So all snarkiness aside for a second. The reality here is that Trump wants an end to the conflict, which is good — and he’s using his experience in business in an attempt at a solution. The problem is what it’s always been: Palestinians don’t want to leave. At this point, now that Gaza has been largely destroyed, I don’t think it’s great that they do — but there’s little alternative for them. The surrounding areas won’t take them, and of course there are both religious and cultural reasons to stay, quite apart from their feeling of justice.

It’s a sad situation, and I’m actually truly rooting for Trump to mix things up. I was hoping for something more serious than this, though. It’ll just involve the US troops in the conflict, which will continue.

What Likud has done here is really unfortunate for Israel. They’ve wanted an excuse to ethnically cleanse the region, and Hamas provided them a great one with the horrid October 7th attacks on innocent people. It has to be understood in a historical context, as the treatment of the Palestinians has been awful for decades— but it doesn’t excuse it either. Nor does it excuse the disproportionate response.

I think Mearsheimer is right yet again: the Isael lobby in Washington is still very powerful indeed, to the point where even Trump — who is anti-war— can’t bring himself to demand a two state solution.

What a disappointment.

Global Temperatures Shattered Records in January

In a report this week, James Hansen, the famed former NASA scientist, argued that cutting pollution had already played a big role in causing global warming to accelerate. The reason is a little counterintuitive: For decades, humans have not only been emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases when they burn fossil fuels. They’ve also been spewing tiny sulfate particles into the air.

These particles spur the formation of more and brighter clouds, which help shield Earth from the sun. But as regulators have curbed sulfate pollution to protect people’s lungs, this cooling effect has diminished, exposing the planet to more of the full force of greenhouse warming.

It’s been so warm that scientists are looking for areas added warmth might be coming from.

Not great.

So the Israel lobby prevails again. So much for Trump being different than any other president.

outlandishly awful idea, which is why I am assuming Trump has a different intention. — Tzeentch

Right, because his long history of great ideas forces one to pause.

Let’s just kick them all out and develop the area?

Bold and innovative!

In any case it’s an innovative and bold idea. — NOS4A2

:rofl:

Partisan hacks are funny.

Trump’s strategy:

Turn around 180 degrees, arrive in the same exact spot, rebrand or rename, then claim everything is different and has been fixed. See NAFTA. See healthcare (oh wait, 0 was done on that), see oil production (already highest ever under a Biden), see massive voter fraud (which doesn’t exist), see border crossings (which were steady for years before and during his first term), see stock market (was trending upward first term, has hit record highs under Biden), etc etc.

His only positive accomplishment is that he doesn’t like wars because he knows they’re unpopular, and may affect his popularity. Otherwise the only thing that will change is the government will be even shittier and Wall Street will get their tax cuts again. Woohoo.

And the genocide lovers applaud. :lol:

EVs are not without costs to the environment — unenlightened

Oh! Well there you go. Check and mate.

Imagine being so transparently idiotic. Moving on, per usual, from one stupidity to the next, the question then becomes personal: “YOU don’t own an EV for SOME reason, so those are the problems I was talking about.” As if we’re not aware that any technology has its issues.

While doofus is compiling a list of “problems with EVs” in his heroic quest to contribute to slowing the transition away from his archaic, harmful technology from the 1800s — I’ll be compiling a list of the stupid shit he’s brought up for the last 20 pages that were refuted, debunked, or retracted.

Answer these questions first:

1) what is it like being a climate denying idiot?

2) is moving on to the next stupid thing after prior humiliation really a winning strategy?

Let’s take over Gaza, turn it into a paradise of development— and ask all the Palestinians to leave. What can go wrong?

Don’t worry— I’m sure the very stable genius has thought this through. His knowledge of Middle East relations is terrific and huge.

Let’s impose tariffs for no reason, then act like something’s been accomplished when nations agree to do exactly what they’ve been doing. The Trump cult will no doubt be celebrating their very stable genius as he battles problems he invented.

Let it be noted just how lopsided the exchanges between unenlightened and the climate denier are in terms of coherence, depth of knowledge, understanding of the issues, etc.

Which is why I guess he thinks he’s the smartest one in the room. The dumbest people aren’t usually very self-aware.

Anyway— let this be a good lesson kids. This could be you if you consume an exclusive diet of propaganda.

abuse anybody who is more intelligent than them — Agree-to-Disagree

:lol:

No, just climate denying trolls like you.

It is clear that you do not have any coherent understanding, but are flailing about looking for contrarian ideas to whatever is the last thing that has been said. — unenlightened

:up:

Hey look, I just copied an AI summary about combustion engine problems. Check and mate:

Combustion engines, also known as internal combustion engines, have several problems including significant air pollution due to emissions like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, high fuel consumption, noise generation, vibration, dependence on fossil fuels, and potential for maintenance issues like oil leaks, worn bearings, and faulty spark plugs, all contributing to environmental concerns and potential health risks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/climate/trump-epa-workers-zeldin.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uE4.wFYZ.EH4Zzdmr8gS6&smid=url-share

Trump’s appointed climate denier leading the EPA now wants to fire over 1,000 employees at EPA. They’re as transparently a death cult as they come.

Question: has this imbecile once cited a credible source or an actual climate scientist? Has there ever been a criticism of fossil fuels and all the problems they cause— apart from climate change? Has there ever once been anything said of the devastation the changing climate has caused? If so, where?

Don’t hold your breath: there is none. It’s just dismissing, minimizing, denying. Then citing climate deniers with deep ties to the fossil industry and plagiarizing AI summaries. That’s all it’s been. All while pretending not to be a climate denier.

This troll should have been booted from this site a while ago.

Even the long-used climate denial line (commonly used by Bjorn Lomberg) about cold deaths is probably wrong to begin with.

In a 2014 interview in the Washington Post of University of Miami climatologist Larry Kalkstein, who has published numerous research papers on weather-related mortality, weighed in on the matter: “Comparing apples to apples, which would be to evaluate acute or short-term responses to weather, I would always give the nod to heat-related deaths. However, if you are considering the seasonal differences in daily mortality, rather than just the “spikes” that we find with acute deaths, I can see why one can argue that winter (or cold-related) mortality is greater.” That was certainly the conclusion of a 2015 epidemiological study of deaths in 13 countries in The Lancet, which found that cold-related deaths in the U.S. were about a factor of fifteen higher than heat-related deaths. Cold deaths outnumbered heat deaths by a factor of twenty when averaged over all 13 countries studied. However, this study did not control for the seasonal cycle in death rates; deaths are always higher in winter, due to influenza and other non-weather-related factors.

The 2005 study, Heat Mortality Versus Cold Mortality: A Study of Conflicting Databases in the United States, advocated using gross mortality (or excess mortality, as shown in Figure 2 for the 1995 Chicago heat wave) as a way to arrive at a better estimate of heat-and cold-related deaths. They stressed that one must correct for the seasonal cycle in deaths before using this technique, to remove the influence of the winter influenza season and other non-weather-related factors. Interestingly, they found that major heat waves cause big spikes in the death rate, whereas major cold waves do not: “Severe heat waves often produce large "spikes" in mortality, especially during the 1995 heat wave across the Midwest. However, abnormally cold conditions have little effect on the standardized daily mortality. For example, February 1996, a cold period across much of the United States, produced no spikes in winter mortality levels.” Similarly, from the 2016 U.S. National Climate Assessment: “The relationship between mortality and an additional day of extreme heat is generally much larger than the relationship between mortality and an additional day of extreme cold.”

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Which-Kills-More-People-Extreme-Heat-or-Extreme-Cold

in relation to the problems of climate change, which, in case you had forgotten, is the topic under discussion. there are no serious problems at all; the problems you have suggested are trivial by comparison with the effects of climate change. — unenlightened

But since you’re dealing with someone who denies it’s really a problem, and who delusionally believes that people who have studied this issue their entire lives are wrong for making such a big deal of it (and he feels entitled to do so because he’s chosen to spend hours listening to long-refuted climate deniers like Richard Lindzen and Alex Epstein and whatever random YouTubers he pulls from his ass (and expects everyone to take seriously)).

He’s worth a few sentences and a couple laughing emojis. He long ago proved that’s all he was worth, after being humiliated over and over again.

You are a delusional evangelist — Agree-to-Disagree

Coming from a delusional climate denier this means a lot I’m sure.

Donald Trump provides links to where he gets his information from. Trust him. Don’t be lazy: look up all the stupid shit he says. Because he’s definitely worth the effort.

Things are going swimmingly so far! — NOS4A2

:rofl:

Always like to check in with the Trump cult.

You, nor MGUY choose to remotely consider them:— all your research and all your criticism is directed at problems that arise from efforts to find alternatives, and the difficulties of pinning down the exact extent of a global change of inconceivable complexity — unenlightened

:clap:

I applaud your efforts for the general reader. This guy makes a decent example of current climate change denial. Because he’s not very intelligent, it makes it easy— so it’s not really fair. But still— good for anyone pursuing.

No wonder everyone thinks you’re an idiot. — Mikie

:lol: Case in point. :point: "This".

That’s how you know it’s true.

Thankfully it’s now clear: climate denier and Trump cultist.

No wonder everyone thinks you’re an idiot.

Now degenerated into full-blown Trump cultist. What a shocker. :lol:

The important thing is that Trump stopped all the massive voter fraud! (Never mind that the “voter fraud” didn’t exist, and was all along a figment of his imagination.) Ditto the “EV mandate.”

And don't let those who have an anti-EV agenda lie to you.

:up: Exactly.

Glad the ceasefire is holding and the Israeli terrorists haven’t continued their genocide. Still so many babies left to murder— must be so hard for them to resist.

So, to summarize in the off-chance anyone pays attention to this idiot:

There is no EV mandate. There was no EV mandate. Effectively or otherwise. Take it no more seriously than “they’re taking away your hamburgers!” Or hysteria over induction stoves. To climate denying Trump cultists, who ignore all reality that doesn’t conform to what he or his media says, it’s all very real. That’s true. But it doesn’t exist. It’s just another small aspect of climate denial.

I don't know if Trump was lying or just honestly has his facts wrong, but either way, there is no EV mandate. The Biden administration DID tighten fuel-economy standards (though not as much as initially proposed) and the EPA did tighten tailpipe-emissions rules but there is no rule or law forcing automakers to build EVs or a certain percentage of EVs. Biden has set a goal of 50 percent EV sales by 2030, but that's a goal not a mandate.

Some might argue that the tighter rules will, in effect, force automakers to build more EVs in order to comply, but that would ignore that automakers can get there using other tech including hybrids. Automakers could also, if I understand the rules correctly, be in compliance simply by building more vehicles that have fuel-efficient internal-combustion powertrains -- you know, the kind of vehicles that have become scare as consumers flock to more-profitable crossovers and SUVs.

Even if the new rules do force automakers to alter their product mix and offerings to be in compliance, it is not a mandate that they build EVs.

I'd also add, taking off the fact-checker hat and putting on the analyst hat, that many American-built EVs are built in states that show heavy support for Donald Trump. Not only is Trump likely upsetting automakers, who need regulatory consistency since they plan models years in advance, but he could be upsetting his own constituents.

The Biden Administration dropped a new rule limiting tailpipe emissions from passenger vehicles yesterday, and you know what that means.

Yes, it's lying season!

I want to focus on one particular egregious lie. You will soon see arguments from certain anti-EV types that new rule is an EV mandate. It very much is not.

First, some background from the New York Times:
The rule increasingly limits the amount of pollution allowed from tailpipes over time so that, by 2032, more than half the new cars sold in the United States would most likely be zero-emissions vehicles in order for carmakers to meet the standards.

We can argue all day long about whether the rule is too stringent or not, or whether automakers will be able to achieve the administration's goals. But as the Times points out, the government is NOT forcing the fleet to become all electric:

The E.P.A. regulation is not a ban. It does not mandate the sales of electric vehicles, and gas-powered cars and trucks could still be sold. Rather, it requires carmakers to meet tough new average emissions limits across their entire product line. It’s up to the manufacturers to decide how to comply.

That hasn't stopped the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers lobbying arm from calling the rule "Biden's EPA car ban." This is where I credit the oft-beleaguered Times, which I have hit at here and there, for not pulling punches and calling that assertion false.

It's not a ban on cars or internal-combustion engine cars. It's just not. And don't let those who have an anti-EV agenda lie to you.

https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/cars/editorials/opinion-politicians-are-lying-about-biden-s-epa-rule-44505856

Exactly. Let’s all wait for those who have established themselves as authorities — and who definitely has not had their stupidity proven over and over again — to EXPLAIN to us children why these disasters are a good thing. Or just natural, etc.

Can’t wait.

The effective EV mandate — Agree-to-Disagree

It’s not a mandate, nor an effective mandate. Citing Trump makes you even more pathetic than you’ve established yourself to be.

Keep embarrassing yourself though. It’s cringey but kind of hilarious.

I will carefully explain it to you — Agree-to-Disagree

Love when idiots pretend to be the one’s “explaining” things— :rofl: Who exactly are you fooling, other than yourself?

Speaking of stupid myths like the non-existent EV “mandate,” what became of all that gas-stove hysteria?

Honestly, I wish there actually WERE mandates on this stuff. Public transportation, sustainable farming, etc. But all we get are emissions reduction targets years in the making, which are already way too long (50% by 2050!).

Meanwhile the world burns.

The Environmental Protection Agency rule that required auto manufacturers to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half in new light- and medium-duty vehicles beginning in 2027 IS THE MANDATE. — Agree-to-Disagree

No, it isn’t. And never was.

You can still buy combustion engine cars all you want. No one is forcing anyone to buy an EV. The entire “mandate” bullshit is and was a manufactured Fox News myth, on par with the hysteria around “taking away your hamburgers” and the “mandate” to buy induction stoves.

And the truly imbecilic fall for it. But Trump and his media said it repeatedly, so it must be true. If only there were a mandate against climate denying idiots…

The point of the original post is we can be 100% certain of the sensations we experience — Art48

What’s interesting about posts like these is the psychology that motivates it.

“Certainty” somehow is important, and saying this string of letters or this particular group of sounds we make — “sensations,” “consciousness,” “being,” “reality,” — is the one thing we can be sure of indicates that value.

Who cares about certainty in the first place? Or what’s true or real or fact? Maybe all of that is nonsense to begin with (which is what I think) and we’re just swimming aimlessly downstream from Descartes and Plato’s conceptions of the world.

Why did Descartes care about finding something “certain” in the first place? Why do you?

Sensations are no more certain than anything else. Sometimes just acknowledging that life is kind of groundless is good for you.

Wind turbines kill birds! Same logic.

Oh wait— cats kill 1000 times more birds. Hmm. It’s almost as if these criticisms of renewables are disingenuous.

Really hilarious to watch.

There has never been an EV mandate. True, that’s hard to believe for climate denying idiots who cite Donald Trump as a source.

The orders include eliminating the so-called "electric vehicle mandate," Trump's phrase for a Environmental Protection Agency rule that required auto manufacturers to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half — Agree-to-Disagree

Emphasis mine.

So yeah, the phrase “EV mandate” sure is used a lot, particularly in conservative media. Imagine thinking that this proves something…

The phrase “voter fraud” pops up a lot too. Must mean it’s true (it isn’t).

So both a climate denier and brainwashed by conservative media…but I repeat myself.

For anyone scrolling: don’t listen to the climate denying imbecile. He’s lying, or he’s watching too much Fox News: there has never been an EV “mandate” in the US. Never.

And the climate denying idiocy continues on…

EV “mandates.” Lol.

The climate denial idiocy continues on…

You shouldn't be pretending that there are no problems with our "solutions" to global warming. — Agree-to-Disagree

:rofl:

Are MGUY's videos "stupid bullshit" as Mikie is claiming? — Agree-to-Disagree

I’ve given your recommendation exactly the amount of attention it deserves: none. As with most climate deniers.

I get that you’re too stupid to understand why — but others do.

So the “windmills kill birds!” tactic of the stupidest of climate deniers. Let’s ignore the bigger “list” of problems with fossil fuels and focus solely on the problems of renewables. Never mind that fossil fuels are subsidized by governments and are far more costly, even when externalities aren’t added — like the fact that they create greenhouse emissions which is heating the world and are causing, and will continue to cause, worldwide devastation.

But some idiot on YouTube has something to say about it that we should all pay attention to — after all, he comes highly recommended by an Internet forum’s resident climate denier, and fellow intellectual fruit fly — who refuses to spend a second reading anything relevant on the topic, but would like you to spend the time watching his stupid bullshit.

Sounds great.

When in a hole, stop digging. Remember that everybody reading the thread can see how ridiculous you are. — Agree-to-Disagree

:rofl:

God you’re delusional.