Who is right? The climate alarmists? Or the Climate deniers?

Discussion in 'Science' started by Patricio Da Silva, Jan 7, 2022.

  1. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    "How most people get their news" is not the topic. And, I wasn't the one bringing up how most people get their news.

    This being a topic of science, the sources of factual information need to be from science.
     
  2. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    It was so low, that I largely laugh at it to be honest. It is only a fraction of the death rate of even the Spanish Flu, and that is nothing compared to epidemics in the past. Some of which wiped out 1/3 of the population of a country.

    And I recognize that our planet is grossly overpopulated. And the main way that nature deals with overpopulation is starvation and disease. Our transportation system makes famine largely a thing of the past, and our sanitation and medication largely wipes out disease.

    But we can not keep growing at the current rate, something is eventually going to give. And eventually something will break out of the rainforests and kill huge numbers of people. It is just a matter of time.
     
  3. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Errr, try around 150 years.

    The first "Modern Vaccine" was for small pox in 1798. That was when Edward Jenner discovered that somebody that had cow pox was immune to small pox. Before then, the closest was actually infecting somebody with small pox, and hope that they got a mild and controllable case of the disease. Of course, even at that time "Germ Theory" was still considered radical, and few could believe that tiny animals living in the body actually caused diseases. Hell, at that time most still believed all meat had fly larva in it. And many still believed that during sex a man placed a homunculi inside the woman.

    No, my argument is based on actually knowing both science and history. And not simply making **** up that I think sounds good, and hope impresses others with how smart I am.
     
  4. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    And actually, that is nothing of what I say at all. In fact, it is not even close to what I believe.

    Like so many in here, you are simply projecting against me because you can not seem to comprehend what I say. You have to fight against it because it is different than you believe, and resort to what you think are insults.

    But the simple truth is, our planet is grossly overpopulated. That is not being nihilistic or fatalistic, that is a simple fact. We are growing at a rate that is not sustainable, and that is what is putting stresses on the planet. We only have so much farmland, only so much water and other natural resources. And it is something that will eventually bite us in the ass unless we get it under control.

    As I said already, the main way that nature deals with that is through either famine or disease. And for tens of thousands of years, that kept the human population in check. But over the last 2,000 years we have slowly eradicated those two things as a way of keeping the population in check, so now increasingly war and crime are taking their place. Crime by the way is also a result largely of population density.

    Nature has a brutally efficient way of dealing with overpopulation. Look at any closed system, and you can see that in play. Put a bunch of mice into a building with no exits and give them a select amount of food per day, and they will breed themselves crazy. Until disease because of the population or starvation sets in. Then you normally have massive deaths, including from injury to each other and even cannibalism until it reaches an equilibrium again.

    I have lived on a small area in LA that was interesting. About 8 square miles, and some of the last "open land" in the county not occupied by city. A wild marshland, and open land. And on that we had foxes, possums, skunks, and rabbits. The first year I was there we had a rabbit explosion. That is actually cyclical, it happens every 8-10 years. Well, the foxes had a field day that year, but we still had rabbits everywhere.

    Then the next year, we had a fox population explosion. As they had more food, they also bred like crazy and more young survived. By the end of that year, they had hunted out all of the rabbits, the feral cats, the possums, and were working on the skunks in addition to raiding the garbage cans and small dogs and cats of the neighboring community.

    Well, by the end of the year we started seeing dead foxes everywhere. It took years for things to stabilize again, but by then the Navy stepped in and started to manage the fox population with trapping and taking the excess ones to zoos.

    I am a cynic, yes. However, more importantly I am a skeptic. I take nobody at their word, and look for validation. Most times in the past. History is an amazing teacher, if one only knows it.
     
  5. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    I'm a little shocked at how easily you right off the deaths of a million Americans.
     
  6. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    So? It's still a long time, and by that fact, doesn't negate my point.

    And, even if I didn't use the example, the point being, just because it's taking a long time doesn't mean we should quit. See? The logic holds even without examples. So, you're pettifogging the argument.
    You're pettifogging the argument.

    My point stands.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2022
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  7. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    No, you made a lot of useless speculations. You stated "what if we made a
    'Department to Stop Earthquakes' "
    ? That's a useless speculation because no one is doing that, but it's useless because it's a false equivalency, save for what a science called 'seismology' can understand about them.

    And, in this point, more of the same, useless points, all stemming from your "why should 'policy makers' be involved at all?".

    that point is refuted by simple logic, which is: The only way we can fight AGW/ACC is via the coordination of governments and industry, which involves 'policy makers'.

    All cynics are skeptics, but not all skeptics are cynics.

    If you are a cynic, (and you just agreed with that point ) it's a given you are skeptic.

    However, let us make an important distinction;

    Non-cynical skepticism is healthy skepticism.

    Cynical skepticism is unhealthy skepticism.

    You appear to be the latter.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2022
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  8. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    No, you brought it up as you were aghast that I know of Global Warming via newspapers and magazines.
     
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  9. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Yes, when you dispute science, you need to come up with sources of science to support you.

    What sources of science do you site?
     
  10. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    "when you dispute science"

    I shouldn't have to remind you of this, but science isn't a dogma, it's a process. You apparently feel differently. All I did was point out a particularly theory is littered with many bad predictions that should be the basis to reexamine the theory. Instead you damn me for disputing sacred writ.
     
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  11. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    You CLAIMED there are bad predictions. And, I'm sure that's true.

    So, I showed you that there are very good predictions.

    I would recommend preferring the good predictions.
     
  12. Grey Matter

    Grey Matter Well-Known Member Donor

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    You've seemingly come to the conclusion then that burning fossil fuels is the cause of western droughts and heat waves and that limiting the use of oil and gas reserves will fix that and is the more prudent approach.

    Yet, I provided you with just one glaring example of where the impetus to move to "green energy" literally can be viewed as having contributed if not actually caused deaths in Texas during its winter storm around Valentine's Day 2021:

    http://www.politicalforum.com/index...ates-or-deniers.590629/page-3#post-1072834169

    What if you're wrong?
     
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  13. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    False.

    https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/18/texas-winter-storm-blackouts-paperwork/

    Maybe you believed what Abbott said. But, he either lied or was ill informed.
     
  14. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    The black death killed around 200 million in Asia and Europe alone. In a time when the planet's population was under 500 million.

    Small Pox killed over 300 million in the 20th century alone.

    And you are actually whining about 1 million deaths in a nation with a population of around 330 million?

    I am shocked that you apparently do not know what happens in a "real pandemic". Of course, I realized long ago that you have absolutely no grasp of what reality is. Only what you want it to be. The total number of deaths is so low it barely registers

    In fact, to put it in perspective, the Spanish Flu killed about the same number of people, around 1 million in the US. When the population was around 109 million. So if COVID was as deadly, we would see over 3 million dead.

    As always, I present real facts, real numbers. Feel free to look it up. But I know you will not do so, you will continue to scream that you are shocked, and I do not care about deaths. But unlike you, I live in the real world. Where people die, it is a fact of life. I do not pretend that things are not as they are, so I can feel good about myself.

    And someday unless something changes there will be another massive plague that wipes out 1/4 or more of the population. It is simply knowing history, and the fact that nature is more powerful than man will ever be.

    But if it makes you feel better, what if I try and wrap it all up into some kind of mystical nonsense, and say it is Gia at work. Will that make you feel better?
     
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  15. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    A long time?

    That is not even the blink of an eye.
     
  16. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Yet you want to give the government powers to do something like change the weather.

    You see, here is the difference. One of us appears to believe that is actually possible. And the other of us was being facetious and knows what was stated was impossible and was just making a point.

    Guess which one you are?
     
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  17. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Then prove it. Find a prediction from before 1980 that comes even close to what they predicted 2000 would be like.

    You see, this is where you keep failing. You have faith in predictions that are constantly changing.
     
  18. Grey Matter

    Grey Matter Well-Known Member Donor

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    If you are going to interrupt my conversation with Patricio then please have the courtesy to do so with a full explanation of why you disagree with a conversation that I've been having with him going back as far as the link in the post above to which you responded.

    Also, you might remember that from my point of view, you're the guy that has argued here that science is not capable of proving anything while simultaneously arguing that science proves AGW. Which is it? You can only pick one or the other.

    Here follows some basic facts regarding how the impetus to add "green energy" supply to the Ercot grid contributed directly to the deaths caused by the loss of power during the 2021 Valentine's Day winter storm.

    Here is data that was available directly from the Ercot website back in August 2021 when I put this together:

    upload_2022-5-21_21-18-2.png

    And here is the same data sorted to clarify which part of the supply was offline according to the percentage of its installed capacity:

    upload_2022-5-21_21-22-3.png

    None of this is mentioned by the article WillReadMore provided to assert his claim that my argument is false.

    The article mentions nothing at all about the extent to which Ercot depends on wind power as 23% of its installed capacity nor does it mention anything at all about 73% of that capacity being offline on Feburary 15, 2021.

    The article correctly points out that there was a glaring administrative f-up on the part of Ercot wherein gas plants that were a critical link in Ercot's supply chain where simultaneously listed as available to have their power cut in the event of load shedding requirements.

    From the article,

    "More than 9,000 megawatts of power outages were caused by power plants not getting enough gas, enough to power 1.8 million Texas homes and accounting for at least 20% of the total outages during the week of the storm, according to ERCOT’s estimate."

    From the data I've summarized above one can see that 50,200MW of supply were offline on 2/15/21 and 9,000MW is fairly close to 20% of this number. The other 16,000MW of natural gas powered generation stations were offline because of other reasons. Some of which included scheduled maintenance outages. The offline missing MW from Ercot's nuclear generation source was due to planned maintenance, if I recall correctly.

    But what about the 18,300MW of wind power - why was that offline? Wind turbines don't need power to provide power - all they need is wind. Well, as it turns out we got cold air but it wasn't blowing in real fast, or in some places where it was it was blowing fast, it was also blowing in with freezing rain that froze up the turbines.

    So, WillReadMore claims his article proves my assertion that green energy kills is false, yet the article only accounts for about 9GW out of the 50GW that were offline. With no mention of the 18GW of wind power that was offline. Forgive me for sticking with my assertion until someone can do a better job of showing it false.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2022
  19. Grey Matter

    Grey Matter Well-Known Member Donor

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  20. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    That doesn't sound very scientific to me. Just ignore the bad results and keep the ones we like that affirm what we want to believe? The opportunities for expanding knowledge lie in the failed predictions.
     
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  21. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    "This blogger" is the Chairman of the Racah Center for Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an IBM Einstein Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He has published voluminously on climate topics.
     
  22. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    It isn't Gaia that stopped so many Americans from taking the well known actions to protect against COVID.

    Yes, there were health catastrophes years ago. But, medical science has advanced, and suggesting that those disasters of years ago set the standard for America and the world is ridiculous.
     
  23. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    This makes NO sense.

    It's a fact that there were good predictions from early on.

    But, it's even more important that predictions have improved substantially.

    Look at the cite of NASA that I gave above.
     
  24. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    What if I'm wrong?

    But that's the entire point of the OP.

    IF we are going to ERR, which side of the policy, do something, or do nothing, must we err on, IF ERR WE MUST?

    If we do something, and we are wrong, (nothing becomes of AGW/ACC) all we have done is waste energy and money.

    IF we do nothing, and we are wrong, (AGW/ACC causes a calamity of epic proportions) we might wind up with an uninhabitable planet.

    therefore, if we have to have wrong, seems to me the wiser path is the former, since we do not know, at the outset.

    OF course, any part of this equation can be wrong, and it's complex, but the choices are binary, do something, or do nothing.

    Where complexity enters into the equation is if we decide to do something, and THEN we can duke it out as to what needs to be done and how much.

    Until that point, it's basically a binary choice.
     
  25. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    You missed the more salient point that my premise is still valid sans any examples, whatsoever.

    Besides, I don't know about you, but I've never witnessed and eye blink last for 150 years. We are not comparing the timeline of the universe to the example, but this, though relevant, is really unimportant, given the above fact.
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2022

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