>To be honest, I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make.
That you think that just because you have a few data points, you can conclude "what is true" for larger whole. You clearly stated above on several occasions that your views are true because of science, in process demonstrating the fact that you:
1. Do not understand what science is. 2. Do not understand how science functions. 3. Attribute possibility of religious totality of statement "this is true" to science.
Third point is easily observable in the statement quoted above. Science does not have the capability to tell us what is true. It is not equipped for it. The very definition of scientific method is that it's an methodology of attempting to approximate a view that is as close to truth as possible, using specific observable data points and understanding that it will never reach this goal. Let me repeat this. Science will NEVER be able to tell you what is true for the larger whole.
Religion is the field that does reach the goal of "knowing what is true". Which is why I keep pointing out that you should look for a better field to find that which you're attributing to science - a field that by its own definition cannot give you what you clearly want. It cannot tell you what is true. It can merely tell you what is likely, all while telling you that for every large whole it looks at, and for every conclusion it draws, there's a far greater "unknown" in that same field that will only grow as science's understanding of this field grows.
Which is why overwhelming majority of predictions science makes based on its knowledge in the field we're talking about have been wrong. And that's how it should be. That's how scientific process works. And that's why it's utterly unsuited for purpose you're trying to jury rig it into with your statements.
Correct. But nowadays, asbestos when used in building insulation is typically used in self-contained panels (as far as I have seen). These would be safe until you break them apart, and breaking apart a self contained panel would require quite severe efforts.
Also, I'm fairly certain that you would in fact be caught alive near asbestos fire blanket in a raging fire. See, dying of fire is a very painful way to go, and at that point you will choose "possible, potential lung damage that may materialise in many tens of years" over "immediate and excruciatingly painful death". The issue isn't that this is a dichotomy however, because it isn't. And while I would consider an asbestos fire blanket to be a good thing if it's properly sealed when not in use, it's not like I wouldn't prefer something that would be significantly more expensive that would be almost as good of a job and that wouldn't be a hazard to long term health to my lungs.
Notably, I put my money where my mouth is on this one. I paid for a decent fire blanket for my home. Of course, I also don't smoke, and generally avoid smoker-filled areas, because I like to have my lungs working long term in general.
Asbestos insulation, depends on how it's done. Properly contained panels are safe. You should probably be more worried about radon in the air if you live at ground level, and street dust and smog if you live in a big city. Those will give you much worse lung problems than properly contained asbestos insulation ever will.
But if it's one of those older constructions which are nowadays torn down specifically because you have asbestos fibres flaking off, we're in total agreement. Luckily it's exceedingly unlikely that many (and in most places in Western world, any) such buildings are still standing. Most of the current asbestos problems are about condemned buildings being torn down safely, not about safety of people living in intact ones.
He's right btw. Asbestos is an excellent fire retardant to use in insulation layers. We have nothing even close to it. Nowadays we use various mineral wools and fibreglass instead. Those are much worse in terms of their ability to retard fire.
Problem is, it costs a lot to actually dismantle structures with asbestos, because of cancer risks from breathing in the microfibre form. And if something does go seriously wrong, such as for example building collapse, there's no way to contain the asbestos dust from spreading. Now if there's strict regulation, there are places where asbestos may be used safely. Military applications where maximum ability to retard fire is critical come to mind.
But for general use, it's unlikely that asbestos will ever become usable in Western world again. This move for example, suggests that new regulations must be put in place for using it instead of blanket ban. Such regulations would likely place strict limits, enabling usage in some areas where fire retarding ability is critical at a great cost, and nowhere else.
If you actually did contend with what you claim you have, you would not be making ANY of your statements, because you would not be able to produce sufficient methodologies to process even the data points we have managed to collect with our limited observational ability.
It's why overwhelming majority of scientific models we've built to explain how large complex system like out biosphere works fails to predict the actual world miserably, and often produces results that are in direct contraction to future they aimed to predict. Lack of data points, or "evidence" as you call it is simply too limited by the fact that we're human, and are unable to gather even a tiniest bit of necessary data points to even begin building a total model of something as complex as our biosphere in a moment, much less a model of our biosphere that can be scaled with time. That's why weather predictions are so crippled in spite of us having more data points than ever before.
Reality is, we know next to nothing about evolutionary process. All we have is a very crude extremely low resolution theory, which we have made a little bit more high resolution than Darwin did, in process having to throw most of Darwin's modelled conclusions out as flat out wrong. And it's for this same reason that our current conclusions based on models (note: models are NOT data points) will likely be thrown out as we continue to collect data points and become able to add resolution to our models. Which will still remain woefully low resolution, and largely useless for any complex prediction attempting to encompass the entirety of the system for foreseeable future and beyond.
The fact that you think this is "mystical" demonstrates that you lack even the most basic understanding of scientific process, just as your suggestions that our conclusions about things like evolution are based directly on evidence.
Because they aren't. What they are based is on the fact that we have a few scattered data points, and then we attempt to reconstruct from those data points something that resembles reality using complex modelling. So even if we assume that data points we have are indeed absolute, which they often aren't - see for example how our ability to sample DNA from archeological finds showed that models we built of evolutionary process were wrong not just because of problems with models but also problems with incorrect assumptions about data points, we have the fact that overwhelming majority of the outcomes we predict doesn't come from data points at all. It comes from the model being applied to data points.
And its the remarkable inaccuracy of the models, as the entire purpose of the modelling is to make complex system into something simple enough that a single biological entity with exceedingly limited capacity for abstraction known as "human doing the research" can actually grasp, that results in wildly incorrect conclusions common to scientific research attempting to comprehend totality of a very large and complex system. I could name you countless conclusions, ranging from models of how agriculture would progress to even models on how global warming would impact Gulf Stream.
The fact that the only way you can process this reality is by dismissing it as "mysticism" shows just how deep your need for belief in totalitarian God-like entity that would beat the chaos of the unknown is. Everything you're saying shows confusion of the person who is in desperate need of an absolute and total God-like entity, and you have chosen the worst one of the lot. Science as a method for explaining the entirety of the world to a being as limited as human is a very poor tool, because it is a great tool for the exact opposite: understanding just how little we even can understand about everything around us, and just how limited we are as species.
I find it funny that you failed to read both my post, and the article, which comes out rather clear in your accusations.
See, I actually talk about hiring for reasons mentioned in the article:
>While a rapidly growing number of Chinese families are sending their children to get what they believe is better education in Western countries, those who stay on to look for work often appear to be much less competitive in the jobs market than they are in the classroom.
And the author makes it clear that while she focuses on Chinese, that being a Chinese parer, she is talking about East Asians as a whole:
>“Those from China, Japan and South Korea never said a word in class,” she said. “It might seem to others they never existed after an entire semester, even if they got A+. But Indians are very active. They know well how to negotiate and how to persuade people,” she said.
So everything you accuse me of? Sounds like you're projecting your own faults.
This is the continuation of your God complex. The assumption within this statement is that you have seen and understood everything that is relevant about evolution, and are therefore able to make this wide sweeping conclusion.
Even a cursory observation of severe limitations of human ability to reason suggest that no human alive today has the mental capacity to be able to take sufficient amount of data into consideration to make such conclusion, even in case that such data was available in a way that human would be able to observe and process. We as species are by far the most capable of abstraction on this planet. We're far from being able to perform the abstraction processes necessary to make the conclusion you just made.
And making wide sweeping conclusions based on your lack of understanding is a primary sign of ignorance. The first thing that beginning to understand complex processes such as evolutionary process occurring on our planet is that we as species know next to nothing about it.
On the last note, I do find it intriguing how willing and able you are to demonize me with utterly absurd projections such as "non-interventionalism" "anti-vaccination" and even "medieval nature worship" which I specifically denounced earlier. Because in your small, bigoted mind, it is horrifying to even attempt to grasp the reality that you know nothing about the world. You have, as I noted above, elevated what you know into position of Godhood, and reject anything that would suggest that you in fact know very little with fervour of true believer looking at heresy. In doing so, you reject the most basic tenet of science - that what you don't know is far more important than what you know.
I don't think it's possible to have a discussion. You're too clearly too afraid to delve into deep waters of what you have no idea of, much less accept just how little humanity actually knows about reality it exists in. When you have elevated your current knowledge to the same status that Christians give to its God, to suggest that there is far more that we don't know is heresy of highest order. Your desperate denunciations of me based on attributing views opposite to what I have clearly stated to hold match this profile to a tee.
And until you learn how to manage your mind's reflexive fear of unknown to the point where it no longer clouds your judgement to such a great degree, no discussion is possible.
>Drought is already a huge problem worldwide: 2/3 of the world potentially facing a water shortage by 2025. [worldwildlife.org] Did you not hear about Capetown?
I have heard about a lot of drought problems ever since the 1980s warnings. They have one thing in common.
They were all solved eventually to a reasonable degree.
Capetown et al are simply new iterations of the same change, and same adaptation. Again, 1980s called. They want their lies back.
>Citation? I'm not aware of any agricultural revolution happening in Europe or elsewhere.
Pick up a map. The reason why you are not aware of it is because you're utterly ignorant, as you have already demonstrated above. Monitor progression of various agricultural belts across time.
>You know what the "evolutionary process" does? Or "God" or whatever you believe is in charge? It occasionally kills off 90% of all life [wikipedia.org]. Are you ok with that? Is that "universal good", or "clear cut evil" in your opinion?
Yes to all of these but the last. Last question is the result of your God complex, which I noted above. I do not suffer from God complex as you do, and therefore find the entire question utterly irrelevant. You may as well ask me if I'm okay with the fact that untold amounts of stars and all their planetary systems have already died, and many more will. Life goes on. We're part of the system, and we play according to the rules of the system. That's it.
>If you really believe that everything is going to be fine, why don't you just quit your job and sit around waiting for the evolutionary process to give you a paycheck and food?
Because unlike you, I understand how evolutionary process works. Frankly this premise you just built is the most idiotic thing I have heard this year. I'm dumber for having to read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Your fixation on strangers on the internet fucking your mother nonwithstanding, you made some decent points. The problem with your first two points is that they are both literally "not all leftists", which is true. I'm a leftist, and I most certainly don't share those views.
Unfortunately it's also not a useful measurement tool either, because advocacy for these views is rather well documented in specific circles, usually overrepresented in certain strata of far left, which unfortunately has a massively outsized impact on political systems across the Western countries.
Reason for this can be found in historic examples were far left was most visible in their power grabs, such as Russian revolution of 1917.
Not sure about your last point. I personally spent several years during my early teen years earning money working on farms. I picked things like cucumbers, potatoes, strawberries, and wage back then was pretty good. Also got me a lot of contacts among the farmers in my region, as while I wasn't the best picker, I was good enough.
That is until the recent BS with thai, ukrainian and such pickers, who were shipped in to work on what is essentially a starvation salary, because in their countries, it was good pay. Here, it wouldn't pay for groceries and rent. Not shockingly, most young folks like me who worked there during summers had to go find new employment, as we liked being able to do something besides living in a tent, and we had no contacts among the East European mafia shipping those people and their food to them with the newcomers so they wouldn't starve. So I and people like me cleaned cruiser ships, probably got your mom's cabin a few times, you know that one where used condoms were everywhere. At least she's smart enough to use them when she was pulling another train of Muhammads and Jihads who were paid to go on these cruises by Swedish welfare state in hopes they would rape a bit less at home after getting their semen emptied into your drunk mom.
And the "labour shortage" can't be fixed by Norwegians. Norway is that place that is pulling Swedish, Finnish and Danish specialists. They can afford to pay. It's about salary related to cost of living in your native country. Not that you'd know, seeing how you sound like an inbred american who has never left his native country.
On the past point. You seem to genuinely believe that environmentalists want us to reduce pollution. That is patently false, observable in, for example, environmentalist rejection of nuclear power. It's equally found in same environmentalists rejecting improvements to filtration techniques of burners, something I personally witnessed on multiple occasions.
Environmentalist movement in its current form is overwhelmingly united by hatred of humanity (humanity is a plague upon this planet and it would be better without humanity) and worship of primeval nature (nature was so much better before humans spoiled it). I don't find any need to explain why former belief is deeply pathological. Latter is pathological because it's a religious belief that goes contrary to massive body of historic and scientific evidence, and because it demonstrated severe delusions of grandeur. It religiously rejects the obvious fact that humans are part of the environment, and instead elevates humanity to the position of Christian God. Creator, manager and someone who gets to decide the fate of the world.
Hint: if you think someone's points are weak, steelman them, then debunk them. You'll win everyone on your side.
When instead you merely go for a personal attack, it looks like his points were so strong, all you could do was concede them all and just fall for the last refuge of the sore loser. Personal attacks.
Which made it really easy to beat his points then. Why wasn't it done? Why did he choose to instead concede all of his points by going for personal attack?
1980s called. They want their environmentalist lie back. Notably, UN would really love for you to do it, so they could have actually been even marginally correct on the speed we're beating their most optimistic predictions on tackling world hunger. They were so far off what came to be, it wasn't even funny. Except for the fact that it was great fun for all the people who were no longer starving, in spite of desperate claims by environmentalist movement that they really should be starving.
So, in your estimation, are we going to run out of water, nutrients, "generally fertile soil" whatever that actually means in your head?
See, right now we have a huge landmass across Eurasia that is meeting all those standards and has everything in excess, and is primarily limited by this pesky thing called "cold winters". Which are notably getting warmer.
On you last point, the answer is "evolutionary process". Or in the nomenclature used by most of the people alive today, "God", "Creator" and other names used for it.
Which is why the fact that you actually asked that question demonstrates just how delusional you are on the subject. You genuinely appear to have bought into belief that homo sapiens is somehow above the system rather than merely a part of it, and is as a result, responsible for it. You also equally appear to have bought into the primeval nature worship, as you think that "conserving what we have" is universal good, rather than clear cut evil. The entire reason for existence of every single species on the planet, including us, is participation in evolutionary process. Attempting to fight the evolutionary process to slow it down it because you have delusions of grandeur is one of the worst things you could do, both for yourself and the "environment" you purport to protect.
Except of course, that pesky, nasty science which studied the plants for greenhouse environments and made it clear that optimal concentrations of CO2 for optimal growth are much, MUCH higher than what we currently have in the air.
But don't let the science stop you from regurgitating the long debunked catastrophist environmentalist dogma while providing no new evidence for it and merely reciting the long debunked claims as if they're real.
Finally, the delusions of grandeur, the problem I mentioned in my initial post is really strong in you. You actually make the patently absurd claim that we are somehow responsible for managing the entire system to prevent the natural progression of DNA based life. Do you fancy yourself a God? Because for your last paragraph to make any sense, you must do so.
And those that we actually rely on, we take care of. Have you ever heard of animal husbandry? Selective breeding?
The whole "think of the other species" narrative is a mix of ignorance of how animal husbandry and edible plant selective breeding worked combined with primeval nature worship. Funniest part, plants actually become much more efficient in warmer climate with more CO2. It's one of the key reasons why UN targets for defeating world hunger were so wildly off mark. They expected the catastrophist environmentalist dogma of "warmer climate means more catastrophies and less food" back then to actually come true, when opposite happened. Not only did we adapt well beyond the change, but we also noticed that people who talked about harmful effects of CO2 forgot entirely why we call it "greenhouse gas".
Because we raise concentrations of CO2 in greenhouses significantly beyond what is in the normal atmosphere, as that makes plants much more efficient. Which makes perfect sense if you take evolutionary perspective into account. Chloroplasts evolved during the much warmer climate, and are deeply optimized for much higher CO2 concentrations than what we currently have. Add to that the fact that plants also really don't like colder climates, and are much less efficient to grow in Nordic countries than in, say, Spain, we're looking to continue to significantly increase our agricultural production for foreseeable future.
The species we're overwhelmingly wiping out are the ones that are harmful. Such as those that eat the edible plants for example. There are a few beneficial species that tend to end up going along with it, and those that are worth saving because they're better than alternatives from our point of view are typically conserved and saved.
So no, we will not be "dying of hunger because of higher CO2 in the atmosphere and warmer climate". The opposite is true. We beat the most optimistic UN targets for defeating world hunger by several years. The fact that so many people still regurgitate the "hunger is coming" nonsense that science debunked long ago tells you that at this point of our history, environmentalist lobby is just as dependent on deeply seated anti-scientific beliefs as the global warming denialist lobby is.
Thing with humans as species, we're very, very good at slow adaptation. And slow changing of habitat due to planet slowly heating up is a great example of slow change of habitat. We're also one of the very few species that can successfully survive on all continents of the planet, from coasts of Antarctica to equatorial regions, and thrive everywhere but Antarctica. That means that even worst warming scenarios are highly unlikely to produce environments we could not function in just because of temperature.
That leaves out of the last possible scenario, some kind of mass extinction, much greater than current one that we cannot manage to limit its damage to us to a meaningfully low level. Now, the current (arguably not mass-) extinction event has been ongoing for at least ten thousand years, likely longer. It has to do with fact that homo sapiens as species don't just adapt to environment. They adapt environment to themselves. That necessitates management of environment, which means extermination of species harmful to us and creation of subspecies beneficial to us. I.e. extermination of large predators that compete with us for alpha predator slot in each ecosystem, all while breeding everything from more efficient food plants to subservient predators that help us manage the harmful species to serve the continued adaptation. And reduction or extermination of any species that are harmful to the species we find beneficial.
I see no reason why humanity could not continue with the same, and constantly accelerating, double ended adaptation of environment to ourselves as it heats up. One thing that constantly keeps popping up in the environmentalist movement is the idea of "virgin, untouchable, primeval nature" as the ultimate good. In reality, that is the state of horrific strife, disease and death for everyone involved. And the entire purpose of DNA based life forms is constant change, and ours is the only species so far that managed to meaningfully reduce the massive amount of suffering that goes with it, to the point where we no longer have to fight for survival 24/7. Much of modern life for homo sapiens, even in developing countries is now about fighting for comfort rather than survival. As far as we know, this is utterly unprecedented in DNA-based lifeforms. Not only that, we're not able to do the same for species we find most beneficial. We're in completely uncharted territory, and we have a significant buffer until we have to go back just to the norm for all other DNA based lifeforms - strife for survival on constant ongoing basis.
There's no logical reason to worship the primeval nature as "better than current", and there's no logical reason to think that humans will stop their own adaptation. Finally, it's simply unnatural to the extreme to favour other species over your own. I.e. the "humans are a blight on this planet" "there needs to be less of humans" ideology. That seems to be a pathological by-product of Western culture, and one of the reasons for its severe numerical decline in relation to other human cultures in recent decades.
Logically, we should aim to keep the rate of change sufficiently low we can adapt, continue to manage the environment to the best of our ability, and continue to grow our species' numbers as to ensure we have maximum amount of people available for necessary processes of adaptation. One of which does in fact include the weaker parts of species dying out to make room for stronger and more resilient ones, which currently appears to be the case for several European phenotypes in relation to African and Asian ones.
Future is Asian and African at the current rate, and with it, we as species will likely purge the current pathological weaknesses of Western culture that appear to have taken hold of many European phenotype carriers within a few tens of generations, and get back on track being the unashamed frontrunners of the evolutionary race on this planet.
Or the opposite, since the discussion about robotics and AI replacing workers has been ongoing since the 1950s.
On the other hand, economic efficiency of modern world just keeps lifting people out of abject poverty, making places where this sort of economic activity is actually viable more rare every year. Which is notably, one of the main reasons why China no longer takes dirty plastics.
On your initial point, you have been lied to. For starters, Swiss houses are around the European average. If you want really small housing, you'll have to go to Netherlands. Second, this has no impact on portions. European portions been generally smaller than US is overwhelmingly for cultural reasons, not practical. Frankly, we eat less and consume less. None of these portions look anything even remotely like what you'll see around the major plastic expunging rivers such as Nile. There, portions are often in single serving size. European portions are smaller than US, several tens of times larger than in places such as those around the Nile.
On your second point, you appear to confuse fruit packaging with perishables packaging. Fruit are usually not as perishable as for example meat, dairy and so on. You also appear to miss the point that it's not just food. This is also about hygiene products, such as soaps, disinfectants and so on, critical in hot, humid tropical disease belts. All of those being packaged such that people can buy a single serving was one of the critical quality of life improvements in developing countries. It made people dying of hunger, thirst and infections be able to purchase food that wouldn't spoil quickly, water that was drinkable and means of handling hygiene that prevented infection and disease related deaths and disabilities.
>I've lived in places where it gets really hot, including inside of course, and I've never had hygienic products spoil.
And then, you visited places like Africa's and Asia's developing countries, and understood that spillage renders them just as useless, even for products that do not become dangerous to use due to bacterial activity. And then you noted that people actually live in utter squalor, where holding liquids contained is a major issue, and before plastics, was done in vessels made of clay and wood.
Which meant that only large servings were available, utterly unaffordable to majority, all while being easily infested, infected and spilled.
>many presently rich countries were poor once, and they went through a huge improvement of living standards and everything in an era before the mass proliferation of plastic packaging.
And all of them had similar problems with disease, affordability, and so on at that time, minus the disease belt related problems.
>No, they send it off to Asia, without properly sorting it, where a significant portion of it - that which is just plain unrecyclable in the first place, which is not worth recylcling for the processors at the given moment, and which is too contaminated to recycle - ends up in the local dumps and eventually in the ocean. This is what this whole thread is about, how Western countries have plastic piling up because China won't take it anymore. So banning plastic packaging in the West would have an effect
This is the propaganda machine at work. It makes things sound logical in your head, as long as you don't understand how this trade actually works in reality. And most people don't.
What actually happens to dirty plastic waste shipping (which you'll note I already explained several times in this thread) is that it's already packaged, so it gets dumped into landfills. Landfills are then scoured by the poorest of their societies, who scrounge for large, heavy pieces of plastic they can reasonably wash in the nearby river, and get to the collector to earn some pennies. Rest stays in the landfill.
Critical part of that is "stays in the landfill". It doesn't get to the bodies of water. And plastic isn't a pollutant. It's biologically largely inert, very few things in the nature can metabolize it. So it just sits there, slowly breaking into smaller and smaller parts as entropy takes hold, going nowhere.
The parts that do get to the oceans are overwhelmingly the products of local consumption. Because most people in poor countries don't care at all about environment. They utterly lack the Christian "original sin" dogma as the base for their culture, and t
Slashdot Mirror
Your information on Saudis is outdated. Bin Salman changed the state's policy to "prepare for post-oil economy" when he came to power.
Tesla fits the bill.
I see that I'm talking to someone who's so utterly stupid, he cannot read the story even after being pointed toward reading it twice.
They're only banned in small amount of Western countries. Worldwide, overwhelming majority of countries does not ban them.
Reminder: do not project Western values upon the world. We're a tiny minority.
>How else could you possibly know what is true?
>To be honest, I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make.
That you think that just because you have a few data points, you can conclude "what is true" for larger whole. You clearly stated above on several occasions that your views are true because of science, in process demonstrating the fact that you:
1. Do not understand what science is.
2. Do not understand how science functions.
3. Attribute possibility of religious totality of statement "this is true" to science.
Third point is easily observable in the statement quoted above. Science does not have the capability to tell us what is true. It is not equipped for it. The very definition of scientific method is that it's an methodology of attempting to approximate a view that is as close to truth as possible, using specific observable data points and understanding that it will never reach this goal. Let me repeat this. Science will NEVER be able to tell you what is true for the larger whole.
Religion is the field that does reach the goal of "knowing what is true". Which is why I keep pointing out that you should look for a better field to find that which you're attributing to science - a field that by its own definition cannot give you what you clearly want. It cannot tell you what is true. It can merely tell you what is likely, all while telling you that for every large whole it looks at, and for every conclusion it draws, there's a far greater "unknown" in that same field that will only grow as science's understanding of this field grows.
Which is why overwhelming majority of predictions science makes based on its knowledge in the field we're talking about have been wrong. And that's how it should be. That's how scientific process works. And that's why it's utterly unsuited for purpose you're trying to jury rig it into with your statements.
Correct. But nowadays, asbestos when used in building insulation is typically used in self-contained panels (as far as I have seen). These would be safe until you break them apart, and breaking apart a self contained panel would require quite severe efforts.
Also, I'm fairly certain that you would in fact be caught alive near asbestos fire blanket in a raging fire. See, dying of fire is a very painful way to go, and at that point you will choose "possible, potential lung damage that may materialise in many tens of years" over "immediate and excruciatingly painful death". The issue isn't that this is a dichotomy however, because it isn't. And while I would consider an asbestos fire blanket to be a good thing if it's properly sealed when not in use, it's not like I wouldn't prefer something that would be significantly more expensive that would be almost as good of a job and that wouldn't be a hazard to long term health to my lungs.
Notably, I put my money where my mouth is on this one. I paid for a decent fire blanket for my home. Of course, I also don't smoke, and generally avoid smoker-filled areas, because I like to have my lungs working long term in general.
Asbestos insulation, depends on how it's done. Properly contained panels are safe. You should probably be more worried about radon in the air if you live at ground level, and street dust and smog if you live in a big city. Those will give you much worse lung problems than properly contained asbestos insulation ever will.
But if it's one of those older constructions which are nowadays torn down specifically because you have asbestos fibres flaking off, we're in total agreement. Luckily it's exceedingly unlikely that many (and in most places in Western world, any) such buildings are still standing. Most of the current asbestos problems are about condemned buildings being torn down safely, not about safety of people living in intact ones.
If you think you can just shove water into the isolation layer and that will prevent fires, you're beyond stupid.
"Greatest" =! "only".
He's right btw. Asbestos is an excellent fire retardant to use in insulation layers. We have nothing even close to it. Nowadays we use various mineral wools and fibreglass instead. Those are much worse in terms of their ability to retard fire.
Problem is, it costs a lot to actually dismantle structures with asbestos, because of cancer risks from breathing in the microfibre form. And if something does go seriously wrong, such as for example building collapse, there's no way to contain the asbestos dust from spreading. Now if there's strict regulation, there are places where asbestos may be used safely. Military applications where maximum ability to retard fire is critical come to mind.
But for general use, it's unlikely that asbestos will ever become usable in Western world again. This move for example, suggests that new regulations must be put in place for using it instead of blanket ban. Such regulations would likely place strict limits, enabling usage in some areas where fire retarding ability is critical at a great cost, and nowhere else.
If you actually did contend with what you claim you have, you would not be making ANY of your statements, because you would not be able to produce sufficient methodologies to process even the data points we have managed to collect with our limited observational ability.
It's why overwhelming majority of scientific models we've built to explain how large complex system like out biosphere works fails to predict the actual world miserably, and often produces results that are in direct contraction to future they aimed to predict. Lack of data points, or "evidence" as you call it is simply too limited by the fact that we're human, and are unable to gather even a tiniest bit of necessary data points to even begin building a total model of something as complex as our biosphere in a moment, much less a model of our biosphere that can be scaled with time. That's why weather predictions are so crippled in spite of us having more data points than ever before.
Reality is, we know next to nothing about evolutionary process. All we have is a very crude extremely low resolution theory, which we have made a little bit more high resolution than Darwin did, in process having to throw most of Darwin's modelled conclusions out as flat out wrong. And it's for this same reason that our current conclusions based on models (note: models are NOT data points) will likely be thrown out as we continue to collect data points and become able to add resolution to our models. Which will still remain woefully low resolution, and largely useless for any complex prediction attempting to encompass the entirety of the system for foreseeable future and beyond.
The fact that you think this is "mystical" demonstrates that you lack even the most basic understanding of scientific process, just as your suggestions that our conclusions about things like evolution are based directly on evidence.
Because they aren't. What they are based is on the fact that we have a few scattered data points, and then we attempt to reconstruct from those data points something that resembles reality using complex modelling. So even if we assume that data points we have are indeed absolute, which they often aren't - see for example how our ability to sample DNA from archeological finds showed that models we built of evolutionary process were wrong not just because of problems with models but also problems with incorrect assumptions about data points, we have the fact that overwhelming majority of the outcomes we predict doesn't come from data points at all. It comes from the model being applied to data points.
And its the remarkable inaccuracy of the models, as the entire purpose of the modelling is to make complex system into something simple enough that a single biological entity with exceedingly limited capacity for abstraction known as "human doing the research" can actually grasp, that results in wildly incorrect conclusions common to scientific research attempting to comprehend totality of a very large and complex system. I could name you countless conclusions, ranging from models of how agriculture would progress to even models on how global warming would impact Gulf Stream.
The fact that the only way you can process this reality is by dismissing it as "mysticism" shows just how deep your need for belief in totalitarian God-like entity that would beat the chaos of the unknown is. Everything you're saying shows confusion of the person who is in desperate need of an absolute and total God-like entity, and you have chosen the worst one of the lot. Science as a method for explaining the entirety of the world to a being as limited as human is a very poor tool, because it is a great tool for the exact opposite: understanding just how little we even can understand about everything around us, and just how limited we are as species.
I find it funny that you failed to read both my post, and the article, which comes out rather clear in your accusations.
See, I actually talk about hiring for reasons mentioned in the article:
>While a rapidly growing number of Chinese families are sending their children to get what they believe is better education in Western countries, those who stay on to look for work often appear to be much less competitive in the jobs market than they are in the classroom.
And the author makes it clear that while she focuses on Chinese, that being a Chinese parer, she is talking about East Asians as a whole:
>“Those from China, Japan and South Korea never said a word in class,” she said. “It might seem to others they never existed after an entire semester, even if they got A+. But Indians are very active. They know well how to negotiate and how to persuade people,” she said.
So everything you accuse me of? Sounds like you're projecting your own faults.
Actually, brown. I've seen a rather interesting story of East Asians being angsty about their hiring performance compared to Indians in US:
https://www.scmp.com/news/chin...
>Evolution has no intent or direction.
This is the continuation of your God complex. The assumption within this statement is that you have seen and understood everything that is relevant about evolution, and are therefore able to make this wide sweeping conclusion.
Even a cursory observation of severe limitations of human ability to reason suggest that no human alive today has the mental capacity to be able to take sufficient amount of data into consideration to make such conclusion, even in case that such data was available in a way that human would be able to observe and process. We as species are by far the most capable of abstraction on this planet. We're far from being able to perform the abstraction processes necessary to make the conclusion you just made.
And making wide sweeping conclusions based on your lack of understanding is a primary sign of ignorance. The first thing that beginning to understand complex processes such as evolutionary process occurring on our planet is that we as species know next to nothing about it.
On the last note, I do find it intriguing how willing and able you are to demonize me with utterly absurd projections such as "non-interventionalism" "anti-vaccination" and even "medieval nature worship" which I specifically denounced earlier. Because in your small, bigoted mind, it is horrifying to even attempt to grasp the reality that you know nothing about the world. You have, as I noted above, elevated what you know into position of Godhood, and reject anything that would suggest that you in fact know very little with fervour of true believer looking at heresy. In doing so, you reject the most basic tenet of science - that what you don't know is far more important than what you know.
I don't think it's possible to have a discussion. You're too clearly too afraid to delve into deep waters of what you have no idea of, much less accept just how little humanity actually knows about reality it exists in. When you have elevated your current knowledge to the same status that Christians give to its God, to suggest that there is far more that we don't know is heresy of highest order. Your desperate denunciations of me based on attributing views opposite to what I have clearly stated to hold match this profile to a tee.
And until you learn how to manage your mind's reflexive fear of unknown to the point where it no longer clouds your judgement to such a great degree, no discussion is possible.
>Drought is already a huge problem worldwide: 2/3 of the world potentially facing a water shortage by 2025. [worldwildlife.org] Did you not hear about Capetown?
I have heard about a lot of drought problems ever since the 1980s warnings. They have one thing in common.
They were all solved eventually to a reasonable degree.
Capetown et al are simply new iterations of the same change, and same adaptation. Again, 1980s called. They want their lies back.
>Citation? I'm not aware of any agricultural revolution happening in Europe or elsewhere.
Pick up a map. The reason why you are not aware of it is because you're utterly ignorant, as you have already demonstrated above. Monitor progression of various agricultural belts across time.
>You know what the "evolutionary process" does? Or "God" or whatever you believe is in charge? It occasionally kills off 90% of all life [wikipedia.org]. Are you ok with that? Is that "universal good", or "clear cut evil" in your opinion?
Yes to all of these but the last. Last question is the result of your God complex, which I noted above. I do not suffer from God complex as you do, and therefore find the entire question utterly irrelevant. You may as well ask me if I'm okay with the fact that untold amounts of stars and all their planetary systems have already died, and many more will. Life goes on. We're part of the system, and we play according to the rules of the system. That's it.
>If you really believe that everything is going to be fine, why don't you just quit your job and sit around waiting for the evolutionary process to give you a paycheck and food?
Because unlike you, I understand how evolutionary process works. Frankly this premise you just built is the most idiotic thing I have heard this year. I'm dumber for having to read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Your fixation on strangers on the internet fucking your mother nonwithstanding, you made some decent points. The problem with your first two points is that they are both literally "not all leftists", which is true. I'm a leftist, and I most certainly don't share those views.
Unfortunately it's also not a useful measurement tool either, because advocacy for these views is rather well documented in specific circles, usually overrepresented in certain strata of far left, which unfortunately has a massively outsized impact on political systems across the Western countries.
Reason for this can be found in historic examples were far left was most visible in their power grabs, such as Russian revolution of 1917.
Not sure about your last point. I personally spent several years during my early teen years earning money working on farms. I picked things like cucumbers, potatoes, strawberries, and wage back then was pretty good. Also got me a lot of contacts among the farmers in my region, as while I wasn't the best picker, I was good enough.
That is until the recent BS with thai, ukrainian and such pickers, who were shipped in to work on what is essentially a starvation salary, because in their countries, it was good pay. Here, it wouldn't pay for groceries and rent. Not shockingly, most young folks like me who worked there during summers had to go find new employment, as we liked being able to do something besides living in a tent, and we had no contacts among the East European mafia shipping those people and their food to them with the newcomers so they wouldn't starve. So I and people like me cleaned cruiser ships, probably got your mom's cabin a few times, you know that one where used condoms were everywhere. At least she's smart enough to use them when she was pulling another train of Muhammads and Jihads who were paid to go on these cruises by Swedish welfare state in hopes they would rape a bit less at home after getting their semen emptied into your drunk mom.
And the "labour shortage" can't be fixed by Norwegians. Norway is that place that is pulling Swedish, Finnish and Danish specialists. They can afford to pay. It's about salary related to cost of living in your native country. Not that you'd know, seeing how you sound like an inbred american who has never left his native country.
On the past point. You seem to genuinely believe that environmentalists want us to reduce pollution. That is patently false, observable in, for example, environmentalist rejection of nuclear power. It's equally found in same environmentalists rejecting improvements to filtration techniques of burners, something I personally witnessed on multiple occasions.
Environmentalist movement in its current form is overwhelmingly united by hatred of humanity (humanity is a plague upon this planet and it would be better without humanity) and worship of primeval nature (nature was so much better before humans spoiled it). I don't find any need to explain why former belief is deeply pathological. Latter is pathological because it's a religious belief that goes contrary to massive body of historic and scientific evidence, and because it demonstrated severe delusions of grandeur. It religiously rejects the obvious fact that humans are part of the environment, and instead elevates humanity to the position of Christian God. Creator, manager and someone who gets to decide the fate of the world.
All of them.
Hint: if you think someone's points are weak, steelman them, then debunk them. You'll win everyone on your side.
When instead you merely go for a personal attack, it looks like his points were so strong, all you could do was concede them all and just fall for the last refuge of the sore loser. Personal attacks.
Which made it really easy to beat his points then. Why wasn't it done? Why did he choose to instead concede all of his points by going for personal attack?
1980s called. They want their environmentalist lie back. Notably, UN would really love for you to do it, so they could have actually been even marginally correct on the speed we're beating their most optimistic predictions on tackling world hunger. They were so far off what came to be, it wasn't even funny. Except for the fact that it was great fun for all the people who were no longer starving, in spite of desperate claims by environmentalist movement that they really should be starving.
So, in your estimation, are we going to run out of water, nutrients, "generally fertile soil" whatever that actually means in your head?
See, right now we have a huge landmass across Eurasia that is meeting all those standards and has everything in excess, and is primarily limited by this pesky thing called "cold winters". Which are notably getting warmer.
On you last point, the answer is "evolutionary process". Or in the nomenclature used by most of the people alive today, "God", "Creator" and other names used for it.
Which is why the fact that you actually asked that question demonstrates just how delusional you are on the subject. You genuinely appear to have bought into belief that homo sapiens is somehow above the system rather than merely a part of it, and is as a result, responsible for it. You also equally appear to have bought into the primeval nature worship, as you think that "conserving what we have" is universal good, rather than clear cut evil. The entire reason for existence of every single species on the planet, including us, is participation in evolutionary process. Attempting to fight the evolutionary process to slow it down it because you have delusions of grandeur is one of the worst things you could do, both for yourself and the "environment" you purport to protect.
One of Saudi national wealth funds most likely. Bin Salman has been clear in his policy to massively invest in post-oil economy. This fits the bill.
And these are the most currency-rich funds in the world, bar none.
Except of course, that pesky, nasty science which studied the plants for greenhouse environments and made it clear that optimal concentrations of CO2 for optimal growth are much, MUCH higher than what we currently have in the air.
But don't let the science stop you from regurgitating the long debunked catastrophist environmentalist dogma while providing no new evidence for it and merely reciting the long debunked claims as if they're real.
Finally, the delusions of grandeur, the problem I mentioned in my initial post is really strong in you. You actually make the patently absurd claim that we are somehow responsible for managing the entire system to prevent the natural progression of DNA based life. Do you fancy yourself a God? Because for your last paragraph to make any sense, you must do so.
Noting a potential outcome is not the same thing as advocacy for that outcome.
And those that we actually rely on, we take care of. Have you ever heard of animal husbandry? Selective breeding?
The whole "think of the other species" narrative is a mix of ignorance of how animal husbandry and edible plant selective breeding worked combined with primeval nature worship. Funniest part, plants actually become much more efficient in warmer climate with more CO2. It's one of the key reasons why UN targets for defeating world hunger were so wildly off mark. They expected the catastrophist environmentalist dogma of "warmer climate means more catastrophies and less food" back then to actually come true, when opposite happened. Not only did we adapt well beyond the change, but we also noticed that people who talked about harmful effects of CO2 forgot entirely why we call it "greenhouse gas".
Because we raise concentrations of CO2 in greenhouses significantly beyond what is in the normal atmosphere, as that makes plants much more efficient. Which makes perfect sense if you take evolutionary perspective into account. Chloroplasts evolved during the much warmer climate, and are deeply optimized for much higher CO2 concentrations than what we currently have. Add to that the fact that plants also really don't like colder climates, and are much less efficient to grow in Nordic countries than in, say, Spain, we're looking to continue to significantly increase our agricultural production for foreseeable future.
The species we're overwhelmingly wiping out are the ones that are harmful. Such as those that eat the edible plants for example. There are a few beneficial species that tend to end up going along with it, and those that are worth saving because they're better than alternatives from our point of view are typically conserved and saved.
So no, we will not be "dying of hunger because of higher CO2 in the atmosphere and warmer climate". The opposite is true. We beat the most optimistic UN targets for defeating world hunger by several years. The fact that so many people still regurgitate the "hunger is coming" nonsense that science debunked long ago tells you that at this point of our history, environmentalist lobby is just as dependent on deeply seated anti-scientific beliefs as the global warming denialist lobby is.
Thing with humans as species, we're very, very good at slow adaptation. And slow changing of habitat due to planet slowly heating up is a great example of slow change of habitat. We're also one of the very few species that can successfully survive on all continents of the planet, from coasts of Antarctica to equatorial regions, and thrive everywhere but Antarctica. That means that even worst warming scenarios are highly unlikely to produce environments we could not function in just because of temperature.
That leaves out of the last possible scenario, some kind of mass extinction, much greater than current one that we cannot manage to limit its damage to us to a meaningfully low level. Now, the current (arguably not mass-) extinction event has been ongoing for at least ten thousand years, likely longer. It has to do with fact that homo sapiens as species don't just adapt to environment. They adapt environment to themselves. That necessitates management of environment, which means extermination of species harmful to us and creation of subspecies beneficial to us. I.e. extermination of large predators that compete with us for alpha predator slot in each ecosystem, all while breeding everything from more efficient food plants to subservient predators that help us manage the harmful species to serve the continued adaptation. And reduction or extermination of any species that are harmful to the species we find beneficial.
I see no reason why humanity could not continue with the same, and constantly accelerating, double ended adaptation of environment to ourselves as it heats up. One thing that constantly keeps popping up in the environmentalist movement is the idea of "virgin, untouchable, primeval nature" as the ultimate good. In reality, that is the state of horrific strife, disease and death for everyone involved. And the entire purpose of DNA based life forms is constant change, and ours is the only species so far that managed to meaningfully reduce the massive amount of suffering that goes with it, to the point where we no longer have to fight for survival 24/7. Much of modern life for homo sapiens, even in developing countries is now about fighting for comfort rather than survival. As far as we know, this is utterly unprecedented in DNA-based lifeforms. Not only that, we're not able to do the same for species we find most beneficial. We're in completely uncharted territory, and we have a significant buffer until we have to go back just to the norm for all other DNA based lifeforms - strife for survival on constant ongoing basis.
There's no logical reason to worship the primeval nature as "better than current", and there's no logical reason to think that humans will stop their own adaptation. Finally, it's simply unnatural to the extreme to favour other species over your own. I.e. the "humans are a blight on this planet" "there needs to be less of humans" ideology. That seems to be a pathological by-product of Western culture, and one of the reasons for its severe numerical decline in relation to other human cultures in recent decades.
Logically, we should aim to keep the rate of change sufficiently low we can adapt, continue to manage the environment to the best of our ability, and continue to grow our species' numbers as to ensure we have maximum amount of people available for necessary processes of adaptation. One of which does in fact include the weaker parts of species dying out to make room for stronger and more resilient ones, which currently appears to be the case for several European phenotypes in relation to African and Asian ones.
Future is Asian and African at the current rate, and with it, we as species will likely purge the current pathological weaknesses of Western culture that appear to have taken hold of many European phenotype carriers within a few tens of generations, and get back on track being the unashamed frontrunners of the evolutionary race on this planet.
The fact that you attacked the person instead of his points speaks volumes.
Or the opposite, since the discussion about robotics and AI replacing workers has been ongoing since the 1950s.
On the other hand, economic efficiency of modern world just keeps lifting people out of abject poverty, making places where this sort of economic activity is actually viable more rare every year. Which is notably, one of the main reasons why China no longer takes dirty plastics.
On your initial point, you have been lied to. For starters, Swiss houses are around the European average. If you want really small housing, you'll have to go to Netherlands. Second, this has no impact on portions. European portions been generally smaller than US is overwhelmingly for cultural reasons, not practical. Frankly, we eat less and consume less. None of these portions look anything even remotely like what you'll see around the major plastic expunging rivers such as Nile. There, portions are often in single serving size. European portions are smaller than US, several tens of times larger than in places such as those around the Nile.
On your second point, you appear to confuse fruit packaging with perishables packaging. Fruit are usually not as perishable as for example meat, dairy and so on. You also appear to miss the point that it's not just food. This is also about hygiene products, such as soaps, disinfectants and so on, critical in hot, humid tropical disease belts. All of those being packaged such that people can buy a single serving was one of the critical quality of life improvements in developing countries. It made people dying of hunger, thirst and infections be able to purchase food that wouldn't spoil quickly, water that was drinkable and means of handling hygiene that prevented infection and disease related deaths and disabilities.
>I've lived in places where it gets really hot, including inside of course, and I've never had hygienic products spoil.
And then, you visited places like Africa's and Asia's developing countries, and understood that spillage renders them just as useless, even for products that do not become dangerous to use due to bacterial activity. And then you noted that people actually live in utter squalor, where holding liquids contained is a major issue, and before plastics, was done in vessels made of clay and wood.
Which meant that only large servings were available, utterly unaffordable to majority, all while being easily infested, infected and spilled.
>many presently rich countries were poor once, and they went through a huge improvement of living standards and everything in an era before the mass proliferation of plastic packaging.
And all of them had similar problems with disease, affordability, and so on at that time, minus the disease belt related problems.
>No, they send it off to Asia, without properly sorting it, where a significant portion of it - that which is just plain unrecyclable in the first place, which is not worth recylcling for the processors at the given moment, and which is too contaminated to recycle - ends up in the local dumps and eventually in the ocean. This is what this whole thread is about, how Western countries have plastic piling up because China won't take it anymore. So banning plastic packaging in the West would have an effect
This is the propaganda machine at work. It makes things sound logical in your head, as long as you don't understand how this trade actually works in reality. And most people don't.
What actually happens to dirty plastic waste shipping (which you'll note I already explained several times in this thread) is that it's already packaged, so it gets dumped into landfills. Landfills are then scoured by the poorest of their societies, who scrounge for large, heavy pieces of plastic they can reasonably wash in the nearby river, and get to the collector to earn some pennies. Rest stays in the landfill.
Critical part of that is "stays in the landfill". It doesn't get to the bodies of water. And plastic isn't a pollutant. It's biologically largely inert, very few things in the nature can metabolize it. So it just sits there, slowly breaking into smaller and smaller parts as entropy takes hold, going nowhere.
The parts that do get to the oceans are overwhelmingly the products of local consumption. Because most people in poor countries don't care at all about environment. They utterly lack the Christian "original sin" dogma as the base for their culture, and t