Current Affairs Environmental Stuff

[JimmyJeffers]

Deffo, but two points:
1. YouTube can provide in depth academic lectures to those that are remote.
2. Funding of academic research deffo skews WHAT gets researched.

For sure.

 

[Tipp blue]

What I'm saying is that you have no idea what you are talking about regarding how science works, and your thoughts are jumbled.

In this recent spate of posts you have claimed that global warming is a "hoax" made up by Al Gore, and you have said that "Billions of years of extream climate change have been cancelled because only the past hundred years or so are relevant" which simply not trued ("Billions"--you are off by at least three orders of magnitude) as I pointed to thousands of climates studies that draw from historical records and provided a graph HERE that shows how the earth has natural climate fluctuations due to a lot of geophysical and astronomical processes--not a single climate scientist denies this point and yet those natural fluctuations are largely irrelevant to the present day issues (look carefully at the right side of the graph I posted). You have claimed that climate scientists must "tow the line" but this is contradicted by the fact that you are also claiming there are lots of studies that the "experts" have gotten wrong--so either climate scientists are in cahoots regarding the "hoax" and parroting the same narrative or they are sometimes arriving at different conclusions because they are acting independently. Which is it? Here's a simple question, if it is a hoax or conspiracy, who has more to gain: climate scientists across hundreds or universities each of whom makes about 150K/year, or big petrol company who's profits are so astrononically large that they can, with a quick writing of a check, spend millions of dollars funding anti-climate change research that ultimately never stands up to scrutiny. Who's the sucker here...us folks who buy into the science, or you, who buy's into a massively funded disinformation campaign run by corporations?

You have also posted graphs from the Heartland Institute, which is an absolute laughable source of information. (click HERE and scoll down to the bottom of the page). The Heartland Institute gets money from the Tobacco Industry and Big oil, so much so that they have stopped disclosing their funding sources. They are notorious for promoting sham science as they have done with this idiotic and wrong population size graph of polar bears, which is based on the work Susan Crockford who is neither an expert in demography nor polar bears and was denied a new contract from U. Vic; thus Crockford now makes money as a full-time climate change denialist who writes misinformation about polar bears (you can read how her website traffics in denialism as it pertains to polar bear misinformation in the link). As to the Nunuvut report, well, I've combed their government website for their polar bear reports--they have several that claim to use genetic mark-recapture techniques, but when you click on those reports they do not contain any genetic data nor even data on mark-recapture. I'm suspicious of their methodology and dislike the implication that if one questions their methods they can claim something like "well, that's western scientists imposing their colonial ideas on our traditional methods." Perhaps some subpopulations of polar bears might be doing better than others, but to say "the population has never been healthier" as you did, is simply untrue. And the numerical models and censusing efforts suggest most subpopulations aren't. Polar bear hunting is big business and there is big money to be made. If their tradition says they can hunt polar bears, I'm not one to disagree, but they shouldn't use dubious qualitative evidence to support their tradition.

More generally, you like to link to news media studies to show how the "experts" are wrong, yet you can't even be bothered to learn a little bit about how science works, or even the simple definition of "prediction" and how it differs from "projection." Instead, you just keep trying to score dumb points by saying things like "scientists claimed we'd be underwater by 2020 and we're not...ergo all climate science is wrong and a hoax." This is infantile and lazy. Maybe instead of letting the youtube algorithm pick your next hot-take, you read this book: The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience. Or simply make yourself a bit more educated about what science is and does. Most people don't opt to take this route because learning and thinking and intellectually challenging yourself takes a lot of work. Much much more than watching a few youtube videos and posting some hot links along along with a dumb snarky comment you picked up from some website.

I could continue this conversation, matching every easily-dismissed ignorant point you make with easily-acquired robust scientific evidence to the contrary, but the broad point is this: Science uses evidence, logic, experimentation, and theory to strip away implausible explanations. Has science made some wrong projections? Yes. Have politicians made exaggerated claims of scientific findings for political gain? Yes. Are there good versus bad scientific studies? Yes. Has some science been corrupted by politics, profit, and prejudice? Yes. But, by and large, science arrives at the best explanation of reality. And the treatment of evidence by scientists is a particularly powerful combination of skepticism and openness (outlined in the excellent book above). The power of science is not in its unerringness or its immutability (the bible hasn’t much changed in its main points for >1000 years but science sure has, and for the better), but in its ability to self-correct to the best evidence-based explanation. At present the track-record of science against religion, pseudo-science, idiots on youtube, Bret Weinstein, Joe Rogan, etc., etc., is devastatingly righteous.

The next time you choose to turn on the tap water for clean drinking water you can thank science, the next time you want to fly to a Amsterdam or Spain you can thank science, the next time you need an antibiotic to clear up an infection you can thank science, the next time you need general anesthesia for a surgery you can thank science. And on it goes.

And by the way, I do science for a living. What do you do for a living? Please let me know.

This way I can start thread on it, perhaps “Auto mechanics” or “Insurance sales” or whatever field in which you have gained expertise; I’ll write all sorts of idiotic statements about what you do is bunk, and that while you are an “expert” (snarky quotes intended) you aren’t really an expert because I just watched a few charismatic YouTubers with really-cool-graphics-and memes, and I just read a really-really-really cool facebook post by this one dude’s uncle who pointed me to a compelling website full of misinformation, so…you know, I’m just as much as an expert as you. Etc., etc., You can see why I tire of these exchanges.

And don't bother responding with the "gee, I'm just asking questions, aren't I allowed to ask questions?...sheesh." That sort of indignant artifice is played out.

Admittidaly that is a Great Post..
I tire of this conversation too for simple reasons that when the planet stops cooperating with the predictions or projections it's dismissed as an anomaly or when the earth does the exact opposite of what we are told will happen there's a flock of scientists rushing to point out why this is not good news (great barrier reef regeneration), the world watched in horror as the fires in Australia destroyed huge areas and pictures of animals being burned were the face of global warming and why we must act now, all leaving out the fact that there are plants in Australia that require fire to germinate and even release flammable compounds to start fires also little mention of the fact that controlled burning was banned in large parts of Australia,is it too much to ask that all the facts get reported not just the scaremongering elements is it that the media not reporting all the facts scientists give or scientists not reporting all the facts to the media I don't know.
Either way there is a massive dose scaremongering being reported, and as an ASD teacher I've seen the anxiety and stress this is causing children with autism, they don't need to be worried to a point that they aren't sleeping and refusing to come to school because they have Geography today and Climate change is being covered.

 

[grandjoeblue]

All the blame on India then for not being able to phase out coal straight away?

Here's an idea where are the real solutions from the developed nations which don't involve millions of Indians losing their jobs and starving?

 

[neil999]

I refuse to believe that I can't be as clever as those scientists even if I haven't read a whole book yet!!

 

[peteblue]

I filled up my car with fuel today, it was just over £100….get used to it lads, this is what you want…….

 

[Tubey]

A spectacular waste of time.

 

[grandjoeblue]

A spectacular waste of time.

How do they expect poor nations to go green overnight?

That's the main issue for me. It's easy enough to talk when you're the ten richest nations on earth.

 

[Tubey]

How do they expect poor nations to go green overnight?

That's the main issue for me. It's easy enough to talk when you're the ten richest nations on earth.

It was ever thus. It's why there's never a satisfactory answer to "what about China/India", because the activists don't have one.

To force them, we'd have to drop our standards dramatically, boycott everything to do with them and so on. It's a geopolitical impossibility.

Truth is that there's very obvious reasons why the richest in the west want to keep their way of living, and why the poorest elsewhere are aspirational. We can't 'meet in the middle' on this, hence why I repeat that it's time to stop pretending this can be stopped and start talking seriously about efforts to merely mitigate it.

COP is, was and always will be a joke. In a world where we have Zoom, telephones, instant communications, you still have all these tossers from every country in the world flying in to one country in private jets with a bevy of cars and eating fancy meals. It's a microcosm of the reality of the situation - they still do it because they want to do it, and the cold hard fact is the entire world acts the same way; hence why you get climate activists driving their kids to school in Range Rovers and taking 3,000 mile round trip holidays.

 

[grandjoeblue]

It was ever thus. It's why there's never a satisfactory answer to "what about China/India", because the activists don't have one.

To force them, we'd have to drop our standards dramatically, boycott everything to do with them and so on. It's a geopolitical impossibility.

Truth is that there's very obvious reasons why the richest in the west want to keep their way of living, and why the poorest elsewhere are aspirational. We can't 'meet in the middle' on this, hence why I repeat that it's time to stop pretending this can be stopped and start talking seriously about efforts to merely mitigate it.

COP is, was and always will be a joke. In a world where we have Zoom, telephones, instant communications, you still have all these tossers from every country in the world flying in to one country in private jets with a bevy of cars and eating fancy meals. It's a microcosm of the reality of the situation - they still do it because they want to do it, and the cold hard fact is the entire world acts the same way; hence why you get climate activists driving their kids to school in Range Rovers and taking 3,000 mile round trip holidays.

You can't boycott these emerging countries. We partially reduce our emissions by buying from them rather than manufacturing here.

Nobody seems to talk about real answers that work for every nation. There might be no answers but you can't expect India to sign a contract for that. Basically a crime against its own people.

 

[Leylo]

Population of the world expanding, planet will never cope in the end.end of

 

[orchard]

You can't boycott these emerging countries. We partially reduce our emissions by buying from them rather than manufacturing here.

Nobody seems to talk about real answers that work for every nation. There might be no answers but you can't expect India to sign a contract for that. Basically a crime against its own people.

And damaging the planet and environment isn't a 'crime against' all humanity ?

 

[grandjoeblue]

And damaging the planet and environment isn't a 'crime against' all humanity ?

What's the answer? Let them starve?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I filled up my car with fuel today, it was just over £100….get used to it lads, this is what you want…….

I just filled up my bike with a few drops of sweat.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

How do they expect poor nations to go green overnight?

That's the main issue for me. It's easy enough to talk when you're the ten richest nations on earth.

India is actually the 3rd biggest producer of renewable energy in the world. Just saying.

 

[grandjoeblue]

India is actually the 3rd biggest producer of renewable energy in the world. Just saying.

Second biggest country so that is no surprise and it shows that they are trying their best but they do have a heavy reliance on coal.

Possibly a climate change tax on people in rich nations with all of the money going towards infrastructure in poorer countries could work well. Hard to implement though.