UGLI baby
Well-Known Member
Just keep your thoughts to yourself and we can all enjoy a happy and safe holiday.
dat jazzfanz.com mobile app doe
Global Warming -- How to Talk to a Skeptic
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Just keep your thoughts to yourself and we can all enjoy a happy and safe holiday.
dat jazzfanz.com mobile app doe
Lol
Isn't that true of everyone's response? With the exception of yours, which is not so thinly-veiled
♪alt13
Well-Known Member
Hate speech? little dramatic
I find it very frustrating that people choose to ignore mounds of data because they have adopted a political ideology. The case for anthropogenic global warming is a very good one(conservative right). The case for evolution is a very good one(religious right). The case for vaccinations is a very good one(hypochondriac left). etc etc
There will always be some sort of data for the opposition to lean upon as well. Many people will believe the data and evidence they want to believe without using reason and making the optimal decision at the margin. Others will examine situations reasonably and still draw opposite conclusions. People are different.
But yes, blind faith and propoganda-induced decision making is not good.
♪alt13
Well-Known Member
There are many things that are debatable. Evolution, for instance, is not one of them. It is no longer a debate. It has become an argument between those that are right and those that are wrong.
Go hang out in Boston for a while. . . or some other not-so-isolated outpost of progressive superiority. . . . and see if there aren't some folks so wound up in their fist-clenching visions of how the planet must be saved. . . . by having everyone do what they know must be done. They are ready to round up the dissidents and cleanse the earth of divergent and non-conforming thought, and they have no time for "re-education" camps. There is no margin of tolerance at all, and our crises are so clearly imperative we just can't allow "careless morons" to run loose or draw oxygen. . . . or emit carbon dioxide.
anyone who thinks "evolution", "vaccinations", or "quantum mechanics" are beyond reasonable dispute is a victim of an illusion of certainty that is premature, and that is such an understatement that it is practically useless as a statement of opinion. If we are not in that illusionary frame of mind, we can see that all the facts.. . . far from settling the issues of our understanding. . . are still raising questions that merit further thought, and more investigation. . .
I don't think for an instant that what little we know, factually speaking, about evolution, vaccinations or quantum mechanics are not facts. . . . it's the extrapolated conclusions or implications that are politically useful that should scare the sh*** out of normally reasonable folks.
In it's beginnings, our planetary atmosphere was pretty extreme in terms of pressure and carbon dioxide dominating it's composition. This planet does have a hot, and heat-generating core, and has a dominant trend of "cooling", as well as losing it's atmospheric carbon dioxide to carbonate rock, principally under semi-tropical seas. It was only when photosynthetic life flourished that "life" as a whole helped to augment that process. . .. and only after we began to use fire. . . and later internal combustion engines. . . that we have been a factor in increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. We are still a minor contributor, in scale far less significant that autogenous decomposition of plant material, and not off the scale in comparison with volcanic releases. ... which do cycle on a millions-of-years scale, or wildfires which will occur whether we try to make use of fuels or not.
Our planet has existed without polar ice or significant glaciers before, and has had epochs warmer than our present one. I could go on about how there is a natural ice age cycle that will result from an increase in ocean level and ocean surface temps generating extreme storms. . . . enough of them. . . . to re-establish an ice cover over the higher-lattitude land masses that will not melt in summertime. . . . and how it will last for millions of years. . . . and this trend has been augmented over millions of years by plate tectonics that is moving more land surface further north. . . .
In the seventies it was the coming ice age that was being touted as justification for synchronized world action by all nations and all responsible individuals. Our survival, we were told, demanded that we submit to management. It was a political tool in the "management toolbox", and it turned out to be directly out of phase with a twenty-year spike in global surface temps. Every ice age has been preceded by a five to ten degree spike in surface temps that lasted oh maybe twenty to fifty years. . .. This fact just wasn't something that could be useful in persuading a skeptical public. Here they were, crying "ice age" and it was hotter than anyone could remember. . . they just looked like idiots.
But nevermind. It's not the facts that are useful, it's the fear. You can make just as much a case for consolidation of power and expanding management whether you argue global warming or ice age. And once you are given the power, you don't have to be "right" about anything.
I'm not nearly as fearful of global warming as I am of global management.
100% this.
There are things worse than extinction, I guess?