Is The World Getting Better Or Worse?

I hope your reasons for stopping at red lights is more than just "rendering unto Caesar".A concern for safety, if not for others at least for your own, would be nice.Avoiding causing deadly accidents because it's the sane thing to do in society would also be appropriate, don't you think?

So ringo is right. You are not insane and reality takes precedence over the protections of prayer.This is good.

As long as you realize prayer cannot save you from the stupidity of people and the laws of physics.

Oh, of course not. One doesn't need to "believe" in reality.Do I believe in the goodness of humanity? In its evil? In the intellect and the stupidity, the drive and the apathy of humanity?Same answer. Agreed. Without.Not that much would change. We would just acknowledge more realistic reasons for our hate instead of the superstitious bs we so often use today. We don't know if your Jesus was real or a conglomerate or a fantasy. I happen to suspect that he was real but wasn't anything even close to who was portrayed. I suspect he was just another run-of-the-mill religious megalomaniac who didn't do/say any of the things his zealous followers allege. Like David Koresh, Abraham and Joel Osteen.Yes, it is alway harmful to let fantasies control your life. It has its place in the discussion. Heavy on the "worse" side. Stupidstition is like toothpaste, you can't put it back into the tube and throw it away. Religion has dug its poisoned claws into the human psyche and I fear you may be right. The best we can hope to do is belittle its adherents in hopes of limiting its reach.

A new warning from 11,000 scientists around the world was released stating that untold human suffering is unavoidable without deep and lasting shifts in human activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and other factors related to climate change. media release

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In a paper published today in BioScience, the authors from the University of Sydney, Oregon State University, University of Cape Town and Tufts University, along with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from 153 countries, declare a climate emergency, present data showing trends as benchmarks against which to measure progress and outline six areas of action to mitigate the worst effects of a human-induced climate change.

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Despite 40 years of major global negotiations, we have generally conducted business as usual and are essentially failing to address this crisis, said Professor William Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology in the Oregon State University College of Forestry and co-lead author of the paper. Climate change has arrived and is accelerating faster than many scientists expected.

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the paper

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Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to tell it like it is. On the basis of this obligation and the graphical indicators presented below, we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.

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(citing various international climate agreements) Yet greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are still rapidly rising, with increasingly damaging effects on the Earth's climate. An immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis (IPCC 2018).

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Especially disturbing are concurrent trends in the vital signs of climatic impacts (figure 2, supplemental file S2). Three abundant atmospheric GHGs (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide) continue to increase (see figure S1 for ominous 2019 spike in CO2), as does global surface temperature (figure 2a—2d).

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The paper goes on to highlight six critical and interrelated steps the world community need to take *now* to forstal the worst of the coming disaster.

The world must quickly implement massive energy efficiency and conservation practices and must replace fossil fuels.

We need to promptly reduce the emissions of short-lived climate pollutants, including methane (figure 2b), black carbon (soot), and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

We must protect and restore Earth's ecosystems. Phytoplankton, coral reefs, forests, savannas, grasslands, wetlands, peatlands, soils, mangroves, and sea grasses contribute greatly to sequestration of atmospheric CO2.

Eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products (figure 1c—d), especially ruminant livestock (Ripple et al. 2014), can improve human health and significantly lower GHG emissions.

Excessive extraction of materials and overexploitation of ecosystems, driven by economic growth, must be quickly curtailed to maintain long-term sustainability of the biosphere.

Still increasing by roughly 80 million people per year, or more than 200,000 per day (figure 1a—b), the world population must be stabilizedand, ideally, gradually reducedwithin a framework that ensures social integrity.

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We believe that the prospects will be greatest if decision-makers and all of humanity promptly respond to this warning and declaration of a climate emergency and act to sustain life on planet Earth, our only home.

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What is so sad is that Trump will continue to insist global climate change is a hoax, Big Carbon will step up their lobbying and their political contributions and the world's political bodies will end up ignoring this warning just as they have ignored all the others.

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Here 11,000 firemen are telling us our house is on fire and We The People will do nothing.

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Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

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Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

Because Trump is an ass. By denying the scientific issue the ass has made it into a greater political issue.Further, he has caused the deaths of millions of future Americans by catering to his billionaire brethren instead of to the long term welfare of the state. He has given aid and comfort to this nation's greatest enemy, climate change and he drags the rest of the planet to its doom with us. He should be jailed for treason against the people. He should be put on a ration of bread and water for the rest of his short miserable little life then drawn and quartered and boiled in oil.As we should do with all Nazis, someone should punch him in the nose ... hard.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Trump is a Nazi ass. He's an ass Nazi. His only trickling is trickling down his leg.It's a no brainer that the business climate would be getting richer when you force feed the swine all the money from the public trough. What's the latest deficit number $23 trillion? I haven't seen any of that. I haven't seen any income increase or benefits increase or any of this trickle down.Have you? Has anyone?Is the infrastructure improving? Is education advancing? Is medical care expanding?No.So where is all this public wealth that is supposed to be trickling out across the nation from sea to polluted sea? Exxon is seeing $275 billion of it. American Business profits are up almost $2 trillion a year. Not revenues, but profits.Where is this firehose of the nation's wealth trickling down to? None of us in the lower 98%.Trickle down my ass. Trickle down my Nazi billionaire ass! No there aren't. None at all. Remember you are the one who used the word "legitimate". Any come back has to be within that constraint.You can't do it. They don't exist on your "Burn the World" side of depravity.Your sources are either charlatans trying to grab their own trickle down from the stupid alt-reich gullible public or they are corporate shills lapping up some of that trickle down from their corporate masters.The world scientific community, in unison, is crying out a warning, and all you do is turn a deaf ear.We're fucked and it's all your fault!

1967-69 but we won't mention the top marginal tax rate of 70% back then and the $20 billion budget deficit back then while your Trickle Down Trump cuts billionaire tax rates to half that and racks up an $800++ billion deficit every year. Trump's Dump Down Deficits are created by massive fat cat tax breaks and defence spending. I guess that's why we get along so well. Takes one to know one.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

No, M'Lady. The deficit is borne of a lack of revenues and an over expenditure of discretionary funds.Increase war spending to $900 billion and give $200 billion in fat cat tax cuts.That is the Trump recipe for making the biggest deficit, the greatest deficit, a Trump sized deficit. The biggest asshole of a deficit in *any* nation's history.So much for his promise to balance the budget. Just like "draining the swamp" he accomplished just the opposite.Make America Broke Some More. Make America Corrupt Some More.Asshole.Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!

Don't know much about government finance. Just like your knowledge of geology, genetics and religion.But, hey, you're a christian. You have a built-in excuse to be so wrong about so many things.