Mal4Prez nails the climate change debate... by kpo

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Mal4Prez nails the climate change debate...

POSTED BY: KPO
UPDATED: Monday, October 10, 2011 18:17
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Sunday, October 9, 2011 6:52 PM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Posted by Riona:

I tend to think that DreamTrove makes sense on this topic and on fracking, though I don't think that its a huge conspiracy to destroy the world. But I do think its a conspiracy to make money no matter what happens.

I don't think the INTENTION is to destroy things; I think that's just viewed as "collateral damage" to the chase for higher profits. As I've pointed out before, I get the distinct impression that these "fracking fluids" are nothing more than a sleazy-but-legalized way to dispose of toxic wastes generated by refineries and industry. They aren't pumped down the well with the firm intention of poisoning the water; they're pumped down the wells because (a) you need something to generate the hydraulic pressure needed to fracture the rock, and (b) using this stuff and pumping it underground is cheaper than detoxifying it or disposing of it properly. Cheaper = more profits, and more profits is the ONLY reason a corporation exists. Just ask them.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 7:33 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:

Sure, I'll agree expertise is important, but there's different ways people wear it, and some ways they wear it are more objectionable than others. Rather like how you feel DT who is not an expert wears what he thinks, some experts seem to think it's enough just to BE an expert. No elaboration, no justification, just "I'm an expert."

I wasn't specifically talking about DT. He at least forms some semblance of an argument regarding what he believes, even if past experience has taught me that he takes 1 + 1 and argues that it equals onety one. A lot of anti climate change stuff I've heard goes like this -

"Oh, I don't buy this climate change hoo ha."
"How come?"
"Well the earth's climate is always changing, always has. Weather patterns alter, is all."
"So how come all these scientists claim that global weather patterns have changed significantly in the past 50 years."
"Bah, scientists are as bad as the fundamentalist religious types, they are just as extreme"
"But don't they base their theories on evidence rather than belief?"
"Look its just the environmentalists waxing on as usual about the destruction of the world"
"But haven't they been proven right again and again about habitat destruction, mass extinction of species, overfishing, toxic waste, deforestation........??"
"It's all just a load of left wing greenie nonsense etc etc"

Quote:
Tasmania, that would be amazing. Of course, to an American, Australia itself seems remote and exotic.

well, we are a long way away, but I'm not sure we are particularly exotic. Everywhere has become depressingly much like everywhere else. Every where has MacDonalds, traffic jams, shopping malls, theme parks....

Tasmania really is very beautiful, very quiet and very slow. Some more photos for your enjoyment.

Most of it is wilderness, old growth forests thanks to the GREENIES who fought to preserve these areas from logging and damning.

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 7:48 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"That's why it's important, even when listening to some experts, to have your incompetence and nonsense detectors out ..."

But if you don't actually know the field, you have no basis.

I think there's a reverence for ignorance in the US - the person who says 'I don't know much about art, but I know what I like' is supposed to be somehow wise about art instead of ignorant and closed-minded. The BS detector you speak of seems more like a way of legitimizing personal reactions to the speaker rather than a product of knowledge.

The kind of deep knowledge that the experts have - the people with the letters and the experience - can't be transmitted in a sentence, or even a paper. And unless you are willing to delve deeply and put in the work to track down all of the anomalies/ issues you have and resolve them in a rigorous way - any response remains mostly an uninformed personal reaction. Which IMO is a reinforcement of already existing notions.

Personally, despite the fact that my back-of-the-envelope calculation doesn't validate the idea that cows and rice growing changed the climate thousands of years ago, I am going to buy and read the book. I think it'll be way more useful to the state of my knowledge on the topic than any amount of back and forth.

ETA: Getting back to knowledge and expertise, it's like my whole statement that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. That it absorbs heat and keeps it from being re-radiated into space. They're facts I know b/c I've been working in chemistry/ air pollution for most of my working life. Now, if you (a hypothetical you, not you personally) didn't happen to believe my statements, or I rubbed you the wrong way in the way I said them, there is no freaking way I could go through years of chemistry just to convince you it was true. Sometimes, unless you (hypothetical) are not going to find them out for yourself, you just have to accept that that other people have more facts than you.

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither....

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 8:21 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Kwicko

"I think DT gets annoyed with people who seem to be saying that emissions are the ENTIRE problem, while he sees deforestation as the major problem."

And he thinks that emissions are 'insignificant'.

Well, yes deforestation is a problem, but the thinking to date is that it's only 20% of the problem. If we were talking about which ice cream flavor do you like best, then everyone's opinion would be valid. But we are talking about physical facts. There is that whole thing about not being able to choose your facts.

'Dr Pep Canadell, from the Global Carbon Project and CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, says in the journal Science that tropical deforestation releases 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon each year into the atmosphere.

“Deforestation in the tropics accounts for nearly 20 per cent of carbon emissions due to human activities,” Dr Canadell says. “This will release an estimated 87 to 130 billion tonnes of carbon by 2100, which is greater than the amount of carbon that would be released by 13 years of global fossil fuel combustion. So maintaining forests as carbon sinks will make a significant contribution to stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.”'

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070511100918.htm

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither....

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Monday, October 10, 2011 4:35 AM

MAL4PREZ

Sorry, I haven't had a lot of time, and don't now, but I want to get this out there:

Bytemite, I don't agree with two things you said many posts up. First: this distinction you're drawing about intelligence is bogus. Science isn't a club that people are born into, and you don't need a degree to join the talk. But you do need to be able to talk the language.

I happen to have found science fun to do and I had opportunity to study for a long time. I learned a language. This doesn't make me smart, it makes me experienced.(Believe me, scientists can be some of the stupidest people on the planet. This whole idea that scientists=smart needs to be put down!)

Anyone with a similar interest can learn this language too, but what I've found is that most people just aren't interested enough to sit through years of basic math and science classes. Most people have other things to do. Which includes me - I hit a wall. I'd love to understand the cosmological constant (related to this year's Nobel prize) but I just don't have it in me to spend years learning the math.

Here's the thing: I would never tell cosmologists they're wrong based on what I read on some wikipedi page. I'm not stupid, but I know very well that I don't speak the language and I haven't seen the data.

It's like DT has shown up to argue about the nuances of a Latin text when he's never actually learned Latin. He just plugged the text into google translator and thinks that gives him all the depth of knowledge he needs. Worse, he's so stuck in his own head that he won't shut up for a second and listen to the people who actually speak Latin.

The second thing I think is off is this thing about "ideas". You seem to think that scientific advances happen when some brilliant person locks him- or herself up in an ivory tower and thinks hard until the idea magically emerges. So why can't the idea come from someone not in an ivory tower, right? Hey - great books can happen this way, or paintings, or songs.

But science is not that. Scientific "ideas" come from observation observation observation. Only by staring at the observations, and quantifying them according to that language of math, and trying many wrong explanations and tests, can the correct patterns show themselves to us. Ideas come from the data, not from the scientist. Tying back - if you don't speak the language of the data, you're not going to see the "idea" that it's trying to tell you.

There's a very good reason that science didn't get its shit together until humans had decent math and experimental skills - it's because our "ivory tower" ideas tend to suck. They tend to be based on our own internal desires. We need to feel important and live in an orderly universe, therefore the Earth must be the center of everything. Right?

So - Plato. Stupid? Dumb guy? No, of course not. He was brilliant. Good at physics? Actually, he sucked at it. He was completely wrong. Philosophy and deep thought were the basis of his theories behind motion. A few basic observations could have proved him wrong, but it was nearly 2000 years before someone bothered to do it.

DT - stupid? No. Just misguided and a bit blind, I think. And Byte, I'm beginning to believe that you are as well.

Picture this: a pro figure skater who's been practicing with a coach 6 hours a day every day since she was five. Some random guy runs to edge of the ice and yells: "Hey, I'm not a skater, but I just had a great idea about how you can land your triple lutz..."

Should the skater:
A. Tell the guy to fuck off
B. Take the guy's advice immediately and without question. After all, that "expert" coach has been teaching the skater for years, but she still falls out of her triples half the time.
C. Ask the guy if he knows an inside edge from an outside edge. From his answer, judge whether his advice is likely to help or harm.

I see a whole lot of option B in the world today. I think it's a kind of love for the underdog. I don't recommend A, but why in the world aren't more people taking C?

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Monday, October 10, 2011 5:05 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Quote:
I have no problem talking to someone who wants to treat me like a human being, and provides backup information/data and their logic for why they've reached their conclusions. I'm even likely to listen. I don't listen if being an expert is all someone has to contribute. What a person has to say is as important as how they got that information.

Yes.

Quote:
DT a chara, I find it tiresome when you always reference the 5th grade education thing, because weren't you homeschooled the rest of the way, got a GED or something similar and then you went to college. So the fifth grade statement isn't accurate and it distracts people, well it distracts me, from your points.

And yes. I'd rather leave the DT aspect out of this, but that describes part of my problem with what he posts.

Quote:
I don't think that its a huge conspiracy to destroy the world. But I do think its a conspiracy to make money no matter what happens.

And yes, that's how I view it as well.

Magons, I think Australia is still considered kind of exotic to us Yanks...for one thing, not many can visit because flights are long and very expensive. Less so in recent times, as we've got so many movie stars from there, and because of Steve Irwin; both have resulted in Americans knowing at least somewhat more about Australia. But my gawd, those pictures! What a fantastic place!

Quote:
I think there's a reverence for ignorance in the US - the person who says 'I don't know much about art, but I know what I like' is supposed to be somehow wise about art instead of ignorant and closed-minded.

Weird, isn't that? Bush being ignorant and a "good old boy", and now Perry, so much that gets tossed around about "elites" and having gone to expensive colleges being a negative; it makes me shake my head. When did we begin to lose respect for education and knowledge? I know it must have something to do with the failings of both, but it still escapes me how it could have become so prevalent, be such a negative and be so easily dismissed.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Monday, October 10, 2011 2:54 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

I love that picture of the Tasmanian forest Magon's!

Mal 4 Pres, I think you're being a tad hard on Byte, I don't think she was dismissing how science is figured out, observation, the scientific method etc. because she is a scientist after all and she cares a lot about science, earth science, physics, environmental science, maths etc. I see what you're saying about how you can't just come up with an idea without observation and trials and expect others to believe it or take you seriously, but I don't get the feeling that's what Byte is doing or saying.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Monday, October 10, 2011 3:39 PM

MAL4PREZ

OK, fair enough. Byte is good folk and I don't mean to tear her down, I apologize if that's how it's gone. It's not what I intend.

I just wonder at how she always jumps in to support DT, even when he's gone way out beyond left field. Seems to be something odd going on there, and I've yet to figure out what it is.

BTW, it's how I work which I think (I hope!) Byte knows: if I think someone is not worth talking to, I don't talk to them. DT I think is living in such a different brain-space that I don't see much point in really dissecting his long posts. Byte, on the other hand, I usually "get". Which is maybe why I go after her a bit when I don't "get" her.

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Monday, October 10, 2011 4:11 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:

Here's the thing: I would never tell cosmologists they're wrong based on what I read on some wikipedi page. I'm not stupid, but I know very well that I don't speak the language and I haven't seen the data.

That part leaped out at me, because I see so much of this kind of thinking in the world today.

The whole Bill O'Reilly "Tide goes in; tide goes out" thing, with him saying in effect, "I don't understand science, and it makes my brain hurt to think too much, so... GOD!"

This is as far as most people seem to be willing to think these days.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Monday, October 10, 2011 6:17 PM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
I just wonder at how she always jumps in to support DT, even when he's gone way out beyond left field. Seems to be something odd going on there, and I've yet to figure out what it is.

That would be because I "get" DT. We might not always agree, sometimes we don't even ask the same questions. There's even been some betrayal. But we have the same approach.

That's invaluable. If I work with him, I think I can make some kind of difference in the world.

That's why.

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