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scaddenp at 11:19 AM on 24 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Well consensus doesnt necessarily imply unanimity.
I do agree that gene technologies are arriving that are leading to questions about a "new eugenics". It has to answer the same questions about effectiness, ethics and targets. Science can inform that debate (eg what percentage of time you can expect CRISPR to miss the target) but the bigger questions are not for science to answer. That debate is very different to the one about AGW.
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:09 AM on 24 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
Rust... Being that I'm responding to someone claiming definitively that renewables "will not by themselves be an adequate response", I believe there is enough research to suggest that might not be the case.
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nigelj at 10:53 AM on 24 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Scaddenp @85
I agree there was probably a social consensus that it would be better defective genes did not exist. However I have seen a few people argue let nature take its course, possibly sometimes for religious reasons and other reasons.
Genetic counselling makes plenty of sense to me. This leads to the issue of how we really define eugenics, and there’s nothing wrong with counselling, but the trouble is if you say this you get labelled a nazi by some people. Its the forced or coercive aspects of Eugenics of most concern.
Regarding your points:
1) I will accept you can’t silence these genes effectively with sterilisation. I take your word for it because I haven’t done university level genetics.
However doesn’t the new crisper technology have huge potential to fix these problems?
2) Regarding is forced sterilisation ethical, this set’s off big alarm bells for me. It’s a huge use of state power, authoritarian power, to dictate biological function of private individuals. Children born with defects are of no great harm to society, and it’s normally harm caused that would justify state intervention. The procedure is open to considerable potential abuse.
I wouldn’t rule it out 100%, because we always have to balance desirable individual rights and freedoms, with justified rights of community expressed through state power and law, but you would need a solid justification like a widespread problem or emergency. As you point out sterilisation doesn’t work too well, and I’m not sure the problem is large enough to justify something forced, even if it did work. The one issue is whether children become a burden on the state, in state care, but we aren’t seeing a massive problem in my country.
It may be that simply discouraging some of these pregnancies is enough by simply providing parents with good information. Alternatively there would be nothing wrong with state incentives, but this would get complicated and contentious.
The new crisper technology might be such an easy solution it resolves the issue.
It’s also like vaccinations. I’m in favour, but nervous about the idea of making it compulsory.
However we make manufacturers add iodine to salt. But the reasons appear overwhelming so this is a case that appears justified and safe.
3)What is defective? Yeah exactly where do you draw the line and who decides, doctors, the state, family?
This leads on to designer babies where people want blue eyes, genes that encourage intelligence or stamina, whatever. Of course nobody in their right mind would force these things on anyone, that would truly be Orwellian, but it leaves the questions of a) should doctors be allowed to provide these options? b) should parents be encouraged or discouraged?
It opens the pandoras box of a genetically engineered civilisation. Better and smarter, perhaps, but this would probably come with risks. We would be narrowing the gene pool wouldn’t we?
Just generally, I’m an advocate for parents having good information on genetic problems. I think the state has a role to ensure this happens, but going beyond this is harder to say. However it’s hard to stop the march of technology, and if we can develop technology that can genetically engineer humans, it’s tough to know what we should do.
There’s something scary about the notion, yet its hard to see a non emotive reason that such procedures would be banned. I suspect it may be a case of looking at specific issues, or classes of issues on their merits and having some ethical guidelines and laws, and limits if there appear to be risks with specific procedures or issues, or they are done for trivial and badly informed reasons. The process will need to be managed I would say.
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scaddenp at 10:06 AM on 24 July 2017The Larsen C ice shelf collapse hammers home the reality of climate change
Well as per last paragraph in the article, data is limited so it is not easy to make definitive statements linking the calving event (which is after all a natural event on ice shelves) to specific aspects of global warming. I think scientists are correct in not jumping to conclusions for which there is insufficient hard evidence.
I understand there are efforts to measure sea temperature and bottom melt on the Ross ice shelf which may show whether there is a link between future calving and the warming ocean. Perhaps other research groups are doing the same for Larsen?
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citizenschallenge at 09:56 AM on 24 July 2017The Larsen C ice shelf collapse hammers home the reality of climate change
Well, it's a done deal, as the beat goes on.
projectmidas.org/blog/calving/
I find that their press release presents us with another epic example of a gross Failure to Communicate Climate Science reality. Or playing by the Koch/Murdoch script.
Can anyone explain how Dr Martin O’Leary, a Swansea University glaciologist and member of the MIDAS project team could possibly say the following about the calving:
“Although this is a natural event, and we’re not aware of any link to human-induced climate change, this puts the ice shelf in a very vulnerable position. This is the furthest back that the ice front has been in recorded history. ”
Moderator Response:[JH] Sloganeering snipped.
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scaddenp at 07:28 AM on 24 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Good points Nigel. I think that you could say that there is social consensus that it would be better if defective alleles that lead to say Huntington's, cystic fibrosis, etc didnt exist. I doubt that geneticists now or then would have contested the point that a species would be better without "bad" genes. Even now, many countries would be taking measures of one sort or another ("genetic counselling") to prevent baby-making where there is a high probability of a major defect.
From that point on, however, things become more complicated.
1/ Do you have an effective means of removing or siliencing defective genes? - Norton's calculation shows sterilization is pretty ineffective for instance.
2/ Is that means ethical? This has historically been the main battleground and strictly speaking is outside science.
3/ What is "defective"? The other major battleground. Early eugenist also clearly had a belief in single gene to characteristic mapping that was unsupported by science.
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nigelj at 07:10 AM on 24 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
Singleton engineer, You say nuclear must be in the mix, but have not provided an actual reason?
Provided countries have a reasonable mix of renewable options, they are unlikely to need nuclear. As evidence, my country is quite small and already has over 80% renewables and are told we can get to 100%. We have good renewable resources, so simply dont need to even consider nuclear power. Its more expensive than wind power for us, and has obvious safety issues. So please explain to me why nuclear would have to be in our mix?
But I can see that a country with poor levels of sunlight and wind may consider nuclear. Its a geographical issue, and a costs and benefits issue.
But I would say countries should explore other options first in preference where possible, because I dont particularly think we should encourage wide proliferation of traditional forms of nuclear given safety issues.
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nigelj at 06:47 AM on 24 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
Wili @4, yes I understand your point. I knew someone would post a response something like yours.
But how far do we go scaring people? Sometimes I want to say very scary things to wake people up and get their attention, but this can totally backfire.
I'm with Michael Mann. Doomsday scenarious will just be depressing and won't convince hardened denialists or politicians. I like Steven King novels, but we probably dont want to present climate change in that way do we?
Like I tried to say, and you seem to have ignored it, is we should have controlled scary stuff that frames the issue urgently, but in a measured, intelligent, adult way.
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rustneversleeps at 05:53 AM on 24 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
No, RobH. There is not "plenty" of research to that effect. Jacobson's work is a huge outlier and widely rejected by most researchers in the field.
Granted, Leo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo endorse it. But other scientists, not so much.
Moderator Response:[JH] Recommended reading:
100% Clean, Renewable Energy Is Possible, Practical, Logical — Setting The Record Straight by Karl Burkart, Clean Technica, July 22, 2017
The Attacks On Cleantech Leaders Have Begun — Expect More by Zachary Sahan, Clean Technica, July 23, 2017 -
ubrew12 at 05:12 AM on 24 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #29
"Arctic sea ice is declining at a rate of 13.3% per decade." Is this for area or volume? I expect the rate for volume is twice that. In any case, it may be helpful to say which it is.
"it’s been a surprise to climate scientists that 2017 has been so remarkably warm " It's never good when the scientists are surprised. This is just speculation: could this be related to the rise in CO2? As recently noted in the NYT: "excess carbon dioxide... rose at the highest rate on record in 2015 and 2016... Scientists are concerned... because... the amount... people are pumping... seems to have stabilized...". Many of us have been concerned that CO2 emissions could begin occuring outside human control. Could this be happening already?
I also think the recent temperature run-up could be related to the Chinese acting to reduce their coal combustion (whose aerosols may have been helping cool the planet). That would work on the short timescales here.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:10 AM on 24 July 2017Planet Hacks: Stuff
The 20 minute long 2007 "Story of Stuff" movie presents an even more comprehensive story about Stuff. A key component is the references to marketing that tempts people to buy things. A key component of marketing is limiting information that is presented and deliberate attempts to distort the perceptions, awareness and understanding about things.
People freer to believe whatever they want to excuse what they want to do clearly cannot be expected to develop sustainable constantly improved results. The ones getting away with behaving less acceptably have a real and perceived advantage over more caring and considerate people. And the ones most effectively creating delusions can be the biggest winners for as long as people can be tempted to accept/like the delusions.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:44 AM on 24 July 2017Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill
BBHY@16,
A better explanation of the absurdity of Lomborg's claim about the irrelevance of California acting to curtail its 1% of global total trouble making is: California's 40 million people are 0.53% of the total global population of 7.5 billion. So their 1% is double the average per-capita impact. And there are some people in California doing far more impact than others. So the largest trouble-makers in California are more than twice as bad as the global average and the global average has to be reduced to zero. A very good way to get to zero is to focus on scaling back the impacts of the bigger trouble-makers.
Looking at the Wikipedia presentation of USA states per-capita CO2 impacts, the impacts of California are actually far lower than most states (not a big fan of Wikipedia as a reference but this information presentation was quick to validate). So in a way, Bjorn is correct. The reduction of the per-capita impacts by other states should be the focus. But responsible national leadership will clearly be required for that (regional Winning leadership is clearly failing to care). California can only strive to Lead by Example (and they should be admired if they truly effectively reduce the impacting by the highest impacting portions of their population - like shutting down their dirty oil production).
And a better analogy than a journey of 100 miles is a condominium community that has developed the nasty habit of everyone pooping outside rather than face the costs of connecting to a community sewage treatment system and paying per-unit for their waste. And some members of the condominium are doing far more pooping than others, but all of the pooping outside has to stop. Bjorn is arguing that the households that comprise 0.53% of the population but contribute 1% of the outside pooping should not act to reduce the amount of popping outside done by the biggest poopers in their households. It is true that there are other housholds that per-person poop a lot more. But that is no excuse for 'The Leaders of the households in the California portion of the condo group' to not reduce the outside pooping done by the biggest poopers in their housholds.
An even better analogy to the global situation is a community of people that poops outdoors in the communities that are far away from them. That is the way many of the wealthiest in the supposedly most advanced or fastest advancing nations have been behaving since 1972 when the Stockholm Conference made it undeniable that the wealthy needed to stop sloppily harvesting non-renewable resources and gobbling them up for personal benefit (reducing the resources avaialble in the future) and pooping their damage results all over the world, piling up bigger problems that future generations would have to try to dig out of.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:36 AM on 24 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
SingletonEngineer... While it's likely nuclear will be a part of the future energy generation mix, there's plenty of research that demand can be 100% supplied by a variety of renewables.
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SingletonEngineer at 00:04 AM on 24 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
Quote: "2) massive government investment in renewables..."
This recommendation (demand?) is an illogical insult to one's intelligence in at least two ways: (1) The claim that renewables, by themselves, are the best available response to the threat of climate change; and (2) governments are wholly responsible for the cost of transition to low CO2 emitting technologies.
We need to ensure that our future is energy-rich. I'm convinced that this will require, as a minimum, two essential features:
1. That the desirable shift is to low- or zero-CO2 emitting technologies.
2. That renewables, ie wind and solar energy plus percentages of geothermal, wave and tidal sources, will not by themselves be an adequate response - nuclear power is an essential component of the mix, as also severely reductions in industrial processes that result in CO2e emissions, such as current primary methods of smelting iron and manufacturing cement.
Moderator Response:[JH] Please speify the source of the quote you have cited.
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wili at 22:41 PM on 23 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
I would like to thank SkS for publishing and highlighting the thoughtful and insightful piece by Margaret Klein Salamon. I'm afraid that, when it comes to psychology, many of us have the same views that some denialists have about climate--just as some of them seem to think: "We are in climate all the time, so they think we know all there is to know about it and don't need 'experts' to tell us the truth."
...so with psychology...may of us seem to think, basically, something like, "We are observing our own and others psychology all the time, so we can just rely on our common sense to know all about it."
This piece is an important corrective to that attitude.
Moderator Response:[JH] You're welcome.
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wili at 22:27 PM on 23 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
nigel, is it possible that one of the concerned villagers in your story might have said to the scientist, who was trying to warn people about just how dangerous a large tiger could be, somdthing like:
"Blatant scaremongering about worst case one in a million chance scenarious isn't going to help. People could get fatigue over too much of all this, and a sense of hopelessness can prevail, and cynicism because some scares in the past have come to nothing."
??
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BBHY at 18:37 PM on 23 July 2017Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill
Lomborg's logic: If you are driving your car on a one hundred mile trip, the first mile is only 1% of the distance, so it's not worth bothering to drive that mile. The second mile is also only 1% of the distance, so don't bother driving that mile either. And so on.
Therefore, your best method of travel is to wait patiently for someone to invent teleportation, so you can arrive at your destination instantly.
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nigelj at 16:50 PM on 23 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Tom Curtis @83
I agree.
Eugenics is probably not even a great example of an alleged scientific consensus that eventually changed, because it has two elements that can be confused.
The first is the belief that genetics leads to inherited disabilities etc. Theres truth in this with some, and I assume most scientists at the time agreed, although I don't know.
The second is eugenics proper, including forced sterilisation etc,etc. This is more of a political, engineering and ethical issue. It appears plenty of politicians supported this, as laws were passed, and I can see why, but its wrong to assume some majority of biologists supported such a thing, and theres no evidence they did. It could have a small minority, and your membership numbers suggest it was unlikely to be a majority.
Eugenics was taught in schools, no question, but this doesn't even mean all teachers believed in it, and many may have had doubts. Such things are largely curriculum decisions, made by politicians and the authorities.
My understanding is the whole Eugenics thing fizzled out after the awful abuses of Nazi Germany. For what its worth I'm instinctively sceptical and a bit repulsed by anything remotely like eugenics, as in the measures promoted like enforced sterilisation, etc, for all sorts of reasons. There would have to be compelling reasons for anything like this, and I havent seen any. Maybe some people meant well, to prevent problems, but the cure was worse than the disease.
On the other hand we have this modern issue of designer babies, etc. So ethical issues and freedom of parental choice issues are back again.
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Digby Scorgie at 15:13 PM on 23 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
nigelj @2
Methinks there should be a postscript: "The biologist did leave as requested and is currently working at a top university in Europe."
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Tom Curtis at 14:28 PM on 23 July 2017Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill
chriskoz @14, I think you have misinterpreted Nikolov and Zeller (2014). Their full equation for planetary temperature with no atmosphere (Tna) is give by equation (14) {(4a) in Nikolov and Zeller (2017)}, and does indeed include terms for the Cosmic Ray Background Radiation (Rc), geothermal heating of the surface (Rg) and regolith heat storage (ηe). However, they state:
"Similar to Eq. (10), here one can also safely assume R c = 0.0 if S o > 0.15 W m−2 and R g = 0.0 in most cases. This reduces Eq. (14) to (11a) with the regolith thermal enhancement factor..."
They then give equation (16) as the reduced form without either the (negligible) effect of the cosmic background radiation or geothermal heating, and it is the equivalent of equation (16) {equation (4b) in Nikolov and Zeller (2017)} that is used in Nikolov and Zeller (2017) (which also discusses the reasons for ignoring geothermal and background microwave heat sources). In both papers they give the threshold at which Rc and Rg can be ignored as an insolation >0.15 W/m^2, ie, nearly a hundred thousandth of that at Earth.
The regolith thermal enhancement factor represents storage of incoming solar energy by surface rocks (the regolith). Heat storage and conduction in the outer rocks is in fact an important factor and is responsible for maintaining night time equatorial temperatures on the Moon at around 100 K, rather than around 2 K as per the background radiation. So, while I cannot confirm their treatment of it, I can confirm that it is a legitimate factor. It is negligible on Earth only because of the far greater heat transport by ocean and atmosphere - factors neglected in the hypothetical Tna which assume no ocean, atmosphere, or surface ice, or vegetation (and that albedo is consequently equivalent to that of the Moon).
Where I can say emphatically that Nikolov and Zeller are in error is in their attribution of the cause of the extra 90 K of surface warming they find. To begin with, the calculation of the effective radiative temperature {(Te), Equation (3) in Nikolov and Zeller (2014) and Nikolov and Zeller (2017)} assumes the surface temperature to be equal at all points. That is not the case on Earth, which would require near infinite thermal conductivity for it to be the case. As unequal temperatures allow the radiation of more thermal energy for the mean surface temperature, that means the greenhouse effect causes more than 33 K warming to the Earth's mean surface temperature. That is, part of the additional 90 K warming estimated is due to the GHE.
The largest part of it, however, is due to the thermal transfers by atmosphere and ocean that greatly restrict the temperature extremes on Earth, and reduce them still further in the upper troposphere. Needless to say, it is not due to a "pressure induced thermal enhancement".
Curiously, there is a pressure induced thermal enhancement of a type involved in the surface temperature of planets with atmospheres. It is, however, a component of the greenhouse effect. In particular, in planets whose atmospheres are optically thick enough, the surface temperature is a function of the altitude of the temperature of effective radiation to space, and the adiabatic lapse rate. The adiabatic lapse rate is, in turn, largely a function of the pressure gradient in the atmosphere.
As has been explained ad nauseum to a variety of deniers, however, adiabatic processes can explain the slope of the thermal gradient with altitude, but a slope by itself does not explain the temperature at any particular location. To explain the temperature, you need the temperature of a point on that slope. That point is the effective altitude of radiation to space. With no greenhouse gases, the point of effective radiation to space is the surface, resulting in no thermal enhancement. With greenhouse gases, that point is lifted above the surface with a consequent enhancement of temperature.
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nigelj at 13:40 PM on 23 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
The following was written by some guy on another website. I hope he doesn't mind me copying it to here. Its rather brilliant and amusing, on climate denialism, and scaremongering. In fact it's more of an analogy and allegory.
"One hot morning near a remote village at the edge of a large forest, a group of villagers discovered a strange large animal in a clearing, apparently asleep. They went back and inform the village elders, who called in the local chamber of commerce, and also summoned the only biologist in the region.
Later, the biologist arrived and reported back to the village. “This is a very dangerous situation. That animal is a large predator. It has huge canine teeth, an absence of molars, eyes relatively close together for focused hunting, and large claws. My best estimate from the body pattern is that it is a large feline. Judging from the stripes, it is a “tiger”. While it is still asleep, it will wake and hunt, perhaps tonight. I got a rough reading from my infrared camera, and its metabolism seems consistent with a large cat. You would do best to evacuate the village, but you MUST keep a large distance, and DO NOT DROP OBJECTS ON ITS TAIL.”
The chamber of commerce spokesperson replied “Don’t listen to this alarmist! It’s a good thing that we invested in an internet satellite station for the village. The pictures of locals dropping sand on its tail have gone viral. We’re making tons of money and creating jobs. Next step is pay-per-view when they drop something bigger. Besides, the epistemology of this job-killing so-called expert is completely warped. The teeth and claws could be for symbolic threat displays during mating season. Besides, you haven’t even observed it move, let alone what it eats. It may not even have any nerves in its tail. We suggest that it’s an estivating herbivore that will be in a torpid state for months, and slow-moving when it does awake.”
The biologist exclaimed “This is nonsense! It can’t be an herbivore with those teeth, and cats have never been observed to estivate, although they do sleep a lot after a large meal.”
The chamber spokesperson scoffed “You haven’t even proven it’s a cat. You’ll need an autopsy or a DNA sample for that. You didn’t get one, did you? You haven’t even demonstrated that it has nerves in its tail. They’re your assumptions, and you’re obliged to demonstrate them. Otherwise, it’s the null hypothesis that it’s not dangerous, won’t wake for a long time, and has no nerves in its tail. You’re illogical. Leave now.”
“Leave now, leave now,” the villagers chanted.
The pay-for-view was the sensation of the season, but nobody from the village ever appeared at the big city bank to collect their money.
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Tom Curtis at 13:36 PM on 23 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
nigelj @78, some idea of the prevalence of suport for eugenics can be gained from membership in the American Eugenics Society:
"Peak membership of the AES was in 1930 with 1,260 members. Although New York, California, and Massachusetts were the states with the highest memberships, every state in the US had at least one member. The 1930 cohort of the AES consisted predominantly of wealthy men and women, and few scientific professionals from fields relating to eugenics. However, in reaction to the eugenic atrocities of World War II, support for eugenics and AES membership began to drop. By 1960, the AES has less than 400 members, most of whom were male scientists and medical professionals. After that time, the AES's focus shifted to genetic analysis and to the investigation of the factors driving human evolution."
For comparison, in 1930, 2071 PhDs were awarded in the sciences in the United States (p387). Of those, 318 were awarded in medicine or biology (excluding agricultural science). The total membership of the American Eugenics Society was, therefore, equivalent to just four years worth of additions to the relevant expert group, with the scientists being members being equivalent to perhaps one years addition.
It would be wrong to suppose that all scientists who supported eugenics supported it strongly enough to join the American Eugenics Society, but it would be hard to argue from these figures that even a majority of relevant experts supported eugenics.
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scaddenp at 12:09 PM on 23 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Mike, one of us is misunderstanding derivation of H-W equation. As far as I can see and literature would seem to support it, H-W implies that sterilization of individuals expressing a rare defect would make negliable difference to incidence in the general population. T J Norton did the calculations for Punnett in 1915. Consider also fatal defects (eg cystic fibrosis until recently) which dont require sterilization to ensure those expressing it dont breed. Still prevalent in the population.
Some eugenists knew this at least - Jennings goes for rhetoric "propagation of even one congenitally defective individual puts a period to at least one line of operation of this devil. To fail to do at least so much would be a crime." Others believed "genetic feeble-mindedness" wasnt rare, despite data from LR Penrose, who was expert on mental deficiency genetics, demonstrating the hetrogeneity of causes. I remain unconvinced that support for eugenics was rooted in science rather than in sociopolitical values of the time - and I do accept that the turning tide on eugenics and close examinations of its assumptions was due to more to changing political values (rise of nazism) than further advances in science.
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nigelj at 07:56 AM on 23 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Bob Loblow @80,
Thank's for that reference. I had never heard of Mortons Demon. The science explanation on the perpetual motion things is interesting, and it's actually a better analogy for how a transistor amplifies a current.
Of course denialists do indeed filter out everything they don't want to hear. They have a big mortons demon.
I think a lot of people would also look in the mirror and simply not care. The psychopathy, sociopathy demon.
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nigelj at 07:33 AM on 23 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29
Blatant scaremongering about worst case one in a million chance scenarious isn't going to help. People could get fatigue over too much of all this, and a sense of hopelessness can prevail, and cynicism because some scares in the past have come to nothing. I find myself tempted to scaremonger, and I'm an inveterate worrier, but I'm just going to pull back.
Of course climate change is very serious, and well proven now, and even the likely scenarious are grim enough to anyone remotely intelligent.
I think we need "controlled" and measured scary stuff. Scary enough to get the seriousness across to people, but without going overboard or spending media time focussing on very unlikely doomsday scenarios too much. (although I personally find these fascinating). People lead busy lives, and only have so much time available to digest news on global problems, so its important to get messages on climate change sensible and measured. We need an urgent message, but not crazy low probability messages.
There are plenty of things happening that are scary enough with weather changes, and changes in rates of ice loss in the antarctic. Just highlighting this in a concise, measured, urgent way should be enough, and the right approach to get through to most people.
Of course you are right people will feel still fear, and it's completely absurd to water down the message to prevent this, but neither should the message be exaggerated.
I also agree you have to wonder if demand driven responses like rather weak looking carbon taxes ar cap and trade will be enough (and I admit I have promoted these).
We are delicately walking around the issue, trying to find something gentle that may be politically acceptable, and the trouble with this approach it sends a message that the problem is not considered that urgent, so people then take it even less seriously with less pressure put on politicians for change. Perhaps it's necessary to cut through everything with much sharper policies that just keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Ideally it would be good for a market lead response, but because attempts at this have been so weak, we are now left with limited time, and a need for more of a more government lead response. The stuff needs to be simply kept in the ground.
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Bob Loblaw at 06:46 AM on 23 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
How would they feel? That depends on how strong their Morton's Demon is. They possibly would not notice, and for sure would not see a parallel with their own behaviour.
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nigelj at 06:28 AM on 23 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Bob Loblaw @77, yes exactly we get these endless, frustrating denialist arguments, and one only hopes the public see the contradictions.
In a couple of years we will probably get a la nina, and they will be back to "global warming has stopped." Another zombie resurrected.
Some of these denialists should look in a mirror occassionally, and ask themselves how they would feel if their friends or family fed them a constant line of lies, deceptions, and nonsense every day.
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nigelj at 06:12 AM on 23 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Mike Evershed and others, the problem we have is no apparent study trying to measure the alleged scientific eugenics consensus. It may have been nearer a 50 / 50, or 60 / 40, so a weak sort of consensus. We will probably never know of course as too much time has gone past.
And the alleged scientific consensus on eugenics could have been more of a political consensus, or even a consensus of clinicians who felt they may benefit from implementation.
But I appreciate the point being made, some consensus positions have been abandoned or changed.
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Bob Loblaw at 23:30 PM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
In this discussion of "consensus", it is worth remembering that the studies looking at the level of consensus in climate science are not trying to make an argument that "climate science is correct because there is a consensus". Rather, they are a counter-argument to the "skeptic" false argument that there is widespread disagreement in climate science.That argument is currently #4 on SkS's list of climate myths.
The finding af a very high degree of consensus on the key points of anthropogenic climate change is direct emprical evidence that disproves that key "skeptic" zombie myth. That the "skeptics" then switch to an argument that "consensus doesn't prove the science is right" is an example of shifting the goalposts. It is largely an attempt to divert attention away from the fact that their "no consensus" argument has been disproven. Of course, once the "debate" on "the consensus can be wrong" quietens down, the "skeptics" will usually return to the "there is no consensus" argument, and the cycle continues. That is why it's a zombie myth.
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Mike Evershed at 22:23 PM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Re: Scadenp: I think it is fair to say that the nature of the scientific "consensus" on eugenics was different from that arising from the climate change literature. Perhaps "widely accepted" would be better? Anyway the reason for posting was that I looked up Haldane's views, which were rather interesting . Here is a brief exerpt from the introduction to his book "Heredity and Politics" from 1938, written when the whole idea was starting to become discredited (not leats by the Nazis): Haldane says:
"It may well be that an increase in our knowledge will fully justify the application to man of certain measures which have led to improvements in the quality of our domestic animals. As one who is endeavoring to increase this knowledge, I can even say that i hope it will do so. But I believe the facts on human heredity are far less simple than many people think them to be. And I hold that a premature application of our rather scanty knowledge will yield little result, and will merely serve to discredit the branch of science in which i am worikng"
Incidentally - for non biologists - I would say the Hardy-Weinberg equation is irrelevant here as it applies to populations not subject to selection pressure. The whole point of Eugenics was to apply such pressure.
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scaddenp at 20:34 PM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
By all means find an appropriate thread. However, I remain unconvinced by "There was a scientific consensus in favour". Science literature seems very lean, nor did "university courses" appear to be science courses. It did most certainly rest on finding from evolutionary theory, but science, unlike many social or political theories is bounded on empirical constraints and the rigor by which a theory/model can account for observations. Biologists (eg Haldane, Holmes, Muller), strongly questioned it's assumption and the long bow it was drawing from evolutionary biology. The Hardy-Weinberg equation was published in 1910 and more or less rips the floor from under it. That it could be promoted despite this discovery smacks mightily of racism and politics. Reconciling the desire for "pure stock" for humans while frantically breeding hybrid plants takes that special attribute of human irrationality so common in "pseudo-skeptics".
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Mike Evershed at 17:29 PM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Thanks to nigelj and scaddencap others for good contributions to the debate on consensus. I don't want to prolong this, but just to complete the eveidence trail, the source for the second part of my statement (on the adoption of eugenic laws across the USA) is "A Century of Eugenics in America" edited by Paul A Lombardo in which it is stated that:
"In 1907 Indiana passed the first involuntary sterilization law based on the theory of Eugenics. In time more than 30 states and a dozen foreign countries followed Indiana's lead".
This isn't the right thread to say where I think the anthropogenic warming hypothesis is most vulnerable to challenge (NB not wrong, but most vulnerable to challenge). But I'll try and find one.
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nigelj at 11:57 AM on 22 July 2017Planet Hacks: Stuff
Chriskoz, ok well given English is not your native language, you have a rather good defence. My excuse for bad spelling is laziness.
I tend to keep home laptops for ages as well, my last windows vista laptop was at least 7 years old, but became very slow, probably due to spyware, and the fan became ominously noisy. But it was basically perfectly fine for general home use.
I splashed out on a new core i5 laptop that was on sale. Like you say web pages are so loaded up with videos, general junk, and sneaky advertising you need power and decent broadband just to make them work. Its a peculiar thing like a treadmill we are on at times, where you need new electronics just to get certain basic services to work.
But on the other hand, some of the graphics are nice especially educational graphics.
Many of my other home appliances are quite old. I could buy all the latest and greatest for cash and hardly notice, but I cannot see the point. The washing machine does the job just fine.
I don't even own a dishwasher. I'm the dishwasher.
My television is a basic 32 inch flat screen. As someone bought up on picture tube televisions, I still marvel at the great quality of even a basic flat screen tv. I dont think the new super high resolution screens offer enough transformation to be tempting. It's becoming more and more money for diminishing returns.
I do however look at electricity efficiency. I bought a new fridge recently, as the old one was possibly becoming a fire risk, and had poor efficiency.
And I do have my little obsessions. I have a lot of books, and a very up market audio system, and a nice car because I hate unreliable cars. But it's not a big, gas guzzling car. That's about it. To some extent the article is also preaching to the converted with me.
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chriskoz at 11:25 AM on 22 July 2017Planet Hacks: Stuff
nigelj@3,
Thanks for your support, especially to my T-Man opinions that frequently attract moderators' scorn, so un-diplomatic and utterly negative they are. But I just cannot help it because if I said anything positive about such absurdly misplaced human character - the likes of which are commonly found in corrective centers (sic! - that's in US) rather than in any public office - I would be hypocritical. But I prefer to be honnest even if I risk infringing on the rules of my playing here (as Hillary infringed with her "basket of deplorabled").
About my spelling mistakes: I use an old (~7y) laptop at home and already dodgy keyboard deceives me. While I pay attention to people's names (with a notable exception of T-man) as not to offend anybody, I ignore my offences to the English language when I did not learn it 100% yet (BTW English is my fourth language and its Australian dialect the fifth) or when my finger slips on a dodgy keyboard.
And here we come back to the topic: I try to re-use and recycle the stuff as much as possible, that's why I keep my laptop for so long as it's perfectly fine for web surfing, though becoming slow due to extreme amount of junk some web pages are throwing at me now. Luckily SkS is not the worst in this regard. So, the OP video, in my case, preaches to the long-time converted. But it's invaluable if shown to those who create so much waste and call it the effect of progress. And physical objects are not the only examples of the "stuff". It's also electronic junk as I;m alluding to above. In the old www days (when I was still a schoolboy then uni student) I was as fascinated by it as today but in recent years I find its power not increasing at all, and graphical interface often delivering no better information at all but only forcing me to upgrade to more powerful computers. The "stuff" is also a wasteful use of electronic sources such as www bandwidth, which must be backed by stronger devices and more energy use.
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chriskoz at 10:27 AM on 22 July 2017Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill
I went after the very first sentence of (Nikolov Zeller 2016) refered by supak@6, so extraordinary this sentence is:
A recent study has revealed that the Earth’s natural atmospheric greenhouse effect is around 90 K or about 2.7 times stronger than assumed for the past 40 years
Said "recent study" is listed as the first citation therein, so I followed it wandering who on Earth could have inspired those two fellows with such revolutionary knowledge. That reference goes to (Volokin ReLlez 2014) which states that:Earth’s total ATE (Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement) is ~90 K, not 33 K, and that ATE = GE + TE , where GE is the thermal effect of greenhouse gases, while TE > 15 K is a thermodynamic enhancement independent of the atmospheric infrared back radiation.
They define the "Thermodynamic Enhancement" as "regolith heat storage and cosmic background radiation on nighttime temperatures".
So "regolith heat" being internal planetary energy source, the above claim would obey the energy conservation and Stephan Boltzman law only if their "cosmic background radiation" component was ~2 times stronger than GE component (i.e. 90K-33K = 57K), which is absurd given that we know cosmic vaccum is glowing at 3K. So, they invent the absurd "adiabatic pressure boosting" to develop fantasies of an alternative universe where temperature is something else than the measure of total kinetic energy in the system.
The interesting part is that Volokin and ReLlez are the fictional characters created by Nikolov and Zeller (but associated with the real company Tso Consulting Limited in UK) as explained by the authors in erratum to it : "to guarantee a double-blind peer review of our manuscript".
Funny, how two fabricators succeed delivering their delirium by inventing sock puppet authors they can then cite in support of their alternative reality.
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scaddenp at 09:36 AM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
A quick glance at papers at the time would suggest eugenics was largely a sociopolitical movement and the biological principles claimed in support were controversial, not consensus within the scientic literature. However, I cannot find any attempt to measure concensus on the subject, or even whether undesirable traits could be extinquished from breeding.
Nonetheless, I am with Nigel in saying that scientific consensus can be wrong. The food pyramid is example of an ever-shifting consensus as knowledge increases. However, it should be noted that a strongly held scientific consensus is very seldom wrong. Setting policy against the advice of a strong scientific consensus in favour of ideology is irrationale.
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nigelj at 06:59 AM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Just going back to this climate denialism and fear issue. I think most of us have some healthy scepticism about climate science, but we see that the denialiist myths are nonsense and we move on. We may own autobobiles, but are not ruled by fears of change.
We see more stubborn denialists, and they mostly seem to have political issues, or vested interests, and thats the big difference. You only have to read internet blogs etc. I would say genuine contrarian denialists would be in the minority.
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nigelj at 06:35 AM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
People are getting too defensive about the idea of consensus. It's accurate to say some scientific consensus positions have been wrong, or at least been partly wrong. The consensus positions on intake of saturated fats and salt have both been partly changed recently. I'm assuming everyone is aware of this, its been in the media enough.
The consensus position is of course extremely important and generally proves to be correct. It is a majority position. It reflects years of research and a slow testing of ideas before arriving at a settled view.
But it is also going to vary in veracity. Theories on saturated fats and salt were based on a limited number of studies, and pretty old research done when techniques had limitations. Climate science is based on a huge number of up to date studies, debated and examined ad nauseum. This gives me more confidence.
If politicians want to question climate science, and its fair that they do, they better be prepared to listen and think calmly and put ideology aside. They better be open minded about the answers, because the answers are not guesswork. One hopes they have enough brains to see that there are obvious holes in the usual denialist myths.
Its also about the degree of consensus. 90 - 97% is pretty high and is a global consensus, so deserves more respect than a few scientists in America going on about eugenics.
But the bottom line is this. When it comes to decision making by politicians, you either go with a consensus, or the claims of some fringe group or individual. We have had many such fringe alternative views which have proven to be nonsense, like homeopathy.
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michael sweet at 06:11 AM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Mike Evershed,
If eugenics were "not fringe but widely held and taught in universities" that is not the same as consensus. 97% of researchers studying AGW agree with the IPCC reports. The fact that papers were published in scientific journals shows that scientists were discussing the merits of this idea. That does not mean that a consensus, or even a majority of scientists thought that Eugenics were a good idea. From your reference it appears to me that Eugenics was always a fringe scientific idea, not a consensus idea. Often politicians use fringe scientific ideas to justify what they want to do (look at the Republicans use of Climate Deniers).
According to your reference Eugenics was only debated slightly (there were only two primary proponents of Eugenics in the USA) in the Scienitfic literature for 20 or 30 years. By contrast, AGW has been reviewed for over 150 years with the last 50-70 years being intense study.
Eugenics is an interesting discussion, but Eugenics was never a scientific consensus. You need to find a situation where scientists were actually in consensus on a subject, not just debating the topic.
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nigelj at 06:04 AM on 22 July 2017Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill
Supak @6, the research you quote appears to be claiming adiabatic air pressure, analogous to compression, causes recent global warming.
They are wrong. Heres a good explanation from Dr Roy Spencer (of all people). I only have a very general sort of knowledge and memory of gas laws, but can get what they are saying.
www.drroyspencer.com/2016/07/the-warm-earth-greenhouse-effect-or-atmospheric-pressure/
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:20 AM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Mike Evershed,
At the time of Eugenics and Nuclear Weapons development the global community did not have clearly presented and well justified governing objectives like the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals and their earlier presentation in the results of the 1972 Stockholm Conference. It could be argued that humanity did not have any sense of its global future responsibility back then. Everyone was focused on being the Winner realtive to Others any way they could get away with - even through actions that could be understood to be globally net-negative actions (as long as the Winner could percieve that they were better off than those Others).
So, since at least 1972 what is understood to be acceptable has significantly changed regarding climate science. Leaders today have no excuse for still trying to get away with delivering Poor Excuses rather than delivering Good Reasoned Leadership based on the fullest awareness and best understanding currently developed to improve the future for all of humanity by acting to correct understandably unacceptable developed popular and profitable activities in the sub-set of humanity that they are leading.
In retrospect, politicians arguing against Eugenics were probably acting more responsibly based on the current best understanding of what leaders are supposed to do than people in positions of leadership who defended the activity with Poor self-interested Excuses.
Science is not the question or concern. The proper/helpful/ethical application of science is the issue.
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Mike Evershed at 01:26 AM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
For new readers this question concerns whether scientific consensus should be challenged by politicians. I cited the case of Eugenics. Steven A Farber from the Carnegie Institute wrote in 2008:
"It is important to appreciate that within the U.S. and European scientific communities these ideas were not fringe but widely held and taught in universities. The report of the Eugenics meeting was the lead story in the journal Science on October 7, 1921, and this opening address was published, in its entirety, beginning on the first page of the issue."
Source: "U.S. Scientists' Role in the Eugenics Movement (1907–1939): A Contemporary Biologist's Perspective"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2757926/
Moderator Response:[JH] Thank you for providing the source of the first half of the statement you made in Comment #67, i.e.,
There was a scientific consensus in favour, many university courses in the USA on the principles and practice, and laws passed in many states as State politicans followed the consensus.
What is the source for the second part of your statement?
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ubrew12 at 01:16 AM on 22 July 2017Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill
supak@6: Final observation: when moist air moves over you before the clouds, and you start heating up, what happens to the barometric pressure? It goes down, exactly in the wrong direction if this 'adiabatic compression' theory of greenhouse warming were correct.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:05 AM on 22 July 2017Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill
Bjorn Lomborg, like many others, has a long history of trying to create the best possible 'Poor Excuses' for not needing to rapidly reduce the global burning of fossil fuels.
His 2007 book "Cool It" made economic assessments similar to other denier-delayers. They basically try to Excuse Less Acceptable Behaviour by making claims about the economics. But what they essentially do is try to justify why a portion of current day humanity should be able to prolong their ability to get personal benefit from:
- an activity that future humans cannot continue to benefit from (even the most fortunate ones) because it is the burning up of non-renewable resources, so it is undeniably unsustainable.
- an activity that is undeniably damaging in many ways, not just the challenges and extra costs created for others, particularly the future generations, by the generation of massive amounts of excess CO2.
They go further than that fundamentally undeniably unacceptable marketing action. They deliberately compare the 'costs to others as they figure it' to 'the costs and lost opportunity to the portion of the current generation who have to correct their ways to reduce the costs and challenges cretaed that others will face - as they figure it'. They then try to claim that if 'the costs to not make problems for others' are greater than 'the costs imposed on others' (all as they figure it), then the ones behaving less acceptably are justified. Of course they understate the future costs because they completely ignore anything they cannot quantify as an action required by the more fortunate (they count building high sea walls at "their cities" based on the low estimates of near term sea level rise - not the longer term sea level rise - and ignore flooding of land less fortunate people live on. They also overstate the 'costs' of correcting the behaviour of the ones who benefit from behaving less acceptably. And they completely ignore all the other costs of burning fossil fuels (they just look at the climate costs - as they figure them)
And the worst of that group actually discount the future costs at the highest rate they can get away with because that is a common business practice when comparing alternative project options that a busines could take. That discounting is only legitimate if the same person faces the current and future costs/benefits of the action.
In a proper evaluation there should be no 'costs or challenges or reduction of resources available to others' created by a pursuit of benefit by someone. Clearly, 'being proper' would not suit 'their interests'. Reduction of 'impacts on others' is what is required regardless of claims that the reduction of harm to others is 'small'.
So I consider Byorn to be clearly in the group of people to be read/aware of, but only in order to be on alert for the shifting types of thinking and misleading marketing being developed by those who want to deny the unsustainable/unacceptability of the ways that so much of the so called advanced nations' economic activity has developed. They could also be called Anti-Correct People because they fight against actually correcting things that clearly need to be corrected (including resisting correcting their thinking regarding climate science and the changes it points out need to happen for the benefit of the future of humanity).
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ubrew12 at 01:03 AM on 22 July 2017Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill
supak@6: I did look at the paper. I'm not qualified to peer-review it, but have a couple observations: " the atmosphere does not function as an insulator reducing the rate of planet’s infrared cooling to space as presently assumed [9,10], but instead adiabatically boosts the kinetic energy of the lower troposphere beyond the level of solar input through gas compression."
How do you adiabatically pressurize an atmosphere? The authors admit sunlight and IR energy are streaming throughout it, and convection is obvious: so what is adiabatic about that? Also, the term 'adiabiatic' is a thermal ideal: it doesn't exist anywhere, even in the most ideal of laboratory conditions. There's no way it could exist for something as plugged into the Universe as an atmosphere.
"the... absorption of thermal radiation by certain gases [in the lab]... does not imply an ability of such gases to trap heat in an open atmospheric environment." Yes, it implies exactly that.
"This is because, in gaseous systems, heat is primarily transferred... by convection... rather than radiative exchange." I've taken classes in combustion (long ago): if you do not include radiation in your modelling equations, you will absolutely reach the wrong conclusion. Just because convection is larger doesn't justify simply ignoring radiation.
"If gases of high LW absorptivity/emissivity such as CO2, methane and water vapor were indeed capable of trapping radiant heat, they could be used as
insulators." But Eunice Foote studied greenhouse gases in 1856 specifically because she observed how hot it got under the moist air that precedes a storm: "The high temperature of moist air has frequently been observed. Who has not experienced the burning heat of the sun that precedes a summer's shower?"Maybe your authors need to get out more.
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ubrew12 at 00:26 AM on 22 July 2017Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill
supak@6: I didn't look at the paper, just the journal its in. According to Desmog " 'Environment Pollution and Climate Change' is being led by a climate science denier who is advising... the Heartland Institute... Climate scientists have told DeSmog that anyone considering publishing in the “pseudo journal” should steer clear or risk damaging their reputation... After just two issues, the journal has published six papers claiming to refute the science linking human activity to dangerous climate change" That's the danger with many online journals: no peer-review, its just pay-to-play. Potholer54 has an instructive recent video (26.7') that focuses on this danger and how to spot sham journals like this one.
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Mike Evershed at 00:18 AM on 22 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Re moderator PS question about politicians resisting scientific consensus - once classic example is Eugenics and the compulsory sterilisation programmes. There was a scientific consensus in favour, many university courses in the USA on the principles and practice, and laws passed in many states as State politicans followed the consensus. Here in the UK there was some political resistance which was enough to prevent compulsory sterilisation becoming law - although to our shame it still happened in some institutions for "medical reasons". I am not trying to be provocative here - my point is still simply that consensus isn't enough. Science cannot put itself above criticism.
Moderator Response:[JH} You state:
There was a scientific consensus in favour, many university courses in the USA on the principles and practice, and laws passed in many states as State politicans followed the consensus.
Please document and link to the source(s) of your claims.
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michael sweet at 20:46 PM on 21 July 2017Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill
The Lomborg article is here. HIs argument is that since Claifornia only emits 1% of the world CO2 any actioon will have no effect and is a waste of time. He claims that since electricity rates go down when solar generates power that solar power is impractical (I wonder why lower costs to customers qualifies as a failure to compete). He suggests more research into new green energy (he does not suggest any technology that might be better than current technology) and doing nothing until those new technologies are developed.
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nigelj at 19:34 PM on 21 July 2017Planet Hacks: Stuff
Ok it was a cheap shot, but things are conspiring to make us buy stuff. While we can of course choose to resist some of this, other things don't give us so much choice. The whole system has to change.
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nigelj at 19:27 PM on 21 July 2017Planet Hacks: Stuff
Less stuff sounds good, but you are up against the still popular "greed is good" neoliberal economic agenda, and keeping up with the jonses, and massive science driven marketing campaigns.
Add massive built in obsolescence, and appliances that are cheaper to replace than repair, and often so cheap to buy resistance is useless.
Wheres the prozac?
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