Your argument that 'someone predicted catastrophe X by date Y and it didn't happen exactly as they predicted by then' (paraphrased) is a deceptive tactic used by anti-environmentalists for decades. It ignores the relatively slow buildup of human overload on nature, and claims the impact must be like one lethal rifle shot or there's no problem and we can skip along in endless denial. It's like saying a superficially healthy smoker at age 50 will never have lethal lung effects over time; a full lifetime diagnosis done in one snapshot (absurd).
That tactic was famously used against Paul Ehrlich, framing the only real proof of human overpopulation as 'not being able to feed humanity.' Ehrlich did fail to predict that the (oil-dependent) agricultural Green Revolution could feed more people via denser plantings and intense (oil-based) fertilizers, which will run into major issues when oil peaks. He never failed in his observations that human population growth continues to wipe out wilderness, forcing species into endangerment or extinction and causing more pollution. The problem of too many people demanding too many resources from a finite planet didn't vanish because some of his predictions were overstated in the narrow realm of human hunger.
You use that same ruse with global warming, setting up straw man arguments as specific years being all-or-nothing deadlines for proof of lethal warming, using absurd parameters like "We’re All Going to Fry!" or "ice free Arctic by year X," ignoring ongoing major losses of ice as trivial, since it's not "all" gone. To examine global warming honestly, you need to monitor growing droughts, fires, floods, melting glaciers, melting permafrost and shrinking polar ice caps as the sum of warming effects, not nitpick random dates to "debunk" a gradual process. But tipping points (like methane release) could make it non-gradual, so you have to wish those out of existence.
Instead of constantly politicizing the topic and never learning the science, you'd start at the beginning by studying how CO2 traps heat (triatomic vibrations re-emit absorbed infrared) and then try to convince scientists that more trapped heat would NOT mean more melting and plant desiccation. That makes no sense. Climate contrarians never do the detailed work (outside of manipulated graphs) because they're operating inside ideology, not science. Always framing the climate issue as Left vs. Right politics is no more honest than framing all cops as racist and ignoring POC crime (the CO2 of the streets, so to speak). The EPA is to climate-control what cops are to crime-control when one is stuck on ideological zealotry.
P.S. Oregon looked like this (below) around 6 PM on 7/27/24, and it wasn't for lack of logging or fantasy crews with weed-trimmers who'd cut down all flammable grass and shrubs over countless acres. It was because chronic heat and drought dries out vegetation.
You can see that California didn't look much better than Oregon, and the town of Jasper, Alberta, Canada just took a major hit from a large wildfire. Remember all the smoke from Canada that plagued the U.S. in recent years? That smoke comes from remote boreal forests that can't simply be "managed," which liars keep claiming would solve all this. Tree farms often burn even worse than older growth.
A gas called CO2 actually does trap large amounts of heat, whether you've got the intellect to understand it or not. You might want to care about this dangerous physics phenomenon instead of writing sarcastic blather that frames CO2 as a leftist molecule.
Toppie and Skeeter should lobby for a line of comic books featuring their origins, their thoughts, and their sort of capering jack-a-napes lives. Strike while the iron is hot though as I suspect the days of the free-range moron much less the litigious free-ranger of that ilk are drawing to a close.
I am finishing the last volume of J.G. Farrell’s Empire Trilogy. These books reconstruct the collapse of the British imperial way of life in different locales. The author has a fine sense of fun, but it is always in the service of horror.
The one I'm completing now, The Singapore Grip is a reference to disciplined pudenda, but among its other connotations it alludes to the hand that manages the UK's colonial marionettes out in that neck of the woods. Just now (in my reading) Jap is about to cross the Jahor Causeway. The European population is upset, mostly with the inconvenience of it all. As Gomer would say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise.”
The second book is titled Troubles and is set where you would expect. The societal collapse there is driven by inanition and the obdurate determination of the ruling clique not to see things as they are.
My favorite and the one that I have read most often is The Siege of Krishnapur. If you know little or nothing about the Sepoy Rebellion (aka The Great Mutiny) this is the briskest and most light-hearted introduction to Johnny Sepoy gone astray that you are likely to get. An example of the author and of history's wit is the degree to which The Crystal Palace Exhibiton's legacy is held to scrutiny
The novels bring to mind America and Portland at this very moment. In the affected communities all of the best people potter and totter around vaguely aware of the whirlwind churning apace just beyond the horizon. Now as then, the changes will arrive with an inexorable suddeness. A season of regret is nearing
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Those two students who think they deserve $400,000 because the protest and their “rough” treatment made them not want to study? Oh boo hoo. They’re just selfish and lazy and want a big fat payoff. The Oregonian is a joke. That quote was hilarious. What a couple of losers.
Jul 9Liked by Richard Cheverton, Pamela Fitzsimmons
It’s almost unbelievable if it wasn’t becoming so common. Why aren’t they required to help scrub that graffiti off? Why aren’t any of the students required to help with the cleanup through community service etc? Nope, just another cash grab for the clean up crews at the taxpayers expense.
“But still, you’d think that Tina would get on the blower to kanoodle with her chief water-carrier, Noelle Crombie of the Oregonian and dish some inside stuff.”
If you were Crombie’s editor, Richard, she would have at least been required to make an effort. What does Governor Kotek think about Biden’s survivability? Even more important, what does the First Lady think? And who did win the Bourbongate hooch?
Instead, our local newspaper, with its resources and staff, have done a deep dive into Nancy Brophy’s successful murder of her husband. News some folks can use, I suppose.
Your argument that 'someone predicted catastrophe X by date Y and it didn't happen exactly as they predicted by then' (paraphrased) is a deceptive tactic used by anti-environmentalists for decades. It ignores the relatively slow buildup of human overload on nature, and claims the impact must be like one lethal rifle shot or there's no problem and we can skip along in endless denial. It's like saying a superficially healthy smoker at age 50 will never have lethal lung effects over time; a full lifetime diagnosis done in one snapshot (absurd).
That tactic was famously used against Paul Ehrlich, framing the only real proof of human overpopulation as 'not being able to feed humanity.' Ehrlich did fail to predict that the (oil-dependent) agricultural Green Revolution could feed more people via denser plantings and intense (oil-based) fertilizers, which will run into major issues when oil peaks. He never failed in his observations that human population growth continues to wipe out wilderness, forcing species into endangerment or extinction and causing more pollution. The problem of too many people demanding too many resources from a finite planet didn't vanish because some of his predictions were overstated in the narrow realm of human hunger.
You use that same ruse with global warming, setting up straw man arguments as specific years being all-or-nothing deadlines for proof of lethal warming, using absurd parameters like "We’re All Going to Fry!" or "ice free Arctic by year X," ignoring ongoing major losses of ice as trivial, since it's not "all" gone. To examine global warming honestly, you need to monitor growing droughts, fires, floods, melting glaciers, melting permafrost and shrinking polar ice caps as the sum of warming effects, not nitpick random dates to "debunk" a gradual process. But tipping points (like methane release) could make it non-gradual, so you have to wish those out of existence.
Instead of constantly politicizing the topic and never learning the science, you'd start at the beginning by studying how CO2 traps heat (triatomic vibrations re-emit absorbed infrared) and then try to convince scientists that more trapped heat would NOT mean more melting and plant desiccation. That makes no sense. Climate contrarians never do the detailed work (outside of manipulated graphs) because they're operating inside ideology, not science. Always framing the climate issue as Left vs. Right politics is no more honest than framing all cops as racist and ignoring POC crime (the CO2 of the streets, so to speak). The EPA is to climate-control what cops are to crime-control when one is stuck on ideological zealotry.
P.S. Oregon looked like this (below) around 6 PM on 7/27/24, and it wasn't for lack of logging or fantasy crews with weed-trimmers who'd cut down all flammable grass and shrubs over countless acres. It was because chronic heat and drought dries out vegetation.
https://imgur.com/a/7GfkQq4 (cropped from large GOES-West satellite image)
You can see that California didn't look much better than Oregon, and the town of Jasper, Alberta, Canada just took a major hit from a large wildfire. Remember all the smoke from Canada that plagued the U.S. in recent years? That smoke comes from remote boreal forests that can't simply be "managed," which liars keep claiming would solve all this. Tree farms often burn even worse than older growth.
A gas called CO2 actually does trap large amounts of heat, whether you've got the intellect to understand it or not. You might want to care about this dangerous physics phenomenon instead of writing sarcastic blather that frames CO2 as a leftist molecule.
Toppie and Skeeter should lobby for a line of comic books featuring their origins, their thoughts, and their sort of capering jack-a-napes lives. Strike while the iron is hot though as I suspect the days of the free-range moron much less the litigious free-ranger of that ilk are drawing to a close.
I am finishing the last volume of J.G. Farrell’s Empire Trilogy. These books reconstruct the collapse of the British imperial way of life in different locales. The author has a fine sense of fun, but it is always in the service of horror.
The one I'm completing now, The Singapore Grip is a reference to disciplined pudenda, but among its other connotations it alludes to the hand that manages the UK's colonial marionettes out in that neck of the woods. Just now (in my reading) Jap is about to cross the Jahor Causeway. The European population is upset, mostly with the inconvenience of it all. As Gomer would say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise.”
The second book is titled Troubles and is set where you would expect. The societal collapse there is driven by inanition and the obdurate determination of the ruling clique not to see things as they are.
My favorite and the one that I have read most often is The Siege of Krishnapur. If you know little or nothing about the Sepoy Rebellion (aka The Great Mutiny) this is the briskest and most light-hearted introduction to Johnny Sepoy gone astray that you are likely to get. An example of the author and of history's wit is the degree to which The Crystal Palace Exhibiton's legacy is held to scrutiny
The novels bring to mind America and Portland at this very moment. In the affected communities all of the best people potter and totter around vaguely aware of the whirlwind churning apace just beyond the horizon. Now as then, the changes will arrive with an inexorable suddeness. A season of regret is nearing
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Those two students who think they deserve $400,000 because the protest and their “rough” treatment made them not want to study? Oh boo hoo. They’re just selfish and lazy and want a big fat payoff. The Oregonian is a joke. That quote was hilarious. What a couple of losers.
It’s almost unbelievable if it wasn’t becoming so common. Why aren’t they required to help scrub that graffiti off? Why aren’t any of the students required to help with the cleanup through community service etc? Nope, just another cash grab for the clean up crews at the taxpayers expense.
“But still, you’d think that Tina would get on the blower to kanoodle with her chief water-carrier, Noelle Crombie of the Oregonian and dish some inside stuff.”
If you were Crombie’s editor, Richard, she would have at least been required to make an effort. What does Governor Kotek think about Biden’s survivability? Even more important, what does the First Lady think? And who did win the Bourbongate hooch?
Instead, our local newspaper, with its resources and staff, have done a deep dive into Nancy Brophy’s successful murder of her husband. News some folks can use, I suppose.