THNX

I do believe it is.

If my world is not very habitable in the first place and I have the option of setting fire to some rainforest to build a farm, sell me some clean air and Orangutang habitat in exchange for good karma and poverty, please.

On the other hand if I make decisions that impact hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis without much recourse to anything in particular (party line? military commanders? local clans? religious leaders?) what does a teenagers speech on the opposite side of the planet change for me? Its just completely off the playing field of making important decisions.

I hear her cry, now calm down and look for ways to actually improve the situation, please.

Suing Argentina for breaking childrens rights? Not bad, human rights cases were actually a good method to fight communist regimes in the 70s and 80s. Just a very slow grinding method.

@newtboy,
" Sane policy makers DO assume the absolute worst modeled outcome"

Here we disagree. When you have a high degree of unknowns in your modelling, you don't always just go off the worst case. Let me argue from the extreme to demonstrate that in principle.

If we are looking to mitigate the risk of an extinction level asteroid strike, we don't solely look at the worst case. The worst case is at a minimum assuming another KT extinction level asteroid out there on it's way to us. Space is big enough that it's still possible one is out there undetected on it's way here in our lifetimes. The probability of that may be low, but it's still a worst case not impossible outcome.

With that known worst case, should we bankrupt the global economy building either a defensive capability to detect and destroy/redirect it, or the capability to abandon the planet in our lifetimes because of this worst case risk?

The answer to me is of course not, you must ALSO take into account other variables like the probability of it happening, the unknowns in the equation that prevent us picturing the problem with full accuracy, and other factors.

@newtboy,

"Ok, but don't discount the factual arguments because they are presented with passion. Ignore the emotion and focus on verifying or debunking the facts presented. Because someone on Fox presents their denial argument flatly and dispassionately doesn't make it more correct."

Obviously agreed, exactly what I was saying.

"if the facts are presented clearly and in totality, which she does better than most if not all professional scientific lecturers....sadly"

I think here you are selling scientific lecturers short, or at the least including folks I wouldn't consider scientific at all in the group.

When I think scientific lecturer, I think an actual scientific researcher giving a lecture related to their field of expertise. That even excludes scientific researchers giving lectures outside their field of expertise. I've seen how badly interdisciplinary study types can misjudge their own knowledge of a field. In the hard sciences they can get rooted out faster, but in softer sciences and humanities it's easier for them to keep finding a niche that hides their ignorance.

If you get the CERES team to give a talk on the global energy budget, they will give a lecture a thousand times more complete and accurate, than you, I or Greta ever could. They will confirm the planet is taking in more energy than is leaving. They will confirm their data is corroborated between satellite and ocean heat content measurements. They can say with authority how much energy is being gained, and can even confirm it largely corresponds to what we'd expect from the increased CO2 contributions. If you asked, they would even also admit that the uncertainties on the measured imbalance are larger than the imbalance itself.

Ask them about mating habits for European swallows and you, I or Gretta might well know better than them.

I am actually doing just fine simply completely ignoring her hysteria. First time I listened to her is this video.
What is her impact in China? Russia? India? Brazil? Indonesia? On people who make decisions?
Perhaps in the USofA hysteria can have an impact on future elections (I am actually doing just fine simply completely ignoring the current administration) but will global ecology really be a big (or medium..) election theme in the USofA in the near future, like 20 years?

Im washing out those plastic bottles and sorting trash and keep my car serviced properly and fly rarely. But if this type of hysteria is randomly aimed against nuclear power, attempts to talk to women in the workplace, and eating meat regularly on other days, could we please not go that way... too late.

What can be done to move the 6 countries mentioned at least slightly in the direction of Europe on pollution? To stop China building coal power stations all over Africa? Brasil and Indonesia deforesting? What has (or can) Grrreta really do to help there? This is like trying to shame Saddam Hussein to give up those WOMD he hid so well. How dare you Saddam? Bad boy!

Also how dare three quarters of us not just lie down and die without children to save the planet? Or are we evil and not mature enough to forego making money to buy food for our families? Which in most places on the Earth means polluting like hell. Vicious cycle. Maybe people should be more modest, maybe rich white kids should not be the ones saying that.

Grreta so reminds me of west european academic communism in the 60s. CND in the 70s. Greenpeace. And so on. Should find out more about people, now that she has read all those encyclopediae. Everyone has to eat and f*@k or we die out in one generation.

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Machine guns are firearms. You can buy pre 1986 machine guns in the USA (I'm not sure what form you have to fill out). The 1986 cutoff is fairly pointless.

I don't consider bazookas, grenades, mortars, etc. firearms. To me a firearm is essentially a rifle that fires cartridges. But if the US government considers them as firearms then that is what they are for legislative purposes.

I believe there is case law regarding what scope of arms they were referring to in the 2A and the result was any common firearm. This currently includes almost all pistols and rifles, both automatic and semi-automatic (with the exception being automatic guns must have been made before 1986 - I believe this limit should be removed).

I'm very much against restricting semi-automatic rifles. There are no good reasons for restricting them. It is unconstitutional. They are not the "weapon of choice" for mass shootings, pistols are. The lethality of them in mass shootings is the same as that of pistols (someone ran an analysis just recently). This last point surprised me a little.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gunpolitics/comments/d7ypcv/no_mass_shootings_carried_out_with_semiautomatic/

I'm for background checks (i.e. for second hand sales which are the only sales left without a background check) as long as the service is cheap and no records are kept (i.e. it isn't used to create a de-facto registration database).

Public health wise, talking about firearms is a red herring. If I were to drop a bucket load of money into stuff in the USA it would be into making health care and mental health care cheap and available and reducing poverty. This would have more affect on mortality and morbidity rates then any gun legislation will. And yes, I would give fully subsidized health care to the poor.

By now you should be asking yourself what planet someone comes from where they support the 2A and free health care at the same time.

@newtboy,

Walking backwards to simplify, my main point is that simply blaming ALL fossil fuel usage on the company providing the fossil fuel is stupid and misleading in the extreme. We don't see millions of people willingly abandoning fossil fuels and living in abject poverty to save the world, instead they are all very willing and eagerly buying them and this video lets all those people off the hook. This video lets everybody keep using fossil fuels, and at the same time pointing the finger at Shell and saying it's all their fault. It's an extremely detrimental piece of disinformation.

"explain what, specifically, I claimed that's not supported by the science."
-Complete collapse of the food web
-Wars over hundreds of millions or billions of refugees
-Loss of most farm land and hundreds of major cities to the sea
-Loss of well over 1/2 the producers of O2
-Eventual clouds of hydrogen sulfide from the ocean covering the land
-Runaway greenhouse cycles making the planet uninhabitable for thousands if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of years

No sir.
I even mentioned one group in America that never adopted petroleum...Amish...and I would counter your assertion with the fact that most people on earth don't live using oil, they're too poor, not too fortunate. 20-30 years ago, most Chinese had never been in a car or a commercial store bigger than a local vegetable stand.

Both customers and non customers are the victims.
Using (or selling) a product that clearly pollutes the air, land, and sea is immoral.

Yes, it's like our business is predicated on rebuilding wrecked cars overnight which we do by using massive amounts of meth. Sure, our products are death traps, sure, we lied about both our business practices and the safety of our product, sure, our teeth and brains are mush....but our business has been successful and allowed us to have 10 kids (8 on welfare, two adopted out), and if we quit using meth they'll starve and fight over scraps. That's proof meth is good and moral and you're mistaken to think otherwise. Duh.

Yes, we overpopulated, outpacing the planet's ability to support us by far...but instead of coming to terms with that and changing, many think we should just wring the juice out of the planet harder and have more kids. I think those people are narcissistic morons, we don't need more little yous. Sadly, we are well beyond the tipping point, even if no more people are ever born, those alive are enough to finish the biosphere's destruction. Guaranteed if they think like you seem to.

Um, really? Complete collapse of the food web isn't catastrophic?
Wars over hundreds of millions or billions of refugees aren't catastrophic? (odd because the same people who think that are incensed over thousands of Syrians, Africans, and or South and Central American refugees migrating)
Massive food shortage isn't catastrophic?
Loss of most farm land and hundreds of major cities to the sea isn't catastrophic?
Loss of corals, where >25% of ocean species live, and other miniscule organisms that are the base of the ocean food web isn't catastrophic?
Loss of well over 1/2 the producers of O2, and organisms that capture carbon, isn't catastrophic?
Eventual clouds of hydrogen sulfide from the ocean covering the land, poisoning 99%+ of all life isn't catastrophic?
Runaway greenhouse cycles making the planet uninhabitable for thousands if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of years isn't catastrophic?
Loss of access to water for billions of people isn't catastrophic?
I think you aren't paying attention to the outcomes here, and may be thinking only of the scenarios estimated for 2030-2050 which themselves are pretty scary, not the unavoidable planetary disaster that comes after the feedback loops are all fully in play. Try looking more long term....and note that every estimate of how fast the cycles collapse/reverse has been vastly under estimated....as two out of hundreds of examples, Greenland is melting faster than it was estimated to melt in 2075....far worse, frozen methane too.

You can reject the science, that doesn't make it wrong. It only makes you the ass who knowingly gambles with the planet's ability to support humans or other higher life forms based on nothing more than denial.

Edit: We are at approximately 1C rise from pre industrial records today, expected to be 1.5C in as little as 11 years. Even the IPCC (typically extremely conservative in their estimates) states that a 2C rise will trigger feedbacks that could exceed 12C. Many are already in full effect, like glacial melting, methane hydrate melting, peat burning, diatom collapse, coral collapse, forest fires, etc. It takes an average of 25 years for what we emit today to be absorbed (assuming the historical absorption cycles remain intact, which they aren't). That means we are likely well past the tipping point where natural cycles take over no matter what we do, and what we're doing is increasing emissions.

I think that, considering the long term massive if not apocalyptic damage done along with the temporary gains, it's undeniably a big negative for humanity and the rest of the planet. Groups like the Amish get along quite nicely without it.

Edit: Now will you please answer my question?

No, sorry, but Jediism is an established and legally recognised religion. Questioning this being tagged religion is as reasonable as questioning Passion of the Christ being tagged religion.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jediism

I thought they strongly implied Leah was the relative Rey was waiting for on the dump planet, making her a Skywalker.

good video but a rather important thing he missed is, that many governments DO pay brasil to maintain the rainforest-

"Norway has followed Germany in suspending donations to the Brazilian government’s Amazon Fund after a surge in deforestation in the South American rainforest. The move has triggered a caustic attack from the country’s rightwing president.


Bolsonaro rejects 'Captain Chainsaw' label as data shows deforestation 'exploded'
Read more
Jair Bolsonaro, whose move to meddle in the environmental organisation’s governance led to Norway’s decision, reacted by suggesting that Europe was not in a position to lecture his administration.

“Isn’t Norway that country that kills whales up there in the north pole?”, the Brazilian president said. “Take that money and help Angela Merkel reforest Germany.”

After weeks of tense negotiations with Norway and Germany, the Bolsonaro government unilaterally closed the Amazon Fund’s steering committee on Thursday. The fund has been central to international efforts to curb deforestation although its impact is contested.

Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, said the Amazon Fund had been suspended while its rules were under discussion.

In response, Ola Elvestuen, his Norwegian counterpart, said an expected payment of about $33.27m (£27.36m) would not take place as Brazil had, in effect, broken the terms of its deal. Norway has been the fund’s biggest donor, and has given about $1.2bn (£985m) over the past decade.

“He cannot do that without Norway and Germany’s agreement,” Elvestuen said. “What Brazil has shown is that it no longer wants to stop deforestation.”

This week Berlin had said it would withhold an expected payment of about $39m. Norway and Germany questioned an initial proposal from the Brazilian government for the fund’s steering committee to be reduced in size, and had warned against any weakening of the structures of the fund.

Grave concerns about the rate of deforestation since Bolsonaro took power have been repeatedly voiced by the Norwegian government and others.

According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, the government agency that monitors deforestation, the rate increased by 278% in the year to July, resulting in the destruction of about 870 square miles."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/16/norway-halts-amazon-fund-donation-dispute-brazil-deforestation-jair-bolsonaro


while I do agree that for 3rd world ex colonies it is extremely tiresome to hear lectures about ecology from the US and Europe, who tore up the planet to achieve their status and continue to consume far more than 3rd world people do, Bolsonaro is dead wrong here and sadly it has to be said this is what the democracy and capitalism produce: shortsighted win-now, defer the costs decisions.

"We" being life on earth.

Nope. Making someone's dream come true has destroyed the planet. The question for me is, did you make things better, worse, or neither for the place everyone lives. If your desire is just to make thoughtless people temporarily happy, it's a certainty you've made things worse.

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Interesting suggestion.

I believe that with 1/10 the population, near today's per capita resource usage would be sustainable....although there would be a necessary time period with net zero or better emissions required to return the atmosphere to "normal" before runaway greenhouse effects and feedbacks turn earth into Venus 2.0. After that, there is an amount of emission the planet can absorb, so resource usage need not be curtailed excessively, but it wouldn't hurt.

I'm all for the lottery system if everyone draws straws, no exceptions except those willing to just move to the reservation voluntarily.
Even a lottery system simply for procreation would do wonders, but remembering the outrage at China for just allowing one child per couple, I doubt that would fly either. Also, it does leave the possibility that the lucky procreators might all be imbecilic morons incapable of following/continuing the plan...we don't want to become a species that is dumber than our pets....or do we?

I think the priorities should be reversed too, what's best for life on earth first, humanity second.