#81
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Last year Austin almost burned down lol and this year the river by my house had water in it for the first time in like 5. I believe in climate change. Allah is most great that he makes change so immense.
#82
[account deactivated]
#83
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it wouldnt have really gone any other way
#84
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discipline posted:
there is something really disquieting about how the discourse around global warming is used as a weapon against developing economies while the united states has like a million billion cars on teh road



this, but with nations

#85
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except we all know that the developed countries will have a relatively easy time dealing with the consequences--new york will build a dang ol' dike if it really has to. it's a question of whether china et al get to burn their massive coal reserves at the expense of africa and south asia
#86
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except it's not a question so much as an obviously foregone conclusion
#87
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im just glad i made it to venice before its swallowed by the adriatic sea

the library from indiana jones is not on the main island, fyi. you need to take a water taxi and its like 12 euro
#88
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TG posted:
you need to take a water taxi and its like 12 euro



you got ripped off lmao

#89
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well, why not, OP?
#90
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girdles_gone_wild posted:

TG posted:
you need to take a water taxi and its like 12 euro

you got ripped off lmao



i didnt say i went to the library. venice mostly sucked cause i didnt want to spend any money and you have to pay to do anything, even go into half the churches

i ended up going to padua for half a day where i saw the relics of saint anthony, saint of the lost (and american indians for some reason)

#91
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st anthony owns, he helps me find my keys all the time
#92
penitent
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i believe in climate change because ancient soothsayers were actually pretty accurate
#93
D.C.
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Anybody posting they believe in Climate Change because we had an indian summer might as well hang themselves now because it's obvious IWC has a better grasp of the issue than yourself
#94
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"indian summers" don't happen in february, hth
#95
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Ironicwarcriminal posted:
People on the progressive left like to throw around the label “denier” and accuse sceptics of denying reality and such, but it comes down to a fundamental issue: Why should I believe the scientists models? Why should I really believe that they can predict the future when future determinism is the kind of thing that “rational” people laugh off in nearly every case.

Why is there so much faith in these techno-soothsayers? Why is everyone drowning themselves in the hubris of believing we are smart enough to understand and predict changes to something as incredibly complicated as the earth’s entire biosphere?

It’s been glibly dismissed before but there’s definitely some truth to the idea that if scientists can’t tell me what the weather is going to be tomorrow, how can they predict it 30 years from now.

Anyway, I want you to tell me why you’ve hitched your wagon to the freight train of runaway climate change and why I should to, because at the moment it looks like a goose chase by charlatans chasing research grants and junkets or investment bankers chasing new ways to extract money from the public purse.

I simply don't know why we should put so much stock in what is, after all, the age old practice of soothsaying.



if you've ever hotboxed a fart with your girf' under the blanket, then you'd know that methane and carbon emissions increase the temperature of a biosphere significantly.

#96
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Peztopiary posted:
You sort of have two choices about climate change. Either you assume all the data is manufactured in attempt to change the habits of an entire planet or you assume that people are just sort of looking at what's happening and saying "Well that's fucked." One option requires a massive global* conspiracy, with the only people brave enough to gainsay it being the heroic oil companies (and scientists who've decide to play dilettante in a different field) and other entities that would benefit from rising ocean levels (Cthulthu, certain species of jellyfish, possibly the Sharktopus...basically horrible sea things that our ancestors left the oceans to get away from).

The other option involves people being mediocre to great at what they do, seeing a problem coming and trying to find a way around it, while knowing deep in their heart of hearts that none of the optimistic attempts to radically transform society will be for anything but naught.

*If you believe in a massive global conspiracy I demand proof that the globe exists, that the world isn't flat and everybody isn't just pulling the wool over your eyes.



It doesn't need to be a "conspiracy", just groupthink, like how scientists used to measure different races skulls for intelligence

#97
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shennong posted:
those african peasants are just so shrill, those never-before-observed erratic rainfall patterns and ever-intensifying droughts probably would have happened anyway. fuckin babies



proof of these erratic rainfall patterns and ever intensifying droughts? and proof that it's linked to manmade climate change?

#98
Nippon
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Whycome you think that if i release this ball it will fall. Lol nice future predicting idiot
#99
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TG posted:
im just glad i made it to venice before its swallowed by the adriatic sea



Venice is drowning because the piles it is on are sinking, not because the water is rising. This is the kind of "that sounds right" hearsay that undermines the alarmist arguments.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/10/hansen-and-schmidt-of-nasa-giss-under-fire-engineers-scientists-astronauts-ask-nasa-administration-to-look-at-emprical-evidence-rather-than-climate-models/#more-61054

HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012.

49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for it’s role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question.

The group, which includes seven Apollo astronauts and two former directors of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, are dismayed over the failure of NASA, and specifically the Goddard Institute For Space Studies (GISS), to make an objective assessment of all available scientific data on climate change. They charge that NASA is relying too heavily on complex climate models that have proven scientifically inadequate in predicting climate only one or two decades in advance.

Select excerpts from the letter:

“The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”

“We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”

“We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.”

#100
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germanjoey posted:
well, why not, OP?



Because people who like to confidently predict what's going to happen in the future are nearly always wrong. Just like those "end of the world is nigh" dudes you were talking about in that other thread.

#101
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Goethestein posted:
Whycome you think that if i release this ball it will fall. Lol nice future predicting idiot

yes, because obviously climate change is as much of a tested and proven concept as gravity. great analogy

#102
Nippon
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It is actually. Thirty plus years of independent confirmations by dozens of groups using a dozen different methods.
#103
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how do you" confirm" something that's happening in the future? Computer models? The same electronic processes and predictions that bought us credit default swaps and the infinite housing boom?

yeah sure
#104
Nippon
Post rating: ~
My favorite was recently when that oil company handpicked some scientists to conduct a big exhaustive review proving climate change wrong and the head scientist dod it and said that they couldn't provide that result basically without lying like crazy
#105
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Goethestein posted:
It is actually. Thirty plus years of independent confirmations by dozens of groups using a dozen different methods.

compared to something we literally see every day, and which has been the exact same since the birth of the planet. thirty years. whoa. that;s a long time.

#106
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Ironicwarcriminal posted:

shennong posted:
those african peasants are just so shrill, those never-before-observed erratic rainfall patterns and ever-intensifying droughts probably would have happened anyway. fuckin babies

proof of these erratic rainfall patterns and ever intensifying droughts? and proof that it's linked to manmade climate change?



*turns around, points to asshole*

#107
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Goethestein posted:
My favorite was recently when that oil company handpicked some scientists to conduct a big exhaustive review proving climate change wrong and the head scientist dod it and said that they couldn't provide that result basically without lying like crazy



koch industries with the berkeley earth surface temperature group is what you're referring to i think

#108
Post rating: +
predictions from scientists on earth day 1970

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By… some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Stanford's Paul Ehrlich announces that the sky is falling.
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

#109
Post rating: +
forgive me for rolling my eyes at the white-coated chicken littles and their portentuous sooths
#110
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shennong posted:
those african peasants are just so shrill, those never-before-observed erratic rainfall patterns and ever-intensifying droughts probably would have happened anyway. fuckin babies


actually they seem to be doing pretty well for themselves, being able to fly over the to the UI campus and hang banners and all

#111
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Ironicwarcriminal posted:


im glad Sen. Gaylord Nelson has remained honest all these years

#112
drivel of drunken hags
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the suggestion that climate change is the cause of famine is a pretty callous passing of the buck
#113
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i also have to suspect this isn't some unique event distinct from every other famine in history, where the environmental factors were at most the precondition and the whole episode would have been entirely avoidable given an equitable distribution system. what's the point of an environmental critique completely divorced from a larger societal critique
#114
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Can't you ecoterrorists see? Because some specific predictions have turned out to be wrong, we can't believe a word "scientists" say.
#115
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Lessons posted:
what's the point of an environmental critique completely divorced from a larger societal critique



attention seeking at best, conspiracy by international bankers and finance at worst

#116
Post rating: +

Lessons posted:
i also have to suspect this isn't some unique event distinct from every other famine in history, where the environmental factors were at most the precondition and the whole episode would have been entirely avoidable given an equitable distribution system. what's the point of an environmental critique completely divorced from a larger societal critique



yeah dude, why didn't they just hang a banner with a 5000 word manifesto explicating the interactions between late capitalism, agroecology, and climate?

#117
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LandBeluga posted:
Can't you ecoterrorists see? Because some specific predictions have turned out to be wrong, we can't believe a word "scientists" say.



you can believe it if you want, but formulating policy on nerds playing computer games is idiotic.

#118
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LandBeluga posted:


ah, yes, but all of the other predictions detailing devastating consequences of climate change by the year 2000 were right, and defoinitely not wrong as well.

#119
drivel of drunken hags
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LandBeluga posted:
Can't you ecoterrorists see? Because some specific predictions have turned out to be wrong, we can't believe a word "scientists" say.


science is always political. while environmental degradation is rather self-evident, the prescriptions of how to correct it (as well as claims as to its effect) should be always considered at least somewhat suspect

#120
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http://asiancorrespondent.com/52189/what-happened-to-the-climate-refugees/

In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. These people, it was said, would flee a range of disasters including sea level rise, increases in the numbers and severity of hurricanes, and disruption to food production.

The UNEP even provided a handy map. The map shows us the places most at risk including the very sensitive low lying islands of the Pacific and Caribbean.

It so happens that just a few of these islands and other places most at risk have since had censuses, so it should be possible for us now to get some idea of the devastating impact climate change is having on their populations. Let’s have a look at the evidence:

Bahamas:

Nassau, The Bahamas – The 2010 national statistics recorded that the population growth increased to 353,658 persons in The Bahamas. The population change figure increased by 50,047 persons during the last 10 years.

St Lucia:

The island-nation of Saint Lucia recorded an overall household population increase of 5 percent from May 2001 to May 2010 based on estimates derived from a complete enumeration of the population of Saint Lucia during the conduct of the recently completed 2010 Population and Housing Census.

Seychelles:

Population 2002, 81755

Population 2010, 88311

Solomon Islands:

The latest Solomon Islands population has surpassed half a million – that’s according to the latest census results.

It’s been a decade since the last census report, and in that time the population has leaped 100-thousand.

Meanwhile, far from being places where people are fleeing, no fewer than the top six of the very fastest growing cities in China, Shenzzen, Dongguan, Foshan, Zhuhai, Puning and Jinjiang, are absolutely smack bang within the shaded areas identified as being likely sources of climate refugees.

Similarly, many of the fastest growing cities in the United States also appear within or close to the areas identified by the UNEP as at risk of having climate refugees.

More censuses are due to come in this year, and we await the results for Bangladesh and the Maldives - said to be places most at risk - with interest.

However, a very cursory look at the first available evidence seems to show that the places identified by the UNEP as most at risk of having climate refugees are not only not losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world.