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Good luck paying for that treatment when you need to raise the funds by convincing 100 people to chip in $8000 a piece, and half of them don't even believe in the existence of cancer.
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Dec 10, 2013 15:35
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His solution, apparently, was to go back to the land. He says they 'work very hard' to avoid using grocery stores, whatever that means, but dude's in Arizona, so I sincerely doubt he's anything like self-reliant. Well, works for some, I suppose.
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Dec 10, 2013 16:13
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JohnnySavs posted:Good luck paying for that treatment when you need to raise the funds by convincing 100 people to chip in $8000 a piece, and half of them don't even believe in the existence of cancer. And more than half of those nonbelievers instead believe that your body has been given, as a gift, to them for their exclusive control, unlimited use, and complete consumption.
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Dec 10, 2013 16:46
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Instrumentally, his extinction thesis seems to rely on the idea that the worlds nuclear power plants, left unmaintained in the collapse of industrial civilization, would release enough ionizing radiation to kill every person, or near enough I suppose. That seems kind of far fetched, even to a nuke skeptic like me. More generally I think that kind of doom and gloom attitude can be useful for propaganda purposes, to shock people out of whatever complacency they live in, but I think it's a disservice generally and falls into goofy liberal individualism at best, and reactionary death-idealization at worst.
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Dec 10, 2013 17:21
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duck monster posted:I have no idea. He's got a pretty serious academic history I think his math, whatever it is (I don't think he's presented any modelling or calculations with respect to the near term extinction hypothesis), is probably flawed if the way he treats data is any indication. I'm looking at his litany of citations in support of the extinction story here: http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/ A few salient examples probably suffice. 1) Interprets supporting evidence uncritically Guy McPherson posted:Tack on, without the large and growing number of self-reinforcing feedback loops we’ve triggered recently, the 5 C rise in global-average temperature 55 million years ago during a span of 13 years, and it looks like trouble ahead for the wise ape. Here he's citing a paper that I posted about in this thread and received, within a couple of days, a fairly compelling reason to be skeptical of: the paper assumes sedimentation rates a million times higher than anything recorded. To me this suggests he's either ignoring or not talking to his (ex) colleagues about recent research, or he would know this. 2) Cites random bloggers and activists as authorities Guy McPherson posted:Tacking on only one feedback loop, and writing on 28 November 2013 — methane release from the Arctic Ocean — Sam Carana expects up to 20 C warming by 2050. Why does Sam Carana expect this? Well, because he fit a curve, son!!!  (Curve 3 on there). I was kind of suspicious of this as I've never seen any published data that gave results anything like this, so I looked Carana up, and as far as I can tell, he hasn't got any formal training in the field (if he does, he's not repping it, which is weird) 3) [citation needed] Guy McPherson posted:In other words, near-term extinction of humans was already guaranteed, to the knowledge of Obama and his administration (i.e., the Central Intelligence Agency, which runs the United States and controls presidential power). Even before the dire feedbacks were reported by the scientific community, the administration abandoned climate change as a significant issue because it knew we were done as early as 2009. I'm generally pretty sympathetic to this guy but mingling this kind of garbage in with scientific data speaks volumes. Everyone knows it's the NSA. 4) Deterministic view of human behaviour, conspiratorial view of academia Guy McPherson posted:All of the above information fails to include the excellent work by Tim Garrett, which points out that only complete collapse avoids runaway greenhouse. Garrett reached the conclusion in a paper submitted in 2007 (personal communication) and published online by Climatic Change in November 2009 (outcry from civilized scientists delayed formal publication until February 2011). The paper remains largely ignored by the scientific community, having been cited fewer than ten times since its publication. The paper he's citing literally says that GDP growth is independent of population or standard of living- it's solely a function of the amount of accumulated capital. That is, you build a certain amount of capital, and of its own accord, it consumes more energy, produces more capital, etc, until energy supplies are exhausted. Garrett apparently believes that all policy measures are therefore useless and nothing can stop this deterministic march toward collapse. Capitalism was inevitable, there's no room for culture, ideology, human agency of any kind. You don't have to have a history major to see the problems with this kind of historical teleology, so the fact that he had trouble getting it published is totally unsurprising, but McPherson takes it as evidence of a grand conspiracy. In any case, I think you're right that he lost it at some point, but he's pretty clearly selecting for the evidence that will cause him to lose it- he's a doomer, and it wouldn't surprise me if he was drummed out of the academy as a result. He raises some good points that pretty much everyone is aware of (feedbacks aren't modelled, climate science is generally pretty conservative, the corporate state is apparently intent on extracting profit at the expense of vulnerable populations), but I don't see him as approaching these issues in any kind of disinterested scientific manner. Rather, he's displaying the pathology so common to disillusioned true believers in the cult of Progress that JM Greer has been talking about for a while now: "JMG posted:The civil religion of progress also has its antireligion, which is the belief in apocalypse. Like the antireligions of other faiths, the apocalyptic antireligion embraces the core presuppositions of the faith it opposes—in this case, above all else, the vision of history as a straight line leading inexorably toward a goal that can only be defined in superlatives—but inverts all the value signs. Where the religion of progress likes to imagine the past as an abyss of squalor and misery, its antireligion paints some suitably ancient time in the colors of the Golden Age; where the religion of progress seeks to portray history as an uneven but unstoppable progress toward better things, its antireligion prefers to envision history as an equally uneven and equally unstoppable process of degeneration and decay; where the religion of progress loves to picture the future in the most utopian terms available, its antireligion uses the future as a screen on which to project lurid images of universal destruction. Paper Mac fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Dec 10, 2013 |
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Dec 10, 2013 18:10
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You'd have to be an idiot to take that guy seriously. I mean just look at it from the very simple perspective that the warmest it's EVER BEEN in the past five hundred million years is 5-8C higher than today. To zoom it down, the Arctic easily could've been warmer than it is currently back in the MWP or the Roman Warming Period or even the early holocene (when we now suspect ocean temperature was MUCH warmer than today). Methane releases didn't cause the Earth to explode in heat during any of those time periods. Contrary to the constant discussion of the end of times in this thread, the current IPCC estimate on climate sensitivity is 1-2.5C (5-95%) per a doubling of CO2 (which itself is a decrease from AR4's estimate, and is STILL probably too high of a range). The reality will probably be closer to the 1C. Don't let math, science, and observations get in your way though. I am sure his "polynomial trendlines" will be the most accurate model going forward.
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Dec 10, 2013 19:02
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Arkane posted:You'd have to be an idiot to take that guy seriously. I mean just look at it from the very simple perspective that the warmest it's EVER BEEN in the past five hundred million years is 5-8C higher than today. To zoom it down, the Arctic easily could've been warmer than it is currently back in the MWP or the Roman Warming Period or even the early holocene (when we now suspect ocean temperature was MUCH warmer than today). Methane releases didn't cause the Earth to explode in heat during any of those time periods.
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Dec 10, 2013 19:12
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Kafka Esq. posted:Settle down, Arkane, everybody was treating the guy with kid gloves. I know that your sole occupation in this thread is taking the low side of projections, but this isn't the time to start accusing everyone of clutching their pearls. There's plenty of people in this thread, page after page, who think the world is careening toward the apocalypse. Usually I hold my tongue, but sometimes I can't help myself. I mean like: Negative Entropy posted:As we're already seeing with hurricanes, droughts, bushfires, amphibian mass extinction, and sinking islands and cities like the Maldives and Venice, 1C will still be pretty disastrous. This is just a blatant UNTRUTHITUDE that we are "already seeing hurricanes, droughts, bushfires, sinking islands" as a result of AGW. The IPCC makes it crystal clear that we do not have any evidence that hurricanes or droughts (causing bushfires) are changing. The sinking of Venice and sea level rise in the Maldives are not linked to AGW, although we may have sped it up by some minimal amount. It says something when the IPCC (whose conclusions I consider alarmist) can be used to dispel arguments. Thread is far outside the realm of reality. Arkane fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Dec 10, 2013 |
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Dec 10, 2013 19:47
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Arkane posted:There's plenty of people in this thread, page after page, who think the world is careening toward the apocalypse. Gonna go out on a limb here and say Arkane Is Right. For every Paper Mac in this thread, there is 1 or more posters fetishizing the apocalypse. And that claim about nuclear power plants causing mass extinction is idiotic. It's as unscientific as any claim made by those who ignore the science of ACC.
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Dec 10, 2013 19:58
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Maybe somebody can check this out?quote:Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama?
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Dec 10, 2013 20:44
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A little bird told me the pdf is here
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Dec 10, 2013 20:50
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Paper Mac posted:I think his math, whatever it is (I don't think he's presented any modelling or calculations with respect to the near term extinction hypothesis), is probably flawed if the way he treats data is any indication. I'm looking at his litany of citations in support of the extinction story here:  That looks like a growth curve fitted by a buttcoiner. It is a well known fact that exponential  Paper Mac posted:His solution, apparently, was to go back to the land. He says they 'work very hard' to avoid using grocery stores, whatever that means, but dude's in Arizona, so I sincerely doubt he's anything like self-reliant. Well, works for some, I suppose. Because trying to bring back 7+ billion people to living a natural(tm) life as hunters, gatherers, or subsistence farmers is definitely the way to go and won't cause hilarious increases in land use. e: I also love the web 2.0 German flag coloured background of that graph
suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Dec 10, 2013 |
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Dec 10, 2013 22:23
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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satan!!! posted:Gonna go out on a limb here and say Arkane Is Right. For every Paper Mac in this thread, there is 1 or more posters fetishizing the apocalypse. I'd say when we are dealing with situations that could actually genuinely bring about the apocalypse it's probably better to be a little alarmist than to favor the status quo because the projections could be low and maybe we'll fix it later.
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Dec 10, 2013 23:14
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blowfish posted:Because trying to bring back 7+ billion people to living a natural(tm) life as hunters, gatherers, or subsistence farmers is definitely the way to go and won't cause hilarious increases in land use. To be fair, he thinks that we're all going to be boiled alive in 20 years no matter what we do, so I don't think he forsees his chosen course of action being generally adopted. I actually feel pretty bad for the guy, he's been in the trenches for decades and at some point he just said 'gently caress it' and took off for the woods. It's hard to underestimate the amount of stress researchers in climate and ecology fields are under, they're out there collecting data and watching ecologies that they're deeply personally involved in and connected to falling apart, no one is listening to them, society as a whole doesn't give a poo poo about what they're saying, and they don't really have any outlets for the stresses and anxieties of all this stuff in their work due to the cultural norms associated with science. I think this guy is basically wrong about his assessment, but at least he made an effort to consider the evidence, arrived at the conclusion that the way society is organised is insane and unjust, and went out and actually did something about it. That's more than can be said of lots of climate researchers, to be frank.
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Dec 10, 2013 23:22
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satan!!! posted:Gonna go out on a limb here and say Arkane Is Right. For every Paper Mac in this thread, there is 1 or more posters fetishizing the apocalypse. Query Paper Mac on his thoughts re: the trajectory and sustainability of our agricultural system. From my reading of his posts (and certainly correct me Paper Mac if I'm wrong), his sober assessments are generally not very sanguine. I don't think presenting the range of positions in this thread as a simple dichotomy is at all accurate. Things aren't ending in 20 years, but things are indeed bad right now.
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Dec 11, 2013 00:05
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"Generally not very sanguine" is a fair description, I think. My primary concern with climate change is effects on the water cycle in the global breadbaskets, although I think my older posts in this thread should probably be viewed a bit skeptically as a lot of the modelling data I was presenting was using the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which I've since learned has some systematic issues I was unaware of at the time. That said, pretty much any BAU case gets pretty grim midway through the century whatever measures you're using.
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Dec 11, 2013 00:14
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Paper Mac posted:"Generally not very sanguine" is a fair description, I think. My primary concern with climate change is effects on the water cycle in the global breadbaskets, although I think my older posts in this thread should probably be viewed a bit skeptically as a lot of the modelling data I was presenting was using the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which I've since learned has some systematic issues I was unaware of at the time. That said, pretty much any BAU case gets pretty grim midway through the century whatever measures you're using. The water cycle is definately something we should be concerned about. Even a small sea level rise is salt a shitload of our free water (Though for a bit of hope see recent discoveries about freshwater supplies under ocean beds. Not sure if its feasible though) simply by virtue of the hydrogeological mechanics of it all. That was my sisters research specialty and it spooked her enough (that and the immense pressure climate scientists have come under from hosed up hate campaigns) that she's pretty much quit the field to focus on her kids. She is not even remotely optimistic about our chances on this, and neither are many of her collegues.
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Dec 11, 2013 03:31
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duck monster posted:The water cycle is definately something we should be concerned about. Even a small sea level rise is salt a shitload of our free water (Though for a bit of hope see recent discoveries about freshwater supplies under ocean beds. Not sure if its feasible though) simply by virtue of the hydrogeological mechanics of it all. That was my sisters research specialty and it spooked her enough (that and the immense pressure climate scientists have come under from hosed up hate campaigns) that she's pretty much quit the field to focus on her kids. She is not even remotely optimistic about our chances on this, and neither are many of her collegues. On this topic, there's a new study out in Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v504/n7478/full/nature12858.html that discusses massive fresh and semi-fresh water reserves under the ocean. I saw bigger parts of the paper quoted somewhere, but can't find it now. I think the good news is that there's a lot more fresh and nearly fresh water available that previously thought
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Dec 13, 2013 18:52
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Pauline Kael posted:On this topic, there's a new study out in Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v504/n7478/full/nature12858.html that discusses massive fresh and semi-fresh water reserves under the ocean. I saw bigger parts of the paper quoted somewhere, but can't find it now. I think the good news is that there's a lot more fresh and nearly fresh water available that previously thought The prospect of having to drill for water like the Deepwater Horizon is not really a pleasant one. Massive-scale desalination isn't really very good for the environment either. Yes, there are alternatives, but that's an alarming concept.
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Dec 13, 2013 19:05
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Paul MaudDib posted:The prospect of having to drill for water like the Deepwater Horizon is not really a pleasant one. Massive-scale desalination isn't really very good for the environment either. Yes, there are alternatives, but that's an alarming concept. Much preferable to dying from thirst, agreed? We don't have to greet every piece of potentially good news with such concern trolling to keep our green cred, do we?
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Dec 13, 2013 19:09
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Eh, you build a pipe out to sea and poo poo the salt back into the ocean. Trust me, no matter how much salt we pull out of sea water, pumping that salt back aint going to make a difference to ocean salinity even remotely. Theres an awful lot of seawater out there.
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Dec 13, 2013 19:57
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Paul MaudDib posted:The prospect of having to drill for water like the Deepwater Horizon is not really a pleasant one. Massive-scale desalination isn't really very good for the environment either. Yes, there are alternatives, but that's an alarming concept. Can you imagine the horror of spilling 5 millions barrels of water into the ocean?
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Dec 13, 2013 20:32
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You can start with the fact that desalination requires enormous amounts of energy. It's going to be environmentally destructive on one scale or another.
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Dec 13, 2013 20:44
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Even so, new sources of nuclear fuel may curtail the environmental impact (Aside from the desalination plants themselves) entirely. Also, I think the freshwater reserve thing has been a known item since at least the 70s.
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Dec 13, 2013 21:00
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What's everyone's take on these articles? http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/illness-plaguing-seals-and-walruses-brings-disease-hunters-alaska http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/08/11083494-fur-loss-open-sores-seen-in-polar-bears I'm not suggesting there's a direct connection between these, but seeing several stories about different species having bizarre problems in the past few days is interesting. There are other stories about sockeye salmon bleeding from the gills, so that's at least three species experiencing some kind of ulcerations that are not yet understood.
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Dec 13, 2013 21:19
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Job Truniht posted:You can start with the fact that desalination requires enormous amounts of energy. It's going to be environmentally destructive on one scale or another. Read the article. There's much more fresh and near-fresh water available than previously thought.
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Dec 13, 2013 21:19
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duck monster posted:Eh, you build a pipe out to sea and poo poo the salt back into the ocean. Trust me, no matter how much salt we pull out of sea water, pumping that salt back aint going to make a difference to ocean salinity even remotely. Theres an awful lot of seawater out there. It can make a difference to a local environment.
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Dec 13, 2013 21:22
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The problem with climate change isn't 'running out of water', it's getting water to go to the right places in the right amounts and stay there. Even supposing we manage to build out the infrastructure to replace rain in dustbowled regions with sub-oceanic freshwater (the carbon emissions associated with this aren't going to be trivial, btw), you still have problems with increased intensity of rainfall destroying crops elsewhere, etc. There's no techno-fix to perturbations to the water cycle.
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Dec 13, 2013 23:16
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"Everyone chill, we can drill below the ocean for fresh water!!" is right up there with "Don't worry you guys, we can always plant crops on Greenland  ". Like gently caress, if we get to either of those half the population have already starved to death.
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Dec 13, 2013 23:30
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So what's going on with the winter this year? It is snowing in Egypt and Israel, but we here in Estonia in Northern Europe have seen almost no snow this year, most of the time it is +6 degrees celsius and raining, even now in the middle of December. What the hell?
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Dec 13, 2013 23:39
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OhYeah posted:So what's going on with the winter this year? It is snowing in Egypt and Israel, but we here in Estonia in Northern Europe have seen almost no snow this year, most of the time it is +6 degrees celsius and raining, even now in the middle of December. What the hell? Well, it could be that the planet is in the early stages of catastrophic changes to its weather patterns. I think there's a thread posted somewhere about it.
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Dec 14, 2013 00:15
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Hello Sailor posted:Well, it could be that the planet is in the early stages of catastrophic changes to its weather patterns. I think there's a thread posted somewhere about it. Wasn't it supposed to get colder in Northern Europe and warmer everywhere else? Like exactly the opposite of what is happening now.
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Dec 14, 2013 01:06
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 In the style of that NatGeo issue 'Is Darwin Wrong?'. I got a kick out of it.
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Dec 14, 2013 01:28
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bpower posted:"Everyone chill, we can drill below the ocean for fresh water!!" is right up there with "Don't worry you guys, we can always plant crops on Greenland That's exactly what I said, thanks for the concise summary. Once you recover from the vapors, maybe read the article and consider the implications.
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Dec 14, 2013 02:12
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OhYeah posted:Wasn't it supposed to get colder in Northern Europe and warmer everywhere else? Like exactly the opposite of what is happening now. Just because something follows a trend doesn't mean there aren't outliers.
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Dec 14, 2013 02:13
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OhYeah posted:Wasn't it supposed to get colder in Northern Europe and warmer everywhere else? Like exactly the opposite of what is happening now. http://www.eea.europa.eu/media/newsreleases/climate-change-evident-across-europe
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Dec 14, 2013 02:29
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Way back on the first page and two years ago, there was a post about using an enzyme with a copper catalyst to turn CO2 into bicarbonate. Does anyone know if that ever panned out?
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Dec 14, 2013 04:48
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I can't ever see that being cost effective, since the amount of CO2 you'd need to sequester is on the order of hundreds of billions of tonnes.
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Dec 14, 2013 06:49
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I was going to say, the scale you'd need to make a reasonable dent on even a local scale would be entirely unfeasible.
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Dec 14, 2013 07:12
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Job Truniht posted:You can start with the fact that desalination requires enormous amounts of energy. It's going to be environmentally destructive on one scale or another. If only we had a bunch of Fast Reactors burning up reprocessed nuclear waste, supplying us with free waste heat to run a big rear end desalination plant 
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Dec 14, 2013 11:07
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