monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

@giujohn,

Global warming is a fact.

@McGentrix,

Yes, all living things ultimately die and their carbon is generally chewed up by bugs and released in the atmosphere. Unless of course it is stored, either naturally (that's how fossil fuels came to be) or artificially (eg in timber used for construction).

Is that clear enough for you?

1 Reply

@Debra Law,

And now, ways how to have Trump himself fired:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/how-trump-could-get-fired?mbid=gnep&intcid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true

It's an article by Evan Osnos, whom I've long liked as a New Yorker writer.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Yes, all living things ultimately die and their carbon is generally chewed up by bugs and released in the atmosphere. Unless of course it is stored, either naturally (that's how fossil fuels came to be) or artificially (eg in timber used for construction).

Is that clear enough for you?

Do you believe that 32 million acres of tropical rainforest die each year? Because that is how much is being deforested. Do you see the difference in what you've written compared to what actually happens?

1 Reply

@layman,

Courage is not a lack of fear, but the ability to control it. Being fearless in the face of danger is a form of stupidity.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

Quote:
The medium is irrelevant.
I'm afraid I don't agree. Obviously the quality of information carried within a medium is important but the medium itself has consequences for thinking. This was precisely the thesis advanced in the work quoted.

I know it was the thesis, but I find it a tad simplistic. And perhaps also self-serving coming from a man of letters. It's perfectly possible to do good TV, and to write bad literature. In fact the vast majority of what gets printed nowadays has very little literary or descriptive value. It's often more entertainment than anything else.

The solution to today's moral and intellectual ills won't come from more books and less TV. Rather it is to be found in qualitatively better books and better TV. And better Internet. And first and foremost, qualitatively better public education.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Yes, re very much needed public education (as opposed to faux education; faux, I'm beginning to despise that word). As anyone here knows, I enjoy reading both of you, not entirely for agreement, but oft for learning.

1 Reply

@McGentrix,

Of course slash and burn deforestation contributes to GW. It releases CO2 just like burning coal. But not all forms of deforestation leads to the wood being immediately burnt on site. If a good deal of the biomass is harvested and used in the form of durable material, that carbon ain't released in the atmosphere.

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@ossobucotemp,

Thanks. It's ok to disagree as long as the two discussants are cool about it. And I agree that reading is important -- I've read all the good books myself... ;-)

One of the greatest advantage of the written medium is that the reader can be in the mind of the author or his characters. You can't do that on TV or cinema, you can't have a voice-over of the heroes' thoughts all the time. Although Birdman used that effectively. Being in someone else's mind is a luxury. It gives a kind of... intimacy with someone else (real or not) which is almost impossible to find outside literature.

Edit: our civilization is built on education. The recent massification of public education starts from a positive intent but has led pretty much everywhere it's been tried to lower education outcomes. The bar HAS been lowered, certainly in France and in quite a few other countries across the globe as well, at the very same time when our societies are becoming ever more complex, sociologically, ethnically, technological, ecologically.... politically too. We are progressively less well trained and yet we need to diggest growing waves of complex information. Leading to information overload, confusion, rumors, misunderstanding and misinformation galore... The post-truth age.

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@Olivier5,

Plus, at least in my memory of California forestry, there were divisive views re culling, to make a lack of fire fuel; I lived in redwood country for six years or so, but am no expert.
It was also wood carving country, such good wood art.

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@Olivier5,

Yes, you can fill in the scene in your own brain's vision.

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@ossobucotemp,

Maintaining productive woodlots for firewood production is carbon neutral because the woodlot grows back, and through photosynthesis it absorbs CO2 to grow, while you burn the last cut wood, which itself came from photosynthesis. So it's a short-term cycle of CO2 --> wood --> CO2 --> wood. But of course, cutting for firewood entire forests in an definitive or unsustainable manner (the forest won't grow back eg for climatic reasons or over-exploitation)... that amounts to a net emission of CO2.

1 Reply

@Lash,

Lash wrote:

You aren't concerned that he's headed for an early retirement?

Trump is going to serve for eight full years, and will be regarded by history as being the equal of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

The American left is almost inexistant. I don't see how they can block anything. Yours are excuses.

That is incorrect. We do have a lot of liberals in the US. And over the years they have done much to block useful measures to counter climate change.

But I was not making a US-centric post. Leftists around the world fight to oppose any reasonable measures to fix climate problems.

The first step in fighting climate change has to be getting rid of all of the liberals.

1 Reply

@revelette1,

revelette1 wrote:

In a sane US, Trump would be impeached,

Setting aside for a moment the fact that Trump hasn't even done anything impeachable.... even if he had done something impeachable, no one is going to care after the way the Democrats allowed Bill Clinton to commit a long string of felonies in the White House.

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@layman,

Quote:

Climate alarmists seem to specialize in selective quotation and a total disregard of any issues they don't want to become public, eh?

Sorry I didn't give you more of a response this morning but I was heading out the door. But when I posted this

Quote:

Climate deniers work quickly to plug any leaks in their collapsing arguments against the scientific consensus, eh?

I was trying to point out that the National Review article was also "guilty" of selective quotation. They pulled one sentence from Holt's testimony — the quote attributed to Bates — and tried to use it to discredit Holt!

Quote:

Interviews with six of his former colleagues at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, including two former bosses, painted a picture of a room filled with brilliant scientists, and — like many workplaces — its fair share of mundane professional spats and jealousies.

Dr. Bates was demoted from a managerial role in 2012 under Thomas Karl — the lead author of the study Dr. Bates has questioned — after complaints over Dr. Bates’s professional conduct, according to the former colleagues and supervisors. He also became frustrated that his efforts to enforce strict procedures in the archiving of climate data were not getting as much attention as he had hoped.
(...)
Former colleagues said that, in aiming at his former boss, Dr. Bates was motivated by more than scientific zeal.

Ms. McGuirk said that one of her responsibilities had been to manage what she described as frequent complaints about Dr. Bates’s behavior in the workplace. Those complaints led to his demotion in 2012 from his post as head of the data center’s satellite and remote sensing division, where he supervised a dozen or so employees, to a position as principal scientist, which involved no managerial duties, she said.

“This episode is consistent with his history of outbursts,” she said.

Ms. McGuirk said that she herself had filed a complaint against Dr. Bates, based on his conduct at a staff meeting in 2009. At that meeting, Dr. Bates shouted that Ms. McGuirk was not trustworthy and belonged in jail, according to an internal log detailing complaints against the scientist that was viewed by The New York Times.

op.cit
The technical arguments for and against man-made climate change are too specialized to be adequately addressed with the usual brevity and panache which make for good reading on a message board like A2K. So we have our warring quotes, partisan sources, and personal attacks on scientists who we've never met. And so it goes.

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@Olivier5,

Ah, I didn't fully understand that it's happening there too <screams>. Sure, some of it, but I figured it was less than here.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Global warming is a fact.

No...climate change is a fact...I watch it change all the time.

1 Reply

An interesting book, with a good mix of anecdote/personal history/science is The Right to be Cold by Sheila Watt-Cloutier.

Ask your library to order it

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/the-right-to-be-cold-a-courageous-and-revelatory-memoir/article23449642/

The Arctic has been seeing a lot of negative changes over the past 30 years or so. Once you've seen the changes, it becomes harder to argue against them.

Anyone who was in NJ for Hurricane Sandy experienced some of the effects of the changes in the global climate.

There have been measurable changes in our climate. That's not a question. Root cause? That's arguable . I'm not 100% sure but if there is anything I can slow down the changes, I'm in.

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@Olivier5,

Wait, from my reading, the culling was all about not fueling fires, by (this is my word) grooming forests.

Alternately, I used to listen to a guy who was some kind of LA Fire captain and writer; Klaus Radke - he wrote a good manual. Meantime, there are others with that name out there.

2 Replies

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