Just Stop Oil Protesters

[Malarky]

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.

 

[dw1305]

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.

There has been a degree of ideological capture in some educational institutions in the US that I sincerely believe is sufficient to significantly bias academic output and even "peer" review. It's not evenly distributed across institutions or even different academic fields but it's real and I think the politicisation of science is a real and growing problem.

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 have also met qualified scientists who appear to genuinely believe that human activity isn't the driving force behind the climate changes that we have observed so far. They may well be wrong, even obviously wrong from some perspectives, but I don't believe they are lying per se or even being consciously misleading in response to some perverse incentive. I do believe them when they say that's what they believe based on the information available to them.

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

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Trump got in because, @MichaelJ maybe qualify it better, as l understand it he took the swing states which includes a lot of Democrats who didn't care about criminal records, and put global warming to one side. but focused on the rusting factory which once employed them and others.

The Ivory Tower thinking (predominantly by the agenda-driving far left) on this and many other topics is why the US election a couple of weeks ago sadly went the way it did. The left allowed the good (i.e. progress) to be the enemy of some ideal the majority just didn't buy into. Instead we are going to get regress and reversals on climate initiatives 🙁 Being an uncompromising purist is fine - thats a choice - just don't expect to win elections and influence seems to be the lesson.

There are very smart people who can make compelling arguments for absolutely abominable ideas and people must be equipped to handle that. it should be very, very obvious to everyone at this point that "but that person is bad!" is no longer sufficient to stop people listening to what they might have to say and doesn't necessarily even mean they are wrong.

I thin the USA election proves all of that.

The issue of lack of progress on climate is not about science, it's about inertia caused by the wealthy and invested interests. In the pandemic it was only science that stopped millions more people dying, but it can't be said we followed the science enough. Society is slow, and more than we admit that is because science is overshadowed by power and what, to simplify, can be called vested interests. In recent memory we all know incontrovertibly that science saved millions of people. Scientists A-W are now suggesting we save billions, except for scientists X, Y and Z, and it turns out that X and y are funded by right wingers, oil interests, etc, and Z, well, he always did like to be different. Maybe Z will find a new angle, but I doubt he will prove climate breakdown is not real.

And that is the truth....

cheers Darrel

 

[AlecF]

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.

 

[Tim Harrison]

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.

 

[AlecF]

Thanks for the example.

 

[Malarky]

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.

Or they will thank us for having enough collective will, shared common purpose and solidarity to avoid turning the planet into a hellscape.

 

[hypnogogia]

the Trump administration won because ordinary Americans were fed up with rising inflation due to a failing economy

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