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Aureon posted:Scientists should be much more involved in politics, even if they shouldn't become partisan. Research scientists have a hard time getting funded and getting on the political radar is generally bad news (google the "Superconducting Super Collider" for one example, although that project also had major cost problems). I can only imagine the defunding risk becomes greater for scientific fields related to politically contentious issues like climate change or the environment. The American Physical Society does in fact have a position on the reality of climate change: http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm although I doubt you'll see much political agitation from its members.
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Oct 20, 2012 00:37
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Guigui posted:Is this not a good thing (somewhat) that the scientific community remains outside the political sphere? If there is one thing that Carl Sagan and David Suzuki imprinted on me through their books; it's that science isn't a good thing - nor is it a bad thing - it just "is". If policy-changing discoveries are found by using the methods of science, well, that is up to our elected officials to debate. I feel like politics (particularly at the national-level) is dominated entirely by moneyed interests and ideologues who have no use for science and empirical facts except when they can be twisted to conform to their political worldview. It's not that I think scientists should play partisan roles, in fact I think that's the root of the problem. Scientists are stereotyped as ivory-tower liberal atheist elitists, which makes them easy for the right to slander and ignore when convenient. Honestly, that stereotyping of scientists as liberal atheists is really pretty accurate (demonstrably and empirically so), but should have no (or very little) bearing on the perception of the quality and conclusions of their research. I'd love to have a discussion about public funding of science. The annual budget of the National Science Foundation is ~$7 billion, which is pretty laughable, really. If I'm a reputable, established scientist, I can spend a fair chunk of time and money (several tens of thousands of dollars minimum, in my field) generating preliminary data for a grant proposal to the NSF. Upon submission of that proposal (which I can do yearly or twice, depending on the NSF section) it is reviewed in a two-tiered peer-review process mediated by NSF section managers who are themselves professional scientists within my discipline (NOT politicians and career bureaucrats, the NSF is run by scientists). I have a 5-10% chance of having my grant funded, typically at a level significantly less than in the proposed grant budget. Once the money is dispensed, the funded research program is very tightly monitored and quality-controlled by both the NSF and the awarded institution (university or whatever). It's really loving hard to get NSF money. Of course, there are other sources of gov't funding that are more discipline-specific. For my field of oceanography, I could potentially get dollars from NOAA, NASA, and possibly the DOE, DOD, or USGS. However, every ingredient in that alphabet soup (other than the NSF) is a mission agency. That is, they're focused either on applied research with specific practical goals and applications (DOE, DOD) or only fund research which narrowly fits their chartered mission statement (NOAA, NASA, USGS). Those are not at all bad things, but the NSF is really the only big gov't funding source for basic/pure research, and it's absurdly competitive (a good thing) to win the very limited (bad thing) NSF funding. Anyway... discuss  That was probably rather scattered.Edit: holy gently caress I love parentheses, apparently. Heh. One thing I forgot to mention that might be a common misconception is that universities do NOT fund research in any meaningful way, at least in the US. Quite the opposite, in fact. Universities and affiliated research institutions actually take a big fat cut of any incoming grant money as overhead. 50-60% is a typical overhead percentage, at my university it's 62%. Graduate students, laboratory technicians, and professors (to varying degrees) have their salaries and benefits paid for from grants. It's not underhanded at all and the overhead is a line item calculation in grant budget proposals. Need $100k for your research? You'll have to submit a grant application for $162k so the university gets it cut for overhead! Anyway, my point is that gov't entities, private foundations, and industry fund scientific research, not universities. They derive a fat chunk of income from their researcher's incoming grant funding. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Oct 20, 2012 |
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Oct 20, 2012 01:26
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Pellisworth posted:One thing I forgot to mention that might be a common misconception is that universities do NOT fund research in any meaningful way, at least in the US. Quite the opposite, in fact. Universities and affiliated research institutions actually take a big fat cut of any incoming grant money as overhead. 50-60% is a typical overhead percentage, at my university it's 62%. Graduate students, laboratory technicians, and professors (to varying degrees) have their salaries and benefits paid for from grants. It's not underhanded at all and the overhead is a line item calculation in grant budget proposals. Need $100k for your research? You'll have to submit a grant application for $162k so the university gets it cut for overhead! I'm not sure if you mean that the university takes a 62% cut, which would imply a $263k grant to get 100k to go to the project, or a 38% cut (62% retention), which would imply your ~$162k. There's a pretty significant difference between the two. I'm somewhat curious what grad program finances are like, so please clarify. To the topic of the discussion: I don't anticipate scientific involvement in politics being particularly useful to society as a whole. In the system as it is, the laymen public can barely decide who to believe. When most scientists can be assumed to have an agenda besides discovering the truth, how can an individual know who to trust? It undermines the entire scientific process. As least in the current system, we can rely on the fact that dishonest actors (currently) do not have the resources to control the scientific consensus. For now.
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Oct 20, 2012 07:36
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Wolfy posted:Hell and high water. I like that. I mean I don't like that, but I like it. God we are so hosed. Nobody is ever going to listen, are they? Read the thread title
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Oct 20, 2012 20:53
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Eyes Only posted:I'm not sure if you mean that the university takes a 62% cut, which would imply a $263k grant to get 100k to go to the project, or a 38% cut (62% retention), which would imply your ~$162k. There's a pretty significant difference between the two. I'm somewhat curious what grad program finances are like, so please clarify. It would be the latter; let me give a practical example. In the second year of our PhD program we're required to take a proposal-writing class, from which most of my knowledge of the subject comes. I'll give a simple example of an NSF grant budget. Most grants are for a 3-year time frame. Let's say I want $75k to buy a gas chromatograph (GC) to measure CO2 concentrations and $25k for laboratory supplies. Permanent equipment over $50k (I think that's the number) is the only material cost not subject to overhead, but the $25k in supplies will be. Next, I have the meat of the budget: salaries, and they do indeed get charged overhead. I'm not understand why that is, logically. Professors are usually either "soft" or "hard" money, referring to the proportion of their salaries they derive from grant funding. Soft money is usually at research institutions where the scientist is going to be doing research essentially 100% of the time, and means they must derive their entire salary from grants. This, as you might imagine, is incredibly stressful since you're forced to continuously win and manage enough grants to support your entire income. Only the most competitive, driven researchers can handle being on soft money. Hard money is the more common setup and sort of analogous to K-12 teachers; scientists on hard money have their school year salary (9mo) paid by the university since they'll be teaching and providing other services to the university, but must derive their 3mo summer salary from grant money. Anyway, let's say I want this grant to be the thesis project for my PhD student, who will be a TA half of the time and be supported 6mo/year for 3 years on the grant. I'll also need 3mo/year for some of my lab technician's time (who despite being a university employee is paid entirely through my grants) and I'll take 1mo of summer salary for myself for the time spend directing/managing this project. In addition to equipment and salaries, I'll need a couple grand toward travel to present the results of the research at scientific conferences and a grand or so for publication costs. I also should budget a few thousand for educational and community outreach (which is taken very seriously and a solid outreach program is necessary to get NSF funding). I don't remember if these items get charged overhead but it's chump change relative to the rest of the budget so whatever. Summing up: Permanent equipment = $75k (no overhead) $25k in supplies plus overhead = $40.5k 6mo salary for a grad student for 3 years @$25k/year plus overhead = $60.75k 3mo salary for a lab technician for 3 years @$50k/year plus benefits and overhead = $68.25k 1mo salary for Dr. Me at $80k/year plus benefits and overhead = $36.4k Travel costs = $3k Publication costs = $1k Educational outreach = $6k For a grand total of $291k, of which ~25% goes to the university. I just threw that example together, in reality NSF grant budgets for my field are usually $500-700k over three years, so this is a small project. Additionally, the NSF is unlikely to hand me $75k for the permanent equipment without extremely good justification for why I need that instrument since I'll continue to get use out of it for many years and for projects beyond the scope of this grant. The 25% chunk the university takes is low, it usually ends up being about a third. Lest any taxpayers be concerned about their NSF dollars going to waste, NSF grants are very tightly monitored by both the program managers at the NSF itself and administrators at the grantee university. It's very obviously in the best interests of the university to make sure the money gets spent as efficiently and productively as possible so they can continue to pull down grants and take their fat cut. As the lead researcher I have to submit periodic (6mo or a year) updates on the progress of the project, and once it's all over I have to give a summary of the publications and results produced. If a researcher is ever caught wasting funds or fails to produce, they get shitlisted and will never again receive NSF or probably other gov't money. Additionally, grants are rarely funded at the proposed level. If your proposal gets funded, you'll get a call from the NSF program manager saying "hey we really liked your proposal and think it shows great potential, could you do it for 2/3 costs? 80% cost? No? Oh, well, here's 80% of the money you requested, try again next year for a supplement." At which point you're now expected to do all the proposed work for 80% of the budget and pray you can convince the NSF to give you a little more for the project in a supplemental proposal in a year or two. tl;dr My take home point is that contrary to what a lot of people I've met assume, universities don't usually pay for research themselves, in fact they derive a major major share of their income from overhead charged on the grants their scientists receive from the gov't and private foundations. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Oct 20, 2012 |
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Oct 20, 2012 20:53
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Painkiller posted:Welp. Hahahaha. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/17/canada-geoengineering-pacific?intcmp=122 My country's current government is awful.
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Oct 20, 2012 21:32
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Dreylad posted:Hahahaha. 
Captain Hindsight fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Oct 21, 2012 |
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Oct 21, 2012 15:13
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Dreylad posted:Hahahaha. quote:Saying the ocean is dying, George tells us humans must take over these last wild places on Earth. We'll convert the open ocean into "pastures" like agribusiness on the seas, farming plankton and the fish. We'll dump iron every year. I'm thinking maybe we'll introduce new genetically modified species, who knows? The dying ocean is ours to play with and command.
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Oct 24, 2012 19:23
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I have been somewhat following this thread on and off, and figured I could make a minor contribution. Recently Frontline had an excellent documentary on the effort by conservative groups to shift public perception on climate change. The whole piece is online at the following address. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/ It is very interesting and a horribly depressing if you have any hope for the United States to implement meaningful climate policy.
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Oct 25, 2012 10:10
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Urban bi-coastal elite....holy poo poo go gently caress yourself, Myron.
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Oct 27, 2012 05:57
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Wolfy posted:Urban bi-coastal elite....holy poo poo go gently caress yourself, Myron. The real difference between the two camps isn't geography, but long-term social welfare vs. quick monetary gains at any cost. Saying that wanting safeguard the very systems and resources that support their golden cow of industry is elitism just proves how little they care about anything beyond the next election cycle or even the next closing bell for the DOW. So yeah, go gently caress yourself Myron, indeed. Worrying about the welfare of people beyond yourself and industrial stocks isn't elitism. I'd call it the exact opposite.
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Oct 27, 2012 16:41
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Watching these smarmy shits on Frontline makes me seriously wonder how many lives would be saved if they were to die.
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Oct 28, 2012 05:53
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Not enough.
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Oct 28, 2012 07:16
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unlawfulsoup posted:I have been somewhat following this thread on and off, and figured I could make a minor contribution. Recently Frontline had an excellent documentary on the effort by conservative groups to shift public perception on climate change. The whole piece is online at the following address. 'Lord' Christopher Monckton, lolz (he is not really a member of the House of Lords - not that anyone should wish to be anyway - and basically fabricated most of his alleged political career. It's easy to lie about being Thatcher's scientific advisor when she's dead, I guess). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbW-aHvjOgM This video series by Peter Hadfield is an excellent & entertaining expose of his bullshit.
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Oct 29, 2012 05:44
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The Ender posted:It's easy to lie about being Thatcher's scientific advisor when she's dead, I guess Since when has the lich been dead?
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Oct 29, 2012 06:25
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Nenonen posted:Since when has the lich been dead? Yeesh, my bad; I must've been thinking of Denis Thatcher. Holy gently caress, I can't believe that bitch has lived past her 80th birthday. EDIT: quote:After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, Thatcher was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests.[208] Her daughter Carol has recounted how she was first struck by her mother's dementia when she muddled the Falklands conflict with the Yugoslav wars; she has also recalled the pain of needing to tell her mother repeatedly that Denis Thatcher was dead. olololol Gee whiz, another right wing politician proves to be a total Alzheimer's basket case. I AM SO SURPRISED. The Ender fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Oct 29, 2012 |
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Oct 29, 2012 06:33
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That's what you get by bathing in the blood of homeless children every day for 11 years.
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Oct 29, 2012 06:36
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The Ender posted:'Lord' Christopher Monckton, lolz (he is not really a member of the House of Lords - not that anyone should wish to be anyway - and basically fabricated most of his alleged political career. It's easy to lie about being Thatcher's scientific advisor when she's dead, I guess). He's often portrayed in the press here in australia as a "Mathematician". His entire academic qualifications are a bachelor in journalism, and has never published a paper in his life. Meanwhile my housemate who is a postgrad qualified actual IRL mathematician, with a number of published papers refuses to call himself that until he's had "a significantly higher number of published papers". Needless to say, he finds monkton assuming that title insulting as hell. I gave him monktons open letter to Rudd filled with bogomathematical nomenclature asking him to interpret for me. After reading it for 5 minutes he gave it back to me and said "Your lacan books use mathematical concepts more competently than this. I would fail a high schooler using statistics so poorly.".
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Oct 29, 2012 07:02
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This thread needs a serious shot in the arm.quote:Craig Dilworth writes "From a biological/ecological point of view, the growth of the human population can be likened to that of lemming populations prior to their periodic migrations. Such a rate of growth is unprecedented in any large animal species.....The human population is 'swarming'. We are behaving like an r-selected species.....Key to this whole process is our constantly meeting vital needs through the application of new forms of technology to both renewable and non-renewable resources, combined with the fact that there have to date always existed resources amenable to that development....If technological development were truly an aid to the survival of the human species, it would not have led to the elimination of a significant part of the population's resource base, only to have replaced by an inferior substitute. There is something wrong with the development of technology in the hands of humans...." http://candobetter.net/node/2755 So what do you think? I agree with Dilworth's assessment - we're basically racing technological innovation against resource depletion, and it's a tortoise-and-hare sort of scenario. Our technological advancement may race ahead - even quite far ahead - of resource depletion from time to time, but resource depletion will eventually catch us in the end. Even were we to implement an energy grid that is powered by a renewable resource like the sun, we'd still run out of so many things (think phosphorus for fertilizer, the rare earth metals that are key components of all sorts of technology, etc.) that a sharp decrease in population would be inevitable. As far as I can tell, the only hope of drastically expanding our resource base for many different resources is some form of space mining, and though that is slowly becoming a reality, it is still unclear that all the energy, material, and money spent getting the asteroids back to Earth would actually provide a return on investment using conventional methods of exploring space (and let's be honest, space elevators are more science fiction than science fact right now). My understanding of asteroid mining is that it provides a more affordable platform for further exploring space rather than it being of any material benefit to folks here on Earth.
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Oct 31, 2012 21:56
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Your Sledgehammer posted:This thread needs a serious shot in the arm. It's a mistake to assume that resources wouldn't eventually be depleted without technology. Even without advanced technology, there's still a net loss of energy from any system over time. It would just take a much longer time. The only way to perpetuate humanity indefinitely is to eventually spread to other planets. This demands a more rapid development of technology, not less.
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Oct 31, 2012 22:46
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quote:It's a mistake to assume that resources wouldn't eventually be depleted without technology. Uhhh....what? Let me make sure I'm understanding you properly - you're saying that you think humans would deplete resources like forests, game animals, energy sources, etc. WITHOUT the use of technology? Really? quote:Even without advanced technology, there's still a net loss of energy from any system over time. It would just take a much longer time. The first sentence here is borderline tautology. "Even without humans, the universe will eventually succumb to heat death." Well, of course. But as you said yourself, the "net energy loss" would take a much longer amount of time. Isn't that the goal here - humans reaching extinction later rather than sooner? quote:The only way to perpetuate humanity indefinitely is to eventually spread to other planets. Honestly, I'm not sure that perpetuating humanity indefinitely is even a rational goal, much less a desirable one. I'd much rather see humans be the common ancestor of a whole branch of the evolutionary tree than see humans in their current form continue to exist for billions of years.
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Nov 1, 2012 00:08
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Uhhh....what? Let me make sure I'm understanding you properly - you're saying that you think humans would deplete resources like forests, game animals, energy sources, etc. WITHOUT the use of technology? Really? His whole argument is that humans pushing to develop technology faster and faster is foolish because we're basically just rushing toward depleting our resources. That's true. But eventually we will deplete our resources anyway. We, as animals, consume natural resources. What we put back after consuming them is not as much as what was there to begin with. If his concern is that by developing our technology we are rushing toward making it difficult to perpetuate the human species on Earth, his argument is dumb because this will eventually happen anyway and the solution is to develop the tech to spread to other planets. If his concern is that by developing our technology we are rushing toward making Earth inhospitable to life generally, then his argument is dumb because he's essentially arguing that humans need to experience a major die-off (since our current population is totally unsustainable without technological help).
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Nov 1, 2012 00:40
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Appropriate that we'd have a nice strawman for Halloween. Here's the deal - the whole "we'd eventually deplete our resources anyway, because the sun will die someday" thing is the dumbest possible argument against aggressively pursuing a more sustainable human lifestyle. It crops up from time to time in this thread and I personally think that it's mostly used as a simple, contrarian response to things people just don't want to hear, because if you're willing to ponder the argument for longer than a few seconds, it immediately becomes apparent how short-sighted it is. It's pretty much the equivalent of someone meticulously and smartly saving money to ensure that they'll have enough throughout their life and then someone comes along and says "You might as well just spend it all now, because you're going to have to spend it all before you die anyway."
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Nov 1, 2012 01:32
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Appropriate that we'd have a nice strawman for Halloween. I'm not talking about the sun. There is a finite amount of the various elements required to sustain life on this planet and they will be consumed eventually either way. I think aggressive pursuit of emigration from Earth is a better solution. If you spread humans thinner a lot of the problems we cause with our current population density are assuaged somewhat. The guy takes makes the observation that because we've often made things worse by advancing our technology, then makes the totally unwarranted leap that we can't make technological advances without causing harm. Technology isn't inherently helpful or harmful. The way we go about developing and applying it can be. This means working toward advancement in a smart way, not deliberately slowing down or reversing our advancement because the industrial revolution was all sunshine.
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Nov 1, 2012 06:49
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quote:So what do you think? I agree with Dilworth's assessment - we're basically racing technological innovation against resource depletion, and it's a tortoise-and-hare sort of scenario. Our technological advancement may race ahead - even quite far ahead - of resource depletion from time to time, but resource depletion will eventually catch us in the end. Even were we to implement an energy grid that is powered by a renewable resource like the sun, we'd still run out of so many things (think phosphorus for fertilizer, the rare earth metals that are key components of all sorts of technology, etc.) that a sharp decrease in population would be inevitable. As far as I can tell, the only hope of drastically expanding our resource base for many different resources is some form of space mining, and though that is slowly becoming a reality, it is still unclear that all the energy, material, and money spent getting the asteroids back to Earth would actually provide a return on investment using conventional methods of exploring space (and let's be honest, space elevators are more science fiction than science fact right now). My understanding of asteroid mining is that it provides a more affordable platform for further exploring space rather than it being of any material benefit to folks here on Earth. Well, I completely disagree, actually. Resource depletion is related to human population far more than it's related to technology, and while it's certainly true that the human population is growing, check the statistics for where human population is growing (Hint: It's not in the industrialized, high-tech western world). For reasons that are not entirely well understood yet, high standards of living and, in particular, high technology, cause population growth to peak and plateau (and, in some cases - like in the U.S. - actually begin to decline). Africa is the continent right now with explosive population growth. If you want to slow down the birth rate of human beings, I'd recommend donating to Medicines Sans Frontiers and / or sponsoring families in Africa, and lobbying for global social equality. By the way, that article would've failed peer review after the first sentence. Lemmings do not actually over-populate until they commit suicide. That's an urban myth that was spawned by a malicious Disney film maker who used a turntable to fling Lemmings to their death in front of his camera.
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Nov 1, 2012 07:50
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The Ender posted:Well, I completely disagree, actually. Resource depletion is related to human population far more than it's related to technology, and while it's certainly true that the human population is growing, check the statistics for where human population is growing (Hint: It's not in the industrialized, high-tech western world). Your conclusion only works if you ignore basic political/economic realities of the world, though. The only way first-world nations maintain their standard of living is by impoverishing the third world. That's just how global capitalism, and capitalism in general, works. I think history has pretty well proven that capitalism can't exist without an underclass. So yeah, I agree that population would stop growing if third-world countries would modernize and industrialize, but they can't do that without impacting the standard of living of the first world (after all, who's going to make all our cheap electronics, coffee, and assorted other nifty things?), and first-world governments won't let that happen. And I haven't even mentioned the dire climate consequences of countries like China and India industrializing to first-world standards. And you might want to re-read that first sentence - Dilworth isn't referencing the lemming suicide myth, he's referencing the way lemming populations grow. Lemmings have population boom periods like other rodents. They occasionally grow to the point that they overwhelm their immediate habitat and end up dispersing in all directions to find resources. He's comparing this to human population growth, which has followed a similar pattern historically, just without an eventual decline in population.
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Nov 1, 2012 15:23
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Your Sledgehammer posted:As far as I can tell, the only hope of drastically expanding our resource base for many different resources is some form of space mining, and though that is slowly becoming a reality, it is still unclear that all the energy, material, and money spent getting the asteroids back to Earth would actually provide a return on investment using conventional methods of exploring space (and let's be honest, space elevators are more science fiction than science fact right now). My understanding of asteroid mining is that it provides a more affordable platform for further exploring space rather than it being of any material benefit to folks here on Earth. Good news! The Launch Loop is an orbital delivery system whose design is completely feasible within the limits of our current technology, including materials science. There are a few engineering hurdles that present some difficulty, such as designing a floating large-scale nuclear reactor, but they are far from impossible; indeed, there are already several workable, competing designs. The economics also work; from the Wiki: "For a launch loop to be economically viable it would require customers with sufficiently large payload launch requirements. Lofstrom estimates that an initial loop costing roughly $10 billion with a one-year payback could launch 40,000 metric tons per year, and cut launch costs to $300/kg, or for $30 billion, with a larger power generation capacity, the loop would be capable of launching 6 million metric tons per year, and given a five-year payback period, the costs for accessing space with a launch loop could be as low as $3/kg." This design is intriguing to me because its operation is the opposite of what I associate with space travel: it's quiet, gentle acceleration (3Gs), capable of multiple launches per hour, disregards weather, and is non-polluting. Oh, and it would be far faster than any hypothetical space elevator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop
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Nov 1, 2012 15:41
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Man my science hard-on would tear right out my pants if they ever made that warp drive thing work. That said, the 'one big discovery' between here and loving star trek , dark energy exotic thingamajig matter sure is a big fucken "if". Frankly I just think humans need to get off this planet and leave the poor thing in peace. Yeah it aint gunna happen. I know. Unobtanium. 
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Nov 1, 2012 18:04
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The Ender posted:Well, I completely disagree, actually. Resource depletion is related to human population far more than it's related to technology, and while it's certainly true that the human population is growing, check the statistics for where human population is growing (Hint: It's not in the industrialized, high-tech western world). As usual the Western environmental progressives' preoccupation with people having babies in the third world emerges in its typically half-baked fashion. If you're concerned about resources, consider that each person in the industrialized first world consumes many times more resources (by any margin: energy, nonrenewable materials, food, arable land) than your African baby. Every baby a Westerner doesn't have is worth like 10 African babies (and I mean that with all irony). I would even argue that it's a fraught line to lobby for "global social equality" because this almost invariably gets translated as "increased industrialization;" I say fraught because these developments would likely improve quality of life for the third world, while at the same time vastly increasing the third world's resource consumption. Sledgehammer's article comes down to an honest value judgment: do you value reproductive freedom or preservation of resources? If the former, we start an impact calculus: how long before all resources are irretrievable, depleted? If the latter, who shouldn't be able to have babies (who gets sterilized)? That's not easily answerable, or at least it shouldn't be. And with respect to history and global inequalities, nobody in this thread, nobody writing in the West, should ever make that call again.
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Nov 1, 2012 18:37
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Hurricane Sandy's been prompting a bunch of news articles to bring climate change to the forefront, with mainstream news citing IPCC guys and actual climate scientists: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/01/opinion/field-sandy-climate/index.html http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/01/14860173-bloomberg-endorses-obama-citing-sandy-and-climate-change?lite http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/11/01/was-hurricane-sandy-the-fat-tail-of-climate-change/ The Bloomberg endorsement of Obama had a pretty strong line in it, quote:Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be – given this week's devastation – should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action. Do you guys think the hurricane could finally begin to counteract all the propaganda against climate change that's been spewed by the oil industry, or is this just going to be forgotten in a few months like Hurricane Katrina and we're doomed to a horrible news cycle of natural disaster followed by pussyfooting followed by natural disaster until all of a sudden we're sharing a floating metal hulk with a be-gilled Kevin Costner?
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Nov 1, 2012 20:56
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flatbus posted:Do you guys think the hurricane could finally begin to counteract all the propaganda against climate change that's been spewed by the oil industry, or is this just going to be forgotten in a few months like Hurricane Katrina and we're doomed to a horrible news cycle of natural disaster followed by pussyfooting followed by natural disaster until all of a sudden we're sharing a floating metal hulk with a be-gilled Kevin Costner? Really don't think so. Proof doesn't do it, I don't see a single destructive event as enough to bring people around. Hell, the doubters use the same techniques with regards to rain in drought times, one hurricane isn't going to bring them around.
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Nov 1, 2012 21:14
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flatbus posted:Hurricane Sandy's been prompting a bunch of news articles to bring climate change to the forefront, with mainstream news citing IPCC guys and actual climate scientists: The latter. People are prone to living their lives based around the short-term for many socioeconomic and psychological reasons. The problem with this is the in order to understand climate change you have to take the long view, and while single weather events may draw it into the limelight for a time, such events neither confirm nor deny the existence of climate change. You cannot point to a single localized event and prove anything in regards to climate because climate is a global system averaged over many many years. People simply don't think in this way.
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Nov 1, 2012 21:34
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Maluco Marinero posted:Really don't think so. Proof doesn't do it, I don't see a single destructive event as enough to bring people around. Hell, the doubters use the same techniques with regards to rain in drought times, one hurricane isn't going to bring them around. Particularly when New York has been struck by a number of powerful hurricanes in recorded history. It's a rare event, but it's not unheard of.
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Nov 1, 2012 21:40
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Maluco Marinero posted:Really don't think so. Proof doesn't do it, I don't see a single destructive event as enough to bring people around. Hell, the doubters use the same techniques with regards to rain in drought times, one hurricane isn't going to bring them around.
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Nov 1, 2012 21:42
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Wolfy posted:Certainly not, but the fact that pretty noteworthy politicians and media outlets are even discussing it is encouraging. We haven't heard a drat word on climate change from anyone/thing that mattered since 2009. When the debate's focal point is based on a single disaster, it doesn't really have anywhere to go. I feel like until the public discourse flat out IGNORES short term events as catalysts for discussion and genuine long term consequences take the stage, that's when progress will start to be made against the deniers.
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Nov 1, 2012 21:48
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Your Sledgehammer posted:This thread needs a serious shot in the arm. The evolutionary biology component of this is almost total nonsense (eg the bits about r- and k-selection read like someone was smoking something pretty powerful while trawling through 40 year old evo bio papers for sciency-sounding terms), and the argument doesn't really hang together without it. Generically associating human population growth with "technology" is pretty silly- to the extent we have a population problem, it's not a result of "technology" per se but of energy availability.
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Nov 2, 2012 07:47
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Paper Mac posted:The evolutionary biology component of this is almost total nonsense (eg the bits about r- and k-selection read like someone was smoking something pretty powerful while trawling through 40 year old evo bio papers for sciency-sounding terms), and the argument doesn't really hang together without it. Generically associating human population growth with "technology" is pretty silly- to the extent we have a population problem, it's not a result of "technology" per se but of energy availability. Without invoking any jargon, though, what do you disagree with in this claim: "for the last 6,000 years humans have used technology to avoid shortages of life necessities. Due to this, the human population has increased without the normal checks and balances animals in nature find," or something like that? Do you think the references to technology are overcomplicating the issue, and if so, could you explain more your counter-claim?
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Nov 2, 2012 15:33
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Why is avoiding the checks and balances in nature inherently a bad thing though?
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Nov 2, 2012 15:39
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rscott posted:Why is avoiding the checks and balances in nature inherently a bad thing though? I don't know if it is, there are very few if any things that have inherent morality, and I don't know what the point of your post is because we can still discuss things that are "only" contingently moral. The point, which you must be deliberately ignoring, is that humans and human activities are detrimental to biodiversity; biodiversity appears to be necessary for continued life on this planet, therefore if you value life on this planet you ought to value biodiversity. The other point, if you don't care about life on this planet (and you might not!), is that continually accelerating human population growth which simultaneously requires more resources per capita (due to industrializing lifestyles) is not sustainable. That's simple math (finite resources versus infinite consumption). So if you value avoiding human famine (which is what this comes down to), you ought not to value continuous population acceleration. This is an illustration of something I'm coming around to, and I know it's not orthodox, but there is really no moral imperative to be stewards to the environment, and I think that kind of language is politically limiting. The only thing that motivates environmentalism is a desire to preserve either biodiversity or to protect our own continued existence. I hold my own dogmas of course, which I've made clear in this thread--I dislike capitalism and the capitalistic deployment of high technology and industry, because I'm anthropocentric and wish to preserve the livelihood of humans. There's nothing "inherent" about my position, it's just a collection of biases I've accumulated from my life.
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Nov 2, 2012 17:26
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My comment wasn't really directed at you, more at Your Sledgehammer as a proxy for the author of that article who seems to think that every human living beyond whatever the population of the world was in 4000BC is beyond the natural carrying capacity of the planet. Since that is not a very large number compared to the billions of people living today, there really isn't a way to get around the fact that people who hold the viewpoint that technology is killing the earth and we should stop using it are indirectly advocating for the elimination of billions of people. Personally, I believe there is (must) be a way to use technology responsibly while preserving biodiversity because the alternative is plain untenable.
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Nov 2, 2012 17:43
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