't have a problem with it.

    Here is where it begins to break up a little for me: I think our understanding of the inputs and outputs of the system is extremely poor. We have no idea what built-in mitigation factors might exist, but for sure there are powerful ones because the earth keeps self-balancing even when subjected to much more severe conditions.
    That's kind of where I'm at with one modification. The human innovation factor. I'm pretty sure we would be overpopulated and facing massive food prices *if* we hadn't greatly increased crop yields. The hole in the ozone layer was reversed due to modifications in human activity. Fracking and additional oil exploration has pushed back "peak oil". That doesn't mean none of those things were in pace to happen, it just means smart people who did see the problem came up with solutions. Perhaps I'm foolish to do so, but I trust the smart people who are studying this sort of thing to have real workable solutions despite the dumb people who've been elected trying to make it a political issue. I'm also sure there will be unintended consequences to some extent.

    At the end of the day, I'm not one of the smart people. I'm not one of the elected people. I am just taking someone else's word for it either way as I don't have the foundation to truly understand the underlying arguments. So who gives a shit? I certainly don't get the hair pulling over the topic being on the forum or people disagreeing. With potentially one exception, I don't think anyone here is doing anything but repeating what the people they've chosen to believe have told them. I don't think anyone here is in a position of power to do anything about it, nor do I think anyone's going to change their voting pattern because of it. So let people discuss things on a discussion board, and if you need PISTOL forum in all your PISTOL forum topics, you can ignore whole subforums and not be subjected to this at all.
    Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.

  2. #92
    Site Supporter Kanye Wyoming's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by 0ddl0t View Post
    Given the data it is perfectly reasonable to have skepticism, but I see it like Pascal's wager: weigh consequences of being wrong against the reasonableness of the extra effort.
    This is an eminently reasonable approach. If more of those who leaned towards thinking global warming/climate change is occurring now in ways and patterns that can be differentiated from how it has occurred in history, and that it is attributable to the activities of man, took your approach – we still have a lot to learn, our models continue to evolve and are only as good as the assumptions underlying them, I understand why some can be skeptical, and we have to take a sharp and dispassionate look at the costs and consequences versus the efficacy and benefits of the remedies we propose – we would be in a very different place. Something approximating the approach of Bjorn Lomborg.

    But, that’s not what we have. We have people trying to remake the way the world works in a way that invests vast powers in governments and transnational bodies at the expense of individual liberty based on apocalyptic projections none of which has come to pass, and much like Torquemada and ISIS they seek to silence/rid the world of unbelievers rather than acknowledging let alone addressing competing evidence and explanations.

    I’m a lawyer so I probably can’t help myself from evaluating competing claims within the framework of a trial or an appellate argument. If an appellate judge asks the lawyer for the state in a death penalty case to reconcile an argument made by the defense, or a fact in evidence that seems inconsistent with the state’s theory, or a line of cases that seems to undercut the state’s theory, and the lawyer responds that unless this defendant is put to death millions will die, the judge is a denier, 97% of lawyers agree that the facts and the caselaw are settled, and that’s all I have to say about that, Your Honor, the judges are unlikely to be impressed with the factual or legal strength of the state’s case.

    I close by noting that other information suggests the infographic you presented showing significant and unprecedented warming in recent years may not be 100% reliable. This is one of many examples.
    https://notrickszone.com/2017/05/29/....hn3ie8f2.dpbs

    Like an appellate judge, I would want the lawyer for global warming to reconcile the seemingly contrary information before putting the economy to death.
    Last edited by Kanye Wyoming; 01-26-2020 at 12:46 PM.

  3. #93
    Site Supporter 0ddl0t's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JTQ View Post
    I guess most skeptics probably wonder what "the reasonableness of the extra effort" entails.
    I think that is up to each person to determine for himself. Personally, I feel having two people in a household each commute 60 miles round trip each day in 4,000 lb SUVs is unreasonable, as is keeping their 3,000 square foot home air conditioned to precisely 68° in 110° summers and 80° in 30° winters. So too is continually buying cheap chinese goods that were shipped halfway around the world that you know you'll just throw away and replace in a year or two.

    But that's just me.

  4. #94
    banana republican blues's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by 0ddl0t View Post
    I think that is up to each person to determine for himself. Personally, I feel having two people in a household each commute 60 miles round trip each day in 4,000 lb SUVs is unreasonable, as is keeping their 3,000 square foot home air conditioned to precisely 68° in 110° summers and 80° in 30° winters. So too is continually buying cheap chinese goods that were shipped halfway around the world that you know you'll just throw away and replace in a year or two.

    But that's just me.
    I guess if you have money to burn...

    I keep it at 67 in winter and 75 in summer. And adjust if needed. Seems to work okay with the system we had installed six months ago.
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  5. #95
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    Quote Originally Posted by 0ddl0t View Post
    I think that is up to each person to determine for himself. Personally, I feel having two people in a household each commute 60 miles round trip each day in 4,000 lb SUVs is unreasonable, as is keeping their 3,000 square foot home air conditioned to precisely 68° in 110° summers and 80° in 30° winters. So too is continually buying cheap chinese goods that were shipped halfway around the world that you know you'll just throw away and replace in a year or two.

    But that's just me.
    I don't disagree with you. It's not something I do, and would recommend folks not do that either. However, I'm pretty sure that's not the level of participation the save the planet folks are demanding.

    I still recall my college "Physics for Dummies" (not the class title, but essentially what it was) professor commenting on nuclear energy. "It may not be the best solution, but we can use it until we find something better, and it will allow us to find something better."

    If we have to immediately stop using coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, etc., as the far left have told us we need to do to save the planet, we're largely back to the 18th Century. That's a pretty big price to pay for a maybe outcome.

  6. #96
    Site Supporter 0ddl0t's Avatar
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    I think nuclear is better than most other forms of energy, but there is no such thing as truly "clean" energy. Hydroelectric dams heat & divert water, killing fish and that ripples through the ecosystem; wind kills birds and take tremendous energy to install in the first place; solar panels require even more energy & dirty materials to create (though they make more energy in return) and they because they absorb solar energy that often would have been reflected they increase local temperatures.

    That's why I bang my head on the wall when I see supposed eco-friendly folks commuting from the valley to the big city in their Tesla SUVs and living like their energy poo doesn't stink.

  7. #97
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BehindBlueI's View Post
    That's kind of where I'm at with one modification. The human innovation factor. I'm pretty sure we would be overpopulated and facing massive food prices *if* we hadn't greatly increased crop yields. The hole in the ozone layer was reversed due to modifications in human activity. Fracking and additional oil exploration has pushed back "peak oil". That doesn't mean none of those things were in pace to happen, it just means smart people who did see the problem came up with solutions. Perhaps I'm foolish to do so, but I trust the smart people who are studying this sort of thing to have real workable solutions despite the dumb people who've been elected trying to make it a political issue. I'm also sure there will be unintended consequences to some extent.
    No arguments here, technological innovation is what's resolved everything so far. There was a time when Peak Whale was coming, and if we'd dealt with it by restricting society only to the level of development that could have been supported by sustainable whale oil harvesting, instead of racing forward and looking for denser, more profitable energy sources, we'd be a lot worse off than we are. I'm not going to go off about it right now but all of human civilization is essentially the search for increasingly dense energy storage media, beginning with food and mass human labour and progressing through hydraulic power via rivers, wood, charcoal, whale oil, coal, and oil and all the machinery we can run with them. Right now we're in the phase where we haven't quite worked out the leap to nuclear fuel. But that will happen, and if we don't handcuff the West, this is where it will happen.

    Handcuff the West and these developments will emerge in the East and that's going to be worse for everybody.

  8. #98
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    Quote Originally Posted by misanthropist View Post
    There was a time when Peak Whale was coming, and if we'd dealt with it by restricting society only to the level of development that could have been supported by sustainable whale oil harvesting, instead of racing forward and looking for denser, more profitable energy sources, we'd be a lot worse off than we are.
    But that’s not what happened. By the time whaling was banned by the endangered species act in the 70’s the prime demand for whale oil, actually an ester, was automotive transmission and differential fluids. We can find news articles from the mid 70’s where Detroit was saying don’t blame us for your transmission problems, it’s the government that banned whale oil. Banning whale oil was a pretty big step backwards, automatic transmission development got set back by almost 20 years.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/17/a...e-killing.html

    Despite at least 20 years of warnings, Detroit ignored all the warning signs about the inevitable end of whale oils. The government just turned the spigot off and didn’t provide any transition period. It’s a history lesson worth looking at, especially since we have a better understanding of the environmental impact of building cars. Fossil fuels will come to an end. On the climate change debate, on side is in denial about the finite nature of fossil fuels and the other is in in denial about the catastrophic consequences of just turning off the tap. Neither side has a plan to transition to alternative sources over the next 50 or 100 years.
    Whether you think you can or you can't, you're probably right.

  9. #99
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Niche uses of whale oil don't really negate the fact that it was supplanted by a more readily available, energy-dense medium.

    We didn't keep using whale oil for a major energy source into the 1970s. We replaced it with something better a long time prior.

    We'll keep using fossil fuels for plastics manufacturing long after burning it to keep warm seems insane.

  10. #100
    Four String Fumbler Joe in PNG's Avatar
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    Another consideration. With the testimony of history that massive, centrally planned economic systems don't work, why is the most commonly proposed solution to the problem a massive, centrally planned economy?

    PJ O'Rourke once pointed out that when it became absolutely plain that massive, centrally planned economies aren't working out when it came to the original state goal of Bettering The Lot Of The Workers Of The World, a change happened. Now it is the Urgent Need to Save The Planet- via massive, centrally planned economy.

    But, consider the horrific environmental record of all the various People's Democratic Republics- it's horrific. For some odd reason, a system that relies on coerced labor and no real ownership tends to be fairly incompetent at building environmentally safe things, and not just nuclear power plants.

    It's as if one referred you to a surgeon, and you find out that all his patients die of horribly painful and lingering complications afterwards. Why the hell would someone even consider him?

    Yet, the same failed massive, centrally planned economic solutions are still in vogue with the Democratic Party- witness AOC's Green New Deal. The reason why has nothing to do with actually saving the environment, and everything to do with power grabs.

    And everyone defending this course of action is a sucker, a dupe, a useful idiot.
    "You win 100% of the fights you avoid. If you're not there when it happens, you don't lose." - William Aprill
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