I just happened across an interesting study that backs my earlier assertions. From the "executive summary":
Aggregate mortality attributed to all extreme weather events globally has declined by more than
90% since the 1920s, in spite of a four
-
fold rise in population and much more
complete reporting of such events.
As extractive industries they want to buy protection from other advocates with environmental views by starving them out of the discussion!
Even if we supposed that all it took to "starve" someone out of a public debate was to spend enough money, the Koch brothers aren't even remotely close to spending the kind of money that would take. They're just relatively wealthy billionaires, not god-emperors with an iron-bound oil monopoly to fund their every whim.
I think a silly aspect of this discussion is the attribution of so much mythical power to money. It misses an obvious problem. If you spend money to steer the discussion and your wealth decreases as a result, then you've lost money and hence, lost that power. There are other forms of power that don't diminish in their use, such as military power or political power.
We already know that there are more catastrophic floods such as recent ones in Central Europe, more extreme winds such as typhoons and hurricanes and so on, and those that appear are getting more powerful.
We and in particular you don't actually know such a thing. There has to be evidence of this first before there can be knowledge.
Catastrophies are increasing on global scale as well
I was merely responding to that. What is "global scale" referring to then? Also, since I'm at it, I don't see any evidence of any increase in catastrophes. To the contrary, I see evidence of substantial declines in catastrophes and body counts when those catastrophes occur. A modern emergency/disaster response works wonders in reducing the occurrence and severity of catastrophes.
Already forgot the tsunami that killed over 30.000 people and effectively wiped out infrastructure in large region of Japan I see.
Completely irrelevant here since both the damage was insignificant on a global scale and quickly repaired (extremely rapid adaptation on a time scale faster than climate change operates on). I'm worried about things that quickly kill 300 million people. Nuclear war can do that. Sea level rise can't.
Fires are a very common side-effect of earthquakes so expect tall buildings to drop like flies if there is ever an earthquake near a city.
There are two things to note here. First, not every such building will come with a precrashed plane parked in it, flaming jet fuel splashed all over the place. Or have fire insulation on their steel girders scraped off. The heat input and initial damage will be different. Second, they aren't all designed like the WTC towers were. That generally is a bad thing since the WTC towers were relatively well designed.
Even worse are the five story apartment buildings where I live in Seattle. There are dozens going up that do not have a concrete or even a steel frame. They're 100% wood that looks like they'll collapse like a house of cards even in a small earthquake. Also, a fire will easily down them.
Wood is actually rather resilient though I am surprised to see it used on such a scale and in such a climate. I'd be worried that termites could be the big hidden killer when the Big One comes. Of course, there probably isn't much that's going to help in the really large earthquakes (like a magnitude 9 one), after the tsunami and lahars sweep through.
The real threat seems to be large nuclear war or some similar military-grade existential threat (weaponized diseases, for example). As long as we don't try to kill each other with such weapons, then it seems to me that the climate related stuff isn't that serious a danger. In other words, if the environmental impact is bad enough that it triggers a large scale nuclear war, then yes, it's really bad else it's just another thing we can adapt to.
They don't blindly assume anything - the models that scientists have been working on for 30 or 40 years all say that the heat is still on earth.
And if the models are right, that's just fine. Reality, however, doesn't have this tendency to assume that the models are right.
You could be correct - the heat could be escaping through some mechanism that is not understood or currently measured, but that's not the high-percentage bet.
Like an ozone hole that we already know is present? Or radiative models that turn out to be incorrect.
You should look at the role of public welfare in a system like the Roman empire. It was used from fairly early on as a bribe to the public by a variety of elites (including the occasional "landed few") to buy and hold power.
Dyson Spheres are a rather silly thing to search for, as the technology required is too advanced to fathom (perhaps impossible).
Let us recall that the Dyson sphere idea started life as a swarm of satellites around a star, not as a solid shell. I think I can fathom solar panels, satellites, and orbiting the Sun. That's the basics of a Dyson sphere (well, that and a relativistic traffic control problem which can involve at least as many satellites as there are people currently on Earth).
We could even be there in 100 years.
Indeed. Though it would probably involve self-replicating machines tearing apart Mercury.
If they've got half their galaxy colonized and they're "close" say within a few tens of millions of light-years to us, then they might already be colonizing our galaxy. My view is a few tens of millions of light years is not that much bigger a jump than a few tens of thousands of light years. For example, even if they didn't have a clue how to break down and store whatever components they use for their AU-scale system, they could always send a small star cluster over at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
So, the civilization has to be pretty much like locusts for it the be easy to discern. There may be some civilization lifetime issues to worry about in that case.
Let me repeat: Without authority there is no science.
And once again, you continue to use a pet definition of "authority" which does not mean "authority" and a definition of "science" which doesn't mean "science". Any argument which relies on changing the meaning of core conceptions is inherently not scientific or all that relevant in any other useful context.
I think that's what I find really ridiculous about the climate change debate. This insistence on using a long list of fallacies and projecting all sorts of silly psychological issues on people who disagree (for example, this is my "face-saving" refutation by your decree) rather than basic rational rhetoric and argument. Just point to the evidence. Don't waste my time with unscientific arguments.
That is the longer term aim; there is much more than an inklink of how this will be achieved (it's either ignorant or ridiculous of you to claim otherwise) and do not underestimate human ingenuity (or engineering).
No. I strongly disagree. The economics of this have not at all been thought out. Human ingenuity and engineering is not magically a match for human stupidity.
Meanwhile China, OPEC, the US, Russia, won't go along. It's likely that nobody will go along, including the parties advocating these proposals. The combination makes the exercise pointless.
Which is probably what I was getting at when I wrote, "ultimately all authoritative statements in science are evidence based."
Which is a combination of the No True Scotsman fallacy and trying to claim something by shifting the definition (here, from the usual definition of "authoritative" to "evidence-based").
That is why it wasn't a brilliant move to let a corporation build its spy network when all sides to all conflicts have equal access to the top spy satellites unless you are pushing complete global anhilation..
I wouldn't call getting out of the way "brilliant" either. "Sensible" seems more appropriate. And rather than use the term, "complete global annihilation", I'd use the term, "reduction in conflict".
Where all of that heat has been going was where the speculation has been, with the usual supposition being "the ocean" or "the poles".
And "outer space". That is the rub. The attempts to find the "missing heat" assume it's still on Earth and then look for it. Presuming the conclusion is a standard fallacy. But for example, the same reason that the poles could hold missing heat is the same reason that the heat might be in space - namely, that satellites aren't properly measuring heat content and heat radiation to space from the poles.
You could make the same argument for 0 != 0.0000003. That's not a serious argument. I don't consider 3 significantly different than 0, as I've already stated.
Pure alarmism.
They are proposing carbon emission reductions of up to 80% globally without an inkling of how that's going to be achieved. That massive, uninformed manipulation of societies easily departs from the "pure alarmism" space.
Don't be absurd. While projections (in any field) will inevitably be inaccurate (as all predictions of the future are bound to be), they, or these, are clearly evidence based. We are trapped in history and can only ever base our policy, if we base our policy on science, upon the best available science. There is no ambiguity as to what that is as pertains to this topic.
What makes you think we're basing this on the best available science? I think it's just another lazy assertion.
That is because climate-related discussion is science based and reliance upon due authority is a central tenet of the methodology of science. On matters of science one ought be more concerned about appeals to inappropriate authority.
It's not. It's based on evidence and models that explain that evidence well. There is no due authority. I think this profound misunderstanding of science is a key part of the problem with human thought today. There is this huge emphasis on consensus and authority rather than on whether the models actually work to explain the climate observed.
As regards the science of global warming, the work of scientists such as Lindzen, Landsea and Pielke, gives us reason to trust its robustness.
That's a pretty dishonest way to characterize their work since they instead have provided reasons to distrust its robustness.
a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body
Sure, we could come up with a new phrase every time we do anything slightly differently, but there's no point to it. It just makes communication overly complex.
That works exactly the same in every life form based on cells with a nucleus. No idea how the exact english name for it is, as I don't know the proper spelling of the german/latin word and can mot google it. Something like Eukariots.
The human body is not a cell nucleus. For example, if this drug triggers an allergy response, then you have both harm and the destruction of the drug before it can do something useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Aggregate mortality attributed to all extreme weather events globally has declined by more than 90% since the 1920s, in spite of a four - fold rise in population and much more complete reporting of such events.
As extractive industries they want to buy protection from other advocates with environmental views by starving them out of the discussion!
Even if we supposed that all it took to "starve" someone out of a public debate was to spend enough money, the Koch brothers aren't even remotely close to spending the kind of money that would take. They're just relatively wealthy billionaires, not god-emperors with an iron-bound oil monopoly to fund their every whim.
I think a silly aspect of this discussion is the attribution of so much mythical power to money. It misses an obvious problem. If you spend money to steer the discussion and your wealth decreases as a result, then you've lost money and hence, lost that power. There are other forms of power that don't diminish in their use, such as military power or political power.
We already know that there are more catastrophic floods such as recent ones in Central Europe, more extreme winds such as typhoons and hurricanes and so on, and those that appear are getting more powerful.
We and in particular you don't actually know such a thing. There has to be evidence of this first before there can be knowledge.
Catastrophies are increasing on global scale as well
I was merely responding to that. What is "global scale" referring to then? Also, since I'm at it, I don't see any evidence of any increase in catastrophes. To the contrary, I see evidence of substantial declines in catastrophes and body counts when those catastrophes occur. A modern emergency/disaster response works wonders in reducing the occurrence and severity of catastrophes.
We can do better than that "best" just by paying attention to what the climate actually does over the next few decades.
Infrastructure outside large cities an major pathways is still in a bad shape.
But that was never in good shape. You aren't going to pack thousands of people per square km in the countryside.
Catastrophies are increasing on global scale as well, as they are not localized so a single region.
Do you actually have an example of a global catastrophe? Zero is not an increase over zero.
Already forgot the tsunami that killed over 30.000 people and effectively wiped out infrastructure in large region of Japan I see.
Completely irrelevant here since both the damage was insignificant on a global scale and quickly repaired (extremely rapid adaptation on a time scale faster than climate change operates on). I'm worried about things that quickly kill 300 million people. Nuclear war can do that. Sea level rise can't.
Fires are a very common side-effect of earthquakes so expect tall buildings to drop like flies if there is ever an earthquake near a city.
There are two things to note here. First, not every such building will come with a precrashed plane parked in it, flaming jet fuel splashed all over the place. Or have fire insulation on their steel girders scraped off. The heat input and initial damage will be different. Second, they aren't all designed like the WTC towers were. That generally is a bad thing since the WTC towers were relatively well designed.
Even worse are the five story apartment buildings where I live in Seattle. There are dozens going up that do not have a concrete or even a steel frame. They're 100% wood that looks like they'll collapse like a house of cards even in a small earthquake. Also, a fire will easily down them.
Wood is actually rather resilient though I am surprised to see it used on such a scale and in such a climate. I'd be worried that termites could be the big hidden killer when the Big One comes. Of course, there probably isn't much that's going to help in the really large earthquakes (like a magnitude 9 one), after the tsunami and lahars sweep through.
The real question is, can we survive ourselves?
The real threat seems to be large nuclear war or some similar military-grade existential threat (weaponized diseases, for example). As long as we don't try to kill each other with such weapons, then it seems to me that the climate related stuff isn't that serious a danger. In other words, if the environmental impact is bad enough that it triggers a large scale nuclear war, then yes, it's really bad else it's just another thing we can adapt to.
They don't blindly assume anything - the models that scientists have been working on for 30 or 40 years all say that the heat is still on earth.
And if the models are right, that's just fine. Reality, however, doesn't have this tendency to assume that the models are right.
You could be correct - the heat could be escaping through some mechanism that is not understood or currently measured, but that's not the high-percentage bet.
Like an ozone hole that we already know is present? Or radiative models that turn out to be incorrect.
You should look at the role of public welfare in a system like the Roman empire. It was used from fairly early on as a bribe to the public by a variety of elites (including the occasional "landed few") to buy and hold power.
Dysons original paper calculated you would need the mass of Jupiter to make a sphere.
I think Mercury is more than sufficient. We're just capturing the energy output of a star, you don't need a lot of mass for that.
Dyson Spheres are a rather silly thing to search for, as the technology required is too advanced to fathom (perhaps impossible).
Let us recall that the Dyson sphere idea started life as a swarm of satellites around a star, not as a solid shell. I think I can fathom solar panels, satellites, and orbiting the Sun. That's the basics of a Dyson sphere (well, that and a relativistic traffic control problem which can involve at least as many satellites as there are people currently on Earth).
We could even be there in 100 years.
Indeed. Though it would probably involve self-replicating machines tearing apart Mercury.
Eeeeexcept that Musk himself tweeted about it as soon as word had spread on internet discussion forums that SpaceX had a loss-of-vehicle.
Why that's definitive proof of something or another!
Out of curiosity, does the phrase "50 cent army" mean anything to you?
If they've got half their galaxy colonized and they're "close" say within a few tens of millions of light-years to us, then they might already be colonizing our galaxy. My view is a few tens of millions of light years is not that much bigger a jump than a few tens of thousands of light years. For example, even if they didn't have a clue how to break down and store whatever components they use for their AU-scale system, they could always send a small star cluster over at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
So, the civilization has to be pretty much like locusts for it the be easy to discern. There may be some civilization lifetime issues to worry about in that case.
For them or for us?
Let me repeat: Without authority there is no science.
And once again, you continue to use a pet definition of "authority" which does not mean "authority" and a definition of "science" which doesn't mean "science". Any argument which relies on changing the meaning of core conceptions is inherently not scientific or all that relevant in any other useful context.
I think that's what I find really ridiculous about the climate change debate. This insistence on using a long list of fallacies and projecting all sorts of silly psychological issues on people who disagree (for example, this is my "face-saving" refutation by your decree) rather than basic rational rhetoric and argument. Just point to the evidence. Don't waste my time with unscientific arguments.
That is the longer term aim; there is much more than an inklink of how this will be achieved (it's either ignorant or ridiculous of you to claim otherwise) and do not underestimate human ingenuity (or engineering).
No. I strongly disagree. The economics of this have not at all been thought out. Human ingenuity and engineering is not magically a match for human stupidity.
Meanwhile China, OPEC, the US, Russia, won't go along. It's likely that nobody will go along, including the parties advocating these proposals. The combination makes the exercise pointless.
Which is probably what I was getting at when I wrote, "ultimately all authoritative statements in science are evidence based."
Which is a combination of the No True Scotsman fallacy and trying to claim something by shifting the definition (here, from the usual definition of "authoritative" to "evidence-based").
That is why it wasn't a brilliant move to let a corporation build its spy network when all sides to all conflicts have equal access to the top spy satellites unless you are pushing complete global anhilation..
I wouldn't call getting out of the way "brilliant" either. "Sensible" seems more appropriate. And rather than use the term, "complete global annihilation", I'd use the term, "reduction in conflict".
Where all of that heat has been going was where the speculation has been, with the usual supposition being "the ocean" or "the poles".
And "outer space". That is the rub. The attempts to find the "missing heat" assume it's still on Earth and then look for it. Presuming the conclusion is a standard fallacy. But for example, the same reason that the poles could hold missing heat is the same reason that the heat might be in space - namely, that satellites aren't properly measuring heat content and heat radiation to space from the poles.
how should an siRNA particle trigger an allergic response?
By the same mechanisms any other molecule triggers an allergy response.
As we have agreed, I thought, 0 != 3.
You could make the same argument for 0 != 0.0000003. That's not a serious argument. I don't consider 3 significantly different than 0, as I've already stated.
Pure alarmism.
They are proposing carbon emission reductions of up to 80% globally without an inkling of how that's going to be achieved. That massive, uninformed manipulation of societies easily departs from the "pure alarmism" space.
Don't be absurd. While projections (in any field) will inevitably be inaccurate (as all predictions of the future are bound to be), they, or these, are clearly evidence based. We are trapped in history and can only ever base our policy, if we base our policy on science, upon the best available science. There is no ambiguity as to what that is as pertains to this topic.
What makes you think we're basing this on the best available science? I think it's just another lazy assertion.
That is because climate-related discussion is science based and reliance upon due authority is a central tenet of the methodology of science. On matters of science one ought be more concerned about appeals to inappropriate authority.
It's not. It's based on evidence and models that explain that evidence well. There is no due authority. I think this profound misunderstanding of science is a key part of the problem with human thought today. There is this huge emphasis on consensus and authority rather than on whether the models actually work to explain the climate observed.
As regards the science of global warming, the work of scientists such as Lindzen, Landsea and Pielke, gives us reason to trust its robustness.
That's a pretty dishonest way to characterize their work since they instead have provided reasons to distrust its robustness.
It is not a 'drug'.
It is a short 20 - 25 bases long RNA strand. (You know what DNA and RNA is?)
Let's actually look at the definition of drug:
a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body
Sure, we could come up with a new phrase every time we do anything slightly differently, but there's no point to it. It just makes communication overly complex.
That works exactly the same in every life form based on cells with a nucleus. No idea how the exact english name for it is, as I don't know the proper spelling of the german/latin word and can mot google it. Something like Eukariots.
The human body is not a cell nucleus. For example, if this drug triggers an allergy response, then you have both harm and the destruction of the drug before it can do something useful.