American election.

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Gary Childress
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Re: American election.

Post by Gary Childress »

I swear, I just can't watch the news anymore. What a mess.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... -ntp-feeds
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henry quirk
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Re: American election.

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Gary Childress wrote: Fri Jan 29, 2021 12:06 pm I swear, I just can't watch the news anymore. What a mess.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... -ntp-feeds
msn ain't a news outlet: it's a propaganda outfit
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attofishpi
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Re: American election.

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henry quirk wrote: Fri Jan 29, 2021 6:56 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Fri Jan 29, 2021 12:06 pm I swear, I just can't watch the news anymore. What a mess.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... -ntp-feeds
msn ain't a news outlet: it's a propaganda outfit
X
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attofishpi
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Re: American election.

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X <----- it is an X ------ amazing - my stat counter of HOW MANY OF U NORTH AMERICANS HAVE STARED AT IT

- ya i think i need to get off the sauce too!
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Immanuel Can
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Re: American election.

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No hard feelings, Gary...but I just want to touch back to a conversation we had previously. I remember you said to me...
Gary Childress wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 5:10 am You just want environmentalism to fail.
And I said in response that I didn't, but I wanted real solutions, not symbolic gestures that actually are making the environment worse.

I want to add to that conversation, if I may, this little video of only 8 minutes or so. The film segments do not come from the Right, nor even from the Centrists or the Center Left, but actually from the Radical Left, as in Michael Moore et al. It's interesting, because despite being very different from me on the politics of the environment, they're seeing exactly the same problems I was indicting in the so-called "Green" movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQZfFy9cFs

I'm not saying we should be discouraging. But we do need to be very serious realists, if we hope to do anything actually helpful to the environment. And we should be very, very wary of the sorts of snake-oil salesmen that are peddling many "green" measures today.
Gary Childress
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Re: American election.

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Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 2:32 am No hard feelings, Gary...but I just want to touch back to a conversation we had previously. I remember you said to me...
Gary Childress wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 5:10 am You just want environmentalism to fail.
And I said in response that I didn't, but I wanted real solutions, not symbolic gestures that actually are making the environment worse.

I want to add to that conversation, if I may, this little video of only 8 minutes or so. The film segments do not come from the Right, nor even from the Centrists or the Center Left, but actually from the Radical Left, as in Michael Moore et al. It's interesting, because despite being very different from me on the politics of the environment, they're seeing exactly the same problems I was indicting in the so-called "Green" movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQZfFy9cFs

I'm not saying we should be discouraging. But we do need to be very serious realists, if we hope to do anything actually helpful to the environment. And we should be very, very wary of the sorts of snake-oil salesmen that are peddling many "green" measures today.
I don't know if I would call the snippets from that documentary concrete evidence that wind and solar can't be made to work. I mean just because it comes from Micheal Moore or a "far-left" source doesn't necessarily make it accurate. And I'm sure, there are shysters out there just trying to make a buck off playing a shell game with government carbon credits and whatnot. Do they prove that wind and solar aren't viable or do they prove that their particular approaches weren't viable?

Also, it looked mostly like anecdotal evidence being offered unless there's some number crunching elsewhere in the documentary. I imagine it comes down to a more careful and rigorous analysis of which method produces more CO2 emissions, charging every battery-powered car from a power plant that burns gasoline or having every car burn its own gasoline. Or does a wind turbine result in more carbon emissions to build than it saves throughout its life span?

I admittedly don't know the answer to those questions. But I'm curious to see them.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: American election.

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Gary Childress wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 5:49 am I don't know if I would call the snippets from that documentary concrete evidence that wind and solar can't be made to work.
I wouldn't trust Michael Moore farther than I could throw him, frankly.

But Jordan Peterson has a good insight about this: he says the difference between a fact and an opinion is that a fact persists contrary to ideology. And in this documentary, one would expect Moore's ideology to be all in favour of the "green economy." After all, it is a cause célèbre of the Left. What one would never expect is for Moore and I to agree on anything. That we do about this shows that the data persists in the face of all ideological predispositions. So that's noteworthy.

But I think we could only decide what was right upon seeing the actual documentary. But here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x7UgKfSug0
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Re: American election.

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Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 5:58 am That we do about this shows that the data persists in the face of all ideological predispositions. So that's noteworthy.
What data, though? That's kind of my point. Being Michael Moore obviously has no bearing in and of itself on whether his claims are accurate.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: American election.

Post by Immanuel Can »

Gary Childress wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:07 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 5:58 am That we do about this shows that the data persists in the face of all ideological predispositions. So that's noteworthy.
What data, though? That's kind of my point. Being Michael Moore obviously has no bearing in and of itself on whether his claims are accurate.
Well, you don't have to guess, Gary. Just take a look at the documentary. See the data.
Gary Childress
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Re: American election.

Post by Gary Childress »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:17 am
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:07 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 5:58 am That we do about this shows that the data persists in the face of all ideological predispositions. So that's noteworthy.
What data, though? That's kind of my point. Being Michael Moore obviously has no bearing in and of itself on whether his claims are accurate.
Well, you don't have to guess, Gary. Just take a look at the documentary. See the data.
I watched the documentary just now. It's pretty grim. Did you see it?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: American election.

Post by Immanuel Can »

Gary Childress wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:44 am
I watched the documentary just now. It's pretty grim. Did you see it?
I watched the first half. That's enough, eh? It's pretty discouraging to see those derelict windmills, and to hear that they only last 15 years or so, and that they can have a carbon footprint bigger than coal, or to hear that solar panels and electric cars rely overwhelmingly on coal, or to hear how little electricity the panels can generate ( a field of them in Michigan for just 10 homes worth?). If all that's true, then it's quite horrid...even worse than I had said.

So all I'm saying, Gary, is that we've got to be really careful here, if we really care about the environment. If Moore is right, then jumping on "the green bus" without checking can potentially do more damage to the environment even then continuing to use things we already use. And it stands to be much more expensive for everyone, and to transfer power to "green" oligarchs.

What we need is a sane, principled environmental action plan: and at present, it seems we don't have one.
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Re: American election.

Post by Gary Childress »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 2:00 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:44 am
I watched the documentary just now. It's pretty grim. Did you see it?
I watched the first half. That's enough, eh? It's pretty discouraging to see those derelict windmills, and to hear that they only last 15 years or so, and that they can have a carbon footprint bigger than coal, or to hear that solar panels and electric cars rely overwhelmingly on coal, or to hear how little electricity the panels can generate ( a field of them in Michigan for just 10 homes worth?). If all that's true, then it's quite horrid...even worse than I had said.

So all I'm saying, Gary, is that we've got to be really careful here, if we really care about the environment. If Moore is right, then jumping on "the green bus" without checking can potentially do more damage to the environment even then continuing to use things we already use. And it stands to be much more expensive for everyone, and to transfer power to "green" oligarchs.

What we need is a sane, principled environmental action plan: and at present, it seems we don't have one.
I agree. You should watch the last half too. Not sure where you left off but it talks about "biofuel" plants. Apparently, the logging industry (and some key environmental groups on their paychecks) supports biofuel because it involves turning trees into fuel and they claim it's "renewable" and "sustainable", however, it doesn't appear to be. They're just cutting down trees like mad, faster than they can grow more back.

They didn't cover it in the documentary but it sounds to me like Nuclear energy may perhaps be the best alternative--like it or not. Maybe there will be nuclear accidents but I suppose if tens of thousands of people become irradiated it's still better than complete destruction of the human race. It's a gruesome kind of math, for sure.

Wow! Just wow! The future seems incredibly bleak.

We need a forum just dedicated to environmental philosophy or philosophy of environmentalism or something. Although it's not a very pleasant topic to discuss at this point.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: American election.

Post by Immanuel Can »

Gary Childress wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:44 am ...biofuel...
Yeah, I know about this: they're turning huge swaths of agricultural land into producing corn for "ethanol," which is then burned in cars, and is low-grade, gummy fuel. Of course, the corn lobby loves that, but it has nothing to do with sustainability or food for the needy. It's a total scam.
They didn't cover it in the documentary but it sounds to me like Nuclear energy may perhaps be the best alternative--like it or not. Maybe there will be nuclear accidents but I suppose if tens of thousands of people become irradiated it's still better than complete destruction of the human race. It's a gruesome kind of math, for sure.

Yeah, that's an ugly one. It's not an easy problem to solve, for sure.

At the same time, we have the means to do better; the question is whether or not we have the will.
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Re: American election.

Post by Dubious »

Gary Childress wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 5:34 pm
Wow! Just wow! The future seems incredibly bleak.

We need a forum just dedicated to environmental philosophy or philosophy of environmentalism or something. Although it's not a very pleasant topic to discuss at this point.
Speaking of incredibly bleak...
A new report is expected in 2022, but the most recent one says that if we take action on emissions soon, instituting immediately all of the commitments made in the Paris accords but nowhere yet actually implemented, we are likely to get about 3.2 degrees of warming, or about three times as much warming as the planet has seen since the beginning of industrialization—bringing the unthinkable collapse of the planet’s ice sheets not just into the realm of the real but into the present. That would eventually flood not just Miami and Dhaka but Shanghai and Hong Kong and a hundred other cities around the world. The tipping point for that collapse is said to be around two degrees; according to several recent studies, even a rapid cessation of carbon emissions could bring us that amount of warming by the end of the century.
...and there is this from the same source...
The ecological dramas we have unleashed through our land use and by burning fossil fuels—slowly for about a century and very rapidly for only a few decades—will play out over many millennia, in fact over a longer span of time than humans have even been around, performed in part by creatures and in environments we do not yet even know, ushered onto the world stage by the force of warming.

Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth (p. 11).


But there will always be Mars for the billionaires when the climate there is better than it is here.
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henry quirk
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Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth

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