I am more worried about population explosions, global famines, plagues, water wars, oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, Y2K bugs, mad cow epidemics, killer bees, sex-change fish, and cell-phone-induced brain-cancer epidemics. — Agree to Disagree

Okey dokey.

It's happened before as a result of global warming, and the conveyor is slowing as we speak.
— frank

Let's hope. — Quixodian

What? It would be beyond catastrophic if it happened again.

I agree that global warming will cause some problems. But it will also bring some benefits.

In my opinion it is almost impossible to stop global warming. The best that we can do is adapt. — Agree to Disagree

All perfectly respectable viewpoints.

That would send the climate into a deep cold spell.
— frank

No sign of that actually occuring, though. It's a theoretical possibility, but the evidence doesn't support it. — Quixodian

It's happened before as a result of global warming, and the conveyor is slowing as we speak. So yes, it's a distinct possibility. The evidence supports it.

So warming causes cooling. — Agree to Disagree

It's happened before, yes.

I think that the key word in your comment is "might". — Agree to Disagree

Nobody has a crystal ball unfortunately.

For the last 40 years we have been told that the world will end in 10 years. Is it the same people who are scaremongering about a shutdown of the global oceanic heat conveyor? — Agree to Disagree

I'm not scaremongering. I don't want you to be afraid. You have a right to think whatever you want. Don't we all?

Are you familiar with the story about the boy who cried wolf? — Agree to Disagree

Sure. Nobody is crying wolf, though. The oceanic heat conveyor is slowing down now because of ice entering the north Atlantic. Does that prospect frighten you?

Yes, it is depressing when people are killed. But which kills more, heat or cold? — Agree to Disagree

Strangely enough, human intervention in the climate might initiate a shutdown of the global oceanic heat conveyor. That would send the climate into a deep cold spell. Weird, huh?

Lest we get too caught up in the complete nonsense being spewed by climate deniers on this page, I want to remind everyone of the facts (mentioned before and completely ignored, incidentally): — Mikie

There are no "climate deniers" on this page. It's a poor form of bullying to intentionally misinterpret someone's posts. Let's not do that.

He's said repeatedly that he believes climate change is underway and it's the result of human activity. He just doesn't believe it's possible to address it.

Agree to Disagree pointed out that addressing climate change may not be possible due to a lack of global unity. As others already pointed out, this is true.

Did you have something to add other than insults?

There's a third option. I think these problems precisly come from being to from being to smart, from being to succesfull. We managed to outsmart the ecology we came from, outgrew and degraded it in the process... and may ultimately fail because we do still depend on it. Icarus was smart too... — ChatteringMonkey

Seems like Kurt Vonnegut mentioned that solution.

Banana slippage is an existential threat? — RogueAI

Well, it could be.

I think we're going to need a world government with some teeth because there are existential issues that keep popping up: climate change, Ai, genetic engineering, nanotechnology. — RogueAI

Bananas. People keep slipping on bananas. That too. :groan:

Yeah, but then a global goverment comes with its own set of problems, a heavy bureaucracy would be one of them. And a lot of power attracts all types of nasty figures invariably, so i'm not sure that would do it. But maybe some type of seperate organisation that gets funding and power specifically to tackle this problem could help... I don't know exactly. — ChatteringMonkey

But corruption will be there no matter what we do. Some people are going to look for ways to exploit what exists to the detriment of others. That's just human. The thing about corruption, though, is that it depends on its host. It doesn't want to destroy the social order. It will act to protect it if need be, because it needs it.

That said, we'd probably need a new global religion as well, to glue the global order together. I think we're probably about due for one.

It's not only about the raw energy, but also in what form it comes, how easy is it to use etc. Nuclear fission for instance probably can compete with fossil fuels on Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI), but the problem is you can't turn it on or off at will like fossil fuel plants... it's mostly a base load, and what we need is peak power.

And maybe more importantly, we need fossil fuels not only for energy, but for all the derivatives, like plastics, chemicals, fertilizer etc etc etc... For instance we do not know how to make fertilizer in an economically viable way without natural gas. This means we need to rethink and remake our entire agriculture if we want to produce enough food without cheap fertilizer.

The same is true for most of the economic sectors. We literally need to rethink most of them from scratch, because they organically grew out of cheap and easy to use energy and the readily available waste and byproducts of refining oil and gas. It's hard to overstate the enormity of this exercise, because years of iterative innovation on these existing processes and enormous amounts of capital investements need to be throw away to basically start over. — ChatteringMonkey

And I don't think this is the kind of change that we can engineer for ourselves. As you say, it's too deeply rooted in what and who we are. We can't preserve ourselves and our way of life. All we can do is bless future generations in their quest for life.

So it really comes down to this: how much faith do you have in your own species? People who hate humanity will just be bitter no matter what. People who love it and believe in human genius, will see that there's a way.

If his point is that some countries won't coöperate he obviously does have a point. — ChatteringMonkey

Yea, we'd need a global government probably. Or if a new power source was just so much better and cheaper than fossil fuels, that would do it as well.

I'd suggest that the bodily attachment is just one way to relate to our masculinity, and that we're not just our penis. In fact we can be a man without it entirely. — Moliere

I agree. My point was that the constitution of masculinity is in what it's not as much as in what it is. It's one of those obscure MerleauPonty type things, although it goes back to Plato.

:grin:

Last year the US government spent $15 billion subsidizing renewable energy, you get a $7500 IRS credit for buying an electric car, and in my state you get a 30% tax credit for using solar power. That kind of thing isn't unusual.

I don't disagree, though in my experience while masculinity is "opposed" by femininity, it is more useful to view them as opposite poles on a broad spectrum, rather than two sides of a dualist paradigm. — LuckyR

The advantage of that is that you have the middle point of the spectrum: the Hermaphrodite, which is a potent symbol.

All the facts concerning his crimes are in the past. Unlike you I've got a good grasp of criminal law. — Benkei

But like you, he's not in the USA.

Exactly. Treating a relative label, like masculinity, as an absolute descriptor, is a fundamental error. — LuckyR

Or you could say trying to pin down an essence will hide the fact that the term is half of a whole that can't stand independent if its opposite.

Wouldn't the energy produced by fusion power be much much much greater than the energy produced from natural gas? — Agree to Disagree

No.

Who controls the energy produced by fusion power? Will every country have their own fusion power?

Turning the supply of energy off can certainly cause damage and/or disaster.

You need energy to fight a war, to manufacture weapons, to protect yourself, etc. — Agree to Disagree

Who controls the energy produced by natural gas? Fusion wouldn't be any different from natural gas other than it doesn't cause climate change.

You said recently that we should all be scared senseless about climate change. All sorts of bad things flow from deep seated fear, one of them being that it becomes ok to dehumanize other people with labels. It's something I struggle with as well. We could all do with some practice putting fear aside to see what clouds fall away from our vision when we do, so we might see that we're all in the same boat, we all have basically the same desires and needs.

I think one of the main things driving climate change denial is this very thing: fear. Except it's fear of intellectuals and academics. It's fear that these scientists might be right, and so we should be worried.

Fear divided us so we don't even see one another. All we see is monsters. That's not good.

Would everybody use fusion power peacefully?

With great power comes great responsibility.

Are all people and countries responsible? — Agree to Disagree

Fusion power doesn't produce materials that can be weaponized, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Many/most people are selfish and most concerned with looking after their own.

This is one of the reasons why climate-change/global-warming is unlikely to be "solved". — Agree to Disagree

Eh, fusion power would solve it along with other problems. Various parties are working on it.

Does everybody want climate-change/global-warming to be "solved" ? — Agree to Disagree

Most people want a hospitable world for future generations. One thing we could do to contribute to that would be to stop emitting CO2. Short of that, slowing down would help.

Masculinity, like anything else, stands out against a backdrop of its negation. You'll pick up on your own masculinity when faced with an opposition to it: your wife, mother, daughter, female divinity, female archetype, etc.

Is it a piece of genitalia or genetics that makes the masculine? Yes and no. Imagine that every human has a penis. We reproduce with machines that produce new creatures with penises. Will a penis mean "male?". No, it will just be part of "human "

But in a world with humans who don't have penises, having one means something. It means something. See what I mean?

Well done.

How would you know if someone has a belief if there is no evidence of that belief? That's the question that interests me. How are belief states exhibited in the world, not do they exist when there is no evidence for them. It's about those things that demonstrate that one has a belief. — Sam26

I don't think you could be certain. You start with the conviction that humans have the faculty of thought which gives rise to beliefs. You don't believe that about bacteria or clouds. It's just humans.

So you assume others have beliefs, right?

Why not run along before embarrassing yourself further about a subject of which you’re completely ignorant? :up: — Mikie

Good grief.

In order to understand others you have to put yourself in their shoes. See what they see out of their skull holes. Then you hook into their frame of reference and the meaning of their utterances will be obvious.

If a person has a very rigid sense of identity, they can't take up residence in other people's positions. Or maybe they've judged the other to be evil or what not. Then they don't want to be tainted.

This doesn't undermine the idea that meaning is first shared and after that potentially private. It just means sometimes we aren't communicating. We're just talking at each other.

-- the wisdom of Asperger's.

I know this is a thread about the war in Ukraine, but I was addressing the general question about how countries in the US sphere of influence develop. — Srap Tasmaner

Oh, sorry.

Well no, but something like what's in the first sentence wouldn't surprise me honestly. The US has a lot of problems but a biggie is the legacy of chattel slavery. If we provide aid and support to country not burdened by such a history, they might very well do better than we do. — Srap Tasmaner

That's probably not what's going on here, though. Remember, Russia attacked Ukraine and Obama let it go. This is Biden's call. He chose to publicly threaten every entity in the world which does business with the US to sanction Russia or suffer the consequences. Big decisions frequently come down to the personalities on the scene at the time, not principles.

What the heck, man? You've already notified us that even if he really was guilty of a crime, you don't care because you don't believe in laws. So you're just trolling.

They're just being buttheads.

Against the shelf -- wasn't it our own continued repetition of using "water" (for obvious needs) that allowed the translation to take place? — Moliere

In this case, yes. Our own usage was like the Rosetta stone for Egyptian, or Babylonian texts were for Sumerian. The latter two cases show that translation doesn't rely on a continuum of usage. We're able to engage with abstract patterns that people thousands of years ago used. We're outside those ancient communities, though, so it's possible that translation is lossy. Since our worldview is profoundly different from theirs in some ways, I would say that's likely, though there are those who would disagree.

And we understood this bit, in the translation, but did we get the whole meaning? I don't think so. — Moliere

There are probably nuances that we don't know about.

The utterance "The cat is on the mat," means "There's spinache between your teeth," but the sentence still retains the meaning "the cat is on the mat", too. That is, given that code divides audience between in-group and out-group, the in-group would still know what the sentence means to the out-group, and if a member of the out-group would use the sentence, that's what the utterance would mean. — Dawnstorm

I agree.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Hittite language. When they were first trying to translate it, they thought maybe it was Semitic, because there was a lot of that in the region They kept coming across a word that looked like it would be pronounced "wassah", and it was frequently near a word that was probably "bread." Then somebody had the crazy idea that "wassah" may have been the same as the English word "water." Turns out that was true. Hittite is an Indo-european language from a 3500 year old extinct culture, but they pronounced "water" pretty much the same way we do. That's an old shelf to take meanings down from.

You should just worry about the fluffernutters or whoever it is that rules the Netherlands. And what kind of a name is that for a country, anyway? — T Clark

That's King Flutternutter to you.

The way to change demand and behaviour is with incentives and disincentives. A tax on meat, a subsidy on public transport. The way to change production is by regulation with a Ban of CFC s for example, or a ban on the sale of gas boilers, or change the building regulations. The world can be reconfigured quite easily, we have been doing it for centuries. — unenlightened

It's doable. People would be healthier if we did. Reduced healthcare costs...