Why Our Brains Weren't Made To Deal With Climate Change

[Lord of Planar]

Really? Riddle me this: why would the primary source of all energy in the modern developed world require any subsidies?

And in your esteemed opinion: how much subsidization is allowed before you stop calling it a "free market"?

My answer is this. If you use the traditional definition of subsidy, meaning a subsidy is a direct payment or tax credit, and not a tax exemption, then I would say no means of profit ventures should be subsidized. Now with the word subsidy, having its definition reduced in accuracy to include anything considered of value, the fossil fuel industry does get more in subsidies than smaller means of energy.

You could now say almost everything is subsidized with the expanded definition of the word, rendering the word meaningless. And that is just what it is now. Meaningless in such debates.

I have asked this before, and I don't think you ever even acknowledged the question. Do you have a breakdown by the type of subsidy? Like low or free land lease rates. Tax credits or tax exemptions? Direct payments, etc?

 

[watsup]

Right . Cutting through that usual blizzard of sarcastic demeaning BS in response to every post I make . What is your solution to this 'problem' and what proof do you have it would work ?

What is your target and why would it be better than what we already have ? You are the guys with the 'sky is going to fall you don't do what we say ' agenda after all so you are the guys with the very big questions to answer ?

PS I like emojis

You continue to hide behind the same boring questions over and over.

 

[flogger]

You continue to hide behind the same boring questions over and over.

They are boring to you despite being fundamental to your position. Thats why you will never answer

I have nothing to hide I just want answers ..... sorry if its confusing

 

[Lord of Planar]

as I explained (in a prior thread),... given the space constraints (for an illustration) selected CH4 (i.e. "methane") as the hydrocarbon fuel used in combustion reaction example because when I looked for "benzine" which a longer chain of carbon molecules (that is another example of fossil fuel),... couldn't find one as spiffy looking (that appealed to my eye)

https://debatepolitics.com/threads/july-4th-tribal-politics-and-climate-change.453594/#post-1074254543

That link is broken, and what I said about it the image was that since your source material is in error, how can we trust any of your source material at its word?

If you are going to post errors, and rationalize it instead of acknowledging it, you have zero credibility with me, and others I bet.

FYI the 20 lbs figure of CO2 created per gal of gas is from NASA (actually the 20 lbs figure is rounded up)

https://climatekids.nasa.gov/review/carbon/gasoline.html

And I didn't disagree that there is a much larger mass of CO2 from from burning gasoline. I am saying garbage in, garbage out. Your post was garbage.

 

[Germinator]

That link is broken, and what I said about it the image was that since your source material is in error, how can we trust any of your source material at its word?

If you are going to post errors, and rationalize it instead of acknowledging it, you have zero credibility with me, and others I bet.

And I didn't disagree that there is a much larger mass of CO2 from from burning gasoline. I am saying garbage in, garbage out. Your post was garbage.

don't know what happened to the link,...

whatever seems ya conveniently ignored the part where I asked a specific follow up,... about specific statements you made

Lord of Planar said:
CO2 is good for plants. I would like to see it rise and stabilize to about 600 ppm.

Lord of Planar said:
I only see good, in creating more farmland and being a critical molecule for photosynthesis.

so for a third time what's the logic,... given science indicates in the PETM when CO2 concentrations were higher,... plants grew lazy,... IOW w/ elevated CO2 levels plants needed fewer stomata (when this happens there isn't as much photosynthesis)

Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide are associated with reductions in protein and multiple key nutrients in rice, according to a new field study by an international team of scientists.

https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/increasing-co2-levels-reduce-rices-nutritional-value

also should mention the one should consider given elevated CO2 levels the boundary condition "math" (i.e. the finite amount of various soil nutrients)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2390258

just saying this "tripe" about knock on effects of elevated CO2 levels should be accounted for AND perhaps your inability to answer how you arrived at elevated CO2 levels is"good" is just another example why "Our Brains Weren't Made To Deal With Climate Change" (since people post errors, and rationalize it instead of acknowledging it)

 

[watsup]

They are boring to you despite being fundamental to your position. Thats why you will never answer

I have nothing to hide I just want answers ..... sorry if its confusing

They are not fundamental. You have refused to answer the actual fundamental questions in the past.

 

[flogger]

They are not fundamental. You have refused to answer the actual fundamental questions in the past.

You are the guys with the trendy current agenda so just answer the challenges put to you on it ?

Simples

 

[watsup]

You are the guys with the agenda so just answer the challenges put to you on it ?

Simples

They are not really "challenges" because you don't understand the fundamental basis of CO2 and thus have one idea what the "challenges" really are.

 

[Lord of Planar]

Serious Germinator. Like I said: "If you are going to post errors, and rationalize it instead of acknowledging it, you have zero credibility with me, and others I bet."

Damn. Do you even acknowledge the error?

You started a thread with no regard to accuracy, and expect is to be wired to accept it when it is laced with fallacies?

Why should we believe anything you post now?

 

[flogger]

They are not really "challenges" because you don't understand the fundamental basis of CO2 and thus have one idea what the "challenges" really are.

Proving your position has any kind of empirical scientific validation whatsoever would seem pretty fundamental to me, but hey call me a traditionalist

 

[watsup]

Proving your position has any kind of empirical scientific validation whatsoever would seem pretty fundamental to me, but hey call me a traditionalist

If you can ever figure out what "empirical scientific validation" actually means, then perhaps we can move forward.

 

[flogger]

If you can ever figure out what "empirical scientific validation" actually means, then perhaps we can move forward.

Oh the irony

I can count bud so lets 'move forward ' on that basis

 

[watsup]

Oh the irony

OH the irony!

 

[flogger]

OH the irony!

Couldn't you at least have come up with something else !

 

[HangLow]

​

 

[Hafnium1979]

Oh the irony

I can count bud so lets 'move forward ' on that basis

Let's talk "empirical evidence" for a moment. Let us say you walk into a room and flick a switch on the wall. Suddenly the light comes on in the room. There is a very real possibility that that light switch is NOT connected to the light but it was pure random chance that the light came on right as you flicked the switch. That's because you have NO DIRECT EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that there is a necessary connection between the switch and the light. You simply cannot ever truly "know" this. Even if you could see the wires running from the switch to the light. All of it could be purely perfectly random chance association that flipping the switch and the light coming on were connected.

You cannot "experience directly" this cause and effect.

NOW, you can repeat this experiment a hundred times and each time the light comes on remember that it could all be pure random chance....flipping a coin 101 times and getting 101 heads is NOT impossible. Mathematically unlikely, statistically unlikely but not a perfect probability = 0.

What you have done, however, is collect sufficient data to infer that there is a necessary relationship between the two. The best you can say is that there is a strong correlation between flipping the switch and the light coming on. But you can NEVER make the perfect claim that this relationship IS.

That's the limitation of empiricism. It's a classic that they teach in intro philosophy classes but it really goes to the heart of science. Science isn't in the game of absolute proof. That's math. Science is best estimate of the most likely true hypothesis. Nothing more.

Let's talk about your supposed area of "expertise", mining geology. You remember? The one you claimed you had a PhD in? Yeah, the earth has several layers as you may remember. The interesting thing is we have never put a drill bit down into the mantle, let alone the outer or inner core. We've seen bits of the mantle preserved in things like kimberlite pipes (google that) and a few ophiolite sequences as I recall, but those are all old and not a real clue of what those rocks are like at depth. And, again, we've never seen anything from the core.

So how do we know about the aesthenosphere? We know plate tectonics is real but we have to infer from data that the aesthenosphere has a "plastic rheology", in that it can flow and deform. It's what the tectonic plates move around on. But, again, we only know about the aesthenosphere from seismic wave attenuation and refraction...nothing direct.

How do we know what the core is made of? It's all inference. We see p-wave shadow zones (google that) we see how s-waves propagate through. But it's all inference. We can infer density and liquid state of the outer core but what do we REALLY know EMPIRICALLY?

Do you see the point yet?

 

[ecofarm]

Short term thinking also hinders global liberation.

 

[LostInSeattle]

Yes, some of us have brains that disregard tripe.

This image for example is wrong, and unsourced. I'll bet you copied it from a blogger that doesn't really know squat:

View attachment 67346582
It shows the combustion of methane, but speaks of gasoline.

A gallon of gasoline only weighs 6.1 pounds, but it does produce about 20 pounds of CO2.

I see stuff like that, and automatically know that the person who posted it due to thge number of errors, doesn't know what they speak of, and believes what ever the blogger of some other activist told them.

My brain is not wired to accept BS, like so many other do.

Why would I waste time looking at hours of material you say is good, when this image says all I need to know about the material you think is good?

What is your beef with this? Where are all the errors?

Yes, the poster chose a methane molecule to illustrate the combustion, but since the molecular structure of gasoline varies between 4 and 12 carbon molecules, it seems a reasonable simplification to use something much simpler, but similar, like methane.

The rest of it is reported accurately. The weight of CO2, the Utah study (not saying the study itself is accurate, i haven't read it).

 

[longview]

What is your beef with this? Where are all the errors?

Yes, the poster chose a methane molecule to illustrate the combustion, but since the molecular structure of gasoline varies between 4 and 12 carbon molecules, it seems a reasonable simplification to use something much simpler, but similar, like methane.

The rest of it is reported accurately. The weight of CO2, the Utah study (not saying the study itself is accurate, i haven't read it).

What the image does not say, is that the process is reversible,
Every pound of Biomass created, takes roughly 3 pounds of CO2 to create, and biomass growth has been increasing...a lot.
Currently the environment is picking up about half of Human emissions. We emit ~ 6 ppm of CO2 per year,
but the average increase is between 2 and 3 ppm per year, so the uptake is between 3 and 4 ppm per year.
This is good news, because it means that if we can trim 2 to 3 ppm per year out of our 6 ppm per year,
we could get to a zero net increase. But this also means is that it is within reach of a number from our transport sector alone.
Humanity has a complicated energy problem!
More than enough energy reaches the ground to meet our needs, BUT, it is not in a form that meets our current demands.
Solar can convert the sunlight to electricity, but Jets, Ships, and tractors, need a high energy density fuel like what we get from oil.
Solar also has a poor duty cycle, both daily and seasonally, so we need massive seasonal energy storage,
to move daytime surplus to nighttime demand, as well as Spring and Fall surplus to Summer and Winter demand.
We know how nature stores energy, it is a method evolved over millions of years, hydrocarbons.
By shortening the time between CO2 uptake and fuel use, we can make carbon neutral fuels,
that are drop in replacements for all of our existing oil based demands.
Power to Liquid
At some point in the near future, it will be more profitable for a refinery to make finished fuel products
out of atmospheric CO2, water, and electricity, than from buying oil.
When this happens the price at the pump of the carbon neutral fuel could be less than the fuel made from oil.
Mass consumption will happen when the lowest price fuel at the pump, is also the one with zero net CO2 emissions.

 

[Lord of Planar]

What is your beef with this? Where are all the errors?

Yes, the poster chose a methane molecule to illustrate the combustion, but since the molecular structure of gasoline varies between 4 and 12 carbon molecules, it seems a reasonable simplification to use something much simpler, but similar, like methane.

The rest of it is reported accurately. The weight of CO2, the Utah study (not saying the study itself is accurate, i haven't read it).

I guess my standards are higher than what is taught in K-12 these days. No wonder the USA is so messed up now. Nobody has proper standards of accuracy.

 

[LostInSeattle]

I guess my standards are higher than what is taught in K-12 these days. No wonder the USA is so messed up now. Nobody has proper standards of accuracy.

Does the substitution of a methane molecule for a gasoline molecule meaningfully change the outcome of the combustion process represented in the illustration? Does it mislead the reader into thinking something different from what the data suggest? Does it alter the conclusion regarding CO2 emissions from gasoline combustion?

I think the answer to all of the above is, "no", but on the basis of substituting one hydrocarbon for another you claim multiple "errors" - which you don't specify - and proceed dismiss everything that the poster has to say. The problem here is not, "proper standards of accuracy" but of being able to discern relevant from irrelevant inaccuracies.

 

[LostInSeattle]

Let's talk "empirical evidence" for a moment. Let us say you walk into a room and flick a switch on the wall. Suddenly the light comes on in the room. There is a very real possibility that that light switch is NOT connected to the light but it was pure random chance that the light came on right as you flicked the switch. That's because you have NO DIRECT EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that there is a necessary connection between the switch and the light. You simply cannot ever truly "know" this. Even if you could see the wires running from the switch to the light. All of it could be purely perfectly random chance association that flipping the switch and the light coming on were connected.

You cannot "experience directly" this cause and effect.

NOW, you can repeat this experiment a hundred times and each time the light comes on remember that it could all be pure random chance....flipping a coin 101 times and getting 101 heads is NOT impossible. Mathematically unlikely, statistically unlikely but not a perfect probability = 0.

What you have done, however, is collect sufficient data to infer that there is a necessary relationship between the two. The best you can say is that there is a strong correlation between flipping the switch and the light coming on. But you can NEVER make the perfect claim that this relationship IS.

That's the limitation of empiricism. It's a classic that they teach in intro philosophy classes but it really goes to the heart of science. Science isn't in the game of absolute proof. That's math. Science is best estimate of the most likely true hypothesis. Nothing more.

Let's talk about your supposed area of "expertise", mining geology. You remember? The one you claimed you had a PhD in? Yeah, the earth has several layers as you may remember. The interesting thing is we have never put a drill bit down into the mantle, let alone the outer or inner core. We've seen bits of the mantle preserved in things like kimberlite pipes (google that) and a few ophiolite sequences as I recall, but those are all old and not a real clue of what those rocks are like at depth. And, again, we've never seen anything from the core.

So how do we know about the aesthenosphere? We know plate tectonics is real but we have to infer from data that the aesthenosphere has a "plastic rheology", in that it can flow and deform. It's what the tectonic plates move around on. But, again, we only know about the aesthenosphere from seismic wave attenuation and refraction...nothing direct.

How do we know what the core is made of? It's all inference. We see p-wave shadow zones (google that) we see how s-waves propagate through. But it's all inference. We can infer density and liquid state of the outer core but what do we REALLY know EMPIRICALLY?

Do you see the point yet?

That is a ****ing great post.

 

[mrjurrs]

listened to a podcast I found interesting about why it's difficult/impossible for people to deal w/ climate change

Losing Alaska

As floods, wildfires, and heatwaves hit many parts of the world, signs of climate change seem to be all around us. Scientists have been warning us for years ...

podcasts.podinstall.com

bottom line the two takeaway ideas were,...

@15m24s

...You spend some time talking with Daniel Kahneman the famous psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economics and he actually presented a very pessimistic view that we would actually [NOT] come to terms with the threat of climate change

He said to me that we are as humans, are very poor dealing with issues in the future,... we tend to be very focused on the short term,... we tend to "discount" would be the economic term,... to reduce the value of things happening in the future the further away they are.

He says we are very cost adverse,... that is to say when there are rewards we respond strongly BUT when there's a cost we prefer to push it away,... just as you know when I'm by myself which I leave until the very last minute (like in my tax return, I mean you just don't want to deal with these things).

And he says we're reluctant to deal with uncertainty.

If things are uncertain OR we perceive them to be,... people say well come back and tell me when we're certain.

What he said to me was in his view the climate change is the worst possible combination because it's not only uncertain BUT it's also in the future AND involves costs.

@21m36s

...So George there obviously is one domain in life where you can see people constantly placing the sacred values above their selfish self interest,.... you know I'm thinking here about the many many religions we have in the world that get people to do all kinds of things that an economist would say is not in that rational self interest.

People give up food people give up water people have you know suffer enormous personal privations people sometimes choose chastity for life I mean huge costs that people are willing to bear and they're not doing it because someone says at the end of the year are I'm going to give you an extra 200 bucks in your paycheck or an extra $2000 in your paycheck they're doing it because they believe these are sacred values that are not negotiable.

We worry about things of small consequence, and ignore the things that are killing us. #sad

 

[longview]

Does the substitution of a methane molecule for a gasoline molecule meaningfully change the outcome of the combustion process represented in the illustration? Does it mislead the reader into thinking something different from what the data suggest? Does it alter the conclusion regarding CO2 emissions from gasoline combustion?

I think the answer to all of the above is, "no", but on the basis of substituting one hydrocarbon for another you claim multiple "errors" - which you don't specify - and proceed dismiss everything that the poster has to say. The problem here is not, "proper standards of accuracy" but of being able to discern relevant from irrelevant inaccuracies.

The ratio of Hydrogen to Carbon in CH4 is 4:1, while the ratio is gasoline (C4H12) is closer to 3:1, so there might actually be some differences.
I am not a chemist, but the gasoline combustion would be far more complex.
The important thing to remember is that while combustion produces 3 times as much CO2, biomass creation requires the same 3XCO2.

 

[Bullseye]

listened to a podcast I found interesting about why it's difficult/impossible for people to deal w/ climate change

Losing Alaska

As floods, wildfires, and heatwaves hit many parts of the world, signs of climate change seem to be all around us. Scientists have been warning us for years ...

podcasts.podinstall.com

bottom line the two takeaway ideas were,...

@15m24s

...You spend some time talking with Daniel Kahneman the famous psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economics and he actually presented a very pessimistic view that we would actually [NOT] come to terms with the threat of climate change

He said to me that we are as humans, are very poor dealing with issues in the future,... we tend to be very focused on the short term,... we tend to "discount" would be the economic term,... to reduce the value of things happening in the future the further away they are.

He says we are very cost adverse,... that is to say when there are rewards we respond strongly BUT when there's a cost we prefer to push it away,... just as you know when I'm by myself which I leave until the very last minute (like in my tax return, I mean you just don't want to deal with these things).

And he says we're reluctant to deal with uncertainty.

If things are uncertain OR we perceive them to be,... people say well come back and tell me when we're certain.

What he said to me was in his view the climate change is the worst possible combination because it's not only uncertain BUT it's also in the future AND involves costs.

@21m36s

...So George there obviously is one domain in life where you can see people constantly placing the sacred values above their selfish self interest,.... you know I'm thinking here about the many many religions we have in the world that get people to do all kinds of things that an economist would say is not in that rational self interest.

People give up food people give up water people have you know suffer enormous personal privations people sometimes choose chastity for life I mean huge costs that people are willing to bear and they're not doing it because someone says at the end of the year are I'm going to give you an extra 200 bucks in your paycheck or an extra $2000 in your paycheck they're doing it because they believe these are sacred values that are not negotiable.

It might also be because we've been dealing with it since man first walked the Earth. It got cold they learned to build shelters, create warm clothing, and light fires, It got warm they wore less clothing, stayed in the shade. The waters grew closer they moved back; the waters receded they moved closer.