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Bill Gates Warns Against Denying Climate Change (usatoday.com)
Reader JoshTops shares a USA Today report: Bill Gates warned against denying climate change and pushed for more innovation in clean energy, during an event Friday at Columbia University in New York. The billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder joined friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett for a question-and-answer session with students. "Certain topics are so complicated like climate change that to really get a broad understanding is a bit difficult and particularly when people take that complexity and create uncertainty about it," Gates said. The planet needs to find reliable, cheap and clean energy, "the innovations there will be profound," Gates said. In December, Gates announced that he and a group of investors would invest more than $1 billion in Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund that aims to finance the development of affordable energy that will reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions.
When your ideas are too good for criticism that's when you know they're worth having.
I have no problem with Bill Gate's wealth but I am annoyed that a guy that lives in a huge house and travels by private jet needs to lecture anyone about climate change. Don't be a virtue signaling hypocrite.
Two hypocrite billionaires who's carbon footprint is more than dozens of families combined living their lavish lifestyles lecturing people who just want to work their shitty job so they can earn their check and try to live a decent lifestyle. When they tone down the way they live by several orders of magnitude, then maybe I'll listen. Until then, they and the climate religion zealots can go fuck themselves.
This is starting to grate on me. You realize that by not debating the factual nature of these facts you're saying "yes, these are facts". Literally alternative fact just means facts that support a different narrative than the one a particular group wants. If the alternative facts are, in fact, not facts, then debunk them as such, and that they are not facts, but lies. Don't refer to them as facts at any level, you just give false credence. As it is, you're just mocking an alternative narrative that is in no way less true than your own.
Okay...
A valid opinion.
I'm sorry, but just because somebody slaps the word 'fact' on something does not make it so. Climate may be ever-changing but if we're making it change too much one way or another, it's bad news for us. We can't survive in almost constant -50C or almost constant +50C. We are fragile creatures and so are the plants we rely on to exist.
#DeleteFacebook
Literally alternative fact just means facts that support a different narrative than the one a particular group wants.
No, my post was satire in case I triggered the Poe effect. "Alternative facts" are lies. The "alternative fact" that Trump's inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama's was a lie. People tried to debunk the lie with clear photographic evidence but Trump and his goons continued to push the lie, so the only tool left in the arsenal now is mockery. The "alternative fact" that the ~375 gigatons of CO2 released into the atmosphere isn't having an effect far greater than any natural variation is a lie. And I'm mocking it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You are assuming "climate change" and "the climate changes" mean the same thing. That is not the case, and would explain your confusion...
The whole debate about climate change is because of three specific groups:
Those who want to suppress the science because it might interfere with them making a profit, those who don't want to admit climate change because they believe having to change will interfere with their way of life, and those who think being ignorant and ignoring the facts is the way to go.
This was summed up quite nicely by Asimov:
"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Steam roll over them.
That is precisely how we ended up with Trump as president with Republican majorities in the House, Senate and most state legislatures and Governorships despite Democrats having a lead in voter registration.
Skipping the consensus building phase will cause backlash.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The fact of the matter is, the climate is changing because the climate is never and has never been static..
That argument is true, but completely facetious. Compare People are dying because people have never not been dying. There is no reason to do anything about that guy with the AK-47 taking potshots on the street, or to do anything about the lead in the drinking water, or to ensure that there is no botox in your tomato cans.
Yes, climate has always changed, and species have always died off. But not at the speed it currently does and they currently do. I'd much rather not be part of one of the species dying out. You sound like a guy in a life boat who insists on getting fresh water by drilling a well...
Stephan
Yeh, and while Trump is denying basic science, you're not looking at what he's actually doing. It's the magicians trick of distraction. When you see him do some big shouty thing that you're supposed to look at, look at the *other* stuff.
So the anti EPA stuff co-incided with his CIA visit. The one, he stuffed the meeting with spotters, to watch the faces of the CIA staff to see who would swallow the pee he was spraying. And the one that resulted in two American spies getting arrested by Putin (but Putin says he arrested people who might have hacked the US election...... (!!)). Gee I wonder which traitor gave Putin the names? Nobody asks because Trump is busy signing every anti-environment contract he can find and you're paying attention to that instead.
Currently it's "ban everyone from these Muslim countries", but you're missing the fact he's written a law here, something Congress does, The Federal Court has already said it wouldn't likely stand at trial, and yet there are some border officials are following Trump and not the law. In effect he's faced down the Republican congress and won. He writes the laws, they have their meetings. He doesn't need them to write laws, he does it, they pretend to follow it in order to pretend to have a role.
What happened to the calls for him to divest his businesses and stop accepting foreign money? Lost in all the other stuff he's done.
What about his tax returns? The fake numbers he gave in the election filing? Forgotten.
You see how he sets the agenda by doing something really extreme, and what you miss is what he's doing at the same time. Really important stuff like blocking the head of Defence from security meetings, banning the US Director of National Intelligence from security meetings.... i.e. removing Congregational approved roles from basic government, so that Congress doesn't appoint anyone who has any role.
Predictions of the future are not facts.
"Alternate facts" is a phrase developed by post-truth politicians and their advisers. When you find some inconvenient truth that contradicts your narrative, simply present some alternate "facts" to support it. These "facts" can be distortions or simply made up, it doesn't matter. People assume all politicians are lying all the time anyway, so just say anything because people care about the message, not if it is true or not.
Thing is, they aren't supposed to use this phrase in public. It's one thing to lie, it's another to tell people "I'm lying to you". Even so, it doesn't actually seem to have damaged Trump very much.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If you want to nitpick, a set of facts about the present can predict a future condition which cannot be denied without denying the facts. A dropped brick will fall. A closed container receiving a constant stream of water will overflow. A human fed through a woodchipper will die. An increase in greenhouse gases will lead to an increase in heat retention.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Actually, it started in academia with postmodernism which was a reaction against ideologies and philosophy and the general march of progress, those being suspect and hence skepticism of everything was thought to be the cat's whiskers.
Then they went a step further and started applying it to science. Not being scientists, they failed to understand the proper relationship between science and the real world.
After that, the alt-right picked up on it and it translated into "we get to determine our own facts".
In sum, what started a reaction against ideology was turning into an ideology that was chameleon-like in nature and made the alt-right feel they were never alt-wrong.
The icing on the cake was that someone who believes Championship Wrestling is a sport, a deadbeat as a businessman, and a reality show host becomes elected President. The American people, who have been taught by TV that nothing is real, are now capable of throwing their democracy down the tubes for a promised pile of magic beans. The TV Preachers and Prosperity Evangelicals are there promoting the entire spectacle for filthy lucre, thus showing that anyone can turn religious principles on their head if they try hard enough. Daesh showed them how to do it and not feel guilty.
Because when a topic is really, really complicated the most important thing is not to be uncertain about it.
The desired response is to be uncertain about things that the science is uncertain about, and to not be uncertain about things on which the science is pretty clearly not uncertain.
If you actually read some of the review articles summarizing the science-- the IPCC Working Group 1 report, for example-- you will notice that there is extensive discussion of uncertainties: what we know, how well we know it, what we don't know, and what the error bars are.
One interesting thing about the real science: the uncertainty goes in both directions. The denier community says "but look at the uncertainty: maybe the warming is on the low side of the range that the best science we currently have is predicting." But the opposite uncertainty is also there: "look at the uncertainty: maybe the warming is going to be much higher-- it could be on the high side of the range that the current science predicts."
People assume all politicians are lying all the time anyway, so just say anything because people care about the message, not if it is true or not.
No, people assume politicians that oppose their ideology are lying all the time. They tend to assume their guy is "a straight talker" or some other baloney. Exhibit A is the irrational believe on our political right that Hillary Clinton is some sort of pathological liar and crook. This in spite the the actual objective evidence that she is not at all outside the range of normal for a high profile politician. In actuality she is relatively honest among that crowd. (a low bar I know) The same people seem to believe that Trump is telling the truth despite objective evidence that he lies FAR more often.
Even so, it doesn't actually seem to have damaged Trump very much.
That's just because the people he was running against weren't very well liked either. Not one of the Republican candidates (including Trump) was a serious statesman with real gravitas. Easy targets for a guy who has made his life's work self promotion. Hillary Clinton for whatever reason just isn't very charismatic to a big portion of the population - and even the she actually won the popular vote.
(Do you realize that only once since 1988 has a Republican candidate actually won the popular vote? That's 6 of the last 7 elections. Talk about evidence of a screwed up election system...)
When your ideas are too good for criticism that's when you know they're worth having.
Ignoring criticism from people who don't know what they are talking about is different than ignoring all criticism.
Yes, Gates didn't say "your ideas are too good for criticism." What he said was "to really get a broad understanding is a bit difficult."
OK, it's difficult. That means you need to do some work to gain a basic understanding.
If people would actually study what we actually do know, and how well we know it before making their "criticism" based on reading one blog post, maybe then they would do criticism on a level that people would pay attention to, rather than continuously re-assert things that are already well studied and known to be false.
Discovering the Higgs? New theory on black holes? Gravity Waves? None of these nor 98% of all other science is ever the excuse for people insisting we raise taxes, cut energy supplies and otherwise try to control, through the political process, how people behave.
You're confusing two totally separate issues. There is no problem with people who discuss the politics of how to reply to man-made climate change. It's perfectly consistent to answer that someone else should pay it, or claim that it won't affect me so I don't pay more, or taxes should not be raised and our children should suffer the consequences, and so forth. There are many ways in which the effects could be countered, you could for example propagate massive investments in possible technical solutions, or you could urge for faster development of nuclear fusion reactors. Moreover, there is nothing wrong *at all* with green energy per se and other solutions like substituting certain emissions with others, and it's kind of bizarre to ignore these options for diffuse political reasons.
But the point is that is all politics and has nothing to do with climate science. What's so appalling are the repeated attempts to deny that there is scientific consensus on some facts, and deny this for obvious political reasons. This kind of thinking is fallacious, no matter how you put it, it's just wishful thinking and make-believe, and is a disgrace to all people who do the actual science such as those at NASA. It's also ridiculous to mix up the scientific matter which is pretty much settled by now with political issues about possible responses, and this is embarrassing the political right of the US internationally, since the phenomenon to ignore science for dubious short-term political gain is pretty much limited to the US. Everywhere else people are perfectly capable of distinguishing between the current state of the art in science and political issues that may or may not result from it.