Don’t worry Willem: just stick around long enough and you’ll be seeing a bonfire of all the idiot throwaway gadgetry that’s getting swarmed over us lately; mostly inadequate replacements for actual human interaction.
Need I mention what’s going to cancel them all? (Hint: has the same initials as ‘Lethal Dose’… 
) Beware, when walking under tall buildings, of suiciding Hariris, as their sick dreams all go to ratshit…
Well, I’d find it pretty difficult to prove, say, “photosynthesis” in my backyard. First I’d have to take it on trust that O2 and CO2 exist and to trust some machine that measures these quantities. That already assumes a lot of accepted theory. There are others which are less easy to replicate still – eg the theory of evolution.
Yes, quite agree. And of course, the theories may be false (eg Newtonian mechanics at very large speeds) or even may look very different if other concepts were named and become “established”.
Re climate and CO2, I also agree that this is highly complex, with very many variables in the system. By its very nature it is not something that can be replicated in a lab. Of course, one can resort to computer simulations – based on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. And here, over the course of decades of research, the results are pretty much a consensus. That doesn’t make it a certainty but, as you indicate with your bookie’s persona, it starts to look reasonably likely that there will be “many upheaving effects” – like sea levels rising, more storms, and more resulting chaos.
Indeed, it seems pretty hopeless especially given the short time scale. But a few things are crucial I think. One is for people to come to the realization that they’re part of nature and really do not need the endless array of conveniences to “protect” them from nature they’re led to believe are essential. That includes much medicine. Also more surprising things like shoes: Shin Edo
Ah, great stories. Actually two of my favourites in this type of science fiction.
Hi Rob
No, I had missed that. In fairness, though, intensive livestock farming is a disgusting practice in general. However it looks like this had more to do with acid rain and water pollution than climate change. With a good sprinkle of WEF edicts to eat less meat.
Small farmers all over Europe are going to the wall right now. Very worrying…
Cheers
Good points there @Willem.
I would add that it’s not only computer simulations that we’re talking about. There are lots of actual practical experiments being done to verify the pieces of the warming picture - for example lab experiments that show the capacity and mechanism by which CO2 can trap heat. Additionally there are an enormous amount of direct measurements that flesh the picture out -from beneath the oceans to the surface, the atmosphere to satellites.
Finally there are a huge number of proxy measurements that also back up the theory and fill out the picture.
It is a complex field but there is a lot of hard info that backs up the basic theory that the planet is currently warming at an unprecedented rate, due primarily to human activity.
This basic principle is not controversial. Sure, the details are hard to pin down, but the general direction of travel is not.
Cheers
Hi Willem. Thanks for your concern for my conceptual welfare!. PP wrote on 25 June on this thread “The scientific consensus could be wrong”. Whatever the context he wrote that within I would regard that as a pretty sane attitude to every scientific consensus, in fact, any consensus. When you realise how you’ve been lied to and fooled by authorities hiding behind contrived consensuses (consensi?) in respect of so many things over a long lifetime you are obliged to take a long hard look at EVERYTHING you’ve been told from when you first understood language.
Talking of language, even the meanings of words is now up for grabs by those who have assumed authority over us, and are being shifted to suit their purposes. Even down to substituting ‘that’ for ‘who’ in everyday use which is helping dehumanise us. You could argue that the evolution of language is a consensual process. I would say you can eff off with your consensuses. Unanimity will have to include me and i’ll settle for nothing less.
Hope I haven’t lost you too W!
Hi Alan, it wasn’t out of such concern and I hope I didn’t come across as patronizing! In fact I agree more or less with what you just wrote. Perhaps it was just the way you phrased that earlier post. It occurred to me that much of our understanding of the world comes from accepted ideas and theories, and that these are essentially consensus opinions. How do we know we have a pancreas, that there is a `gas’ called Oxygen and that we need this substance, etc… Life would be unbearably impractical if we needed some direct proof of each step*.
All this is not to say at all that following the consensus is the right way to go. Far from it, they ought to be challenged, especially anything that remotely smells fishy. Typically (so it seems to me), the longer a consensus has been around, the more valid it is and the more proof is required to dislodge them. So “quaranteeing the healthy” goes completely against the earlier consensus of only “quaranteeing the sick”.
*Of course, we can easily go through life without knowing any of these things like all animals do, but then it’s difficult to argue about these issues in the first place
Crikey! Talk about a short life span. But it all adds to the GDP, so must be good…
There is a new plan to create this mega city.
All the usual inane words and phrases are there: “cities are too small to compete” “the ‘battle of the cities’, in which mega cities compete for investment and talent”, they are “creating a very strong player in this ‘battle of the titans’”, “Our city marketing is too fragmented and inefficient’” etc.
Anyway according to some critics, the “environmental” policy is there to force the farmers off the land, so that these areas can be developed for eg housing. (See eg Vastgoedmafia rooft boerengrond via milieuorganisaties en krijgt er subsidies bij kado - YouTube – unfortunately it’s in Dutch! Maybe there’s a translation out there, but I haven’t found it.)
Not that I want to weigh in for this debate, but …
If that someone was the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the BBC all said it (and to the main players you can add Sky News, CNN, MSNBC, etc), most would agree that that is the case!
And five years later did anything materialise?
Weird isn’t it, the way all these mad mega-projects are getting pushed just as the means - the real, physical energy-and-materials means - are beginning their long shrinkage away from availability; not to mention capital (in its real, non-hallucinated forms).
I expect that quite a few of such projects will never be finished, even if they get launched, as the means choke away, and it all grinds to a halt.
Their real future - as JMGreer describes it in both his futurist fiction and his non-fiction essays - is a landscape of many ruins, where a guild order of professionals - the Ruinmen - lead dangerous lives slowly taking down the white-elephant structures with hand-tools and much muscle, to salvage the steel and other re-usable materials in them.
And meanwhile, a much-reduced human population grubs up a MUCH simpler living; and the wilderness begins to creep back wherever a niche opens up. Wolves in Limburg? Don’t deny it too soon; they’re already nearby in Deutschland…
That’s what makes this so muddled. In a way it was much clearer when the vast majority of the news media ignored or downplayed climate change (most of the last few decades).
Now the disaster capitalists have decided they can make money out of climate change, the media have jumped in. But only for narratives that point the way their capitalist paymasters want.
Sadly, for the rest of us, the planet continues warming and ecosystems are suffering. We’re expecting 40 degrees in england next week. The last highest temp was recorded in cambridge (about 15 miles from me) a couple years back.
Dont let the media fool you into disbelieving… the shit is hitting the fan.
Cheers
Was this because the “data” for about 18 years showed little signs of any increase in global average surface temperatures?
James Corbett has some interesting videos on this:
the last references this study:
and this interesting commentary:
this has a Covid ONS fixing feeling to me, imo.
cheers
No, I don’t think so.
I think it’s much more likely that the media went out of their way to hide stories that the robber-barons who own them want hidden. The fact that capitalism (and other isms) are leading us to a catastrophe is one such story. They are still doing this, by the way.
Im not sure exactly what significance you think the 18 year period you are referring to has on the global picture of the last 2,000 years… perhaps you can explain it?
Im also somewhat confused by how you put scare quotes around so many basic words.
Or “words” as you might put it…
Hi @RhisiartGwilym , although both James Corbett and Iain Davis are “only” investigative journalists/researchers they do a good job in explaining the alternative views to the “official narrative”
cheers
PS as to our current heatwave here’s a Consevative view writing for TCW:
cheers
Hi @CJ1
I would suggest that this is because you don’t actually read any data that conflicts with your predetermined position.
Full marks for reading one side. How about actually trying to read the other? You could start with the 18 year period you refer to above… theres been a lot written about it.
Good luck!
Hi @PontiusPrimate , check out Koonin’s cv and current position as expressed in his book - his view is centrist as far as I can see. I would also place Judith Curry in that bracket.
Who do you recommend that is free from bias and undue influences?
Cheers
And the record before that was set at Brogdale, the weather station is at the back of extensive orchards, no reflected heat from concrete, tarmac etc.
Photo from a few years back
For a good example of how woke corporatism is piling on see
These felons are currently astro turfing in NZ and no doubt many other places too
There are many researchers who are convinced that the robber-barons actually fund green protests, green projects and of course green finance. We think big oil wants to kill the green movement whereas these researches maintain the reverse is the truth.
I was suggesting a reason for the msm adopting a low profile over that period which you referred to - they are clearly pro government platforms seeking to confirm their policies to the public. The public would not be persuaded of severe and catastrophic global warming if average global temperatures were constantly shown to have hardly changed in 18 years this century - they react to weather events today and are given global warming excuses despite there being no provable connection. They have little interest in the 2000 year perspective.
We have learnt under the Covid regime how plain words can be changed to meet policy needs!
I deliberately put “data” in quotes as certain historical records of global average temperatures reported by NASA seemed to have changed - without the general public realising there have been changes not just to predictions but to past satellite records. They were merely told by the MSM that global warming was even worse than we thought it was!
If cherry-picked data can be altered so easily by the data providers then there is a question as to what sort of data we are dealing with. This is what is being claimed by many researchers, I am only observing their claims here.
The question was raised - I think by James Corbett on the lines of : Do you not think it odd that satellite data has been altered only from1998 , and not before, where 1998 was the start of the 18 year “pause” in the global average temperatures. Of course the “data” now shows a rise.
cheers
