Life and lifestyle stuff


2ndRateMind
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1 minute ago, person0 said:

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.

Which is why with all things are are commanded to Study it out and Pray about it.  Thing that might be worthwhile and useful can depend a lot on an individuals current resources and abilities

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1 hour ago, 2ndRateMind said:

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.

Sure.  If governments were not using the platform for political aggrandizement.  That's what I've been trying to convince you of but you won't even bother to listen to a 13-minute video.  So...

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1 hour ago, anatess2 said:

Sure.  If governments were not using the platform for political aggrandizement.  That's what I've been trying to convince you of but you won't even bother to listen to a 13-minute video.  So...

2 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

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

2 hours ago, anatess2 said:

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.

I never pretended to be apolitical. In fact, somewhere on this thread I specifically conceded that environmentalism is inevitably political.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

 

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2 hours ago, person0 said:

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.

I am interested to discover why you might think some environmental measures are simple and obvious, and some foolish and inappropriate? Does an environmental measure need to be simple and obvious, to be wise and appropriate, for example?

Best wishes, 2RM

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5 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

I am interested to discover why you might think some environmental measures are obvious, and some foolish and inappropriate? Does an environmental measure need to be obvious, to be wise and appropriate, for example?

Best wishes, 2RM

Answering for myself here, but an attempt to save one thing while utterly laying waste to another is what makes something inappropriate.

Get rid of planes and cars and all of a sudden you may have an economic disaster in your hand as well as a massive safety risk when it comes to war.

slaughtering all the cows may save the atmosphere, but will destroy the environment.

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7 minutes ago, Fether said:

Answering for myself here, but an attempt to save one thing while utterly laying waste to another is what makes something inappropriate.

Get rid of planes and cars and all of a sudden you may have an economic disaster in your hand as well as a massive safety risk when it comes to war.

slaughtering all the cows may save the atmosphere, but will destroy the environment.

I would tend to agree that the result through history of 'all or nothing' solutions has generally meant 'nothing'. But, so far as the environment goes, I tend to think that sensible compromises about our lifestyles are more than possible.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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6 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

I would tend to agree that the result through history of 'all or nothing' solutions has generally meant 'nothing'. But, so far as the environment goes, I tend to think that sensible compromises about our lifestyles are more than possible.

Best wishes, 2RM.

I think so to. But killing all the cows and getting rid of all the cars is not a compromise.  I think the “compromise” is to make public transportation cheaper and more convenient than driving ourselves to where we want to go. You will never convince a nation to simply give up the convenience of a car and go back to horse and buggy.

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11 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

But, so far as the environment goes, I tend to think that sensible compromises about our lifestyles are more than possible.

I'll second what @Fether said.

I am curious, what do you consider to be a sensible compromise?  What do you suggest should be done (that is not already being done) to better protect the environment of our planet?

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12 hours ago, Fether said:

I think so to. But killing all the cows and getting rid of all the cars is.  I think the “compromise” is to make public transportation cheaper and more convenient than driving ourselves to where we want to go. You will never convince a nation to simply give up the convenience of a car and go back to horse and buggy.

Yes. And one does not need to slaughter all cows. Just eat a little less red meat (a proposal which is, incidentally, supposed to be good for one's health). The result of the reduced market demand will be fewer cattle the following year. And so on.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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7 minutes ago, person0 said:

I am curious, what do you consider to be a sensible compromise?  What do you suggest should be done (that is not already being done) to better protect the environment of our planet?

So, I'm following a well-known technique in marketing. The idea is to expose people to the ideal of an altogether better, more sustainable world. The agenda is 'Awareness  -  Interest -  Desire  - Action'. At the moment, I'm working on awareness, and trying to dispel some myths.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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8 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Yes. And one does not need to slaughter all cows. Just eat a little less red meat (which, incidentally, is supposed to be good for one's health). The result of the reduced market demand will be fewer cattle the following year. And so on.

Best wishes, 2RM.

The problem I have with “solutions” like this is that they will never work. Sacrifice is a great thing and is an essential part of the gospel, but when it comes to changing the world, you will never get the masses to sacrifice.

Much like the public transportation solution I mentioned  above, the solution to this is not to sacrifice eating meat, it’s to create something that is a cheaper and tasty substitute to red meat. Once that happens, cattle farms will shrink. That way there are no sacrifices and both sides are happy.

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8 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Yes. And one does not need to slaughter all cows. Just eat a little less red meat (which, incidentally, is supposed to be good for one's health). The result of the reduced market demand will be fewer cattle the following year. And so on.

Cows are God's creatures, living organisms with spirits.  God has given us dominion over them.  Does mankind on the whole eat too much red meat? Sure, but to suggest that we should reduce the population growth of cattle (one of God's creations having an eternal spirit), to adjust the disputable impact on our environment, has no value to a discussion where the religious merits of such an action are being considered in addition to he secular.

1 minute ago, 2ndRateMind said:

So, I'm following a well-known technique in marketing. The idea is to expose people to the ideal of an altogether better, more sustainable world. The agenda is 'Awareness  -  Interest -  Desire  - Action'. At the moment, I'm working on awareness, and trying to dispel some myths.

So you are going to get around to telling us what you think should be done eventually?  Or that is your way of avoiding the question?  Honestly, I suspect you may already realize that the benefit of any suggestion you may make would either be trivially effective, unrealistic, or both.

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10 minutes ago, Fether said:

 You will never convince a nation to simply give up the convenience of a car and go back to horse and buggy.

Speaking of horse and buggy... that reminds me of a story I heard once.. (Which I can in no way validate so take it as you will).

Back when Horse and Buggy was the means.. people started becoming concerned about the natural pollutant of that form of transportation (Horse Crap).  Predictions were made that we were getting too congested, and if we did not stop soon we would be up to our waists in horse crap...  It was the smog of its day.

Clearly this did not happen.  Because a game changing tech appeared.  The internal combustion engine.  It did not change things over night... but it did change things.  And because of it we are not up to our waists in horse crap.

Now we see the problems with the internal combustion engine and its pollutants...  So what is the game changer for the internal combustion engine?  I do not know.  Predicting the future is hard.  Like the internal combustion engine before it, any of the current potentials I am seeing have issues that they need to work out.  But I definitely want to see them given and chance to do so.

 

 

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On 5/10/2019 at 7:28 PM, Fether said:

The problem I have with “solutions” like this is that they will never work. Sacrifice is a great thing and is an essential part of the gospel, but when it comes to changing the world, you will never get the masses to sacrifice.

Much like the public transportation solution I mentioned  above, the solution to this is not to sacrifice eating meat, it’s to create something that is a cheaper and tasty substitute to red meat. Once that happens, cattle farms will shrink. That way there are no sacrifices and both sides are happy.

Can't argue much with that. Apparently, the attitude of the Japanese to the preservation of whale species is not to seek to conserve them, but to eat as much whale meat as possible now, before it's all gone forever. So, we need to take that kind of foolishness into consideration.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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4 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

So, I'm following a well-known technique in marketing. The idea is to expose people to the ideal of an altogether better, more sustainable world. The agenda is 'Awareness  -  Interest -  Desire  - Action'. At the moment, I'm working on awareness, and trying to dispel some myths.

Best wishes, 2RM.

Now I’m curious where you learned this?? I sell solar as a career and one thing I have learned is that nobody among the general populace goes solar because it’s the “right thing to do”. Solar is HUGE in California because it can be 10-60% cheaper than the power company. Solar is not popular in North Dakota because it is far more expensive than their power company.

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6 minutes ago, person0 said:

... the benefit of any suggestion you may make would either be trivially effective, unrealistic, or both.

Very possibly. But when, come judgement day, I face my Creator alone and stripped of all my fond illusions, I will at least be able to look Him in the eye, unashamed, and say: 'I did my best'.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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8 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

I never pretended to be apolitical. In fact, somewhere on this thread I specifically conceded that environmentalism is inevitably political.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

 

He DOES address all that.  He stated within that 13-minute video all the ACTUAL environmental measurements on a graph and superimposed the PREDICTED environmental measurements and showed that all the predictions were SEVEN TIMES higher than actuals.  Therefore, all those environmental things that you mentioned on the actual real-life scale when applied to the current climate models actually do not reach the doom-and-gloom conclusions of the predictions. 

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16 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

So, my question is, if global warming is happening seven times slower than the models predict, why are the polar ice caps melting faster than they predict?

Best wishes, 2RM.

Because you’re focusing on just ONE indicator in a magnificently complex system.  For example, the Arctic is melting faster than predicted AT THE SAME TIME that the Antarctic is melting slower than predicted.  So, if you ignore the quadzillion other indicators and just Cherry Pick the indicators that support your preconceived conclusions then that’s how you get the Al Gore movie.

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No, I don't think I am focusing on just one indicator, more citing it by way of an example. Were the world on a sustainable footing, the icecaps wouldn't be melting at all, either faster or slower than the projections of the climate models. But, to bring us back to the OP of this thread, a million species are threatened with extinction due to global warming and the human destruction of their habitats. To be sure, Fox News, pandering to its conservative audience, will always be able to find a maverick scientist who denies such an outcome of climate change and that the wholesale destruction of complete ecologies is possible, likely, or certain, but do we really want to place our trust in such mavericks, when gainsaid by the mainstream academic consensus, and given the magnitude of the risk? Would that really constitute 'good stewardship'?

It seems to me that the wise course of action is to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. And that attitude suggests that 'business as usual' is not an option available to us, any longer.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

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On 5/12/2019 at 11:21 AM, 2ndRateMind said:

No, I don't think I am focusing on just one indicator, more citing it by way of an example. Were the world on a sustainable footing, the icecaps wouldn't be melting at all, either faster or slower than the projections of the climate models.

Nobody believes that climate doesn't change.  Like I said, we're on the 4th Ice Age.   But the idea that the "world is not on sustainable footing" and we can change that is... where the skepticism lies.  The earth went on Ice Ages and Meltdowns without the benefit of human existence.

 

On 5/12/2019 at 11:21 AM, 2ndRateMind said:

 

But, to bring us back to the OP of this thread, a million species are threatened with extinction due to global warming and the human destruction of their habitats. To be sure, Fox News, pandering to its conservative audience, will always be able to find a maverick scientist who denies such an outcome of climate change and that the wholesale destruction of complete ecologies is possible, likely, or certain, but do we really want to place our trust in such mavericks, when gainsaid by the mainstream academic consensus, and given the magnitude of the risk? Would that really constitute 'good stewardship'?

It seems to me that the wise course of action is to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. And that attitude suggests that 'business as usual' is not an option available to us, any longer.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

More politicking.  To say that Fox News can find quack scientists and completely ignore CNN who bandies about Bill Nye the Science Guy as some expert on the field...

So, I'm guessing you believe Dr. Patrick Michaels to be a quack scientist.

And that's why we don't like talking to you about these things.  You are ideologically possessed and so you refuse to look at the issue with skepticism - A REQUIRED METHOD IN SCIENTIFIC STUDY.

 

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Guest Scott
1 minute ago, anatess2 said:

The earth went on Ice Ages and Meltdowns without the benefit of human existence.

This is true, but it is proven that CO2 and other greenhouse gases in an atmosphere causes warming.    This is true whether the CO2 and other greenhouse gases have natural or artificial causes.

It is a fact that greenhouse gases cause warming.    That is why Venus is the hottest planet (by far) even though Mercury is closer to the sun and why the earth is on average, is much warmer than the moon.  This isn't really isn't disputable.

The effects of global warming may be able to be disputed, but not that greenhouse gases cause warming.   This can be easily proven, even in an elementary school classroom.  

 

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22 minutes ago, Scott said:

This is true, but it is proven that CO2 and other greenhouse gases in an atmosphere causes warming.    This is true whether the CO2 and other greenhouse gases have natural or artificial causes.

It is a fact that greenhouse gases cause warming.    That is why Venus is the hottest planet (by far) even though Mercury is closer to the sun and why the earth is on average, is much warmer than the moon.  This isn't really isn't disputable.

The effects of global warming may be able to be disputed, but not that greenhouse gases cause warming.   This can be easily proven, even in an elementary school classroom.  

 

That's not the question.  The question is HOW MUCH of the warming is caused by human emissions or how much of human emissions are responsible for "catastrophic predictions".  If we can answer that question with CREDIBLE predictability then we can figure out a better balance between progress and the environmental cost.  As it stands, you got Bill Nye the unscientific guy stating on National TV and praised by environmentalists that - 100% of global warming is caused by humans.

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1 hour ago, anatess2 said:

You are ideologically possessed

Hmmm. Is everyone you disagree with 'ideologically possessed'?

As for Dr Micheals, I do not think he is a quack, (the word I used was 'maverick') I just point out that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists would disagree with him. He, and you, seem to be sceptical enough of the consensus on climate change to serve for all of us.

Nevertheless, I think it worth exploring the potential impact if a) he is wrong, and the rest of the academics right, and b) he is right, and the rest of the academics are wrong, assuming we make minimum appropriate changes to our current lifestyles.

In case a) we have disaster, maybe multiple disasters, and the irretrievable degradation and decline in the fertility of the planet.

In case b) we don't have such disasters, and our precious habitats remain intact.

Borrowing a concept from Game Theory, we have, then, a payoff matrix something like the following:

Make no change to our lifestyles. and climate change happens:      payoff = -100

Make no change to our lifestyles, and climate change doesn't happen:     payoff = 0

Make changes to our lifestyles, and lesser climate change happens:    payoff = -50

Make changes to to our lifestyles and climate change doesn't happen:   payoff = -10

Either way, all we risk by way of a 'stake', is whatever climate change amelioration and mitigation measures we might feel appropriate to put in place. The 'minimax'* solution is to assume climate change will happen and make appropriate adjustments to our lifestyles to reduce its impact. So the questions become, how much are we prepared to risk, and how moral is it to make that wager?

Best wishes, 2RM.

*minimise the maximum losses and gains.

 

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