Climate Change Denier comes in from the cold: SCIENCE!!!

And that point is wrong. It happened when the Roman Empire collapsed, for one example. Only if they can get fossil fuels. If most people accept alternative energy sources, fossil fuels won't be economically viable.Imagine loving Zeppelins so much that you "can't" give them up.

First, it wouldn't simply be a question of "saving the planet", but rather of ensuring our continued survival. It is far better and easier to prevent a disaster than it is to try to survive that disaster or even try to ignore the disaster (eg, lung/larynx/mouth cancer victims who have had their throat and half their face removed surgically and yet continue to smoke -- in Austria, I saw a pack of cigarettes whose health warning label was a graphic color photo of cancer surgical aftermaths).A possible analogy might be your car. You just keep driving it without ever performing any maintenance on it, not even an oil change. Then when you're driving through the middle of nowhere (driven there, had no cell phone coverage) your car breaks down completely, basically just falls apart on you. Now you are faced with a big survival emergency and I'll bet that you didn't pack any kind of emergency kit or supplies either, did you? And yet if you had just done what you needed to do to maintain your car that would not have happened. An even worse scenario would be that your car would fail in such a manner as to cause catastrophic collateral damage including mass casualties. All because you were too selfish and penny-pinching to meet your responsibilities in maintaining your car.Second, yes, there is always human nature. I want to share an image file, but to my knowledge I still cannot post images on this forum (Percy think's it's a http-v-https security issue and says he will try to fix it), so I'll provide the link to Ed Babinski's Facebook page where he posts it (if it doesn't work, go to that link): Update Your Browser | Facebook .In the meantime, I will describe it to you (setting a good example which you will yet again refuse to even consider following). It depicts a climate summit in which the speaker has listed the many benefits of addressing the climate change problem. One person in the audience complains angrily to the person next to him: "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"As we all witnessed in your adamant and intractable opposition to the clear teachings of Jesus, the only way to convince many people to do the right thing is to make it too expensive for them to continue to do the wrong thing. Too many people, especially Christians, are just too selfish and greedy and lacking in empathy or altruism.Starting on page 30 of his book, The Authoritarians (2006 -- available for free or for cheap at The Authoritarians ), Bob Altemeyer describes a simulation game that his son ran in which the participants run world governments and have to deal with events and with each other (my son was in such an exercise for one of his public administration classes). Bob used that exercise for his own experiments to see how the game would run with all high-RWA (right-wing-authoritarians) or all low-RWA participants. Here are some excerpts from that book starting at page 30 (go there to read the entire account) -- actually, the entire account is so good and informative that we cannot find what to cut out, not unlike Biden's COVID bill:

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Unauthoritarians and Authoritarians: Worlds of Difference

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By now you must be developing a feel for what high RWAs think and do, and also an impression of low RWAs. Do you think you know each group well enough to predict what they’d do if they ran the world? One night in October, 1994 I let a group of low RWA university students determine the future of the planet (you didn’t know humble researchers could do this, did you!). Then the next night I gave high RWAs their kick at the can.

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The setting involved a rather sophisticated simulation of the earth’s future called the Global Change Game, which is played on a big map of the world by 50-70 participants who have been split into various regions such as North America, Africa, India and China. The players are divided up according to current populations, so a lot more students hunker down in India than in North America. The game was designed to raise environmental awareness, and before the exercise begins players study up on their region’s resources, prospects, and environmental issues.

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Then the facilitators who service the simulation call for some member, any member of each region, to assume the role of team leader by simply standing up. Once the Elitesin the world have risen to the task they are taken aside and given control of their region’s bank account. They can use this to buy factories, hospitals, armies, and so on from the game bank, and they can travel the world making deals with other Elites. They also discover they can discretely put some of their region’s wealth into their own pockets, to vie for a prize to be given out at the end of the simulation to the World’s Richest Person. Then the game begins, and the world goes wherever the players take it for the next forty years which, because time flies in a simulation, takes about two and a half hours.

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The Low RWA Game

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By carefully organizing sign-up booklets, I was able to get 67 low RWA students to play the game together on October 18th . (They had no idea they had been funneled into this run of the experiment according to their RWA scale scores; indeed they had probably never heard of right-wing authoritarianism.) Seven men and three women made themselves Elites. As soon as the simulation began, the Pacific Rim Elite called for a summit on the Island Paradise of Tasmania. All the Elites attended and agreed to meet there again whenever big issues arose. A world-wide organization was thus immediately created by mutual consent.

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Regions set to work on their individual problems. Swords were converted to ploughshares as the number of armies in the world dropped. No wars or threats of wars occurred during the simulation. [At one point the North American Elite suggested starting a war to his fellow region-aires (two women and one guy), but theytold him to go fly a kite--or words to that effect.]

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An hour into the game the facilitators announced a (scheduled) crisis in the earth’s ozone layer. All the Elites met in Tasmania and contributed enough money to buy new technology to replenish the ozone layer.

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Other examples of international cooperation occurred, but the problems of the Third World mounted in Africa and India. Europe gave some aid but North America refused to help. Africa eventually lost 300 million people to starvation and disease, and India 100 million.

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Populations had grown and by the time forty years had passed the earth held 8.7 billion people, but the players were able to provide food, health facilities, and jobs for almost all of them. They did so by demilitarizing, by making a lot of trades that benefited both parties, by developing sustainable economic programs, and because the 32 Elites diverted only small amounts of the treasury into their own pockets. (The North American Elite hoarded the most.)

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One cannot blow off four hundred million deaths, but this was actually a highly successful run of the game, compared to most. No doubt the homogeneity of the players, in terms of their RWA scores and related attitudes, played a role. Low RWAs do not typically see the world as Us versus Them. They are more interested in cooperation than most people are, and they are often genuinely concerned about the environment. Within their regional groups, and in the interactions of the Elites, these first-year students would have usually found themselves on the same page--and writ large on that page was, Let’s Work Together and Clean Up This Mess. The game’s facilitators said they had never seen as much international cooperation in previous runs of the simulation. With the exception of the richest region, North America, the lows saw themselves as interdependent and all riding on the same merry-go-round.

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The High RWA Game

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The next night 68 high RWAs showed up for their ride, just as ignorant of how they had been funneled into this run of the experiment as the low RWA students had been the night before. The game proceeded as usual. Background material was read, Elites (all males) nominated themselves, and the Elites were briefed. Then the wedgies started. As soon as the game began, the Elite from the Middle East announced the price of oil had just doubled. A little later the former Soviet Union (known as the Confederation of Independent States in 1994) bought a lot of armies and invaded North America. The latter had insufficient conventional forces to defend itself, and so retaliated with nuclear weapons. A nuclear holocaust ensued which killed everyone on earth--7.4 billion people--and almost all other forms of life which had the misfortune of co-habitating the same planet as a species with nukes.

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When this happens in the Global Change Game, the facilitators turn out all the lights and explain what a nuclear war would produce. Then the players are given a second chance to determine the future, turning back the clock to two years before the hounds of war were loosed. The former Soviet Union however rebuilt its armies and invaded China this time, killing 400 million people. The Middle East Elite then called for a United Nations meeting to discuss handling future crises, but no agreements were reached.

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At this point the ozone-layer crisis occurred but--perhaps because of the recent failure of the United Nations meeting--no one called for a summit. Only Europe took steps to reduce its harmful gas emissions, so the crisis got worse. Poverty was spreading unchecked in the underdeveloped regions, which could not control their population growth. Instead of dealing with the social and economic problems back home, Elites began jockeying among themselves for power and protection, forming military alliances to confront other budding alliances. Threats raced around the room and the Confederation of Independent States warned it was ready to start another nuclear war. Partly because their Elites had used their meager resources to buy into alliances, Africa and Asia were on the point of collapse. An Elite called for a United Nations meeting to deal with the crises--take your pick--and nobody came.

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By the time forty years had passed the world was divided into armed camps threatening each other with another nuclear destruction. One billion, seven hundred thousand people had died of starvation and disease. Throw in the 400 million who died in the Soviet-China war and casualties reached 2.1 billion. Throw in the 7.4 billion who died in the nuclear holocaust, and the high RWAs managed to kill 9.5 billion people in their world--although we, like some battlefield news releases, are counting some of the corpses twice.

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The authoritarian world ended in disaster for many reasons. One was likely the character of their Elites, who put more than twice as much money in their own pockets as the low RWA Elites had. (The Middle East Elite ended up the World’s Richest Man; part of his wealth came from money he had conned from Third World Elites as payment for joining his alliance.) But more importantly, the high RWAs proved incredibly ethnocentric. There they were, in a big room full of people just like themselves, and they all turned their backs on each other and paid attention only to their own group. They too were all reading from the same page, but writ large on their page was, Care About Your Own; We Are NOT All In This Together.

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The high RWAs also suffered because, while they say on surveys that they care about the environment, when push comes to shove they usually push and shove for the bucks. That is, they didn’t care much about the long-term environmental consequences of their economic acts. For example a facilitator told Latin America that converting much of the region’s forests to a single species of tree would make the ecosystem vulnerable. But the players decided to do it anyway because the tree’s lumber was very profitable just then. And the highs proved quite inflexible when it came to birth control. Advised that just letting things go would cause the populations in underdeveloped areas to explode, the authoritarians just let things go.

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Now the Global Change Game is not the world stage, university students are not world leaders, and starting a nuclear holocaust in a gymnasium is not the same thing as launching real missiles from Siberia and North Dakota. So the students’ behavior on those two successive nights in 1994 provides little basis for drawing conclusions about the future of the planet. But some of what happened in this experiment rang true to me. I especially thought, I’ve seen this show before as I sat on the sidelines and watched the high RWAs create their very own October crisis.

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Edited by dwise1, : Removed footnote numbers from quoted section

No, but it describes fairly thoroughly the differences between left and right wing thinking...at least in regards o Authoritarian tendencies. Each side tends to believe stereotypes about the other side. In general,however, one group believs in caring for the group (of humanity on the planet) above their own self interests. The other side does not...but not simply because they are selfish or power hungry. The Hight RWA believe that it is detrimental to be forced to arrive at a consensus that impinges on personal freedom. What would happen, for instance, if the majority was poor and needed a lions share of the funds shared? That does not sound fair and equitable to me, and I wouldn't automatically believe that Jesus would support it. It may well be that He would hope that the RWA group freely chose to be altruistic but He would never force the issue.

No, I don't claim that they are. Some scientists, not nearly all, are quite skilled at making a seamless transition from actual science, to what their own projections are about what will happen in the future, and what should politically be done about it. The good scientists who don't bother to do that don't get much attention, while the ones who DO do that get plenty of attention, resulting in profits for themselves. No, I'd only have to show that they trumpet some things much louder than they do others. One example, it's seldom mentioned that the world population has multiplied by 4 in the past 100 years. Or that today's non essential uses of fossil fuels, like pleasure boats, have skyrocketed in only the past 50 years, and were practically non existent 100 years ago. I just did a quick Google search on "non essential fossil fuel uses". Didn't see anything that broke down the percentages of fossil fuel use for essential uses versus non essential uses. That's a big red flag for politics. That's because, with few exceptions, the rest of the world points to the U.S. and says "It's all your fault - you fix it!" They have little desire to change anything they're doing. I don't ignore them, I believe them. I ignore the doom and gloom predictions of what it will cause by power seeking governments.

It's not, thanks for admitting it. But it's contentious with some here, after being posted here one full year ago, I just proved Message 658 100% WRONG. As you might have noticed, it caused a two posters here to have a complete emotional meltdown. I used Texas as an example that unexpected challenges and problems can happen if something new is implemented and depended on too quickly. The world isn't ready to replace fossil fuels in any meaningful way in the near future. Fossil fuels are TIME TESTED. Any complete replacements for them also need to be time tested, and it takes time.

We can't go back to primitive, labor intensive methods of the horse and buggy days, when the world population was 1/5 of what it is today, and expect to keep up with current volumes of what is required in today's world.

For a hundred + years good scientists have been screaming their heads off about anthropic warming and getting zero attention just as you describe. It IS the good scientist that is the source of our gloom and doom. They are the ones making the predictions.And with a profit motive. They get to save the world. That’s big payback.You want to follow the $$ trail you can’t go wrong looking at fossil fuel profits. We’re talking $billions+ per day.$billions+ per day!Now right there is a strong reason to shut down talk of anthropic warming, its implications, its impending physical, economic and political costs and who pays.You think any of those eco-warriors makes that much?You want to see motive in money? Clean your glasses. No, you conservative windbag, you have to do just as Taq requires. We don’t care about your politically slanted lists and illogical bias. We care about the reality. The important parts like the science, not this politically motivated disinformation wrapped in minutia crap that you’re spreading. It is. And we have to.But with the rest of humanity trying to emulate us the problem has become global, and the whole world knows it, whether your demented sources care to see that news or not. I guess it helps your side to kick sand in the face of the global consensus. In a world divided you can continue to rake it in while you burn the place down.You folks are evil. The gloom and doom is coming from the science. Or are you saying that shifting weather patterns, altered ocean currents, and thus shifting droughts and floods altering food production over vast areas of the continents, is not, somehow, amazingly, not supported by the science?Oh, That's right. Your beer is cold now and all this gloom and doom stuff is just so far away. No need to upset the oligarchs with this talk of timelines beyond next quarter's bottom line.And as for power seeking governments, the reality, discernable to most viewers of politics and power structures, is that government is in the hands of the conservative capitalist elite sourced by that $billions+ per day. You can buy a lot a republicans with that kind of cash. Whoa! Trump’s got nothing on you when it comes to making false claims right in the face of the evidence. Good show Marc. Oh, Marc, Marc, we know you and your type. You can’t even raise a slight palpitation with anyone here. Then you failed, Bunkie. The Texas situation had nothing to do with technology and everything to do with republican politics. What foolish crap is this? You think we care if the source becomes XX? In this society the only requirement is that it work. Time tested, my ass. If it replaces carbon bring it on!And regardless of what you might hear in the back hallways of stupidity on power generation, do try to use less of the stuff, ok? We know. That’s part of the gloom and doom we’ve been talking about.The transition is happening. Can’t be stopped. Those that can adapt will go on. Wall Street will find the rudders to keep things moving as long as the government can pump in the liquidity to keep all the ships afloat. When that stops businesses collapse, economies collapse, societies collapse. Kinda the definition of gloom and doom. We’re not going to have much choice. Major tipping points are coming and going with no attempts to action.I know you don’t believe in the gloom and doom of tipping points but the science, uninfluenced by $billions+ per day, is getting so much better so fast that we have started to realize just how too late we are on a lot of this stuff already. We’re fucked.A thousand years from now most of humanity will have rediscovered the non-oil versions of everything on your list while the community gathers on the commons to pray in union that the plague and the horde of patriots will pass them by tonight.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Congratulations. So what, it was a totally stupid position.We all know that our modern way of life is built on the use of fossil fuels but we also now know that that use is killing the world. So it has to change. Unfortunately it has too whether it's ready or not. Left to deniers like you, we would never be ready.

And yet we're always trying to create more jobs. The current levels are not sustainable.

You need to share what you are smoking.What makes you think recreational boating is a significant source for increases in atmospheric CO2? A quick google shows that there are 12 million boats registered in the US compared to 270+ million cars. Already, boats are 5% of that of cars. I highly, highly doubt that most boat owners are burning more fuel in their boats than they are there cars on an annual basis. At most, I would say that carbon from boats is 1% of what cars produce. Cars account for 28% of all carbon released, so that would put boats at 0.28%.Do you really think boats are the problem here? That's complete bullshit. Many countries are actively reducing their carbon emissions. All they are asking is that the world's second largest producer of carbon emissions join with them.You are concerned that people aren't focusing on boats which release less than 0.3% of total carbon, and yet you think the US should get a complete pass even though the US is responsible for 15% of total carbon emissions worldwide. Think about it. Dunning-Kruger in overdrive.

What do you think of the idea of studies and discussion to determine essential versus non-essential uses of fossil fuels? Why aren't you sputtering with rage and calling Tangle every vulgar name you can think of? I'd like to see you two discuss it, better yet, you and 10 of your helpers discuss it with only him. If he wanted to, he could demolish all of you in a week, because he'd have a little thing called the TRUTH on his side. Republican politics didn't bring green, untested, solar and wind power to Texas in recent years, to the extent that it failed them last month. But increasingly liberal voters in Texas did. Where did they come from? I'm glad I pretended you asked that.

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A 2020 Texas Relocation Report by Texas Realtors showed that 86,164 Californians moved to Texas as new residents in 2018, and it is showing no signs of slowing down.

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The cost of living in California has increased to the point to where it is not affordable for the average family to stay in the West Coast state, so the majority are looking to places like Texas where housing and the overall cost of living is more affordable.

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https://www.txmemes.com/...rnians-moving-to-texas-went-up-36The California liberals have screwed it all up, and now they're moving to Texas, and are well on their way to screwing it up just as badly. Let's see what happens in a few more years. Yes, wind and solar worked great in Texas. Until February 2021.I put up 2 links back in Message 682 about new technology (still in its infancy) about making tires from grass, to try to help RAZD out. . Both of those links still work. As I pointed out somewhere, not in that exact message, that rubber tires in the 1930's, 40's,50's were much more dangerous (subject to sudden blowouts) than tires are today. That's because the process of making them was incrementally improved slowly, over the following decades. No interstates in the 30's and 40's, 30 or 40 mph was all the faster many people cared to go in those days. And yet there were still many more injuries and deaths from tire blowouts back then than there are today, where it's now routine to go 70 or 80 mph today. Are you ready to go 70 mph on tires made of grass? Time tested, your ass, yes. I've asked since the beginning of this thread, many times, several global warming alarmists; What specifically do you want to be done about it? I never get an answer. What action do you want? Here's a repeat of a link I showed earlier;Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions - Competitive Enterprise InstituteWhat's different about now? Why should we believe doom and gloom predictions now?

Since you have been offended by AZPaul3, are you now ready to discuss this with him? I suspect you're not - this place seems to be much more about shouting down conservatives than it is any desire to find out what the truth is.DID YOU NOTICE THAT THE SAME 3 POSTERS GAVE YOU BOTH APPROVAL DOTS? I LOVE this place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What specifically has to change? Do you think discussions and debate about essential versus non essential uses of fossil fuels should be happening? I'm not denying that it isn't, but it isn't in any noticeable way. If you know of a link where it is, show me.

Green power does not provide anywhere near the majority of electricity to the texas grid. Conventional power plants failed as well, plants that the electric utility had been warned were vulnerable to extreme weather after similar situations.Bloomberg - Are you a robot?Republican policies of cutting corners to save money brought this on.

Willful ignorance and utter disregard of reality caused the Texas blackout.

The significant increases in sales and size of the recreational boating industry.U.S. Recreational Boating Industry Sees Seventh Consecutive Year of Growth in 2018, Expects Additional Increase in 2019 One is essential, one is non essential. If that means nothing to you, okay, but it does to some people, and it's logical. It's also logical to assume that a significant percentage of gasoline powered boats are not registered. As that link shows, 95% of boats on the water are less than 26' in length. An insignificant size to justify registration, in the minds of many. Could be, when combined with all other forms of non-essential, really large boats. Here's a list of cruise ships currently in operation;List of cruise ships - WikipediaIt shows the year they went into service. A rough count shows almost 3/4 of them were built since the year 2000. Let's see, then we have politicians and other millionaire's yachts. Numbers of millionaires and billionaires increases every year. Non essential uses of fossil fuels could be a real eye opener, if only someone was interested in studying it. Yes I have, and I'm wondering what we should do about it. "Regulate" is the usual very vague term I often hear. It means of course, that some small segment of the population, needs to lose their long-time freedom to use fossil fuels as they see fit. Yet no one commits to any speculation on just how, or who. It's different, yet just a volatile as slavery was in the late 1850's, and could have the same result.