victor is always in the wrong — BitconnectCarlos

Nope.

let’s compare what was done to [Japan] in WW2: there’s bound to be “collateral damage” in a just war against evil. — Mikie

America killed many more Japanese children in WWII. — BitconnectCarlos

Shocker. :yawn:

Israel is winning — BitconnectCarlos

Yeah, killing ten thousand children is a real win.

The terrorists should be eliminated. We can all agree. So let’s start with the ones who kill, injure, and starve the most people— in that case, the Israeli government. Maybe kill 10 or 20 thousand Israeli children as well, in pursuit of such ends. I’m sure the forum chickenhawks would be fine with this, given how consistent they are.

Majority are sensible. Even 5% is too high, but so be it. You and a handful of other apologists are to be expected. It’s repulsive, but I don’t waste that much time on you — or this thread.

Likud wants Palestinians dead or out of the way. October 7th, which itself was a reaction to Israeli policies in Gaza, was a gift towards this end. They’ve been explicit about what they want, and October 7th lends them cover (“We’re just defending ourselves against the terrorist organization that has killed far less people than us”).

That’s what’s really going on. It’ll be very easy to see in time, but like many things it’s impossible for many to see now.

Since they basically start with the premise that Arabs and Muslims are backwards, and further include Palestinians in with this group, and hence are the bad guys on par with Nazis and animals, they can get away with murdering as many innocent people as they want.

As children are being butchered, our very intellectual and sophisticated apologists busy themselves about with 3 main justifications:

1) the numbers may be wrong, given that they come from a Hamas-run organization.

2) Hamas is using human shields

3) Israel doesn’t intend to murder people, but Hamas does and has said so explicitly.

All predicated on Israel being a high-tech, Western aligned, modern and reasonable state. As opposed to the “savages” — in Ayn Rand’s words.

Thus, Israel never INTENDS to commit these war crimes or kill thousands of children — and, after all, since they’re fighting a war against the Nazis, let’s compare what was done to Germany in WW2: there’s bound to be “collateral damage” in a just war against evil.

So, because of this warped, stupid way of thinking, thousands more children will be starved and killed— and our enlightened, philosophy-reading hobbyists will continue to cheer on the sidelines. All the good studying philosophy does…

How repulsive.

Something weird is going on in Australia. They’re gonna fry in a few years. Must be that problem with populism I was talking about. — Punshhh

They will fry, yes. But their economy relies on fossil fuel extraction and export, especially to China — so they’ve delayed and continue to delay, although some steps have been recently taken.

devil is in the details. — Agree-to-Disagree

Lol. Yeah, please keep talking as if you understand the “details” — evidently in this case meaning “googling for an article, posting it, and pretending it proves something.”

You don’t know what you’re talking about. You haven’t known what you’re talking about since the time you started trolling this thread with your thinly veiled denialism.

So here’s an assignment: while you’re googling, google the problems and “details” about oil, coal, and natural gas extraction — the environmental damage, the health damage, the industry practices and lobbying, the destruction left in its wake, its transportation, the effects on workers, the effects on respiratory problems, its expense, how governments subsidize the industry, the externalities that aren’t paid for, etc.

It’ll be good for you. You might learn something. Then you can get back to your pro bono work as an industry apologist, following their playbook of amplifying the “risks” and “problems” associated with a green transition. “They don’t work well in cold climates!” (Wrong) “They aren’t cost effective!” (Wrong) …etc. Take a break.

Watching Schitt’s Creek. On season 3– pretty funny, light. Nothing groundbreaking or that interesting.

I’d give it a B.

Heat pumps outsold gas furnaces again last year — and the gap is growing

According to data from the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute released last week, Americans bought 21 percent more heat pumps in 2023 than the next-most popular heating appliance, fossil gas furnaces. That’s the biggest lead heat pumps have opened up over conventional furnaces in the two decades of data available from the trade group.

Good news— still a long way to go.

Small ??? — Agree-to-Disagree

Yes, and becoming smaller. At least in the world. True, fossil fuel states have higher rates — US, Australia, probably Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc. But still minorities even there. Even the oil companies pushing denial bullshit are themselves not really deniers.

At this point it takes a special kind of stupid— but whatever. People believe in creationism and that the Holocaust didn’t happen and in a flat earth. Eventually you got to let them be. No sense engaging seriously.

Looks like this reactionary court will now overturn Chevron.

From Balls & Strikes:

For normal people who want to live in a country not ravaged by periodic outbreaks of foodborne illness, the end of the administrative state as we know it is bad news. But this slurry of confusion, delay, and incompetence is exactly what the conservative legal movement hopes to bring about.

Killing Chevron is a two-for-one deal for Republicans, who do not have an affirmative vision for regulation so much as they oppose the very concept, because they want to keep their billionaire cryptkeeper benefactors unburdened by any obligation to protect factory workers from getting maimed by heavy machinery. Burying understaffed chambers in terabytes of non-OCRed PDFs will make the day-to-day task of running this country even harder than it already is. It will also turn conservative dogma about the evils of Big Government into something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: To the extent that government works right now, it won’t anymore, because conservatives made sure of it.

Spot on.

:up:

With that caveat, I’d say FDR was the last decent president— perhaps the best ever.

. In reality there is a spectrum of denial. — Agree-to-Disagree

Yes, and it’s all both dangerous and immoral. There’s a spectrum of Holocaust denial too, and I likewise have no interest in engaging seriously with any of it. Again: there’s better things to do.

Thankfully, deniers are a small minority, both in the US and the world. So, fuck ‘em.

Many people will cooperate if they are asked nicely. — Agree-to-Disagree

No, they won’t. Climate deniers are like creationists. It doesn’t matter how nicely you present evidence or argue your case. Carl Sagan was doing it respectfully, articulately, and reasonably — 35 years ago, in interviews, in congress, in lectures, on popular radio and television programs. Climate deniers remain with their denial.

I’m no longer interested in engaging substantially or nicely with those who deny reality and delay progress on a problem known decades ago. Especially on the internet. As I said: fuck ‘em. There’s better things to do.

Calling people "deniers" creates an "us and them" mentality. This makes it even less likely to get cooperation. — Agree-to-Disagree

Good. They never intended to cooperate anyway, because they deny there’s a problem. Fuck ‘em.

The more rapid these issues have to be dealt with the greater the barriers and obstacles there are. The greater the upheaval. — Punshhh

Indeed— and we see this all over. The conversion to a better electric grid requires permitting, for example, and sometimes has to cut across people’s properties and they don’t want to lease. So it gets tied up in courts or eminent domain is invoked, and that angers people, etc. All kinds of problems like this will crop up. Electric charging stations, upfront costs, and so on.

But it’s going to happen one way or another, because it has to. Which is why the fossil fuel industry keeps politicizing things like induction stoves (which are awesome) and meat alternatives and blather on about freedom and masculinity. They selectively run ridiculous stories and constantly highlight problems— not constructively, because they don’t care in the first place, but in order to paint a picture of unreliability or socialism or whatever. Anything to delay.

Their propaganda works, gets into the brains of lazy consumers, and eventually gets regurgitated on Internet forums. See the past 108 pages for plenty of examples.

now-removed log — AmadeusD

If there’s an issue with moderation, take it up in feedback. I have no clue what you’re referring to and don’t mod threads or conversations I’m involved with.

So add one more subject that the climate-denying troll knows nothing about: heat pumps. Cool. :up:

None of you here are qualified to read "research", that much is evident. — Lionino

Yes, because so far you’ve proven yourself credible to make such a judgment. :roll:

Why not go troll somewhere else.

The only real question left is how we’re going to solve this existential problem. The solutions are already being employed and they’re worth looking at and engaging with, whether individually or, better, within a community or organization.

It’s no longer a debate about whether it’s happening (it is), whether scientists agree (they do), whether humans are causing it (we are), or what the effects are (bad).

My own interest is converting heating systems from fossil fuels to heat pumps (and better insulation), increasing the building of electrical transmission lines, and greening the electrical grid (including through nuclear). This means talking to one’s employer and getting them on board with IRA rebates, retrofitting buildings, talking to local officials, talking with state public utility commissions, going to (boring) meetings like zoning boards, etc.

Voting, divesting from fossil fuels (switching from banks to credit unions, for example), advocating for better public transportation, electrification of all school buses and postal trucks (numbering in the hundreds of thousands), plugging old oil sites, plugging methane leaks in fracking sites, and on and on.

Plenty of things to do. I think that should be the topic here. Perhaps “Climate change solutions” should be the new name, or a separate thread. All this one does is occasionally attract random ignoramuses who want to take yet another stab at the subject by exhuming tiresome lines of delay and denial, drowning out anything interesting.

I think we truly are incapable of judging another whole person as anything, other than person deserving respect. — Fire Ologist

Not everyone deserves respect, besides the basic acknowledgement of being human. The rest is earned. And some people really are idiots. Judging from their behavior, not seeing into their souls.

I’d argue it’s very important to discriminate between good and bad ideas and good and bad behavior. Making no judgment whatsoever is silly. You want to do that, become a monk.

“Often, we don’t think something is beneficial unless it’s productive,” she said. We don’t always realize “that sitting around and resting with someone is still a productive state, and worthy of our time,” she said.

Liming, an associate professor of writing at Champlain College, said there wasn’t much research on hanging out and more was needed. But there’s evidence to suggest that face-to-face contact can strengthen emotional closeness. Plus, hanging out has an appealingly low barrier of entry, and it’s inexpensive: You don’t need reservations or tickets or special skills.

Hanging out also invites deeper conversation and builds intimacy, Liming said. (Dr. Ayers points to the trending desire on social media for a “couch friend” — a buddy that will sit with you on the couch and happily do nothing.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/well/live/hanging-out-adult-friendships.html

Apropos of this thread.

What do you mean by religion?

I always thought numbers started at -2/3.

Great post. Some thoughts…

we are disconnected to the physical form of communication. There's tons of studies on the importance of physical connection — Christoffer

Yes— and it’s just obvious from experience.

We're blasted by information in our alone time, and the information is "dead". — Christoffer

It’s dead from lack of physical communication as you mention, but also dead in the sense that we’ve become desensitized to information. We now have knowledge and information of all kinds at our fingertips, while walking in the woods, and we’re less knowledgeable and less informed (and more confused, distracted, divided) than ever.

So it’s a problem of abundance as well. But one more supplemental point: even books are removed from the person writing it. Books never substituted for conversation in real time, but I wouldn’t say they were dead. What’s truly “dead,” and I think we all can feel, is reading and communicating through screens. Reading a book in the real world versus online is a very different experience. The former I consider alive, the latter rather dead. I’m exaggerating, but there’s something to it. Reading a book online is simply different— whether it’s the light from the screen or whatever, the experience is cheapened. At least for me.

Together with the focus on individuality, the neoliberal ideology of the self, it has skewed the perspective people have of their ego. — Christoffer

One important aspect of a general assault on the majority of mankind. The elites have the power and want to keep that power. They know the only real power the masses have are their numbers.

Undermining a sense of community, solidarity, and the common good are all necessary. Keep everyone as divided, alone, apathetic and passive as possible. The emphasis on individual consumption is therefore an important piece. Destroying unions is another. Infiltrating the education system is another and, of course, owning and controlling the media — of which social media is another piece (owned by major multinational corporations).

What we need more today than ever is social groups not just meeting, but building something together within the physical realm. A step back from the individual perspective, the focus on the ego and into a collective realm in which social groups build something together. — Christoffer

Yes— and it has to be in the real world. It cannot be on a Facebook group. It’s too easy and cheap. People have to show up. There’s other prerequisites too: awareness, some education, the ability to listen, and some control of emotions. But schools and parents and media fail at cultivating these attributes, based on deliberate decisions years ago — so this itself is a challenge. If people are tired, financially insecure, indebted, busy, addicted to technology and never educated on any of it, it’s no wonder of the percentage of people even interested in politics, less than 5% do anything more than slacktivism. It’s all by design, really. In the sense that none of it is an accident.

the decline in spirituality and religion has created a void in the larger collective sense. — Christoffer

Yes — and there’s been nothing to replace it. We have science and capitalism. That’s it. It’s material gain and material existence. It’s not fair to “blame” science for this as the creationist-type people like to do, but there’s something to it. Even if we believe science — whatever it is — has stumbled on the ultimate and infinite truth, it may well be worth implementing something like Plato’s noble lies, just for the health and betterment of society.

One such project, I would say, is building a new form of living that mitigates climate change. — Christoffer

A big one, yes. It’s good to have a problem and a goal, to be problem-solving with others. Nuclear weapons is another one. We have problems never faced in human history. Wars and famines have always existed, at least going back 10,000 years or so, but nuclear weapons and 420 ppm of CO2? Man…

An old one, but still relevant and in the prophetic words of Carl Sagan:

Good one. I deeply miss Sagan. With Chomsky on his way out, I’m running out of heroes.

“Who’ll be my role model, now that my role model is gone, gone…He ducked back down the alley with some roly-poly little bat-faced girl.” — Paul Simon

Well this thread took an unexpected positive turn. Glad to see it.

Only disappointed the contrast between one’s internet persona and that of the real world wasn’t explored more. Oh well!

How fortunate we all are to be led down the shining path of empathy and compassion (and effectiveness) from an internet rando…who is exceedingly ineffective at teaching people about empathy and compassion, having never demonstrated it themselves. Do as I say, not as I do — always works great in teaching, especially on the internet.

—

That is quite the achievement considering how much the West has been exporting it's heavy industry to China. — unenlightened

I’m surprised by this too. Given that the Republican Party line is now “we can’t do anything because China is emitting more than anyone”, I wonder how this pans out— and what their next bullshit excuse will be.

I know it’s hypothetical. But it seems in keeping with a general trend.

We’ve disagreed before, yes. I don’t like Biden, but Trump is still worse. You feel differently. I still think that’s a mistake. I retract the insanity part — that was exaggerated.

That would be Trump. — Baden

It’s kind of interesting watching people convince themselves into voting for Trump, almost out of spite. As if that’s the answer to awful Biden administration foreign policies. It’s insane.

Trump had supported Israel's far right government to the very end, and no doubt would again. If you’re not familiar with his policies, there’s plenty of information out there.

True, Trump has mumbled all kinds of things lately because he likes that this is bad for Biden. Like the border problems. But like his four years in office, he would be giving aid and encouragement to Israel as well if in office. Maybe he would say some nice words about doing it better, etc — but so does Biden. That he would support a ceasefire is ridiculous.

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-carbon-emissions-are-set-to-decline-years-earlier-than-expected-cfc99dd2?mod=mhp

China’s Carbon Emissions Are Set to Decline Years Earlier Than Expected

China’s rollout of 300 gigawatts of new wind and solar power last year was for the first time enough to cover its new electricity demand

Oh that’s a hard one. Try…anything he’s ever said about Israel, and every policy decision he ever made re: Israel. Have fun.

Look, the other guy does it too." seems like a weak defence in law, and an even weaker justification in political discussion. — unenlightened

You painted it as two choices, between a supporter of genocide and a narcissist. That’s not true. The other guy indeed does it too, even more brutally. It’s not a defense of anything.

It's a hard choice - between a narcissist con man and a supporter and facilitator of genocide and ethnic cleansing. — unenlightened

Trump also supports genocide.

To deny that claim is to take an anti-capitalistic stance. — Hanover

Not at all. Unless one defines capitalism as exclusively the most destructive form ever known. Other countries are doing much better than we are, and they’re working within a mixed economic system too.

So it’s a false dichotomy. But should capitalism be abolished in all its forms? One can only hope.

There's a person trying to convince him that he shouldn't drive home drunk but there's also another person who's trying to just push that person aside and tell the drunk that he shouldn't listen, that there is no risk, there's no problem, just drive home and do it as fast as he can. — Christoffer

Because you weren’t nice enough.

Instead of saying “hey I agree this is important, but your approach may be counterproductive — anyway, here are some possible solutions” they focus exclusively on feelings. Why? Because they don’t understand the issue anyway, and refuse to take the time to learn.

Because it’s a public Internet forum, everyone feels entitled to a seat at the table, pretending to contribute with doozies like “this all doesn’t feel quite right to me, we’ll get out of it somehow” to “Science isn’t always right” to “It’s a sham” to “Climate activists are mean.”

There’s only two reasonable ways to deal with such people: ignore them or point out their stupidity, in the harshest way possible so that they hopefully go away. In the real world, there’s a very different approach. One I’ve been assuming for years and which works well. (Which is why it’s hilarious to be given “lessons” from Buddhist wannabes.)

How many of those lives do you actually appreciate? — baker

:lol:

What Is Climate Change?

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Such shifts can be natural, due to changes in the sun’s activity or large volcanic eruptions. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.

Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures.

The main greenhouse gases that are causing climate change include carbon dioxide and methane. These come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a building, for example. Clearing land and cutting down forests can also release carbon dioxide. Agriculture, oil and gas operations are major sources of methane emissions. Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and land use are among the main sectors causing greenhouse gases.

The Earth is feeling the heat.

Humans are responsible for global warming
Climate scientists have showed that humans are responsible for virtually all global heating over the last 200 years. Human activities like the ones mentioned above are causing greenhouse gases that are warming the world faster than at any time in at least the last two thousand years.

The average temperature of the Earth’s surface is now about 1.1°C warmer than it was in the late 1800s (before the industrial revolution) and warmer than at any time in the last 100,000 years. The last decade (2011-2020) was the warmest on record, and each of the last four decades has been warmer than any previous decade since 1850.

Many people think climate change mainly means warmer temperatures. But temperature rise is only the beginning of the story. Because the Earth is a system, where everything is connected, changes in one area can influence changes in all others.

The consequences of climate change now include, among others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity.

The Earth is asking for help.

People are experiencing climate change in diverse ways

Climate change can affect our health, ability to grow food, housing, safety and work. Some of us are already more vulnerable to climate impacts, such as people living in small island nations and other developing countries. Conditions like sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion have advanced to the point where whole communities have had to relocate, and protracted droughts are putting people at risk of famine. In the future, the number of people displaced by weather-related events is expected to rise.

https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change

[Worth posting the basics. I’ll refer back to it when the next goofy “skeptic” with 15 minutes of Fox News under their belts comes ambling along. “It’s the clouds, stupid!”]