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Climate Change(d)?

Loren Pechtel said:
bilby said:
Loren Pechtel said:
He's a politician. Expect him to be wrong
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I'm gonna stop reading there, as doing so enhances the accuracy of your post ;)
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Politicians very well might get the broad picture right.
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Sure, but more by good luck than good judgement.

Politicians and journalists (with a handful of exceptions) are almost never scientists. And worse, almost never have even a basic scientific education. They have degrees in law, or in politics, or in English language or literature, not in physics or chemistry. Even degrees in history are uncommon.

Voters are even less well educated. Most people actively reject scientific education or knowledge; Look at any game show with general knowledge questions, and see how pathetically easy the questions in "science" are, compared to those in "history", or "politics"; And then see how most contestants actively avoid those easy questions, declaring with pride that they don't know anything about science.

An election is a popularity contest. If you want to win a popularity contest, scientific knowledge is a handicap to be concealed. Nerds may be smart, but they ain't popular.

In the rare event that politicians trust what the scientific community says, they more frequently do so because they have been told that doing so will win votes, rather than because they understand the underlying science.

Which is why we see unscientific exaggerations, oversimplifications, lack of doubt, and inability to handle cross-examination, all of which give ammunition to their equally unscientific opponents.

And of course, this is what tribalism requires. Certainty and simplicity win votes; But these are not scientific positions. Science produces complex probabilities, not slogans that fit on a bumper sticker.

And journalists cannot properly cover scientific topics, nor are they properly qualified to interview either politicians or scientists on scientific subjects.

I saw an article recently on the BBC, taglined as being by "Joe Bloggs, BBC Science Correspondent" (name changed to protect the guilty), which contained a very basic error. So I did some digging, and discovered that Mr Bloggs is not a BBC staffer, but a freelance "science journalist"; And he has a degree in English Literature from Oxford. If he has any scientific qualifications at all, he has kept them from the Internet.

As I have mentioned here before:

bilby said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
What is with journalism and anything remotely related to science?
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The vast majority of journalists hated science classes in school, and stopped taking them as soon as they possibly could, in favour of English Literature, History, and Politics.

Journalists with a decent secondary school level science education are few and far between; Journalists with a bachelor's degree in science are vanishingly rare, and those with a science doctorate are like hen's teeth. On the flip side, most scientists had enough on their plates learning actually useful stuff about reality, and so never bothered to learn how to write effectively for a general audience. (Most didnt even bother learning how to correctly use apostrophe's).

Even when an article about science is written by a journalist who actually understands any science, their editor almost certainly doesn't. And insists that they dumb everything down.

And, of course, those editors are right, from a commercial perspective. Most of their readership would be angry and hurt, if articles assumed a very basic level of understanding that those readers lack.

A newspaper article that assumes readers are familiar with the Odyssey, or the Iliad, or the plot of King Lear is, for some reason, not seen as an insult to the intelligence of those readers who are clueless about those things. But assuming that your readers know the boiling point of water at sea level is guaranteed to anger the vast majority of them, because not only are they completely ignorant of it, but they also don't want to ever be reminded of their ignorance about it.

To quote Teen Talk Barbie: "Math is tough". Shakespeare is for smart people, but science is for nerds and geeks. Assuming (incorrectly) that your audience are smart, is OK. But wrongly accusing them of being nerds? That just angers them.
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Elixir said:
Loren Pechtel said:
bilby said:
Loren Pechtel said:
He's a politician. Expect him to be wrong
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I'm gonna stop reading there, as doing so enhances the accuracy of your post ;)
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Politicians very well might get the broad picture right.
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For every politician that is right there is an equal and opposite politician who is wrong.
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The point is while you can pretty much figure they got the details wrong that doesn't mean they always get the big picture wrong.
 
The Net Zero cult is unravelling

Tony Blair has called for the government to change course on climate, suggesting a strategy that limits fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is “doomed to fail”. In comments that have prompted a backlash within Labour, the former prime minister suggested the UK government should focus less on renewables and more on technological solutions such as carbon capture. Blair said people were “being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”. He said “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail”. Writing the foreword for a report from the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), he said the current climate debate was “riven with irrationality” and suggested net zero was losing public support. The paper itself, written by the TBI’s Lindy Fursman, said net zero policies were now “increasingly viewed as unaffordable, ineffective or politically toxic”.
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Teh Grauniad



It is a catastrophic 70 degrees today!
 
Ranchers are planting avocadoes and mangos in Okeechobee County. Large acreage in a couple of spots. Testing the waters. But haven't had a killing freeze in over a decade so they are giving tropic fruits that use to be restricted to barrier islands from Cape Canaveral to Ft. Lauderdale a shot inland.
 
TSwizzle said:
The Net Zero cult is unravelling

Tony Blair has called for the government to change course on climate, suggesting a strategy that limits fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is “doomed to fail”. In comments that have prompted a backlash within Labour, the former prime minister suggested the UK government should focus less on renewables and more on technological solutions such as carbon capture. Blair said people were “being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”. He said “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail”. Writing the foreword for a report from the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), he said the current climate debate was “riven with irrationality” and suggested net zero was losing public support. The paper itself, written by the TBI’s Lindy Fursman, said net zero policies were now “increasingly viewed as unaffordable, ineffective or politically toxic”.
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Teh Grauniad



It is a catastrophic 70 degrees today!
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Politicians don't get to determine reality.
 
I came home to find my wife has three apricots. The birds agreed with her assessment that they were ripe. Weeks early.
 
This ain't your daddy's Climate Change.

article said:
NOAA said Veterans on Patrol was recruiting people for “penetration drills” on locations hosting Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) systems, which are composed of white, spherical Doppler weather radars that detect precipitation, wind and thunderstorms. The equipment is also operated by the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Air Force to chart aircraft, according to NOAA.

Veterans on Patrol believes the infrastructure is a “weather weapon” controlled by the military against Americans, NOAA wrote in an email. The group’s leadership wrote on repeated messages to Telegram that the equipment was “poisoning our skies.”

The group shared images of radar sites last week, encouraging followers to investigate whether the equipment can be “easily sabotaged.” Messages sent Sunday identified an unspecified NEXRAD site supposedly in Northern California that was visited by a “lone wolf.”
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*sigh*
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
This ain't your daddy's Climate Change.

article said:
NOAA said Veterans on Patrol was recruiting people for “penetration drills” on locations hosting Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) systems, which are composed of white, spherical Doppler weather radars that detect precipitation, wind and thunderstorms. The equipment is also operated by the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Air Force to chart aircraft, according to NOAA.

Veterans on Patrol believes the infrastructure is a “weather weapon” controlled by the military against Americans, NOAA wrote in an email. The group’s leadership wrote on repeated messages to Telegram that the equipment was “poisoning our skies.”

The group shared images of radar sites last week, encouraging followers to investigate whether the equipment can be “easily sabotaged.” Messages sent Sunday identified an unspecified NEXRAD site supposedly in Northern California that was visited by a “lone wolf.”
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*sigh*
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This is hilarious. I recognized the name Veterans on Patrol (VOP), as I met a guy dressed in camo and wearing a VOP hat while driving on the isolated one land dirt road into our remote cabin in the Sierra foothills a couple of years ago. He was pretty sketchy looking and unkempt, but he was nice enough to help us clear out some fallen trees on the road so we could drive all the way in. He told us his name was Lewis, and he had previously helped veterans and migrants at the Arizona/Mexico border, but that he got into some trouble with the Feds and had to go into hiding far away. He was living in a dilapidated trailer about three miles from our cabin, but has since moved and left the area. After a little googling this morning on this, I come to find out he personally started VOP back in 2015, and has some noteriety among right wing kooks. The SPLC has a long write up on "Screwy" Lewis (with his picture front and center no less), in case anyone is interested:

Veterans on Patrol
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
This ain't your daddy's Climate Change.

article said:
NOAA said Veterans on Patrol was recruiting people for “penetration drills” on locations hosting Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) systems, which are composed of white, spherical Doppler weather radars that detect precipitation, wind and thunderstorms. The equipment is also operated by the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Air Force to chart aircraft, according to NOAA.

Veterans on Patrol believes the infrastructure is a “weather weapon” controlled by the military against Americans, NOAA wrote in an email. The group’s leadership wrote on repeated messages to Telegram that the equipment was “poisoning our skies.”

The group shared images of radar sites last week, encouraging followers to investigate whether the equipment can be “easily sabotaged.” Messages sent Sunday identified an unspecified NEXRAD site supposedly in Northern California that was visited by a “lone wolf.”
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*sigh*
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You should see the Chemtrails bill that DeSantis is bragging about signing. Whole GOP is nuts.
 
scombrid said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
This ain't your daddy's Climate Change.

article said:
NOAA said Veterans on Patrol was recruiting people for “penetration drills” on locations hosting Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) systems,...
The group shared images of radar sites last week, encouraging followers to investigate whether the equipment can be “easily sabotaged.” ...
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*sigh*
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You should see the Chemtrails bill that DeSantis is bragging about signing. Whole GOP is nuts.
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It's true that mental illness has been rising in the USA, with the latest lists from healthdata.org showing USA in a near-tie for the lead with Lebanon, Tunisia, Gaza, Iran, Portugal, Brazil and ... Australia! And among U.S. states, bright-red Utah scores #1 with a whopping 29.2% of the population suffering mental illness. (The numbers are normalized to account for varying reporting criteria.)

HOWEVER -- (and I don't know whether DeSantis fits in this group or not) -- many GOP leaders are more-or-less capable of rational thought but pretend to be mentally ill in order to retain the support of their Godfather, MAGATs, and campaign donors.

I for one would have much more affection for these varmints if they were REAL psychotics instead of poseurs. One of my best friends suffered from OCD so severe that she was written up in a psychology journal.
 
a recent paper, "Increased transparency in accounting conventions could benefit climate policy," suggests that disruptions due to agriculture are underestimated.

Agriculture has become the major disruptor of five planetary boundaries: biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, and now climate change. In the author's view, this emphasises the need for policies to address this sector if we are to have a liveable future. Agricultural subsidies globally have been described as overwhelmingly harmful. Initiatives aimed at reducing harmful agricultural subsidies and initiatives such as the EU Green Deal are susceptible to industry influence, and misinformed and uninformed debate has enabled harmful agricultural industries to obstruct understanding and policy. These accounting advances may usefully support policy reform.
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You know what they say, the early bird gets the apricot.

Changing how we farm does not really change anything. Our economics requires a growing population. With our low birth rate we need immigration to keep the economy going.

Same low birth rate problem in Russia, China, and Japan.

If you are in your 20s 30s today with a retirement plan you are gambling that involvements in the economy will show a net profit when you retire. IO)W a growing economy.
 
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