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2ndRateMind
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58 minutes ago, unixknight said:

So I just don't see the ironclad, concentrated awesome here.

Well, the idea was never to be awesome (though the degree of international consensus is pretty surprising), just practical. Environmental stuff is hardly ever awesome, just another step on the road to sustainability, which ordinary consumers might never even notice.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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25 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Well, the idea was never to be awesome (though the degree of international consensus is pretty surprising), just practical. Environmental stuff is hardly ever awesome, just another step on the road to sustainability, which ordinary consumers might never even notice.

Best wishes, 2RM.

This is the issue with Climate Change.  The rhetoric is doom and gloom - millions of species extinct, the world ending in 12 years, no more earth for your children to live on.  And the solution is - just practical.  So, when we see Al Gore with his giant houses riding jets all over the place getting Nobel prizes while we here are planning our retirement to live in 8.5' x 16' tiny houses with composting toilets... that international consensus doesn't seem consensus-y at all.  It's just another... virtue signal.

Edited by anatess2
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17 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

This is the issue with Climate Change.  The rhetoric is doom and gloom - millions of species extinct, the world ending in 12 years, no more earth for your children to live on.  And the solution is - just practical.  So, when we see Al Gore with his giant houses riding jets all over the place getting Nobel prizes while we here are planning our retirement to live in 8.5' x 16' tiny houses with composting toilets... that international consensus doesn't seem consensus-y at all.  It's just another... virtue signal.

Like any religion, Environmentalism has its hypocrites and opportunists.  

The difference between Al Gore and Joel Osteen is all in the flavor, not the substance.

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On 5/7/2019 at 10:41 AM, 2ndRateMind said:

Actually, they don't.

Actually, they don't.

Each and every species that goes extinct is the Irretrievable loss of billions of years of evolution; the genetic wisdom of life. If that risks loss, I think the precautionary principle applies, that we should do what we can to preserve it, if not for their sakes, then for ours. 40% of cancer drugs have significant input of organically derived material, for example.

Best wishes, 2RM.

Just FYI.  There's such a thing as speciation.  The primary factor for speciation in evolutionary science is... environmental change.  Yes, there's no UN Study covering the rate of speciation as a direct result of climate change.   

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-biology/chapter/hybrid-zones-and-rates-of-speciation/

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2 hours ago, anatess2 said:

There's such a thing as speciation.

Indeed so. But gradual speciation occurs in geological time (many millenia rather than a few years) as a response to gradual change. For speciation to occur more rapidly, you need the same species to inhabit two (or more) different environments, each population separated (normally by some geographical feature) to prevent interbreeding with the original gene pool. Otherwise you just get ordinary evolution. And environments, up to now, have also changed over geological time. The problem we have is that man made alterations to habitats occur far more quickly than this, and do not allow time for populations to adapt by evolution, let alone speciation, which is why they go extinct.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

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1 hour ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Indeed so. But gradual speciation occurs in geological time (many millenia rather than a few years) as a response to gradual change. For speciation to occur more rapidly, you need the same species to inhabit two (or more) different environments, each population separated (normally by some geographical feature) to prevent interbreeding with the original gene pool. Otherwise you just get ordinary evolution. And environments, up to now, have also changed over geological time. The problem we have is that man made alterations to habitats occur far more quickly than this, and do not allow time for populations to adapt by evolution, let alone speciation, which is why they go extinct.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

Speciation and Extinction occurs due to environmental change.  It is therefore logical that an acceleration of environmental change would affect not just extinction but also speciation.  Unfortunately, speciation doesn’t fit the political narrative, therefore, it is not studied.

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16 hours ago, anatess2 said:

Unfortunately, speciation doesn’t fit the political narrative, therefore, it is not studied.

You can be sure that there are enough PhD students (of all political persuasions, and none) searching for topics for their dissertations that, were speciation easy to study, it would be studied. The reason there is so little material on the subject is that speciation, at least within a human lifespan, is rare and unpredictable.

It may be useful, at this point, for me to explain what I mean by speciation, in case we are talking at cross-purposes. I follow, for the purposes of this discussion, the  idea that a species is a grouping of living things genetically distinct from all other such groupings, capable of breeding within itself, but not capable of producing fertile offspring with other species. As such, a species comprises many evolutionary developments that separate it from it's parent species. Speciation is the umbrella term for the exact process by which this happens, which is unique to each species.

Best wishes, 2RM

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3 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

You can be sure that there are enough PhD students (of all political persuasions, and none) searching for topics for their dissertations that, were speciation easy to study, it would be studied. The reason there is so little material on the subject is that speciation, at least within a human lifespan, is rare and unpredictable.

It may be useful, at this point, for me to explain what I mean by speciation, in case we are talking at cross-purposes. I follow, for the purposes of this discussion, the  idea that a species is a grouping of living things genetically distinct from all other such groupings, capable of breeding within itself, but not capable of producing fertile offspring with other species. As such, a species comprises many evolutionary developments that separate it from it's parent species. Speciation is the umbrella term for the exact process by which this happens, which is unique to each species.

Best wishes, 2RM

Speciation in context to the original comment that started this topic is the opposite of Extinction.

The same PhD students that not only cannot get funding for their studies on anthropogenic Climate Change that counter the political narrative but also get professionally ostracized, is the same PhD students that not only cannot get funding for studies that counter the extinction narrative but also get professionally ostracized.  That's how you get blatantly false and unscientific claims of "98% of scientists agree..." without getting a massive pushback from the scientific community.

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6 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

The same PhD students that not only cannot get funding for their studies on anthropogenic Climate Change that counter the political narrative but also get professionally ostracized, is the same PhD students that not only cannot get funding for studies that counter the extinction narrative but also get professionally ostracized.

Do you have any evidence to support this contention as a world-wide phenomenon? In my experience, universities jealously guard their academic independence.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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5 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Do you have any evidence to support this contention as a world-wide phenomenon?

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

10 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

That's how you get blatantly false and unscientific claims of "98% of scientists agree..." without getting a massive pushback from the scientific community.

 

 

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So, that's the popular media for you. It tells and shows it's readership and viewership what they want to hear and see. It doesn't even begin to compete with a PhD thesis in terms of a claim to truth value.

Best wishes, 2RM

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3 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Speciation in context to the original comment that started this topic is the opposite of Extinction.

The same PhD students that not only cannot get funding for their studies on anthropogenic Climate Change that counter the political narrative but also get professionally ostracized, is the same PhD students that not only cannot get funding for studies that counter the extinction narrative but also get professionally ostracized.

That is what happens when you politicize science... It stops being the search for truth and becomes a propaganda tool.  Note the problems I have pointed out (The so called experts not believing it [Actions speaking louder then words], falsifying data using data one knows to be false[Hockey stick chart], and simply being wrong but insisting they are right anyways[Four feet under]) are exactly the behavior one would expect from a propaganda tool.  It is not what one would expect to real science.

Yet the believers still believe when once again the propagandist cry wolf while claiming to be really about science. And berate those that say "No you need to prove the wolf this time."  As being unscientific, irrational, and illogical 

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8 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

So, that's the popular media for you. It tells it's readership/viewership what they want to hear. It doesn't even begin to compete with a PhD thesis in terms of a claim to truth value.

Best wishes, 2RM

You're calling Dr. Patrick Michaels popular media?

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2 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

The same PhD students that cannot get funding for their studies on anthropogenic Climate Change that counter the political narrative is the same PhD students that cannot get funding for studies that counter the extinction narrative.

A note on that, since I've worked in an environment supported by such funding.

When it comes to research in scientific areas, funding is absolutely everything.  In my case,  the finding was a grant form the NIH to construct a system for cardiac research, so it was completely apolitical.  That funding paid for everything.  My salary, the salaries of the other developers, software, hardware (including servers and someone to maintain them) and plenty of ancillary costs like social functions, travel for training, etc.  On our project, only two people had a job once the funding ran out... The PhD who was running the whole thing (he drew a salary form the university) and my supervisor, who was paid out of some kind of general money bucket provided by the university.  On the day that NIH grant ran out, we were OVER.  Badly as they wanted to keep me employed, they just had no funding to do it and my job ended.  Funding from grants is everything.  Without it, nothing at all happens.  

And there's more.  To remain relevant, a PhD who's into research needs to publish papers and submit them for things like peer review, or PubMed, etc.  (I got co-author credit for such a paper while I was at this job.)  This is the "product," if you will, that gets produced by the work supported by the grant.  This is what the expected outcome is, and it  needs to be one that is viewed favorably in the future, because that increases the likelihood of getting future grants.

Since there's a finite amount of grant  money out there, competition for it can be pretty fierce.  In the latter days of the grant I worked under, the boss was trying to apply for new grants to keep the money flowing, but alas it was not to be.  Our PhD boss was a pretty honest guy, and his goals were sincere, but I saw others who were outright liars.  I know of one university in America that straight up went against the requirements of their grant and commercialized their product, rather than keep it open source like they were supposed to.  They also claimed credit for software I'd written until I had to go after them to properly cite me as one of the authors and maintain the open source license.  In science, as in everywhere else, there are honest people and serpents.  There are noble goals and opportunistic goals.

So when you think about a field of research that is highly politicized, it doesn't take much imagination to see how objectivity can rapidly be compromised.  Politicized science is funded by entities with an agenda, whether they be governments, institutions or corporations.  And if they have an agenda, don't you think they're likely to grant research money to people who they expect will provide the desired result?

  • If you're Exxon Mobil, what kind of scientist are you likely to grant money to when you have to do some government mandated environmental impact study?
  • If you're a government department during a regime that is pushing for green legislation, what kind of track record in researchers are you going to be looking at when granting federal money for studies on climatology? 
  • If you're a government theocracy, will you fund research into the missing link?
  • If you're a university trying to attract the dollars of left-wing minded people, what kind of researchers will get grant money form you when it comes to LGBT studies?

If you're a researcher and you know these are the kinds of grants being given, would it be reasonable to wonder about the scientific neutrality of your research?

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So, ignoring the reasons to argue from a secular viewpoint for a minute, if we truly believe that we are in the latter days and that the Second Coming is nigh, why would we care about global warming / climate change?  Especially because there is contention on the subject itself, you can assume that at least 50% of the population will not change their habits voluntarily, and the reduction of emissions by the remaining 50% would be so statistically small as to not have any real long term effect; therefore, why bother?

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26 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

You're calling Dr. Patrick Michaels popular media?

No, just Fox News. As for the rest, I am not sure Dr Micheals has an explanation for why the polar ice-caps are melting, or what the effects of that might turn out to be.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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8 minutes ago, person0 said:

So, ignoring the reasons to argue from a secular viewpoint for a minute, if we truly believe that we are in the latter days and that the Second Coming is nigh, why would we care about global warming / climate change?  Especially because there is contention on the subject itself, you can assume that at least 50% of the population will not change their habits voluntarily, and the reduction of emissions by the remaining 50% would be so statistically small as to not have any real long term effect; therefore, why bother?

It would be my contention that saving the world from its various temporal crises requires of us precisely the same virtues that a good, just God would require of us for entry to heaven.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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11 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

No, just Fox News. As for the rest, I am not sure Dr Micheals has an explanation for why the polar ice-caps are melting, or what the effects of that might turn out to be.

Best wishes, 2RM.

I guess you didn't watch the Video.  Sigh.

You are quick to discard Fox News who simply hosted Dr. Michaels without even bothering to listen to what he has to say.  CNN, of course, will never host somebody like Dr. Michaels or when they do, they would put one "Ben Carson-like" scientist with 5 Climate Hucksters (one of them being Bill Nye the unscientific guy) whose sole purpose is to keep the guy from making sense so all he can do is look stupid.

And here I just proved that even YOU are very much engaged in Politicized Environmentalism.

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6 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

It would be my contention that saving the world from its various temporal crises requires of us precisely the same virtues that a good, just God would require of us for entry to heaven.

Best wishes, 2RM.

EXACTLY.  So, find a commandment where Jesus said - save the planet by handing the responsibility over to governments.

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17 minutes ago, person0 said:

So, ignoring the reasons to argue from a secular viewpoint for a minute, if we truly believe that we are in the latter days and that the Second Coming is nigh, why would we care about global warming / climate change?  Especially because there is contention on the subject itself, you can assume that at least 50% of the population will not change their habits voluntarily, and the reduction of emissions by the remaining 50% would be so statistically small as to not have any real long term effect; therefore, why bother?

For the same reason you take care of a kid even when they're 17 years and 10 months old.  Our stewardship of the planet isn't over until it's over.

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No, I did watch the video. 😉

I just didn't see the good Dr address any of the currently predicted and observed effects of global warming, such as the melting of icecaps, or the advancements of spring conditions to national climates, or the severity of weather, be it drought or storm.

Best wishes, 2RM

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5 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

EXACTLY.  So, find a commandment where Jesus said - save the planet by handing the responsibility over to governments.

We can, and should, act individually and disparately. But governments offer us also the opportunity to act collectively and in a coordinated manner.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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1 hour ago, person0 said:

So, ignoring the reasons to argue from a secular viewpoint for a minute, if we truly believe that we are in the latter days and that the Second Coming is nigh, why would we care about global warming / climate change?  Especially because there is contention on the subject itself, you can assume that at least 50% of the population will not change their habits voluntarily, and the reduction of emissions by the remaining 50% would be so statistically small as to not have any real long term effect; therefore, why bother?

Because God commanded us to... and we are ultimately accountable before him for how we handled our stewardship...  Standard understanding is that as long as we do the best we can with what we have and know... God will find it good enough... But if we do not even try we are going to be not liking things.

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54 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

It would be my contention that saving the world from its various temporal crises . . .

44 minutes ago, unixknight said:

Our stewardship of the planet isn't over until it's over.

1 minute ago, estradling75 said:

Because God commanded us to... and we are ultimately accountable before him for how we handled our stewardship...

I accept these as valid reasons to care for the earth, however, in relation to global warming / climate change that returns one full circle to needing to prove with certainty that making x-y-z changes will actually have a beneficial impact to the planet itself.  Some simple things are obvious, like not littering and not improperly dumping waste materials; other things like not driving cars (or driving only electric cars), not flying planes, and reducing cattle are foolish and inappropriate.

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