What happened to Global Warming?
When I put my first above ground pool in around the late 90's we were able to open it in April and start swimming in May.
Now my pool is just opened and still not warm enough to swim in
I'd like some global warming back...
Oh get over yourselves....sure the US is selfish...so is every country....the only difference between the US and the rest of the world is that our selfishness affects more people than, say, the selfishness of Switzerland...
I'm not so sure wars are ever truly won...........stopped sure.......but then that usually happens through colossal loss of life as well. I'm sure any event as large as a 'world war' being stopped requires/required cooperation and should not be represented as a 'single-handed victory'...........of course this is only my opinion. Also it is infinitely interesting to me why/how a nation that prides itself on being the 'world helper' (largest bringer of 'foreign aid') has such qualms and/or reservations about helping its own citizens (at whatever cost). I mean I'm sure the cost of funding even one aircraft-carrier battlegroup and its various escorts/logistics infrastructure for a single 'humanitarian operation' deployment could have gone a long way towards speeding that healthcare.gov business along?
I imagine those who lived in Nazi controlled Europe (or under Imperial Japan) disagree about whether or not the Allies "won" the war. Also, the US joining the Allies in WW2 (and earlier efforts to arm the Allies) is the event that won the war. Without US assistance Nazi Germany would have solidified it's hold on Europe and turned it's full attention to Communist Russia.
As for the rest, all you present is false choice. You assume money is the problem with healthcare.gov. They had essentially unlimited funding as it was. The problems were design (of the law) and competence (of those responsible for the implementation), but there was another whole thread about that (here)so no sense using this one for that discussion.
The US is controlled by a small elite of millionaires who have only their own self-interest in mind. (In theory it's a democracy, but it's a democracy where you can only be elected by the backup of very large sums of money, and it's a "democracy" where you can win an election by spreading ridiculous lies to the people... well that's not really how a real democracy is supposed to work)
It's not surprising that the 2% elite in the US has gotten ever richer in the last 30 years, and the rest of that country ever poorer.
Hardly anyone pays taxes in the US, almost half of everything they make is payed by loans.
The printing of over 3 trillion US dollars has put a lot of strain on the whole world, inflating asset prices globally and creating the foundation of the next big crisis.
But they don't care, just keep printing as long as that 2% elite in the US gets richer.
And a 2% that doesn't even give a shit about the other 98% of their people, well you cannot expect any compassion from such types, you cannot expect that such people will give up their enormous wealth and their status, just for the sake of the entire planet 100 years into the future... that's not how they got their money.
It's really horrible.
A long time ago, 50 years ago or so, the tax system in the US was more fair. There was more equality and the "american dream" meant something for a lot of people. At the moment there is just too much poverty.
In such a political climate, nobody gives a damn about the state of the planet. The rich just sit in their big fat houses counting their money and the poor cannot complain because all they care about is scraping together enough money to survive another day, they don't have time to complain.
Just look at all that "fracking" business, and the oil shale business - it's called another oil boom. But it's expensive and polluting. It's an artificial attempt to keep an out-of-date economy going as if nothing is happening. Why: fracked oil is more expensive, it cannot really be used to fuel an economy that's based on the availbility of cheap oil. It's just drawing enormous amounts of money away from development of more sustainable sources of fuel.
The only ones who benefit from this in the medium term (there is no long term) are the oil companies and their stockholders.
The ones who lose are the people who buy that expensive oil and who think it's "normal" to buy it. Well it's not, it's fucking ridiculous that such a thing is happening nowadays. But I suppose it's the new "normal" and the new normal is:
- more pollution at a higher price -
BTW. China is even worse than that, China is ruled by a super-rich elite that's not kept in check by any democratic means. And Europa is going down the drain too, heading for US-style "solutions".
That system built after 1950 in the US was not economically stable. Keynes and his fellows idea with the strong state system turned out to be unmanageable after some time, because strong state influence in economy and in the market alters reality and causes overproduction and crisis. It was something like communism, original idea sounds good (by communism I mean equality, solidarity, so not the tyranny), but reality shows you it is not a long term choice.
Yes, but the other end of the spectrum is also bad. Placing wealth in the hands of only a few causes other kinds of problems.
In Europe, the industrial revolution led to incredible wealth in the hands of a few industrialists. In the US too (in the roaring 20s). It caused lots of problems.
China also suffers under the abuse of an elite. Are we going to end up like China, or like the 20s again, or like the times of the industrial revolution again (with coal smog covering the big cities, because the rich are too greedy to do something about it) ?
The 20s ended with an implosion of a wealth bubble. About 5 years ago there was another implosion, but this time the wealthy simply print more and more money to keep their precious bubble intact. It's just unreal.
They're doing the same with our coal-based economy. They don't want to spend money on new technology if that means they've to throw away trillions of dollars worth of shares in oil companies, energy companies, car companies etcetera. Those will become worthless and they'll lose their wealth and power. They don't want that and they'll do whatever they can to prevent a change.
(I know I would try everything if I were that wealthy ^^)
Democracy saved us from ending up like China during the industrial revolution. But democracy is hollowed out, especially in the US, by the might of money. You can literally buy yourself a seat in Congress and do whatever crazy stuff you want in there... just throw a lot of money on ads, discredit your opponent by whatever crazy scandal you can think of, doesn't even have to be real... and you're safe.
Hell, because of the "war on terrorism", everybody is a suspect and subject to an elaborate spying network that monitors billions of people (just to catsh a handful of terrorists). There were times when the rights of the individual were protected, when monitoring was only allowed after there were reasonable suspicions. Now everyone is a suspect, while 99.999% of those monitored have done absolutely nothing.
And where is all that information going... such information is valuable and it won't stay indoors. It'll leak to different parts of the government, maybe to top industrialists ... anything to gain an advantage on the competition.
And while they're busy spying on each other and planning one costly war after the other, the world around us is falling apart.
It's horrible, just horrible, they should get their priorities straight.
A. You make sure your home is a nice place to live in.
B. You make sure your home will not be flooded in 100 years from now.
C. After that, you're free to fight your neighbour.
They cannot be 'won'. Violence only begets more violence.
Wars are survived or not.
Are the Nazis of this world gone? Is their hatred? Has anything really changed in the human psyche? I'd say no. Does it matter if a person/people are killed by street violence or by gas chambers? No, they are just as dead all because others cannot simply accept them as human beings no different than themselves. Since they hate themselves, they hate others and expect the same.
I truly wish that need to hate and harm others was defeated and gone...but it isn't.
But you have to agree the age we are now in is not a bad era, the majority of the population in developed countries should be satisfied because they are not starving, have homes etc. Though I agree there are several sreious porblems with this world, but what can you do about it? While the society is full of lame idiots you cannot achieve anything, they will just follow the ones that promise them the most..
Yes I agree.
That's a problem yes.
So we should start with education.
But education is also "political". Like politicians who want "intelligent design" to be taught next to evolution theory. And people like psychoak who go against the whole scientific community and claims that kids are lied to at school when they learn about global warming.
Or in some countries where things like the holocaust are denied.
In the Netherlands, democracy is protected better than in the US. It's not allowed to get financing for a political campaign in the Netherlands.
On the other hand, we're at the mercy of talk-shows then, and those are often politically inclined.
But still... I think it's a better system than in the US. Much better.
We also don't have millionaires in our government.
But then again even in our country, personal power is important. However you look at it, politicians are not your average citizen... they live for talking and arguing and trying to push their opinions before all others. It's a completely different world, very artificial and separated from reality. Sometimes I look at those discussions on TV and then I think... omg omg omg. So much time wasted over nothing, while there are so many problems to solve. They don't solve the real problems, they just keep bickering about all kinds of little things, which they think are so important. The big picture is lost in all the details.
Sigh.
Democracy works, but it is such a slow and tedious system.
It's not bad in normal situations, but for a global warming problem... maybe it's just too slow to tackle that problem in time. Or maybe the problem is just too big for a bunch of politicians to handle. They're trained to run a country or rather, to keep a country running as it is without too much change, not to handle extreme problems and to change the course of history...
But politicians are also trained to ignore problems till the very last moment. They keep denying, they keep telling nothing is wrong, as long as they can keep their voters content and happy.
In case of an economy it's ... well acceptable. There's chaos, some people lose a lot of money and other win a lot of money, but nothing's really destroyed and no lives are lost.
In the case of global warming, it's can be a disastrous habit.
Remember.
Politics is a prohibited topic in this Forum section.
The subject of this thread is Global Warming, not Democracy.
Out of curiousity, how was this thread not already political? Surely you don't consider it to be "scientific"?
Much of the 'science' was pre-school quality.... but essentially the Political 'divide' wasn't/hasn't been brought up in relation to pro/con GW ...so it's OK.
Side-stepping into Holocaust denial, etc. is clearly off-topic and symptomatic of the gradual decay into a political stoush - the very thing which is not desired/allowed here.
And, BTW, no-one needs to 'get over themselves' simply because they make a comment of opinion...
Well... the political system is part of the solution.
Someone said action in WW2 by the US was only taken 2 years after the start of WW2. So there was this huge war that affected half the world, and it still took 2 years of bickering before the US stepped in.
To be honest, I think governments won't take action before something really bad is going to happen because of global warming.
Is it ok to discuss what kind of disasters will be required before action is finally taken?
Of course.
Though I thought you'd had your last comment several times already...
More final concerts than Whispering Jack...
Here is what the AGW faithers have brought us so far...
A clearly biased IPCC report with all it's "suggestions" on how to fix the problem.
Models that can't predict the future or past events.
Links to pseudo scientists (i.e. professors, bloggers, journalists, ECO terrorists, etc).
Fantastic ideas on how to redistribute wealth from one country to another.
A lot of What Ifs? and OMG OMG OMG(s).
And last but not least- somehow it's always the fault of the USA.
Yes ... it's a bit addictive.
Yes. For a long time the biggest polluter in the world. The biggest economy. The biggest army. Fought most wars of the last century. A completely self-centered foreign policy. So naturally everything is the fault of the US. But don't worry, China is taking over that role, and the Chinese are even worse.
The only "ifs" come from deniers. As far as I'm concerned it is not a matter of "if" anymore, but "when"
Ok. I can only speak for the Netherlands. The last time there were major investments in infrastructure, was after a severe flooding of the Southern part of the country.
So I think my government will only do the necessary investments when the sealevel is so high, that it will cause new flooding of that magnitude.
This requires a few meters of sea level rise.
I don't think the increasing temperatures by themselves will be problematic for the Netherlands. It might affect agriculture due to hotter summers and maybe drier topsoil... but I doubt that will trigger action by my government.
Sea level rise will also affect agriculture, by making the groundwater in the coastal regions more salty. But I don't think that will trigger more decisive action, maybe they'll just install more pumps to get rid of the extra water.
So we will have to wait for the floods. Unfortunately, when the sea level is rising that much, then it will be due to melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps (plus the smaller glaciers elsewhere) and that will not stop overnight. I'm afraid it will be too late by then and we'll have to evacuate the low-lying western part of my country. This will be quite costly, because that is where the large harbours and some very large cities are located.
Hmm... this is nice, it gives an overview of statements from deniers and why those are wrong. It doesn't add much to what's been said in this forum but it's a nice listing.
http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths
This is a nice article describing the history of obtaining temperature data from foraminifera. Perhaps skeptics will learn to admire such work one day...
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/forams.htm
It's just getting worse and worse. The US, the EU don't give a damn about the planet. And now Japan, too.
http://www.livescience.com/41236-japan-lowers-greenhouse-gas-goals.html
Really, what kind of horrible disaster will it take before politicians take responsibility for the planet (and their own country) instead of always going for the (second) cheapest, short-term solution... (the cheapest one is nuclear power, the second cheapest one is coal/gas, the more expensive one is solar energy).
Well at least Japan cooperates on a decade-long project to investigate nuclear fusion. Too bad it's full of red-tape and lots of cost overruns and delays... but we should happy that such a thing is done ... let's just hope that they won't pull the plug halfway the project.
I rest my case.
You need glasses...and an understanding of what constitutes real science.
I have glasses, he's right on all points.
Instead of spending all your effort telling others they don't understand what constitutes real science, you should actually read the foundations of their conclusions. It's spelled out pretty plainly for anyone that bothers to read the climate model evaluations. They claim 99% accuracy because they're able to model past changes, using the information they determined the past changes by. They have nothing resembling an accurate representation of current temperatures, let alone future temperatures. The bias for the last 15 years is larger than the temperature change.
A ham sandwich would be just as useful for predicting future climate changes. Go make yourself one and ask it if you should buy a windmill.
Wait...aren't you the guy who is smarter than all the other scientists, just because you say you are? Aren't you the guy who said that professors are just guys who teach chem 101? Aren't you the guy that was asking what planetary scientists have to do with climate research? Just checking to see what kind of credibility you have...oh that's right. None.
I might not necessarily agree with psychoak's viewpoint but I'm not going to question his 'credibility'. He has an opinion as equally 'valid' as my own.
I'd suggest everyone adopts my attitude towards others' opinion....it's good for your future tenure...
Debating is about TOPIC, not person ...
I think when someone says that he is smarter than scientists, which he DID say in this thread, or when they question why planetary scientists should be talking about climate, that speaks to their credibility in my opinion.
Who goes around saying he is smarter than the experts in a particular discipline because he doesn't agree with their conclusions/politics? If he doesn't understand that physics is the same throughout the universe and that if a climate model works on Earth, then it should work to describe the Great Spot on Jupiter, etc, how can you trust his understanding of the subject (see reply #823)?
In addition, psycho told Geoman twice that he hopes he doesn't breed, or something to that effect. It wasn't directed at me, but if it were, I would look at that as a personal attack, and yet no mention was made of his word choices.
I'm not going to debate Stardock's forum policy re conduct...it's not open to debate.
If you look closely at the timeline of responses in this thread you'll see 'some' people have been absent for 'a time' - instigated by yours truly in response to inappropriate comment/s.
You're entirely free to join them if you cannot debate the topic rather than the person.
Yes, Physics IS the same 'throughout the universe' however none of it is entirely defined as ABSOLUTE. ALL of it is open to revision - THAT is the nature of Science.
Both sides of this particular topic are fundamentally FLAWED through the artifice of selective reference AND prejudice, both of the debater AND the sources. It is the nature of contentious topicality. The very fact this subject has gone on for 46 pages without any form of 'resolution' is simple testament to that.
I've come to the conclusion that one of me is more than enough to put the world through as well. Some genes just shouldn't be spread, for a variety of reasons. Just think what your children would go through in elementary school with your sparring ability...
When the scientist is a fucking moron that thinks a model with a bias ten times the actual change and in the wrong direction should be used as predictive proof of impending doom, hell yes I am. The dog shit in the yard is smarter than they are too. Assuming they actually think that. I expect most of them don't, but you seem to think monetary influence only applies to the oil companies, or that the IPCC report at all reflects the actual views of the scientists they claim composed it.
Rather fast and loose with this, but yes I did mention the fact that most of these "scientists" they survey are teachers that spend their days reading from instruction manuals and have no relevant knowledge on the subject they're responding on because no one even bothers to read the thousand plus page report, let alone find all the hundreds of articles they based it on.
No, that was someone else. I do find it amusing that you think a survey of astronomers would have merit just because a couple guys at NASA study extra planetary climates. Your fixation with the consensus among people that aren't paying an ounce of attention to the subject is one of life's little joys.
You're not much better than Geoman. He spent ten pages repeatedly ignoring what was said and running around in circles with the same arguments against points he himself made. You just retort with "they're scientists" every time someone points out that you have no clue what you're talking about.
You still haven't realized that you're living in a magical world where the surface temperatures have fallen even though CO2 is increasing the temperatures at a rate far beyond the rate natural forces could decrease. The latest IPCC report actually shows this with their wonderful pictures showing how little solar output affects the increasing temperatures. Something they know with 99% certainty?
If you really want to get me, come up with an explanation for this. You know, one that actually works and isn't just a link to some asshole saying "it all makes sense for some technical reason I can't be bothered to actually show" while pretending skeptics are the ones in need of rectal surgery to keep them from suffocating. I'd be speechless. For reasons other than fear for the future of the species.
Edit: Jafo, no one seems to be able to actually find the conduct policy. It's not something I worry over to begin with, but apparently it doesn't exist anymore. Someone et it. The only things left are Terms of Service agreements for service sites like WinCustomize. Anyone not coming from one of those doesn't even have that.
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