Blatantly political rant

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Also agree. It was a good response. And so far as the response was also a reaction to the way I am perceived to be "telling" everyone what they ought to do, I understand the point.



I do not "demand dominance"... though if you insist on using such strong words, you could say I demand compliance... I would say I require compliance, but that's splitting hairs. Anyway, in the spirit of the question, if I did demand dominance (or require compliance), it would only be because I felt there was an overridingly good reason that it needed to be done, such as the preservation of life, or the upholding of a moral code.

I do happen to believe that the environment of this planet is in imminent peril of lasting damage that will be damaging to individual and overall all human life. I also believe that, because reversing these trends will be exceedingly difficult, becoming more difficult the longer we wait, that it is important that everyone do everything they can to start reversing these trends now... or else, we as a race have little chance. This, I'm sure, explains why I feel so strongly about trying to preserve the planet, and why I tend to speak of it in terms of necessity and compliance.

Unfortunately, I see this as a problem that has gone past the level of being solvable if "a few willing people" change, and the majority changes nothing. And any milder wording would only result in the minority acting, the majority doing nothing, and nothing being accomplished.

To tell you the truth: I know this is a fool's errand. The majority will refuse to change, either because they ignore the mild words, or rebel against the harsh words, making the efforts of the minority largely meaningless, until it is too late, and we have no choice. Our government needs to pour every dime they have into alternate energy research, and instead, they waste it guarding an oil-producing nation, while they insist on drilling more domestically. That strategy is going to sink us. But Americans will dutifully wait until their knees are wet before they'll change.

Well, I'm not waiting. I'm saying something now. If the harsh words tick off other people, that's just what will happen. Because I can't convince people to act by saying "pretty please."

To make my point, I provide logical reasoning, for example, my motorcycle story, or any other facts at my disposal... this I have done. I believe in my facts, and I defend them... until someone shows me where my facts are wrong, and I must accept new facts. I make my decisions based on these facts, as opposed to vague emotional positions, as often as possible.

In discussing the environment, I have offered facts, and I have refuted others' statements with more facts. I am willing to hear any facts that contradict mine, and force me to adapt to new facts.

Unfortunately, I can get frustrated in such discussions, because "I want to be left alone" and "you can't talk to me that way" aren't facts. A fact would be a statement like: "I have to idle my truck, because it is a 30 year old truck, and it often won't start, so I can't afford to shut it off, and I don't have the money to replace it."

That's a fact. Nothing I can say will change that fact. Idling discussion is over.

I may use harsh words, but they are not the only thing to my statements... they are only there to get people's attention, to get them to read the facts. And I state again, for the record, that if anyone has better facts, demonstrating why we should not take efforts to conserve, I want to hear them.

However, you don't need to say "I won't do it, because you didn't ask nice." That's a given. Asking nice is pointless. Acting is the only point.

Point Of Order - a belief is not a fact! It is an opinion.

You believe the ecology is going to pieces, requiring drastic immediate changes. I don't have the same belief. You undoubtably have facts that buttress your beliefs, as I do mine. Such facts can be discussed and compared, hopefully dispassionately, and might even change one or the other's beliefs, depending on whether the facts drive the beliefs or whether the beliefs drive the facts. But I can't accept changing the world, and causing tremendous damage to billions of lives, over an opinion. I don't have that right, nor do I believe you have that right.

Even if I grant you beliefs (I don't, but I will accept them for the sake of discussion.), they don't all have the same timeline. Piles of trash will have a longer term degradation effect than, say global warming. It's not everything, all at once. I'll pitch some facts at global warming, as it's the hottest (pun intended) problem currently.

Yep, we're pitching lots of CO2 in the atmosphere. And yes, its a greenhouse gas. These are facts. So are sunspots. Almost nobody talks about them. We're at a what we think is a peak of a peak of a cyclical peak in sunspots. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. The future is a projection. But study the history of the "little ice age" in the 1600's. There were no sunspots for nearly a hundred years. Coincidence? Sunspots and global mean temperature track pretty well, as least as well as CO2 and temperature. We don't know the causality, just the correlation. Do you include sunspots in your global warming facts?

How long will we be pitching CO2 in the atmosphere, at the current rate? All I see is straight-line projections for at least the next 50 years. I'm sorry, it's not going to happen, with or without command and control intervention. Why? Because the "invisible hand" of economic is going to change it. Personally, I like solar. I like using waste space (my roof) for economic gain. Right now it's too expensive. The price of crystaline silicon has gone from $5 a pound in 2000 to $50 a pound in 2007. Why? Too much demand from solar power and too little supplyof processed silicon. Lots of crystaline silicon plants coming on line in the next year or two. And that's not the CIGS technology trying to come on-line, or Cadmium Telluride that already on line (at half of silicon prices, building a new big plant every six months from the profits of the existing plants...) and a half a dozen technologies in the teething stages that may cut costs 10 fold in the next 10 years. The ramp up for conversion will be starting soon. Now it will take 20 years to complete, all big changeovers do, but the economics will become cost effective in 5 years. then it will be a matter of producing and installing enough product to make the changeover. What will happen to the CO2 curve then?

Now these are opinions. But my opinions are just as valid as your opinions are. Because of my opinions, based on the facts and evaluations above, I see no need to panic and be overly concerned about global warming. I certainly don't see any need for draconian controls over it. Me, I'm planning to convert when the 20 year amortization shows a profit over the previous 5 year electricity average cost. I'm already saving my pennies. And that's not because I care a fig about global warming, but because I want to save money and get the CO2 whiners off my back! (The more money I save, the more polar bear hunts I can go on... )

[pshrynk]

It's rabbit season.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

It's rabbit season.

Duck season.

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

RM, what I find interesting it that if you correct for multiple translations, and that the original source was written for a non-scientific (and barely literate) audience, what you end up with in the tale of the beginning in Genesis is the big bang theory. The amazing thing is that this myth beat out all the others over 5,000 years to match up with modern physics.....

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I think one problem on the part of folks like that is a failure to comprehend infinity.

I'm bemused by the folks who think God created the heavens and the Earth in six days of 24 hours each, and rested on the seventh, and that this all took place about 4,000+ years ago. Since our 24 hour day comes from the rotation of the Earth facing the sun, and neither existed when God began, the idea that God's day is 24 of our hours long is a big assumption.

And aside from that, whether creation is 4,000+ years old or 14 billion years old doesn't matter. If we assume there is a God who is eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient, who had no beginning and will have no end, the entire time creation has existed is less than an eyeblink for Him.

Question 1 for the creationists is "What do you think God was doing in all of the uncountable eons before he decided to create the heavens and the Earth? Why do you assume our cosmos is the only one He made?"

Question 2 is "And what did He do on the eighth day after he had rested? What makes you think he's finished creating?"

For the first, I rather like the idea Olaf Stapledon proposed in _The Star Maker_. His Star Maker was an artist, learning its craft by doing, and ours was neither the only nor the last universe it would create. Stapledon had the Star Maker creating many universes, until it finally created the ultimate cosmos, the final flowering of its art, and would settle back and spend the rest of eternity contemplating it.

As for the second, I think He did just what we do after the day of rest: He went back to work. Our universe is a work in progress.


Indeed. Your Mom was a seriously cool person.
______
Dennis

Originally Posted by jamesdmanley

problem is some out there arent letting live.

dont forget an entire culture the communist party destroyed in china

Intersting points, guys.

Of course, people of my belief system (I always struggle with what word to use ... since Buddhism is not a "religion" in the true sense of that word) do not believe in a 'creator god."

Although, we are also taught to believe that all faiths are worthy of the highest respect to the extent that they are based in compassion for others. Which is why I've always enjoyed discussing religion with people ... especially when it comes to the history and evolution of the belief structure.

Someone here in Texas once asked me why there didn't seem to be any Buddhist "missionaries." I opined that it was probably because to try to change the faith of another person would be to cause them to suffer ... and the whole idea of Buddhism is to try to relieve suffering.

Every person has to find their own path to enlightenment ... you can't force someone to have faith in something. And, requiring people to believe in something that is just plain wrong ... is just plain wrong.

As the Dalai Lama said (and I'm seriously paraphrasing here so I won't use quotes ...) If modern science proves something to be false, then it is false. It doesn't matter if Buddha himself believed it to be true and stated that it is true ... it is still false. Buddha was enlightened, but he was still a human being, and as a human being capable of being wrong.

[slayda]

My Grandma used to say, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

'nuff said.

[jamesdmanley]

i heart buddhists =)

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

Intersting points, guys.

Of course, people of my belief system (I always struggle with what word to use ... since Buddhism is not a "religion" in the true sense of that word) do not believe in a 'creator god."

Although, we are also taught to believe that all faiths are worthy of the highest respect to the extent that they are based in compassion for others. Which is why I've always enjoyed discussing religion with people ... especially when it comes to the history and evolution of the belief structure.

Someone here in Texas once asked me why there didn't seem to be any Buddhist "missionaries." I opined that it was probably because to try to change the faith of another person would be to cause them to suffer ... and the whole idea of Buddhism is to try to relieve suffering.

Every person has to find their own path to enlightenment ... you can't force someone to have faith in something. And, requiring people to believe in something that is just plain wrong ... is just plain wrong.

As the Dalai Lama said (and I'm seriously paraphrasing here so I won't use quotes ...) If modern science proves something to be false, then it is false. It doesn't matter if Buddha himself believed it to be true and stated that it is true ... it is still false. Buddha was enlightened, but he was still a human being, and as a human being capable of being wrong.

I should have said "myth beat out most others". Sorry.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

RM, what I find interesting it that if you correct for multiple translations, and that the original source was written for a non-scientific (and barely literate) audience, what you end up with in the tale of the beginning in Genesis is the big bang theory. The amazing thing is that this myth beat out all the others over 5,000 years to match up with modern physics.....

Yes, you can read it that way. It answers the question "Why did the Big Bang occur?" God said "Let there be light."...

I also like a bit I heard of from Chinese mythology, where the creation myth began with "First there was nothing. Then there was something, and the something was Pan Ku"

The Hindi mythology has Mahasamatman, the dreamer, dreaming all the worlds, and that bit maps neatly the the concept that our universe is a bubble in a multi-dimensional hyper cosmos, where other bubbles also exist. A Hindu friend years back once told me that there were portions of the Hindu scriptures reserved for the advanced that talked about what happened when the dreamer woke up, but I never found out more about it.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by jamesdmanley

problem is some out there arent letting live.

dont forget an entire culture the communist party destroyed in china

Well, tried to, perhaps, China is a huge place, and cultures change at glacial speeds. You can question what fundamental changes the Communist Party actually made, beyond changing the names for some things.

Chairman Mao essentially became the Emperor. That wasn't what he called himself, but that was the position he effectively occupied. And despite supposedly being an egalitarian and classless society, there was still enormous concern, even among the Communists, with rank and precedence.

Some years back, during the early stages of mainland China's push to industrialize and move to a capitalist economic model, a senior Chinese official was asked about the moves, and gave a remarkably pragmatic response. If it worked, it was a triumph of the glorious People's Revolution. If it didn't work, it was a product of the decadent Western imperialists.

Use whatever worked, and change the name to make it politically acceptable...
______
Dennis

[nekokami]

Too many posts to comment on portions individually. I'll just add that there is something between "facts" and "opinions/beliefs" called "theory" or perhaps "hypothesis." We include all the best facts we can find in our working hypotheses, and adjust them as new facts come to light and are tested and validated. My current working hypothesis, based on my reading of scientific evidence, is that human-induced climate change is real and is a problem. (Yes, I've looked at the sunspot theory. I don't find it compelling, and neither do many other scientists who've also looked at the available evidence.) Regarding projections, no one can know the future, but one of the main goals of science is to attempt valid predictions. Models can be tested, validated, and improved. It makes sense to build the best models we can and to try to act appropriately based on their predictions, knowing that we may have to change the models as new facts come to light.

Meanwhile, we are left with the question of what actions to take now. I'm repeating myself, but given the obvious tendency most people have to base their decisions on personal costs, e.g. the cost of solar panels vs. the cost of purchased energy generated by coal or nuclear plants, if the long-term costs of generating power by various means are not passed on to the consumer, consumers will continue to make decisions with long-term detrimental effects for short-term reasons. None of the power generation vendors are going to be the first to include the costs of pollution mitigation and cleanup in their consumer prices, because that would create a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace. Again, this is where government regulation is appropriate.

Of course, it's much more fun to rail on about how others are trying to deny one's personal liberties than to address whether government regulation should enforce the free market by requiring all costs to be included in a consumer commodity.

The only other thing I'll add is that I've heard quite a large number of Muslims speaking out against the radical actions of the violent minority. They don't tend to get much air time in the U.S. They make the situation much more complex. A simple "news" story that plays up the role of the fanatics is more catchy and probably sells more advertising.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

...There were no sunspots for nearly a hundred years.

Is that a reference to the Maunder Minimum?
There was some sunspot activity during that period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_minimum

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Is that a reference to the Maunder Minimum?
There was some sunspot activity during that period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_minimum

I believe so. The activity level was extremely low.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Too many posts to comment on portions individually. I'll just add that there is something between "facts" and "opinions/beliefs" called "theory" or perhaps "hypothesis." We include all the best facts we can find in our working hypotheses, and adjust them as new facts come to light and are tested and validated. My current working hypothesis, based on my reading of scientific evidence, is that human-induced climate change is real and is a problem. (Yes, I've looked at the sunspot theory. I don't find it compelling, and neither do many other scientists who've also looked at the available evidence.) Regarding projections, no one can know the future, but one of the main goals of science is to attempt valid predictions. Models can be tested, validated, and improved. It makes sense to build the best models we can and to try to act appropriately based on their predictions, knowing that we may have to change the models as new facts come to light.

Susan Sontag once commented that science was the practice of disproving theories. You see a set of facts, and you propose a theory that explains the relationship between those facts and posits a cause. Accepted theories are those which have stood up to repeated attempts to prove them false.

As for global warming, it think it's clear there is a warming trend. The question is the cause and what we may do to address it. My feeling is that we are are seeing the results of long term cycles over which we have little control.

Human history and development begins in a time when the Earth was just coming out of a period of glaciation, and the trend was warmer. In prehistoric times when the dinosaurs roamed, there was a period when the entire Earth was tropical. Then things got cooler.

While human activity certainly adds to the warming trend, it's doubtful it created it. At the time the glaciers began to retreat, there weren't human beings to do anything to cause or add to it.

So the big questions are "How much is human activity affecting the trend?" and "How much impact can our efforts have in reducing or reversing it?"

For the first, I don't know. For the second, I'm all in favor of efforts to reduce pollution and greenhouse gasses, simply on principle, but I don't see those efforts stopping or reversing the trend. The best I think we can hope for is to slow the rate of change, and give ourselves more time to adapt to the changes.

Meanwhile, we are left with the question of what actions to take now. I'm repeating myself, but given the obvious tendency most people have to base their decisions on personal costs, e.g. the cost of solar panels vs. the cost of purchased energy generated by coal or nuclear plants, if the long-term costs of generating power by various means are not passed on to the consumer, consumers will continue to make decisions with long-term detrimental effects for short-term reasons. None of the power generation vendors are going to be the first to include the costs of pollution mitigation and cleanup in their consumer prices, because that would create a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace. Again, this is where government regulation is appropriate.

It's been done in the past, through political pressure. I'm old enough to dimly recall when coal was a far more widely used source of power, and houses had coal cellars to hold the fuel used in their furnaces. Factories and power generating facilities pumped enormous amounts of junk into the atmosphere produced by burning coal. Few houses still use coal these days, and other places that burn it are required to install scrubbers to filter the particulate matter before exhausting it to the atmosphere. Cities like Pittsburgh are far nicer places to live than they once were.

Whether the true costs of power generation get passed on tends to vary by locality. There are electrical utilities that are explicitly for-profit that do so, yet offer rates competitive with other utilities in the industry.

Of course, it's much more fun to rail on about how others are trying to deny one's personal liberties than to address whether government regulation should enforce the free market by requiring all costs to be included in a consumer commodity.

Well, it's much more in line with the underlying beliefs of the folks who rail like that. Complaints about undermining personal liberty and vitriolic comments about greedy corporations strike me as stemming from the same source: an underlying assumption that can be stated as "I am a powerless individual being oppressed by large organizations for their own benefit".

If you don't take it personally and feel it's all about you, it becomes easier to explore alternatives. But as mentioned up thread, once people have a worldview, the primary goal is to defend it. Suggestions that implicitly challenge that worldview will get nowhere.
______
Dennis

[nekokami]

Dennis, I see your point about the glaciers, though I think the current trend is more sharply defined than that. It's an area in which reasonable people can certainly disagree; since there are so many other problems associated with pollution that is generated along with the CO2, not to mention the geopolitical instabilities around fossil oil, I'd say we're better off to act now to look for better energy sources. It seems we may be in agreement there, in any case.

But then again, my willingness to accept ambiguity and try to see multiple sides of an argument may be another one of those unstated assumptions I absorbed from an early age-- my parents (particularly my mother) are much the same way. I've also put some work into trying to deconstruct my assumptions over the years-- I think it's best to consider that an ongoing project, don't you?

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Susan Sontag once commented that science was the practice of disproving theories. You see a set of facts, and you propose a theory that explains the relationship between those facts and posits a cause. Accepted theories are those which have stood up to repeated attempts to prove them false.
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Dennis

Actually, I follow C.P. Snow's falsifacation concept. Take all the fact you know on a particular item. Make a theory that covers all the facts. Then try to find facts that disprove the theory. When you do, make a new theory covering the old fact and the new facts. Repeat the cycle.

You never find the absolute truth this way. You just narrow the range of answers the truth is in. But you don't allow yourself to fall in the logical trap of treating a false premise as a true premise that you can't/don't question...

(Modern physics is probably in that kind of trap today. They have set certain things as constants, beyond question. If they are less than completely correct, then they're going down a blind alley, with no way out, because the guild doesn't allow the constants to be questioned....and then wonder why there hasn't been a new Einenstein in over a 100 years.)