Since religions are the definition of "good" and "horrible" your statement makes no real sense. There are no real moral standards outside of religions, and the examples you give (war bad, rational justification good, people are essentially moral beings,...) are distinctly Christian in nature. A rational actor would not agree with you, since he would make a cost-benefit analysis on every action and refuse to say any act is inherently bad, it depends on the result (statements like "docter mangele saved lots of lives on balance, and so he was a good human being" would not be controversial to a rational actor, they would simply be calculated and decided upon. This specific statement would probably pass munster).
I hope you see the problem. "Right reason", "good", "horrible", are relative concepts that depend on your religion and/or ideology. For a muslim 9/11 was "good", for everyone else it was "horrible". The same is true for countless other things and for every other religion, political persuasion and ideology. Have you really never seen a communist claim that Stalin never executed anyone, or only those that deserved it ? How do you interpret statements like that ?
An equally valid point would be that the definition of a muslim is one who agrees on at least this issue (and frankly, ask a few you think "western"/"moderate" on the apostate killing, you'll be scared by the responses).
Another argument would be that they don't act on this due to local laws (which would leave the issue that they will of course try to overturn religious freedom in America, for example). In short, that they don't act on this, and the law is perfect.
The trials of two "honor killers" are underway in America this week: one in Buffalo, New York, and the other in Arizona.
But I prefer to call myself an atheist. Because I lead my life as though no gods existed,
In other words, you're atheism has exactly nothing to do with whether or not you believe in Gods.
The idea is that to me, something exists if it is observed to have an effect on the universe.
Okay, by that standard, all religions' Gods, by virtue of their existence in minds and books, exist. So does Batman. Which of course reinforces my first point about the origin of your convictions.
Btw : I don't mind anything about how you live your life. Feel free to do as you please. But a bit more honesty about your motivations might be nice.
In my experience you're wrong. Talk to a Christian or Buddhist monk, and discuss science. You'll find them making good well thought out points (certainly beating the average person in the street by an order of magnitude).
Now do the same with an imam. It won't take long for a screaming match or open threats to surface.
argument that people only use empirical information to reach rational conclusions and act rationally without bias...
This is not just "not human". Acting rationally is surprisingly tough. We can't find the "rational" actions a chess player should take in the general case with entire datacenters, to say nothing of moronically simple games like Go, or google plus' flood-it.
And if no human can rationally play a stupidly simple game of chess (because they can't beat the datacenters which are known to be flawed), what makes anyone think rational responses are possible for huge open-ended problems like life ? Life is vastly more complex than chess (mine includes a lot of chess games, proving the point at least in my case), and includes dozens of problems chess players do not face. Incomplete information for one. Limited economic resources. Vast number of players interacting, which is where the fun game "but does he know I know he knows I know ?" comes from. The list goes on and on and on.
That's not true at all. You can never prove a negative. You can't prove the non-existence of something without examining everything in existence, which isn't feasible. There is no known method to arrive at a proof God doesn't exist. Mathematically there's a number of subtleties here, which make sure that such tricks as asking which rule applies to "not not God exists" don't change the nature of the question.
Proving something doesn't exist in a limited, qualified set is of course possible, and is an entirely different problem. But we don't know a mathematically rigorous definition of the "set" of possibilities that we actually live in. We don't even have an intuitive definition that's useful imho.
Proving God exists, however, is simple : just make him show his face. Point a telescope at his living room... you get the point.
Incidentally, I also believe that it wouldn't matter to atheists at all if God proved his existence. They are not unbelievers because they really care about the intricacies of what can be logically proved or not, or they would have the same problem with nearly every science (anything that can't be expresses in a proven-to-be-consistent logic system. If you really care about mathematically correct proof, you'd be a climate-change-denier for example. Hell, you'd be denying that physics itself works at all, since it most definitely can't stand up to a mathematical standard of proof). Atheists, and agnosts mostly are unbelievers because they hate the social customs involved (eg. because it is somewhat at odds with their dating life, real or imagined dating life I mean), or because it's popular in their neighbourhood.
Proof that God exists would make hardly any atheists change their mind. It doesn't solve the "real" problem they have with religion : that it provides a set of rules they (think, in most cases) they can short-cut without consequences.
All of those quotes are out of context. Some are in reality examples of the bible saying it's NOT the sole truth, with the "not" located slightly above the line you're quoting. One other is about the ten commandments, which the bible does claim are the truth.
None of those quotes even remotely make the point you're trying to make.
And frankly, of all the books that claim to be the answer to everything, from the greek philosophers' works (read them, note how many families or even entire cities get massacred and for what moronic reasons that sort of thing happens), over things like mein kampf, little red book, quran, vedas... the bible is definitely the most positive one by far (should say "the new testament" to be perfectly accurate).
We all know which religion you're talking about. And it's only one. Where exactly does Christianity say that you can kill infidels ? Where exactly does Buddhism say so ? Where do you find that in Hinduism ?
Of course, the answer to those questions is very well known.
You're making a logical, historical and accurate argument to these guys. Muslims say "agree with us or we kill you"
Guess which side they will "honorably" take "out of free will" ? The nonviolent one ? Well, they'll certainly claim to take the nonviolent side, it just won't be the one we all know to be nonviolent.
Isn't the "moral equivalence" argument thoroughly discredited ?
The same argument can be made about any ideology. None of them are perfect, so a "liberal" is as despicable a human being as, say stalin or the muslim prophet. Do you think that's accurate ? No ? Then obviously you don't really think that "every" ideology is a plague on the world.
It makes about as much sense as saying every computer program's evil because there are a few viruses.
This tweet got posted on several important websites, and this is a sort-of important person. Their religion demands they execute him for this, and they can't publicly ignore that. Ask a "western" muslim about this, you'll be horrified by their response. I guarantee it.
So they didn't have to pour over tweets. The "police" got this shoved in their face.
Note that no-one forced any muslim to kill people over the muhammad cartoons. This is sort of like that. Their prophet publicly and cruelly executed anyone who criticized him as soon as he could get away with it. Not "taking" insults is very important to muslim culture.
All of this doesn't mean that they don't pour over everyone's tweets though. They do. Or at least, they try. Luckily, they're about as capable and effective as your average government.
In Western theological terms, that's like saying that Christ is an inspirational person with some really interesting teachings, but not the Son of God.
There are days you see this five times before breakfast... and yet no killings, no nothing.
It's called "freedom of religion". Muslims demand it from others, like the west, so why do they get to do this ?
The problem with this statement is very simple. If you actually implement this, you are basically making it impossible for muslims to live their religion. It is how their culture works and self-polices. Cut this out, and you destroy it.
Additionally, this is no joke. Saudis and a lot of muslims will scream (quite literally sometimes) about racism if you criticise their attitude towards "hate speech" (executing anyone they perceive as insulting, and there's plenty of example where the person didn't even say anything, it was just "generally thought" (sometimes because of lying) that he said/did/... something). Reading the actual primary sources of the religion, it's plain and obvious that this is how islam works, and they're vastly more flexible than the muslim example. The prophet had people buried in sand in the desert to watch them die for criticizing him.
Cutting out this means flat out declaring the central figure of islam to be an inhuman moronic, cruel paedophilic bastard.
Of course, that's exactly what he was.
Until we face this reality, and force muslims to accept people saying this everywhere on this world, this won't end.
The problem of course is that those increases coincide with much larger increases in co2... They accelerated the situation, but the situation will "deteriorate" almost as fast without them.
Have you read the IPCC reports ? They pretty directly state this.
Are there perhaps feedback loops we don't know about yet? I'm quite sure there are, but since we're seeing measurements moving at paces not seen previously at any time in history
This is quite a claim. Since we have no data of any real resolution once you go back 200 years you should change this claim. Before that measurement intervals are at best 10 years apart (as in we can't tell what happens during 10 years in history, only "average change over 10 years, assuming x y z, which we know corrupted at least some datapoints"). Once you go anywhere near the last ice age, which would be the interesting area for this, resolution is down to several centuries. So we have no idea if the rate of change is really unprecendented. It's unprecedented in the last 200 years, but that's not exactly a surprise to anyone. Before that it's a game of chance.
There have certainly been more massive co2 releases into the athmosphere than all human production combined in history. And much faster ones too. They did not kill the planet.
I already gave you the CO2/H20 vapor loop. It's real, it's testable, it exists.
It's "real" only for specific cases (it has requirements such as being at very near the end of an interglacial period). It's most definitely not testable (nothing in climate science is testable, since we have no spare climates to fool around with. And please don't start with how simulations are the same as tests, or I will compare the data of the IPCC AR1 simulations with reality and let's see you explain that). However I agree the data seems to indicate this feedback loop does exist (statistical inference is what's used here, not "reality", not experiments, not empiricist science (in fact according to empiricist science you'd be pretty fucking justified in claiming it doesn't exist), it just statistically seems to be what's happening "on average").
Incidentally, what you neglected to mention is that it also releases massive amounts of co2 into the atmosphere, and by now far more than the human production. In fact, it's far past the point where human co2 emissions became insignificant. Let's call this existence of this feedback loop "fact A".
That alone is reason to reduce CO2. The earth is a very malleable planet
Great let's call this "claim B".
Can you elaborate on A -> B. You take this as a given. Needless to say I don't agree. This step is beyond unclear to me. If feedback loops exist the only reason for warming (in the last century and a half) is warming slightly before that (which may - may have been caused by anthropogenic co2 in the beginning of the 19th century aided by a few larger than life volcanic eruptions). Human emissions after that probably did not help matters, but they had but a tiny effect. So can you please explain to me what effect 1% (at best) reduction in CO2 levels in the athmosphere is going to have ? (most co2 additions to the athmosphere in the last century were the result of feedback loops adding more co2, they were not human emissions. And yes, the pace of h2o and co2 release into the athmosphere is accelerating much faster than our production is)
When saying "co2 emissions caused by humans caused global warming" that is only correct if you mean the deforestation that occured in the early 19th century in Europe and a bit in Asia, with perhaps a dash of coal burning, but not much. It is absolutely incorrect to claim it has anything to do with burning oil, or burning coal in the 20th century. Same for 21st century.
So I really, really, really don't understand. Limiting emissions does nothing about global warming (if it's real - but we both seem to agree it is).
Well I don't get the official position on feedback loops... first of all, my personal opinion is that yes, they exist, and yes, they're big ones. But ignoring ones particular beliefs about the feedback loops, there are 2 options. (to summarize, "feedback loops" here means global warming is caused by only one factor : a tiny amount of warming about 170 years ago, and the ship has sailed : no amount of co2 reduction or anything short of diverting more energy than global warming has already amassed can stop warming running it's course. Needless to say, diverting energy streams like that is a pipe dream. )
But as I said, reality is simple : either they exist, or they don't.
In case they don't, then global warming will add the direct influence of co2 and proceed to stop. Which will result in a net warming of ~0.1 degree Celsius, let's say worst possible case and call it 0.5 degrees. It's insignificant. 0.5 degrees and everything else is the normal cycle. In this case we should obviously do nothing, as there is no reason to do anything.
If they do, then the battle is lost. Expanding every last resource available to the entire human race to the point everybody dies will not make the tiniest dent in the warming effect. Again, co2 reductions are ridiculous, unless they can be implemented 200 years ago. Anything later than that is beyond ridiculous.
So can anyone please explain to me how the hell you justify co2 reductions ? They don't even work in the most optimistic cases (ie. we drop co2 production tomorrow and let everyone north of North Carolina freeze to death), and in the scenario where China does... well the only possible option available to them (burn all their coal in the next 50-100 years or faster)... forget about it.
Sadly this post is a bit of a joke. This sort of paper comes out at least once a month. People just really, really want to believe this it seems. They are slowly getting more convincing, but as you can see in the paper, the timing doesn't exactly match very well. Some of the changes occur rather a long time after the earliest eruption, which throws their whole thesis in serious doubt. If the plant disasters they claim indeed occurred at the dates claimed, why isn't that massive sudden cooling in the history books along with a few revolutions occurring at those dates ? Why did the cooling last so much longer than similar volcanic eruptions ? At the very least they're missing something, at worst, they're just wrong.
They're also invoking feedback effects. That's cute, but feedback effects obviously never cause anything, it's a cop-out. This sort of claim gets weaker and weaker once you realize that they claim a tiny, tiny effect (slight albedo reduction, a sort of (tiny) "nuclear winter" caused by volcanoes) and everything else followed by necessity (it cooled further because it was cooling. Great ! If so, why did it stop ? No answer).
What this paper claims is that the little ice age occurs in simulations of their events, after tweaking the values a few times. Which values ? They need to rather greatly prolong the expected cooling a volcanic eruption causes. Great. But the Mauder minimum just happens to coincide really really well with the little ice age. And the timing matches a lot better than their volcanoes. Is that just a coincidence ? Nobody really thinks so, and this will be one of the many papers that fails to convince people of that fact.
If this paper is true, that little ice age should probably be classified as a "false start" of a real one. It tried to start and sure enough, temperatures started dropping (enough to cause the extinction of several countries), but for some reason that this paper doesn't go into, it didn't happen (and the modern world wouldn't have happened if it did, we'd be back in the stone age if not extinct instead of on the moon). The feedback loop cooling the planet got triggered, ran for a while, and then just... died. Why ? It doesn't seem to have had any false starts the previous times. In fact this feedback system has proven extremely unstoppable in the past, including a few times with a massive co2 increase, which failed to halt temperature drops (at least in the long term it failed, in the short term we're guessing). They could at least have said something akin to that the sun may not have started the little ice age, but it looks like it ended it (at least the Sun may have sufficient power to do so).
That's another bit of an elephant in the room. It is "about time" (give or take 5000 years) for another huge ice age to start. Was the little ice age a "false start" ? If it is, that seems a rather unique event. We don't yet know what causes ice ages (and no, it's not an iceberg blocking the gulf stream as half of the internet seems to believe, that would suck for Europe, as last years' UK snow disasters would become yearly events, and rock for Canada (unless Canadians like skiing), but it doesn't really change temperatures). We just know that ice ages happen with alarming regularity in the past, and that their alarm clock is about to go off.
Regardless, this paper is one of many with this claim, and it's not exactly better than most. They have some new, real-world data which is rather unique, but otherwise...
There's another problem I'd like to point out about these simulations. They show us the real nature of causality. No one cause "causes" something else. In this paper the "cause" of global cooling during the middle ages is "a number" of volcanic eruptions, which activated a number of physical effects due to their location and their distribution, which were followed after a century and a half by another 3 volcanic eruptions, and the warming between the two caused a change in ocean salinity in one or t
You mean nearly throwing out the first amendment trying to acquiesce to their demands ? Muslims kill 5000 innocent Americans, and the result is near-immunity from criticism, at least in the press. Constant accusations that the state is "mistreating" people caught attacking Americans in warzones (mistreating, of course, according to American law, not e.g. geneva conventions)
Why we don't directly attack the ideology and it's members is beyond me. Even a small increase in their numbers or their attacks will force everyone to do just that anyway...
But we like to pretend everything is just peachy...
And most of the other countries have suppressed evidence of genocide (Saudi Arabia, China, especially Turkey, India), suppress entire political ideologies (France, India)... in addition to all of what you say happened in the USA.
And I do agree with the other criticism against you : most of what you complain about boils down to suppressing warez sites. Which just doesn't compare to the atrocities those other countries (excepting perhaps France) commit. Warez doesn't deserve defense.
Cute... and what about the religions who kill in response to insults ?
Another flaw is limiting this to religions. Communists have killed in response to insults. Hell, they've killed in response to facts. Then again, muslims killed dozens in response to the claim they're intolerant... you can hardly imagine more complete proof of the evident truth about islam...
But you people don't kill enough. Don't riot enough. The way to your kind of laws is to influence the state. The way to influence the state, well... If you want concessions, from America, 9/11 should be your guide. Notice how the concessions after 9/11 increased, not decreased, violence against America. You want concessions from India ? Google "pakistan secession" (also notice what Indian concessions got for India. More violence, in fact, much much more violence).
So there's a second lesson : don't stop the violence just because you got what you want. You need to increase the pressure every time you get concessions and scream about racism everyone someone attempts to tie violence to your ideology.
And the main lesson : if you want to oppose these kinds of people, grand statements do not suffice. You want to defend to the death someone's right to say something ? Don't forget that you need to add that you are prepared to kill to defend someone's right to say something if it comes to it. Without that, it doesn't mean a thing.
The crux of the matter is simple : an enlightened civilization makes the statement referred to before, attributed to Voltaire (who also didn't mean it)
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
The rest of the story has been repeated countless times : group X: "oh really ? Let's see what happens if we kill a few (dozen) people over this" "enlightened" civilization: "please please PLEASE stop. We'll kill those people we'd "defend to the death"
Group X has historically been muslims, dictators and communists in regions where they have enough control to actually commit large-scale violence. The conclusion is of course, as simple as they come : against "modern free-thinking atheists" any amount of violence, if it's over the threshold of killing people, will make "free-thinkers" acquiesce to any demands. This has been used both by "protestors" (e.g. see the effect of the sept 11 attacks on the american press), and governments (e.g. the Iranian government control over newspapers is much more based on regular attacks against the worst offender than it is on constant inspection).
Needless to say, there is one way to stop this : if any ideology starts using violence, should result in slowly building attacks against any member of that ideology. That is the only recourse, except pie-in-the-sky 100% police effectiveness and worldwide freedom of speech laws.
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Since religions are the definition of "good" and "horrible" your statement makes no real sense. There are no real moral standards outside of religions, and the examples you give (war bad, rational justification good, people are essentially moral beings, ...) are distinctly Christian in nature. A rational actor would not agree with you, since he would make a cost-benefit analysis on every action and refuse to say any act is inherently bad, it depends on the result (statements like "docter mangele saved lots of lives on balance, and so he was a good human being" would not be controversial to a rational actor, they would simply be calculated and decided upon. This specific statement would probably pass munster).
I hope you see the problem. "Right reason", "good", "horrible", are relative concepts that depend on your religion and/or ideology. For a muslim 9/11 was "good", for everyone else it was "horrible". The same is true for countless other things and for every other religion, political persuasion and ideology. Have you really never seen a communist claim that Stalin never executed anyone, or only those that deserved it ? How do you interpret statements like that ?
And what about issues that matter ?
An equally valid point would be that the definition of a muslim is one who agrees on at least this issue (and frankly, ask a few you think "western"/"moderate" on the apostate killing, you'll be scared by the responses).
Another argument would be that they don't act on this due to local laws (which would leave the issue that they will of course try to overturn religious freedom in America, for example). In short, that they don't act on this, and the law is perfect.
The trials of two "honor killers" are underway in America this week: one in Buffalo, New York, and the other in Arizona.
But I prefer to call myself an atheist. Because I lead my life as though no gods existed,
In other words, you're atheism has exactly nothing to do with whether or not you believe in Gods.
The idea is that to me, something exists if it is observed to have an effect on the universe.
Okay, by that standard, all religions' Gods, by virtue of their existence in minds and books, exist. So does Batman. Which of course reinforces my first point about the origin of your convictions.
Btw : I don't mind anything about how you live your life. Feel free to do as you please. But a bit more honesty about your motivations might be nice.
In my experience you're wrong. Talk to a Christian or Buddhist monk, and discuss science. You'll find them making good well thought out points (certainly beating the average person in the street by an order of magnitude).
Now do the same with an imam. It won't take long for a screaming match or open threats to surface.
I have very few problems with invisible wizards, provided they do not order large mobs to kill others.
Needless to say, islam's invisible wizard is found lacking.
Every piece of evidence implies god does not exist - so therefore he doesn't.
Name one such piece of evidence ? One.
argument that people only use empirical information to reach rational conclusions and act rationally without bias...
This is not just "not human". Acting rationally is surprisingly tough. We can't find the "rational" actions a chess player should take in the general case with entire datacenters, to say nothing of moronically simple games like Go, or google plus' flood-it.
And if no human can rationally play a stupidly simple game of chess (because they can't beat the datacenters which are known to be flawed), what makes anyone think rational responses are possible for huge open-ended problems like life ? Life is vastly more complex than chess (mine includes a lot of chess games, proving the point at least in my case), and includes dozens of problems chess players do not face. Incomplete information for one. Limited economic resources. Vast number of players interacting, which is where the fun game "but does he know I know he knows I know ?" comes from. The list goes on and on and on.
You can't prove it either way.
That's not true at all. You can never prove a negative. You can't prove the non-existence of something without examining everything in existence, which isn't feasible. There is no known method to arrive at a proof God doesn't exist. Mathematically there's a number of subtleties here, which make sure that such tricks as asking which rule applies to "not not God exists" don't change the nature of the question.
Proving something doesn't exist in a limited, qualified set is of course possible, and is an entirely different problem. But we don't know a mathematically rigorous definition of the "set" of possibilities that we actually live in. We don't even have an intuitive definition that's useful imho.
Proving God exists, however, is simple : just make him show his face. Point a telescope at his living room ... you get the point.
Incidentally, I also believe that it wouldn't matter to atheists at all if God proved his existence. They are not unbelievers because they really care about the intricacies of what can be logically proved or not, or they would have the same problem with nearly every science (anything that can't be expresses in a proven-to-be-consistent logic system. If you really care about mathematically correct proof, you'd be a climate-change-denier for example. Hell, you'd be denying that physics itself works at all, since it most definitely can't stand up to a mathematical standard of proof). Atheists, and agnosts mostly are unbelievers because they hate the social customs involved (eg. because it is somewhat at odds with their dating life, real or imagined dating life I mean), or because it's popular in their neighbourhood.
Proof that God exists would make hardly any atheists change their mind. It doesn't solve the "real" problem they have with religion : that it provides a set of rules they (think, in most cases) they can short-cut without consequences.
All of those quotes are out of context. Some are in reality examples of the bible saying it's NOT the sole truth, with the "not" located slightly above the line you're quoting. One other is about the ten commandments, which the bible does claim are the truth.
None of those quotes even remotely make the point you're trying to make.
And frankly, of all the books that claim to be the answer to everything, from the greek philosophers' works (read them, note how many families or even entire cities get massacred and for what moronic reasons that sort of thing happens), over things like mein kampf, little red book, quran, vedas ... the bible is definitely the most positive one by far (should say "the new testament" to be perfectly accurate).
"Religion" ? "God" ?
Really ?
We all know which religion you're talking about. And it's only one. Where exactly does Christianity say that you can kill infidels ? Where exactly does Buddhism say so ? Where do you find that in Hinduism ?
Of course, the answer to those questions is very well known.
You're making a logical, historical and accurate argument to these guys.
Muslims say "agree with us or we kill you"
Guess which side they will "honorably" take "out of free will" ? The nonviolent one ? Well, they'll certainly claim to take the nonviolent side, it just won't be the one we all know to be nonviolent.
Isn't the "moral equivalence" argument thoroughly discredited ?
The same argument can be made about any ideology. None of them are perfect, so a "liberal" is as despicable a human being as, say stalin or the muslim prophet. Do you think that's accurate ? No ? Then obviously you don't really think that "every" ideology is a plague on the world.
It makes about as much sense as saying every computer program's evil because there are a few viruses.
This tweet got posted on several important websites, and this is a sort-of important person. Their religion demands they execute him for this, and they can't publicly ignore that. Ask a "western" muslim about this, you'll be horrified by their response. I guarantee it.
So they didn't have to pour over tweets. The "police" got this shoved in their face.
Note that no-one forced any muslim to kill people over the muhammad cartoons. This is sort of like that. Their prophet publicly and cruelly executed anyone who criticized him as soon as he could get away with it. Not "taking" insults is very important to muslim culture.
All of this doesn't mean that they don't pour over everyone's tweets though. They do. Or at least, they try. Luckily, they're about as capable and effective as your average government.
In Western theological terms, that's like saying that Christ is an inspirational person with some really interesting teachings, but not the Son of God.
There are days you see this five times before breakfast ... and yet no killings, no nothing.
It's called "freedom of religion". Muslims demand it from others, like the west, so why do they get to do this ?
The problem with this statement is very simple. If you actually implement this, you are basically making it impossible for muslims to live their religion. It is how their culture works and self-polices. Cut this out, and you destroy it.
Additionally, this is no joke. Saudis and a lot of muslims will scream (quite literally sometimes) about racism if you criticise their attitude towards "hate speech" (executing anyone they perceive as insulting, and there's plenty of example where the person didn't even say anything, it was just "generally thought" (sometimes because of lying) that he said/did/... something). Reading the actual primary sources of the religion, it's plain and obvious that this is how islam works, and they're vastly more flexible than the muslim example. The prophet had people buried in sand in the desert to watch them die for criticizing him.
Cutting out this means flat out declaring the central figure of islam to be an inhuman moronic, cruel paedophilic bastard.
Of course, that's exactly what he was.
Until we face this reality, and force muslims to accept people saying this everywhere on this world, this won't end.
The problem of course is that those increases coincide with much larger increases in co2 ... They accelerated the situation, but the situation will "deteriorate" almost as fast without them.
Have you read the IPCC reports ? They pretty directly state this.
Are there perhaps feedback loops we don't know about yet? I'm quite sure there are, but since we're seeing measurements moving at paces not seen previously at any time in history
This is quite a claim. Since we have no data of any real resolution once you go back 200 years you should change this claim. Before that measurement intervals are at best 10 years apart (as in we can't tell what happens during 10 years in history, only "average change over 10 years, assuming x y z, which we know corrupted at least some datapoints"). Once you go anywhere near the last ice age, which would be the interesting area for this, resolution is down to several centuries. So we have no idea if the rate of change is really unprecendented. It's unprecedented in the last 200 years, but that's not exactly a surprise to anyone. Before that it's a game of chance.
There have certainly been more massive co2 releases into the athmosphere than all human production combined in history. And much faster ones too. They did not kill the planet.
I already gave you the CO2/H20 vapor loop. It's real, it's testable, it exists.
It's "real" only for specific cases (it has requirements such as being at very near the end of an interglacial period). It's most definitely not testable (nothing in climate science is testable, since we have no spare climates to fool around with. And please don't start with how simulations are the same as tests, or I will compare the data of the IPCC AR1 simulations with reality and let's see you explain that). However I agree the data seems to indicate this feedback loop does exist (statistical inference is what's used here, not "reality", not experiments, not empiricist science (in fact according to empiricist science you'd be pretty fucking justified in claiming it doesn't exist), it just statistically seems to be what's happening "on average").
Incidentally, what you neglected to mention is that it also releases massive amounts of co2 into the atmosphere, and by now far more than the human production. In fact, it's far past the point where human co2 emissions became insignificant. Let's call this existence of this feedback loop "fact A".
That alone is reason to reduce CO2. The earth is a very malleable planet
Great let's call this "claim B".
Can you elaborate on A -> B. You take this as a given. Needless to say I don't agree. This step is beyond unclear to me. If feedback loops exist the only reason for warming (in the last century and a half) is warming slightly before that (which may - may have been caused by anthropogenic co2 in the beginning of the 19th century aided by a few larger than life volcanic eruptions). Human emissions after that probably did not help matters, but they had but a tiny effect. So can you please explain to me what effect 1% (at best) reduction in CO2 levels in the athmosphere is going to have ? (most co2 additions to the athmosphere in the last century were the result of feedback loops adding more co2, they were not human emissions. And yes, the pace of h2o and co2 release into the athmosphere is accelerating much faster than our production is)
When saying "co2 emissions caused by humans caused global warming" that is only correct if you mean the deforestation that occured in the early 19th century in Europe and a bit in Asia, with perhaps a dash of coal burning, but not much. It is absolutely incorrect to claim it has anything to do with burning oil, or burning coal in the 20th century. Same for 21st century.
So I really, really, really don't understand. Limiting emissions does nothing about global warming (if it's real - but we both seem to agree it is).
I know a woman who does all of that (lots of upholstery too). Will she do ?
Well I don't get the official position on feedback loops ... first of all, my personal opinion is that yes, they exist, and yes, they're big ones. But ignoring ones particular beliefs about the feedback loops, there are 2 options. (to summarize, "feedback loops" here means global warming is caused by only one factor : a tiny amount of warming about 170 years ago, and the ship has sailed : no amount of co2 reduction or anything short of diverting more energy than global warming has already amassed can stop warming running it's course. Needless to say, diverting energy streams like that is a pipe dream. )
But as I said, reality is simple : either they exist, or they don't.
In case they don't, then global warming will add the direct influence of co2 and proceed to stop. Which will result in a net warming of ~0.1 degree Celsius, let's say worst possible case and call it 0.5 degrees. It's insignificant. 0.5 degrees and everything else is the normal cycle. In this case we should obviously do nothing, as there is no reason to do anything.
If they do, then the battle is lost. Expanding every last resource available to the entire human race to the point everybody dies will not make the tiniest dent in the warming effect. Again, co2 reductions are ridiculous, unless they can be implemented 200 years ago. Anything later than that is beyond ridiculous.
So can anyone please explain to me how the hell you justify co2 reductions ? They don't even work in the most optimistic cases (ie. we drop co2 production tomorrow and let everyone north of North Carolina freeze to death), and in the scenario where China does ... well the only possible option available to them (burn all their coal in the next 50-100 years or faster) ... forget about it.
Sadly this post is a bit of a joke. This sort of paper comes out at least once a month. People just really, really want to believe this it seems. They are slowly getting more convincing, but as you can see in the paper, the timing doesn't exactly match very well. Some of the changes occur rather a long time after the earliest eruption, which throws their whole thesis in serious doubt. If the plant disasters they claim indeed occurred at the dates claimed, why isn't that massive sudden cooling in the history books along with a few revolutions occurring at those dates ? Why did the cooling last so much longer than similar volcanic eruptions ? At the very least they're missing something, at worst, they're just wrong.
They're also invoking feedback effects. That's cute, but feedback effects obviously never cause anything, it's a cop-out. This sort of claim gets weaker and weaker once you realize that they claim a tiny, tiny effect (slight albedo reduction, a sort of (tiny) "nuclear winter" caused by volcanoes) and everything else followed by necessity (it cooled further because it was cooling. Great ! If so, why did it stop ? No answer).
What this paper claims is that the little ice age occurs in simulations of their events, after tweaking the values a few times. Which values ? They need to rather greatly prolong the expected cooling a volcanic eruption causes. Great. But the Mauder minimum just happens to coincide really really well with the little ice age. And the timing matches a lot better than their volcanoes. Is that just a coincidence ? Nobody really thinks so, and this will be one of the many papers that fails to convince people of that fact.
If this paper is true, that little ice age should probably be classified as a "false start" of a real one. It tried to start and sure enough, temperatures started dropping (enough to cause the extinction of several countries), but for some reason that this paper doesn't go into, it didn't happen (and the modern world wouldn't have happened if it did, we'd be back in the stone age if not extinct instead of on the moon). The feedback loop cooling the planet got triggered, ran for a while, and then just ... died. Why ? It doesn't seem to have had any false starts the previous times. In fact this feedback system has proven extremely unstoppable in the past, including a few times with a massive co2 increase, which failed to halt temperature drops (at least in the long term it failed, in the short term we're guessing). They could at least have said something akin to that the sun may not have started the little ice age, but it looks like it ended it (at least the Sun may have sufficient power to do so).
That's another bit of an elephant in the room. It is "about time" (give or take 5000 years) for another huge ice age to start. Was the little ice age a "false start" ? If it is, that seems a rather unique event. We don't yet know what causes ice ages (and no, it's not an iceberg blocking the gulf stream as half of the internet seems to believe, that would suck for Europe, as last years' UK snow disasters would become yearly events, and rock for Canada (unless Canadians like skiing), but it doesn't really change temperatures). We just know that ice ages happen with alarming regularity in the past, and that their alarm clock is about to go off.
Regardless, this paper is one of many with this claim, and it's not exactly better than most. They have some new, real-world data which is rather unique, but otherwise ...
There's another problem I'd like to point out about these simulations. They show us the real nature of causality. No one cause "causes" something else. In this paper the "cause" of global cooling during the middle ages is "a number" of volcanic eruptions, which activated a number of physical effects due to their location and their distribution, which were followed after a century and a half by another 3 volcanic eruptions, and the warming between the two caused a change in ocean salinity in one or t
You mean nearly throwing out the first amendment trying to acquiesce to their demands ? Muslims kill 5000 innocent Americans, and the result is near-immunity from criticism, at least in the press. Constant accusations that the state is "mistreating" people caught attacking Americans in warzones (mistreating, of course, according to American law, not e.g. geneva conventions)
Why we don't directly attack the ideology and it's members is beyond me. Even a small increase in their numbers or their attacks will force everyone to do just that anyway ...
But we like to pretend everything is just peachy ...
And most of the other countries have suppressed evidence of genocide (Saudi Arabia, China, especially Turkey, India), suppress entire political ideologies (France, India) ... in addition to all of what you say happened in the USA.
And I do agree with the other criticism against you : most of what you complain about boils down to suppressing warez sites. Which just doesn't compare to the atrocities those other countries (excepting perhaps France) commit. Warez doesn't deserve defense.
Cute ... and what about the religions who kill in response to insults ?
Another flaw is limiting this to religions. Communists have killed in response to insults. Hell, they've killed in response to facts. Then again, muslims killed dozens in response to the claim they're intolerant ... you can hardly imagine more complete proof of the evident truth about islam ...
But you people don't kill enough. Don't riot enough. The way to your kind of laws is to influence the state. The way to influence the state, well ... If you want concessions, from America, 9/11 should be your guide. Notice how the concessions after 9/11 increased, not decreased, violence against America. You want concessions from India ? Google "pakistan secession" (also notice what Indian concessions got for India. More violence, in fact, much much more violence).
So there's a second lesson : don't stop the violence just because you got what you want. You need to increase the pressure every time you get concessions and scream about racism everyone someone attempts to tie violence to your ideology.
And the main lesson : if you want to oppose these kinds of people, grand statements do not suffice. You want to defend to the death someone's right to say something ? Don't forget that you need to add that you are prepared to kill to defend someone's right to say something if it comes to it. Without that, it doesn't mean a thing.
That sounds great. And this is what happens in practice with ... shall we say ... "a certain faith", and a few various ideologies ...
an example of what india had to deal with in the past
The crux of the matter is simple : an enlightened civilization makes the statement referred to before, attributed to Voltaire (who also didn't mean it)
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
The rest of the story has been repeated countless times :
group X: "oh really ? Let's see what happens if we kill a few (dozen) people over this"
"enlightened" civilization: "please please PLEASE stop. We'll kill those people we'd "defend to the death"
Group X has historically been muslims, dictators and communists in regions where they have enough control to actually commit large-scale violence. The conclusion is of course, as simple as they come : against "modern free-thinking atheists" any amount of violence, if it's over the threshold of killing people, will make "free-thinkers" acquiesce to any demands. This has been used both by "protestors" (e.g. see the effect of the sept 11 attacks on the american press), and governments (e.g. the Iranian government control over newspapers is much more based on regular attacks against the worst offender than it is on constant inspection).
Needless to say, there is one way to stop this : if any ideology starts using violence, should result in slowly building attacks against any member of that ideology. That is the only recourse, except pie-in-the-sky 100% police effectiveness and worldwide freedom of speech laws.