The US is the largest threat to human existence on the planet at this point. Nothing about Russia or China or Iran or Iraq or all of them combined even comes close. The entire country is "conservatives" right now, every single last one of them.

I saw this coming back in November. So I’m not at all surprised. All the more reason to fight back in the same way the right has for the last few decades: state and local level politics. We’ve largely lost National power for a while now.

The Supreme Court has said it requires Congress to speak clearly in the interest of democratic accountability. In the climate decision, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the people’s elected representatives should make decisions where the consequences are enormous.

“A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” he wrote.

But the net effect of that approach was to enhance the Supreme Court’s own authority.

“They’re saying that they’re doing it for democracy purposes, but the fact is that they’re increasing their own power,” Professor Lazarus said.

Were democracy working, Professor Huber said, there would be new federal legislation to address the threat to the planet.

“If we had a Congress that at all reflected what the median American voter wanted,” he said, “we’d have relatively aggressive climate action.”

Exactly. This goes back, once again, to how important the (original) 350 billion reconciliation bill was last year. Despite having both chambers of congress and the executive, nothing has happened on climate change. The reactionary court knows this quite well, and so like the excuse of “sending it back to states,” sending it back to Congress and the “representatives of the people” is a complete joke. Just the same old delay, delay, delay tactics of these corporate shills.

The strategy of delay: Pass it on to state legislatures, because they’re dominated mostly by corporate-stocked conservatives; kick it all back up congress, because you know the house is gerrymandered in favor of conservatives and the Senate disproportionately favors conservatives (plus it’s minority rule anyway thanks to the filibuster). This way it looks like you’re operating on principles and not nihilistic greed, Christian nationalism, and science denial.

So I know we can’t blame only one person, but at the end of the day the actions of one guy from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, has literally been the roadblock to the changes that are needed. Blocked the reconciliation bill, and refused to abolish filibuster. No winning. Where are the people going to THAT guy’s house and protesting? Now’s the time.

Between the Supreme Court, appellate courts, Congress, state legislatures, governorships, think tanks, corporate lobbying groups, and a mass of enthusiastic consumers of Fox News type propaganda — the conservatives have already won.

Turns out the 2020 election only stopped the train from going backwards, delayed the inevitable and, at best, nibbled around the edges of progress. So once again if the voters show up, it’ll have to be because they’re motivated by the horrors inflicted by the party technically not in power. Not an easy feat. And unlikely.

Which means the climate-denying, election fraud-believing, Trump-worshipping, spineless corporate servants take back Congress —and nearly nothing gets done until 2024, when things could go even worse.

All the more reason you take things local.

Reference: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/supreme-court-s-e-p-a-ruling-shifts-more-power-away-from-congress/ar-AAZ7iOq

This "Supreme Court" want everybody to die — Manuel

That's the idea!

Good one! :up:

Sad that the SCOTUS has been infected by politicians with vested interests. Just shows how weak American democracy is. This corruption will have severe long-term consequences for the US and the world.

:snicker:

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, Wol was explaining to Piglet all about iron flow batteries to make large scale energy storage much cheaper while also using less rare metals and stuff:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/23/1046365/grid-storage-iron-batteries-technology/

Interesting. There's a lot of things going on technologically that is hopeful. The question -- as always -- is whether we get there in time, and just how much damage has to occur beforehand.

I think we all agree as human beings, with few exceptions, that it would be nice if the species survived and that our kids and grandkids had a habitable world. We also agree that there's a lot of people in the world, that there will be even more in the future, and that we have finite resources -- metals, oil, gas, etc. Only so much land, so much potable water, so many trees, etc.

Given that simple commonality, we can achieve a lot. We have the solutions, too. They're right there. We don't even have to sacrifice all that much. Public transportation, electric cars, heat pumps, electric lawnmowers, solar panels, less meat consumption, etc. etc. A more sustainable world is possible.

So what is getting in the way? There are no simple answers, but there are a range possibilities which vary in importance and explanatory power.

One is cost. Another is feasibility of scale. A big one is the profit-motive, and the fact that those in power want to keep their power (and status). Another is a failure of vision and values, a kind of nihilism and short-term thinking that's infected the minds of those in power -- both in business and in government. Yet another is the force of habit, the "This is how it's always been done" syndrome. Lastly, and not exhaustively, is the melding of governments with corporations to the point where you cannot distinguish one from the other.

So depending on how we prioritize these obstacles, we can formulate where we want to direct our civic energies. For me, it's the state and local level in the US. Not simply changing my own lifestyle, as has been promulgated by the fossil fuel industry, but building solidarity and community. I include in this, of course, unionizing. Which seems far removed from climate change, but it isn't. If more workers are unionized, they can create a crisis both for the employers and for the politicians. Strong unions are what tilted the scales in the 1930s, and it has that potential to do so again. It's one of the most powerful weapons the majority of Americans (who are wage-workers, blue or white collar; working or middle class) -- the bottom 80 or 90% -- have to truly fight back against the corporate takeover of government. Not simply protesting -- although that's important. Not voting -- although that's important. Not even mobilizing.

But true organization. And that can only happen on the ground at the local level. Our obsession with the national news drama distracts us from this, because there's little we can do about it besides vote every 2-4 years. If that's all we do it's exactly like the "solutions" presented to climate change: change your lightbulbs and recycle. In other words, complete nonsense. All while the rich get richer and the planet continues to burn (and people die of opiates, and kids become increasingly obese, and education is de-funded in favor of privatization, etc etc.).

So that's a rant, but it's worth talking about the entirety of this problem and the solutions that are staring us in the faces.

Public transportation, electric cars, heat pumps, electric lawnmowers, solar panels, less meat consumption, etc. etc. A more sustainable world is possible. — Xtrix

Somewhere around 60 percent of electrical energy in the US comes from coal and natural gas.

Climate change (due to CO₂ emissions), is it falsifiable?

What predictions have been made by climate scientists in re climate change? "Extreme weather" is just too vague for me and others too I presume.

Climate change (due to CO2 emissions), is it falsifiable? — Agent Smith

Yes.

What predictions have been made by climate scientists in re climate change? — Agent Smith

Lots.

"Extreme weather" is just too vague for me and others too I presume. — Agent Smith

Climate isn’t weather.

If you’re truly curious, there’s thousands of options to study it and mountains of evidence.

The devil's in the details! Kindly expand & elaborarte.

This is the same question you asked with respect to the theory of evolution yesterday. Are you not aware of falsefiable predictions or do you think there aren't any?

This is the same question you asked with respect to the theory of evolution yesterday. Are you not aware of falsefiable predictions or do you think there aren't any? — Benkei

The only prediction I'm aware of that climate change makes is extreme weather and, as far as I can tell, that's too vague; almost as if they had an astronomer astrologer on the team. Edify me/us please!

Oh! And where are the experiments?

Oh! And where are the experiments? — Agent Smith

That's not a requirement. We know stars go supernova and haven't tested that under laboratory conditions. Maybe Chalmers' "What is this thing called science?" is a good read for you.

The only prediction I'm aware of that climate change makes is extreme weather and, as far as I can tell, that's too vague; almost as if they had an astronomer astrologer on the team. Edify me/us please! — Agent Smith

This is lazy and the same reason I didn't answer the other question.

That's not a requirement. We know stars go supernova and haven't tested that under laboratory conditions. Maybe Chalmers' "What is this thing called science?" is a good read for you. — Benkei

True, for some branches of science, astronomy being one, experiments are technologically impossible. However this doesn't imply that the scientists in such sciences don't want to do experiments. The same goes for evolutionary biologists, oui monsieur? At the very least, I expect the proponents of evolution to describe only, an experiment in as much detail as possible to test Darwin's theory.

lazy — Benkei

Yes, some scientists are lazy and hence my query.

Oops! Got my wires crossed! :snicker:

@Benkei

Describe only an experiment to test the climate change hypothesis!

Google is your friend. I'm here for discussion not to educate you on things that can easily be found online.

Google is your friend. I'm here for discussion not to educate you on things that can easily be found online. — Benkei

Merci for reminding me I can google this stuff. I did and all I found were rather simplistic experiments involving lab jars, some CO₂, sunlight and a thermometer. To be fair, such experiments do demonstrate the heating effect of CO₂.

However, I'm more interested in real world experiments - done out in the field as it were and not in cozy labs. Climate change is a claim about the earth itself, I expect the predictions to be at the same scale and they must be observable to ensure the hypothesis is falsifiable. The only prediction climate scientists have made is extreme weather, but what exactly does this mean? It's so vague, like Barnum statements found in horoscopes, that they're utterly useless - Too hot? Climate change! Too cold? Climate change? Drought? Climate change! Downpours? Climate change! :brow:

Falsifiability isn't about experiments but about observations and it only needs to be falsifiable in principle to qualify as a falsifiable hypothesis.

The only prediction climate scientists have made is extreme weather, — Agent Smith

This is simply wrong.

Now we're talking! So expect, on average, global temperatures to soar, in keeping with climate change'a alias global warming, That's a prediction that can be tested, has been tested? Unprecedented heat waves across Europe, China, South Asia as per the media. Temperature measurements - they're the experiment.

Extreme weather, on the other hand, includes temperatures in free fall.

Sure. Here's a brief overview I wrote not long ago:

In explaining climate change, for people who are truly interested in learning about it, I always like to start with an easy experiment: you can take two glass containers -- one with room air and one with more CO2 added, and put it in the sun, seeing which one heats up the fastest. Easy, simple. In fact, Eunice Foote did exactly this experiment in 1856:



Then we can ask: How much CO2 is in our atmosphere? Since trees take in CO2 and most living organisms let off CO2, there's always fluctuations. So the next thing would be to look at the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, measured all over the Earth -- starting in the Mauna Loa Volcanic Observatory in 1958 and expanding from there.

What do we see? Concentrations go up and down a little, naturally, every year, because there are more leaves on trees in summer in the Northern Hemisphere than in winter. Yet the average rises every year, leading to the famous Keeling Curve:



That's just from 1958 to the present. When you look at the concentrations over the last 800 thousand years, an even more interesting trend emerges:

https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/

That's 412 parts per million currently, and the last highest level was about 350 thousand years ago at 300 ppm, before modern humans were even around.

So we know (1) that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and (2) that there is a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere now than in the last 800,000 years.

One would think the planet would be warming, giving these two facts. So now we'd have to look to see how temperatures have fluctuated over time, and if increases in temperature correlates in any way with increases in CO2. Is there a correlation?

Turns out there is.

Over 100 years:



And over 800 thousand years:



Then the question becomes: why is this happening? Where is all of this extra CO2 coming from -- and in such a relatively short period of time?

The answer to that question is because of human activity, especially since the industrial revolution. As world population increases, and more trees are cut down (for fuel, houses, and to make room for raising livestock), there is less of a carbon "sponge."

But on top of this, we're also burning things. Burning wood puts CO2 into the atmosphere. Cows and other livestock also release a lot of methane, another greenhouse gas.

But of course it's not only wood and not only livestock. The main culprit, it turns out -- and why the industrial revolution was mentioned -- is fossil fuel: coal, oil, and natural gas. These are carbon-dense objects, and when burned release a huge amount of CO2. Multiply this burning by an increasing population, year after year for over 150 years, and it becomes very clear where the excess CO2 is coming from.

So human activity is the driver of rapid global warming.

Lastly, so what? What's the big deal about increasing the global temperature by just a few degrees?

I think the answer to this is obvious once you realize how only a few fractions of a degrees has large effects over time, which we're already beginning to see. The melting of the ice caps, sea level rise, an increase in draughts and wildfires -- all happening before our eyes, as every year we break more heat records.

In my opinion, I think it's undeniable that this is the issue of our time and those of us who aren't in denial should at least put it in their top 3 political priorities and act accordingly.

The issue of our time will be biodiversity collapse. We can adapt to global warming and rising water levels even if it would destroy countries but not us as a race. Biodiversity collapse will potentially wipe us from the earth as well.

Biodiversity collapse is exacerbated by climate change, as you know. Whether it occurs without a rapidly changing climate -- probably, but certainly not to the degree it is. So I'd still place the greater emphasis on lowering emissions, as that will benefit biodiversity collapse greatly. Other solutions to the biodiversity issue are more than welcome.

The temperature data fits the climate change hypothesis alright, but what/where are the other hypotheses? There should be at least one other which then gets ruled out (falsified) by making an incorrect prediction. This - formulating more than 1 hypothesis - is routine in science I was told.

Anyway, muchas gracias for such an informative reply.

The temperature data fits the climate change hypothesis alright, but what/where are the other hypotheses? — Agent Smith

Early on there were many hypotheses — natural cycles, water vapor, and a host of others. These hypotheses have been abandoned.

Also the predictions made over several decades have now become true— in fact the effects have taken place quicker than expected, for example in the melting of the ice caps and severity of draughts.

This is why the idea is so widely accepted. But now it’s completely obvious to the point where even fossil fuel companies acknowledge it publicly. All one has to do is check the global temperature averages which break records year after year.

I'm in your debt monsieur! Danke!

Just another reason why the US shouldn't be the leader of the free world. And hopefully they won't be, as other countries start to realize how broken of a nation it's become.

Have to wonder how much fossil fuel has been transformed since the industrialization (and before), say, by decade, and how much is left to transform.
Don't think I've seen the two numbers plotted on one graph going centuries back; would be interesting though. Anyone know/have?
Then there's deforestation, pollution, roads, cities, farms, nature/wildlife displacement, all that. Humans + "footprints" + remains are all over (bombing too for that matter).
A global scale thing. Anthropogenic effects are noticeable. Global scale responses seem called for.