patrick.net

That's absolute hogwash.

It's a good thing I live in Hollywood part of the highground Henry Flagler found when he brought the railroad south. Everything else west and south was under water.
No water in south Florida was man made, how do you reconcile that paradox?

wash them hogs, reeeeeeeeeeeeeel good, boyz!

Live from Cocoa Beach!!

I like the sea. More is better.

(Troll is strong in me today.)

NPR is liberal fake news.

I understand why NPR is a daily drone of praise and pity for blacks, Hispanics, gays, and women and hate for straight white men. That is the most effective way to divide the working class and give the globalists what the what: corporate rule of the world with no organized opposition.

But I don't quite understand the psychology behind the global warming factions.

rando says

But I don't quite understand the psychology behind the global warming factions.

Let me know if I missed a faction, but this is what I've got...

Faction Rationalist

Climate change is about wise management of resources and good engineering and business decisions.

Rationalists look at evidence. The evidence is overwhelming that man-made climate change is real, significant, happening right now, and needs to be addressed to minimize its cost to society, costs in the form of life, agricultural output, political instability, terrorism, lost of coastlines, spread of disease, and further loss of species.

Given all this, the only rational course of action is to stop contributing to uncontrolled climate change, to mitigate the existing damage, and to prepare for what cannot be mitigated. Even ignoring the moral and ethical implications, this makes the most economic sense.

Faction Tree Hugger

Climate change is about culture. Hippies good, cowboys bad. Anything that involves the ecosystem is pro-hippie, anti-corporate, loves rock'n'roll, hates country. Anything we can do that is "Earth-friendly" is a symbolic win, and that is all that matters. Actual change and fixing the problem isn't important. We must talk about the problem, beat drums, and connect environmentalism to social and political causes like feminism and the minimum wage.

Faction Jesus Freaks

Climate change is about religion. If climate change is real, our religion is not.

God made the Earth for man to exploit. We should eat or fuck any animal we want. God gave us dominion over them. They exist only to serve us and the more we make them suffer the better. After all, we were made in god's image. They weren't.

Besides, god promised he wouldn't flood us again, so we can do whatever the fuck we want and not have to worry about rising sea-levels.

Faction Capitalist

Climate change is about immediate profit. $1 today is worth $100 tomorrow.

Of course man-made climate change is real and is going to cost a lot of lives and money, but not our lives and money! Most of us will be dead before the shit really hits the fan, so that's someone else's problem. Plus, we can always move, so we personally won't bear the cost. Therefore, it is in our financial interest to pollute the shit out of the world and let the unwashed masses, particularly future generations, pay the bill. Let's party!

Oh, but don't let the public know. They should be told the science isn't done. Just keep the debate going so no actual action happens. We don't want pesky laws preventing us from committing acts that normally would be considered crimes like wrecking other people's property.

None of the factions matter as your base assumption is that "climate change is real" and "the evidence is overwhelming." What everyday people do about climate change is irrelevant, kinda like recycling. Climate change (renamed to make it more palatable, since AGW couldn't be proved) is just a way to make everyone feel bad if they're "not doing their part" to combat this "real threat."

Of course climate change is "real." Climate is always changing. We have no definitive evidence which way climate is changing, despite those who want you to think otherwise.
Fact: Give any current climate models currently in use info from ten years ago. No model can predict today's climate - they all diverge greatly. Yet they all say 100 years from now we know what's going to happen.
Two Money reasons I think climate fraud smells fishy:
1. Who approves carbon capture projects? The UN. Want a license to print money? Pay off someone at the uncorruptible UN to grant you a "carbon sequestration project license" and you can sell carbon credits for money.
2. Al Gore's net worth: less than $2 million in 2000, over $173 Million by 2015. He got paid by Google and others to be a climate alarmist shill.

Yes, Al Gore's motivations are $$$ bank bank bank. He isn't going to stop until 500 million. At that time he will build towers with his name on them and just laze about on a speed boat.

rocketjoe79 says

you can sell carbon credits for money.

Trump better by 3, for all three coal workers he gets jobs to, with his amazing legislation push.

Dan's faction list is pretty good. What I don't understand is why the religious people have remained so antagonistic toward science. I do understand that science is antagonistic toward a variety of religious beliefs as Dan pointed out. I would think some of the higher ups in religion would make a strategic decision to align more with science, because the antagonistic relationship is driving people away from religion over time. It seems that religion just cant change as fast as science. If it did, it would lose its reason for being. Changing religion fast could result in a decreased membership today. Changing it too slowly is a putting off the problem until later.

This is an offshoot of Inherited Ancestral Guilt, known as 'shaming'...
Liberals are so into all varieties of guilt they may start opening their own confessionals to cement the scam into the psyche of the herd...

rocketjoe79 says

Climate change (renamed to make it more palatable, since AGW couldn't be proved) is just a way to make everyone feel bad if they're "not doing their part" to combat this "real threat."

Science makes a mockery of religion.
That's like signing their own death warrant...

YesYNot says

I would think some of the higher ups in religion would make a strategic decision to align more with science,

BlueSardine says

That's like signing their own death warrant..

It's not a matter of if but when religion admits that the scientists were correct. Do you see religious people running around denying that the earth revolves around the sun? No. They aren't that brazen. But, they were happy to persecute people for saying such a thing 400 years ago. They always come around eventually, but all of the people who were arguing against Galileo never had to admit that they were wrong.

This is how society treats scientists with revolutionary ideas: https://www.wired.com/2012/06/famous-persecuted-scientists/

YesYNot says

What I don't understand is why the religious people have remained so antagonistic toward science.

You mean why do christians and muslims remain so antagonistic toward science. Judaism certainly isn't antagonistic to science, nor any of the eastern religions. Same reason for both being antagonistic. Desire to control information and thinking. Plus money, never forget to follow the money trail. Christianity was founded on being anti science. Christians were the common people. The educated were pagans. The christian church successfully controlled all education, philosophy, and science in europe for a very long time. It was called the dark ages.

Islam is more complicated. Muslims were on the forefront of advancing science for 400 years until Nizam al-Mulk, the grand vizier of the Seljuq dynasty, created a system of education called Nizamiyah that focused on religious studies in the 12th century. Ironically enough this was done enable the sunni's to combat the rise of the shia movement. ​​Not only did Nizamiyah colleges focus on religion but they also adopted a narrow Sunni interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence as the source of curricula: the Shafi'i school. The Shafi'i school focused on the fundamentalist principles of Sharia and disdained the rationalist approach of the Umayyad dynasty and Abbasid dynasty. Nizamiyah colleges were established in major cities under the control of the Abbasids or Seljuks including Baghdad, Isfahan, and areas where Shiites formed majorities such Basra and the Syrian region of al-Jazira. Nizam al-Mulk used Islamic theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's book The Incoherence of Philosophers as reasoning to interpret that falsafa (which literally means philosophy but included logic, mathematics and physics) was incompatible with Islam. Most scholars believe Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's was only advocating a separation of falsafa teaching and religion teachings, not eliminating falsafa. Read Mirror For the Muslim Prince: Islam and the Theory of Statecraft by Mehrzad Boroujerdi

The sunni's teaching fundamentalism and intolerance to gain power over the shia and the west. Where have we heard that recently?

rocketjoe79 says

None of the factions matter as your base assumption is that "climate change is real" and "the evidence is overwhelming."

That's not an assumption. It's a fact. Facts are verifiable. Verifiable means that they can be confirmed. It does not mean that someone who chooses to reject reality will accept them.

There are literally tens of thousands of independent lines of evidence that confirm and measure man-made climate change and its effects. If even one of these lines of evidence contradicted the others, there would be widespread coverage of the contradiction. There is not.

There is more evidence for man-made climate change, and the evidence is stronger, than there is that George Washington ever existed. If someone denied the existence of George Washington and said the history isn't settled, what would you think of that person?

rocketjoe79 says

Of course climate change is "real." Climate is always changing.

This is a cop out no different than "we should do nothing about terrorism because violence in some form or another has always existed". No one would accept that statement, so no one should accept your equivalent statement.

Natural climate change is rare and takes a long time. If natural climate change were to endanger our species or our civilization, then we should act to counter it with controlled man-made climate change. This, however, is not the case. It is uncontrolled and reckless man-made climate change that threatens our coastlines, our agriculture, our economy, and our political stability. Of course we should stop causing the single greatest problem we are ourselves creating. The cost of acting now is minuscule compared to the cost of dealing with the consequences of the problem if we let it to continue to grow exponentially. Anyone who thinks it's cheaper to punt the problem to the next generation just plain sucks at business and economics, and should not be listened to.

rocketjoe79 says

Two Money reasons I think climate fraud smells fishy:

This is a completely hypocritical and dishonest argument. All the corruption and lies caused by money is on one side, the polluters. Corporations that pollute have a huge financial incentive to lie and deny climate change just like Big Tobacco had a huge incentive to lie about smoking causing lung cancer. And yes, in both cases the corporations and their board members are outright lying. It's not an honest difference of opinion or skepticism. It's lying because they care more about their pockets than your life.

In contrast, scientists have a huge incentive to disprove other scientists if they are wrong. If a scientific theory is incorrect and widely accepted, the very best thing a scientist can do for his career is to demonstrate that the theory is wrong. This would make him a rock star. This only becomes even more so the case the longer the theory has been accepted and the more popular it is. If someone could disprove Einstein's Theory of Relativity, then that person would win a Noble Prize. If someone could disprove Darwin's Theory of Evolution, he would take Darwin's place as the greatest scientist ever. And if someone could disprove the accepted science of man-made climate change, every single scientific organization would hail that person as a hero for correcting a huge mistake.

The fact that none of this has happened despite the enormous incentive to prove ideas wrong in the scientific community demonstrates the incredible strength of the evidence of relativity, evolution, and man-made climate change. The entire scientific method is built on the principle of disproving, not proving, ideas. Science works by actively trying to find evidence that contradicts ideas. It is a self-correcting mechanism that just plan works and has centuries of real-world results that prove it's effectiveness. There is no other activity ever done by mankind that has this incredible track record, especially religion or capitalism.

Furthermore, even if we ignore all the consequences of climate change, it makes absolutely no sense to allow corporations to pollute. Pollution is nothing more than a form of theft in which corporations steal your wealth to increase theirs by shifting the cost of goods form the producers and users of those goods to people who aren't producing or using those goods, and may indeed be producing or using competing goods. Even ignoring all environmental, ethical, and moral concerns, a completely amoral economist who only cares about economic effeciency would strongly object to allowing pollution because even at a purely economic level, it is a terrible thing because polluting is the misallocation of resources from efficient use to extremely inefficient use. Pollution is waste. It lowers the over economic output of an economy. The only people who say it doesn't are the ones deliberately not including the costs of pollution in their balance sheets.

There is no economic argument that favors either pollution or uncontrolled climate change. The only economic argument that can possible favor either of these two things is
Fuck you. I'd gladly cost you and everybody else $1 trillion in order to increase by wealth by $1 million. That's a good trade-off for me. Fuck you and everyone else.

That's the pro-pollution economic argument.

YesYNot says

What I don't understand is why the religious people have remained so antagonistic toward science.

Science contradicts religion. The two are mutually exclusive. Even scientists who are religious have to suspend being scientists and being rational whenever their religion comes into play.

Anything that challenges a person's power by revealing that person's power is based on a lie and is undeserved will be venomously opposed by that person. Religious people, particularly the leaders but also the sheep, gain power or the perception of having power from their religion. This power is destroyed when it is revealed that their religion is nothing but lies. The power they fear losing includes political persuasion, false moral righteousness, and community respect. They don't deserve any of these powers.

YesYNot says

I would think some of the higher ups in religion would make a strategic decision to align more with science, because the antagonistic relationship is driving people away from religion over time.

There are attempts like that. They are made whenever the power holders do a cost-benefit analysis and think that giving up power X will allow them to keep more important power Y. This is why the current pope was elected, and this is why that pope has soften the Catholic Church's position on homosexuality. All of Christianity has been forced to make concessions over the past 500 years due to the rising power and influence of secularists, rationalists, scientists, agnostics, and atheists. If not for these opposing forces, Christianity today would be every bit as bad as Middle Eastern Islam.

Nonetheless, these concessions do not address the fundamental problems of religion. Nor should such concessions lull us into accepting an inherently evil institution simply because it has been temporarily defanged. Even if the defanging were permanent, it would not justify accepting the evil. There simply is no upside to doing so.

YesYNot says

It seems that religion just cant change as fast as science. If it did, it would lose its reason for being.

This is because religion is inherently about faith, accepting a statement without evidence and even in spite of counter-evidence. There is no reason that morality cannot be defined, studied, debated, refined, and taught as a science instead of as a religion. In fact, this is exactly how morality should be studied and taught. Science, particularly evolutionary psychology and biology, has done far more to advance the study and understanding of morality in the past 20 years than all of religion has done in all of human existence.

Religion actually hinders the advancement and application of morality by replacing real morality with corrupt and perverse pseudo-morality. I could give a plenitude of examples, but I'll try to be brief by giving one. We are currently behaving extremely immoral when it comes to the way we treat other sentient animals on this planet. The other apes, whales, and dolphins clearly meet any rational criteria for personhood and what we call "human rights". In the very least, the apes have demonstrated indisputable evidence that they are capable of understanding languages, even human languages. You can literally have a conversation with any ape of any species using sign language or a written language. There is plenty of very strong evidence that dolphins and whales are at least as sentient as six-year-old human children even if they don't have language abilities, which is not known at this time. Yet, we enslave, murder, and torture these persons. Yes, even torture. The way captive whales are treated would absolutely be considered torture if done to a human.

So, why hasn't religion, any religion, ever rallied against such a clear, important, and urgent moral crisis? Because religion sucks at promoting or teaching morality. Science is great and explaining, structuring, refining, and teaching morality. We need our morality based on science in order to stop the moral atrocities we are currently committing. Religion cannot do this, and the religious don't give a damn. Science allows us to see beyond our tribe, our nation, and even our species so we can be moral beings. Morality can only work as a science. It can never work as a religion.

BlueSardine says

Liberals are so into all varieties of guilt they may start opening their own confessionals to cement the scam into the psyche of the herd...

You're thinking of the conservative left, not liberals. The conservative left use fake outrage and fake guilt to virtue signal.

Liberals, such as myself, have no guilt over their ancestors. First, I'm not descended from American slavers. Second, if I were, I would simply acknowledge the evil of those ancestors and reject their culture. A son is only guilty of the father's sins if he condones, continues, or extends those sins. Many descendants of slavers continue the sins of their ancestors every time they try to stop blacks from voting or buying property. They are guilty because they continue the harm. Those who don't engage in this behavior have no reason to bear guilt. This is the liberal philosophy.

Only when the American South stops being on the side of evil and admits its sins can it be forgiving. Luckily, this has been slowly happening over the past 50 years. Very slowly, but it has been happening.

YesYNot says

Do you see religious people running around denying that the earth revolves around the sun? No. They aren't that brazen.

They used to when their power was based on that. Remember Galileo? If the power of religion still was contingent on that belief, they would be saying the Earth is the center of the universe. You will notice that religion always bases its belief system on what promotes the power of the religion. When asked about the scientific advancements in understanding the Big Bang and the creation of the universe, Pope John Paul II stated that scientists should not even inquire into what happened before the Big Bang as that was god's territory. He didn't want science encroaching on his territory and threatening the power of his religion to provide answers to the masses and thus to control those masses.

The fact is that science addresses all the problems that cause people seeking answers to turn to religion. There is absolutely nothing that religion can offer that science cannot except brainwashing, delusions, and certainty in false statements. The only things offered by religion are bad things. Those bad things that masquerade as good things are the worst of those bad things.

YesYNot says

hey always come around eventually, but all of the people who were arguing against Galileo never had to admit that they were wrong.

Nor did those people make up for the harm they did. Furthermore, their harm continues to today. Even though their beliefs are no longer held, those beliefs held back progress and so the costs of those lies continue to mount exponentially. Lost opportunity matters. If Christianity had not held back science for a thousand years, we'd have cured death and colonized the galaxy by now.

A perfect reason to buy a condo above the 10th floor. 😃

Dan8267 says

Besides, god promised he wouldn't flood us again, so we can do whatever the fuck we want and not have to worry about rising sea-levels.

Lol, excellent point.

rocketjoe79 says

Who approves carbon capture projects? The UN. Want a license to print money? Pay off someone at the uncorruptible UN

Ah, I had not considered that since burning carbon is fundamental to the economy, control over the burning of carbon is control over the economy, therefore essentially infinite power for whoever has that control.

Very much like the Fed has essentially infinite control over labor via its ability to create money without doing any work.

In both cases there is massive concentration of power and money, and the more power and money are involved, the more paranoid we should all be, because of the profitability of "the long con" as they say.

rando says

Lol, excellent point.

The thing is, I'm not exaggerating at all. This is the actual belief held by the senator who is in charge of climate change policy. The senator who became the chair of the U.S. Energy Committee. That's an important position regarding climate change policy and fossil fuel consumption.

'The planet won't be destroyed by global warming because God promised Noah,' says politician bidding to chair U.S. energy committee

A Republican congressman hoping to chair the powerful House Energy Committee refers to the Bible and God on the issue of global warming.

Representative John Shimkus insists we shouldn't concerned about the planet being destroyed because God promised Noah it wouldn't happen again after the great flood.

Speaking before a House Energy Subcommittee on Energy and Environment hearing in March, 2009, Shimkus quoted Chapter 8, Verse 22 of the Book of Genesis.

He said: 'As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.'

The Illinois Republican continued: 'I believe that is the infallible word of God, and that's the way it is going to be for his creation.

'The earth will end only when God declares its time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood.

These are his actual, indisputable words in their exact context. This is what the guy in charge of our energy policies really believes. I have never exaggerated in the slightest bit when I've rallied against the irrationality of religion and the effects that religion has on the world and Christianity specifically has on the United States.

The batshit crazy religious beliefs of Christian senators and their constituents would scare any rational person. It's not that Christianity is no longer a threat. It threatens the very existence of our species. We can still fail global litmus tests of survival if we are irrational. This is a damn good contender for explaining Fermi's Paradox. Religion can absolutely be a great filter that wipes out civilizations that become technologically advanced.

And senator Shimkus is not an exception to the rule.

On Wednesday, Barton cemented that reputation by citing the Old Testament to refute scientific evidence of man-made global warming, drawing on the story of Noah's ark.

"I would point out that if you are a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the great flood was an example of climate change," Barton told a congressional hearing on Wednesday in a video first shown on the BuzzFeed website. "That certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy."

Barton was speaking at a House subcommittee hearing called by the Republican leadership to promote a bill that would allow Congress to fast-track a controversial pipeline that would pump crude from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries on the Texas coast.

For every senator or other important official that is dumb enough to expose his stupid religious beliefs, there are ten times as many who let religion be the basis of bad decision making and just keep that quite. We cannot afford big mistakes to be made because of the influence of religion, including Christianity. A neutered religion is still dangerous because it creates irrationality. You cannot have a rational religion by definition. That's a contradiction in terms.

I'm not rallying against religion out of some pet peeve or cultural preference. There are hard-core, rational justifications for eliminating all religion from the world. And it is literally a matter of life and death and the survival of our species. We're simply too powerful and too influential on our environment to let irrational forces run amok.

Dan8267 says

Corporations

I'll get a couple of checks each month for the rest of my life from the oil and gas corporation where I worked for 30 years so I like corporations.

Dan8267 says

Fuck you. I'd gladly cost you and everybody else $1 trillion in order to increase by wealth by $1 million. That's a good trade-off for me. Fuck you and everyone else.

That's the pro-pollution economic argument.

If that's the way you want to put it, that's fine with me.

P N Dr Lo R says

I'll get a couple of checks each month for the rest of my life from the oil and gas corporation where I worked for 30 years so I like corporations.

Would you also like the corporation that gives someone else a couple a checks each month for the rest of his life as reward for profit generated by killing your family with pollution?

Yes, I understand you like money. Money isn't inherently bad. It's a tool and a necessary one. Making money by producing wealth is good. Making money by destroying wealth, including by wrecking public property through pollution and harming or killing other people is not good.

Your statement is that if you make money, any unjust act is justified. That's bullshit. Make your money by doing good, not by doing things that should be crimes.

P N Dr Lo R says

Dan8267 says

Fuck you. I'd gladly cost you and everybody else $1 trillion in order to increase by wealth by $1 million. That's a good trade-off for me. Fuck you and everyone else.

That's the pro-pollution economic argument.

If that's the way you want to put it, that's fine with me.

That is exactly the pro-pollution economic argument, and that's exactly why 99.99% of people in the world should be wholesale against pollution. Polluting only financially benefits the few at a far greater expense to far more people. It's a great net economic loss.