faetal on 16/3/2015 at 09:58
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
You could argue that the opposite is true as well. When people spend almost all their interactions in the context of fiction, you get the purple-haired freaks who go on righteous rampage over trivialities that normal people don't even notice. Hell go take a look over at the Bioware forums where you can find posters who are taking the oppression against the elves in a fictional contest as seriously as people used to take real racial issues back in the day.
Agree re the reverse being true. But think about what drives people into alternative realities in the first place.
Quote:
On global warming....where's what's his name when you need him? I forget his username, the guy that was banned after 20-something pages of trolling a global warming thread.
Was it Fragony? If so, I thought he got banned because he made some kind of personal threat or massively out of order insult to someone.
SlyFoxx on 16/3/2015 at 20:03
The fact that the Top Gear orangutan garners so much negativity from the left warms my heart.
Kolya on 17/3/2015 at 00:00
Yeah, because a lot of opposition means you're right, right? Or at least you can feel comfortably bad ass, despite acting just like everybody else.
Oh and Fragony didn't insult or threaten anyone, he merely uttered a mild sexual fantasy about an admin's girlfriend and then was white knighted.
But A) that was understandable and B) he had put so much work into acting like a complete dick before that no one really cared everyone felt relieved when he was gone.
As for global warming: This is one of the things that really makes me think we need some kind of alien threat before we get our act together and start acting like THE human race and not like a dairy clan from Wisconsin.
Nicker on 17/3/2015 at 01:13
Nice bit of equivocation and straw-manning by Saint George. Yeah I know it's supposed to be comedy but really it's editorial and rather uninformed at that. Carlin's funny years were decades behind him at this point.
Saving the planet doesn't mean saving the geosphere, it means preserving enough of the ecosphere so that humans and hopefully a few animals and plants can survive. We are not just killing species we are killing entire genera and families, entire ecosystems. Certainly natural disasters have done worse but this is the first time that a complex life form has done so on a global scale.
While I agree with Carlin that there is a certain hubris in our panic I disagree with his, "don't interfere" message. We already have.
These are easy criticisms from a man living well outside the immediate effects of environmental degradation (making his anti-environmentalist digs a tad hypocritical) and shielded from the effects of his "fuckit" attitude by the knowledge that he would be dead long before any serious effects hit.
We are too smart and not wise enough.
That said, Clarkson is just a bellicose, arrogant twat. There you go, SlyFoxx, that should add a couple of degrees of cardio-warming.
Tony_Tarantula on 17/3/2015 at 04:16
Quote Posted by Kolya
Yeah, because a lot of opposition means you're right, right? Or at least you can feel comfortably bad ass, despite acting just like everybody else.
Or maybe it has nothing to do with being right and everything to do with how much fun it is to watch people who are complete assholes get something stuck in their craw for a change.
faetal on 17/3/2015 at 09:30
So it should be entertaining watching Clarkson get pissy about people wanting to rein in fuel emissions, and then "righties" get amused watching "lefties" get pissy about that. All sounds like a pointless circle jerk to me. Even the notion of Right and Left defining political leanings is facile and denotes that a person is not able or willing to actually discuss at a substantial level. Pointless labels for scoring pointless points.
Nicker - I agree about Carlin. I don't like the "hippy" viewpoint in general that humans are somehow separate from nature and that we're destroying it. We are nature destroying a part of itself. Likewise, we aren't destroying earth, we're just fucking it up in terms of its ability to carry us. If we wipe ourselves and 90% of life on earth out, it doesn't "matter" at the cosmic scale, since the earth will bounce back, new life will emerge, new diversity will form - rinse and repeat. Who knows, if the Permian mass extinction hadn't happened, we could have had an intelligent life form fucking things up millions of years ago already. The point is "do we want to survive or be consigned to the fossil record as a very interesting extinct species which once populated the whole world?". It's like, we keep reproducing and hoping for a good life for these kids and their kids etc, while also handing them an increasing risk of having to deal with an actual apocalypse. How fucked is that?
Gryzemuis on 17/3/2015 at 13:54
Quote Posted by faetal
while also handing them an increasing risk of having to deal with an actual apocalypse.
All generations before us have done that. (Done stuff with zero respect for the environment).
What makes this generation so special that it's gonna behave differently ?
====
Newest (
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2997950/Another-race-row-embattled-Clarkson-Gear-host-says-foreign-cabbies-cars-smell-vomit-magazine-article.html) column by Clarkson.
It made the news in The Netherlands.
It was translated as "all cars owned by foreigners reek of vomit". In stead of just taxis.
Quote:
‘In London, there are two types of [cab] driver.
You have a chap who has just arrived from a country you've never heard of, whose car smells faintly of lavender oil and sick, who doesn't know where he's going and can't get there anyway because he never puts more than £2 worth of fuel in the tank of his car.
‘Then you have someone in a suit in a smart black Mercedes S-Class who does know where he's going and is very polite but he charges around £7,500 a mile.'
faetal on 17/3/2015 at 14:04
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
All generations before us have done that. (Done stuff with zero respect for the environment).
What makes this generation so special that it's gonna behave differently ?
That's not what I said though. We've always disrespected the environment, sure, but we've never known specifically that it could / would lead to an actual collapse in the earth's carrying capacity. That's the bit that's fucked. Previous generations were just concerned about things like direct toxicity, not knock on effects that may get out of control.
We've only known about AGW since the latter part of the 20th century and it's only really in the last 5 years that it's become widely accepted to the extent that not believing it is happening is nearly considered on a par with not believing in evolution. We (as in, our generation, the people having kids within the last 5 or so years onwards) are engaging some pretty fearsome cognitive dissonance. It's no wonder people deny it in the face of evidence - the alternative is to accept that we're just irresponsible or morally lazy. I'm not even exempting myself from this, so there's no high horse
per se.
dj_ivocha on 17/3/2015 at 16:02
Quote Posted by faetal
If we wipe ourselves and 90% of life on earth out, it doesn't "matter" at the cosmic scale, since the earth will bounce back
Will it, though? If we "try" hard enough, it could get to the point where the runaway greenhouse effect is irreversible and the Earth ends up like Venus. If something like that happens, probably all multicellular life would perish.
bjack on 17/3/2015 at 16:23
I got my degree in Biology and Chemistry, so I do know a little bit about the Scientific Method. One does not cook or adjust measurements to make them fit one's hypothesis, and that is exactly what some of the research has done. One must accept all the data, even those data that contradict your views. I don't see that happening.
So, are we warming at this time? Yes. Is it caused by CO2, CH4, etc? That is not yet proven. Remember that consensus is not proof. Correlation is not not proof of causation. Unless you love Big Brother and perform doublethink, there really is an objective reality out there, and a history for that matter.
Correlating CO2 increases with temperature rise may sound like a nice hypothesis, but it is not sound theory at this point. I am using the term theory in the scientific sense, not the mass media and popular sense. Here is an analogy of the potential problem: You are in a forest and see a heavy leaden sky. It looks like it "wants" to rain, but there are just too many chirping crickets! You see, you have been out here before and you have observed that if the crickets stop, it starts to rain. Always, just before the rain starts, the crickets stop chirping. So, crickets keep it from raining. Now never mind that it does not always rain after the crickets stop. It is enough for settled science to say that for it to rain, the crickets must stop.
But BJACK, you anti-warminist hater, denier of the faith, oh unholy conservative (not really, I am mostly Libertarian), your analogy is false! The rain makes the crickets stop. Yes, and that is my point. Warming makes CO2 rise, not the other way around. The rise is CO2 is an effect of higher temps, not the cause. Yes, we are adding more CO2 than the "natural" amount, but the percentage is far below the levels of CO2 during much cooler periods of time. Evidence of this kind, that contradicts the "settled science" is suppressed, or now simply ignored. Funding is withheld from those that do not "believe". Only projects that support the the one sided "settle science" hypothesis get the dough. This is done in the name of prudence. "We might be wrong about CO2, but can we afford to take the chance?" That is the real debate and one needs to look at the motives of both sides to come up with an answer. The 97% know that if they do not support the current political view, they will not get funding and cannot publish. For those of you that are academics, you know that publishing is the life blood of a professor, and by extension a University. You do not go against the benefactor.
The Koch brothers and petroleum companies are funding alternative research because governments will not. To say Koch research should be discounted because it is one sided is specious. Support for the one sided government backed research should also be suspect. In truth, I think all sides are cooking the books at this point. Once the all powerful government cooks the books, no amount of real science will suffice to discredit them. If you do not see this as Orwellian, you are a great practitioner of doublethink.
Lastly, I see attacks against a person's viewpoint based upon popularity numbers. So it is wrong to say Jeremy is a cool guy because so many support him, but correct to say man made GW is correct because 97% of a selected group of scientists say it is? Can't have it both ways. Oh wait, you follow Insoc. Of course you can have it both ways. :thumb:
Oh yeah, J. Clarkson is the coolest wanker in England. I did not say all of the UK, since there are cooler people in Scotland, Wales, and N. Ireland. May he not have to ride in cabs that smell of vomit! ppppptttttt! :joke:
And no, I will not site the numerous sources of information about GW. Some were already posted here and one may just Google it to get information. Oh, I forgot, there is no reason to see for yourself since "Daddy" has told you it is settled science. Just trust them, they haves your best interests at heart. Yeah right! :tsktsk:
