Regarding claims about the politicisation of science remember Trump's last Presidency closed down NASA's Carbon Monitoring System. Yes, science is contested but that's different from a frontal attack on the institutions that actually track the data.
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Just Stop Oil Protesters
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Hi all,
I'm not going to hide my political, or religious, affiliations, I'm a "card carrying liberal" and I've been an atheist since primary school.
<"Lord Kelvin"> calculated the age of the Earth, based upon the science available to him, but he also wasn't right <"Lord Kelvin, the Coldest Possible Temperature, and the Age of the Earth - ChemistryViews"> but we now have definitive proof of the Earth's age <"Uranium–lead dating - Wikipedia">.
Geologists, on the whole, didn't believe in the <"bolide impact theory"> at the K-T boundary <"Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary - Wikipedia"> when it was announced by <"Luis Walter Alvarez - Wikipedia"> & <"Walter Alvarez - Wikipedia">, but they do now, because you can't find any other plausible mechanism for the the iridium (Ir) spike at the K-T boundary etc.
cheers Darrel
I'm not going to hide my political, or religious, affiliations, I'm a "card carrying liberal" and I've been an atheist since primary school.
I agree with you, but that bias isn't mainly coming from the left or the "woke" it is funded by oligarchs, and the shadowy figures hiding behind <"Institutes">, many with an anti-science agenda <"It Can’t Happen Here (Or Can It?): The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science—A Scientist’s Warning: A Conversation with Author Peter J. Hotez - PMC">. Edit What @AlecF says.
I'm sure that is true of some. For example <"Louis Agassiz"> was one of the first people to appreciate the effects of ice on the world we live in, based on practical observation and deduction, but he carried on believing in "God's creation of life in its present form" until his death.
<"Lord Kelvin"> calculated the age of the Earth, based upon the science available to him, but he also wasn't right <"Lord Kelvin, the Coldest Possible Temperature, and the Age of the Earth - ChemistryViews"> but we now have definitive proof of the Earth's age <"Uranium–lead dating - Wikipedia">.
Geologists, on the whole, didn't believe in the <"bolide impact theory"> at the K-T boundary <"Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary - Wikipedia"> when it was announced by <"Luis Walter Alvarez - Wikipedia"> & <"Walter Alvarez - Wikipedia">, but they do now, because you can't find any other plausible mechanism for the the iridium (Ir) spike at the K-T boundary etc.
cheers Darrel
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Hi all,
cheers Darrel
I think the USA election proves all of that.
And that is the truth....
cheers Darrel
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I foresee a time, not too far distant, when we look back at comments querying climate breakdown with the same horror we now view the rise of the far right in the 1930s, or all the other examples we can think of – the historical crises and wrongs that 99% of us now see as bad, dangerous, foolish, etc. It will always be asked, could Hitler have been stopped, or the Vietnam war, etc, and we always look back and regret that the political will was lacking at the time. But we're sleepwalking, or walking with open eyes, into something as bad, or worse.
G
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Presuming we still have the freedom of self-determination, I think future generations will look back on this episode in history with horror. They’ll think we were morally bankrupt for allowing our leaders to ruin our economies by spending trillions and trillions of dollars trying to reduce the concentration of a trace, and moderate greenhouse gas, that’s essential to life on this planet.
That is when that money could have been spent on promoting rapid economic development to improve the standard of living of the poorest of the poor in developing nations. That would be the real key to reducing any perceived anthropogenic climate change. Not punitively taxing normal people to pay for a misguided green agenda.
On that subject, the Trump administration won because ordinary Americans were fed up with rising inflation due to a failing economy caused by the cost of Biden’s green agenda. Never mind that China still continues to burn fossil fuels to rapidly grow its economy and belch out billions of metric tonnes of CO2. In 2022 it released 11.4 billion metric tonnes, and that will only increase. Perhaps two steps forward and one back when it comes to reducing global CO2 emissions.
Understandably the Trump administration isn’t about to let a green agenda ruin the US economy so China can become the world’s number one economy and super power. That would be disastrous for democracy the world over. There is little doubt that he will formally withdraw the US from the Paris agreement. It has been reported he thinks anthropogenic climate change is a hoax.
That is when that money could have been spent on promoting rapid economic development to improve the standard of living of the poorest of the poor in developing nations. That would be the real key to reducing any perceived anthropogenic climate change. Not punitively taxing normal people to pay for a misguided green agenda.
On that subject, the Trump administration won because ordinary Americans were fed up with rising inflation due to a failing economy caused by the cost of Biden’s green agenda. Never mind that China still continues to burn fossil fuels to rapidly grow its economy and belch out billions of metric tonnes of CO2. In 2022 it released 11.4 billion metric tonnes, and that will only increase. Perhaps two steps forward and one back when it comes to reducing global CO2 emissions.
Understandably the Trump administration isn’t about to let a green agenda ruin the US economy so China can become the world’s number one economy and super power. That would be disastrous for democracy the world over. There is little doubt that he will formally withdraw the US from the Paris agreement. It has been reported he thinks anthropogenic climate change is a hoax.
Inflation in the US rose for the same reasons it rose everywhere else: cost of oil and the war in Ukraine. The US economy did not suffer as Republicans will have us believe.
How The Economy Really Fared Under Biden/Harris And Trump—From Jobs To Inflation (Final Update)
The final economic data is in ahead of the election—here's what the numbers say about the Trump and Biden/Harris economies.
www.forbes.com
MichaelJ
Member
Well, American politics is unfortunately very much driven by perception and slogans... Inflation stood at 2.6% in Oct 2024, almost the same level as Oct 2019... GDP @ estimated $29 Trillion for 2024 vs $21 Trillion in 2019... hardly a failing economy by any stretch of the imagination 🙂 Now, the problem with inflation that I think a lot of people just don't get is that when it tapers off prices wont really go down unless you have a stagnant or shrinking economy - people who think this will change after January 20th 2025 are going to be disappointed. The reason for inflation was certainly more than just Biden, but it really took off when the CARES Act was enacted - the Green agenda played a role but not as much as most tend to believe. A large part of the additional inflation was caused by the so-called supply chain disruption caused by the Covid shutdowns that enabled companies to jack up prices to compensate for lost revenues during the shutdown - a large part of that was essentially just greed and when the supply chain issues eased prices of course didn't go down.
Same here.
I am a pretty pragmatic Lutheran myself... yes, you could say I took Pascal's wager 🙂 An anecdote attributed to the Danish Physicist Niels Bohr probably sums it up for me; He had a horseshoe over his work desk and when asked about it he quipped: Of course I don’t believe in it, but I understand it brings you good fortune, whether you believe in it or not.
Thats essentially the case Bjorn Lomborg is making.
Cheers,
Michael
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Bradders
Member
OK OK OK! I am going to have a go!! 😀
"An argument from ignorance is the idea that if we don't know whether a claim is true or false, it must be false or true." Or something like that, anyway!
The key problem here is that we don't know the outcome. How could we? We can see indicators that point to potential outcome(s), but we don't know the actual outcome. So, it becomes a prediction of what we know (or think we know) to make a determination of the the outcome. Science, after all, is only the "accurate" norm until it gets disproven.
There is nothing in this thread (scientific or anecdotal) which is conclusive. There is nothing in any link that is conclusive. But I do subscribe to the idea that "man" has its impact on the environment. Whether that is population growth, technology use, earth resource extraction or general change. Who knows! This rock (VERY broadly) does not change in comparison to human change. We have gone from 2Bn to 8Bn in just 100 years in terms of population.
My position? Well, that is very hard when you are talking to a person who questions whether the human race's propensity to cure all ailments is actually a good thing! But I do think people, in general, are a problem. I do think that consumption is a problem. And I do believe that any resource is (eventually) finite. And that math (as we currently know it!) is worth considering. The fact a slow-moving object (the earth) can keep up with infinite population growth without impact seems implausible. Possible but implausible.
I firmly believe that humans impact nature. Im not clear how much, but my sense is that its not all good.
"An argument from ignorance is the idea that if we don't know whether a claim is true or false, it must be false or true." Or something like that, anyway!
The key problem here is that we don't know the outcome. How could we? We can see indicators that point to potential outcome(s), but we don't know the actual outcome. So, it becomes a prediction of what we know (or think we know) to make a determination of the the outcome. Science, after all, is only the "accurate" norm until it gets disproven.
There is nothing in this thread (scientific or anecdotal) which is conclusive. There is nothing in any link that is conclusive. But I do subscribe to the idea that "man" has its impact on the environment. Whether that is population growth, technology use, earth resource extraction or general change. Who knows! This rock (VERY broadly) does not change in comparison to human change. We have gone from 2Bn to 8Bn in just 100 years in terms of population.
My position? Well, that is very hard when you are talking to a person who questions whether the human race's propensity to cure all ailments is actually a good thing! But I do think people, in general, are a problem. I do think that consumption is a problem. And I do believe that any resource is (eventually) finite. And that math (as we currently know it!) is worth considering. The fact a slow-moving object (the earth) can keep up with infinite population growth without impact seems implausible. Possible but implausible.
I firmly believe that humans impact nature. Im not clear how much, but my sense is that its not all good.
Bradders
Member
Do you think so, Tim? I don't influence my kids in any way; I just teach them core life values. Not one of them has made sense of what you say. And they read it all.
G
Guest
Guest
Pretty much Michael, I came to a similar conclusion during my studies at about the same time his book was published.
I remember feeling somewhat relieved I wasn't the only one.
I'm not sure what it is exactly that you're asking me Bradders.
MichaelJ
Member
Thats the problem we have with any science that can't be falsified... that is, we can not make an experiment that changes the initial conditions and check if we get a different result - a result that contradicts the theory or contradicts the observations; in this case we can’t go back two hundred years and stop emitting CO2, let two hundred years pass, and see if we get a different result. We have to look at the data we can obtain now and draw meaningful conclusions.
And the data clearly indicates global warming is happening, heating of oceans, change of ocean currents, melting glaciers and ice caps, mass extinction of species (insects in particular) etc. that all seems to correlate with an increase in CO2 emissions.
Cheers,
Michael
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G
Guest
Guest
These might be of interest
Earth Is Not in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction
“As scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons.”
www.theatlantic.com
Michael Shellenberger: No, humans are not causing a 'sixth mass extinction'
On CBS’s “60 Minutes” earlier this month, scientists
nationalpost.com
G
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Species–area relationships always overestimate extinction rates from habitat loss - Nature
There is broad agreement that Earth is facing a biodiversity crisis, but estimating extinction rates remains a daunting task, not least because it is almost impossible to determine when the very last individual of a species has died. Fangliang He and Stephen Hubbell demonstrate that a widely...
www.nature.com
That's a bit of a leap Alec. It's also a bit more complex than that. For instance, mass extinctions are characterised by total ecological collapse. We're talking Biblical end of days stuff. If we were in the, often quoted, midst of one we'd know about it. Or perhaps not, since most of us would be dead already. It's just more existential alarmism.
To quote Doug Erwin a leading expert on the End-Permian mass extinction,
"...There’s a very rapid collapse of the ecosystem during these mass extinctions...If we’re really in a mass extinction...go get a case of scotch,” See this article I posted above.
That's not to say habitat destruction hasn't taken its toll on biodiversity. However, as I mentioned before. Instead of investing in green energy, invest in rewilding, nature recovery networks, and connectivity on a landscape scale to create core habitat, rather than isolated fragments mainly composed of edge habitat.
This will secure all sorts of goods and services, clean air, clean water, flood alleviation, promote biodiversity, and climate resilience. And reduce levels of atmospheric CO2, if that’s important to you.
Further, rapid economic growth in developing nations and agricultural intensification are key to reducing all polluting emissions, and releasing land to recreate wildlife habitat and secure the above goods and services for people throughout the world.
The alternative, "Green Grabbing" in the pursuit of green energy production, solar and wind farms for instance, is often somewhat detrimental to local people and results in further wildlife habitat loss. A bit counterproductive to biodiversity, don't you think?
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It's perfectly possible to erect a wind-farm and at the same time allow a patch of land to rewild or diversify. You simply remove the turbines and allow the roads to revert to moorland, after 30 years. Some mass extinctions are caused by a comet, or similar event, and are obviously sudden, but in the terms of life on earth the change since we began to burn carbon at this rate is very, very, very, sudden. Up in Scotland we call the arguments you quote "whataboutery". Under my Neo-Marxian policies, as you would call them, those wind-farms belong to communities and the benefits are shared. The idea that there is no problem because there may be 3 capercaillies left, rather than 1 is the worst kind of diversionary tactics. I'm sorry, I just don't understand people who seek to construct arguments in this way.
simon_the_plant_nerd
Member
The two corys you gave me are apparently indestructible. I suspect I could drain the tank and the corys wouldn’t be bothered.
It’s typically a condition of planning to conduct environmental surveys and undertake environmental management with new energy development projects. SEPA, Scottish Government, Marine Scotland, local councils are all interested parties who will grant environmental licenses and permits. Whale and Dolphin conservation, RSPB, NatureScot, Marine Mammal Observer Association are all interested in development of wind farms and the associated infrastructure.
I’ve been reading the environmental management plan for a new energy transition facility just this week in my day job and it’s reassuring, positive reading.
Maf 2500
Member
What strikes me is that the guys who are shouting "there is no climate change from fossil fuels, why are you trying to change things?" are the exact same people who, if the sh*t should seriously hit the fan, will be shouting "why did the wokes not do anything about it?"
G
Guest
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Because you mentioned rewilding, windfarms and birds in the same post I have to add that based on my own experience it seems to me that onshore wind at least is an absolute disaster for birdlife. I often hike up past the windmills in East Lothian and the ground around their bases is always littered with a huge variety of dead birds and the same is true at a windmill site near Bathgate. Just last week I found a barn owl that had been struck, it was alive and I took it to the animal hospital in Edinburgh but they euthanised it because its wing was too damaged to ever hunt again.
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