264 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum March 3, 2017”
There are new PIOMAS numbers out for February Arctic ice volume. Generally the trend continues as before – a new daily minimum by some margin everyday.
NASA has a new prediction method for summer ice extent. They are doing a pretty good PR job these days.
This shows running average annual volume. The trends are using data to December so any change in rate can be seen – there has been a slight slowing in the curve down in February, but not enough to be seen.
This is sea ice, right? So what does this do to the sea level? Nothing.
Or am I missing something?
You are missing that weather over a sea ice free Arctic in summer will be fundamentally different from now.
“One of the ways Arctic sea ice melt may be impacting weather patterns is due to the reduced temperature difference between the Arctic region and the mid-latitudes, which could favor the weakening of the polar jet stream, AccuWeather Meteorologist Brett Anderson said.
Acting as a highway in which storm systems travel along, the jet stream is a fast river of air high in the atmosphere that marks the boundary between cool air to the north and warm air to the south.
“When the polar jet stream weakens it can increase the chances of a ‘blocking’ pattern over the far north,” Anderson added. “These blocking patterns can end up forcing the jet stream to buckle, allowing Arctic air to push much farther south than normal.” http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/how-rapid-arctic-sea-ice-melt-may-alter-global-weather-patterns/70000514
We are making a life experiment with the world’s climate
Thanks Matt. I agree, probably best not to mess with system. And I do support kicking fossils fuels ASAP.
I live just above 50n on the BC coast and this years sagging jet stream is no joke. Our usual wet onslaught has been diverted to northern California while we have experienced cold snaps over and over again while the Arctic has warmed. Yesterday, I watched the temps drop 3 deg in an hour and the snow flakes were the size of fried eggs. Last year all our fruit trees were in bloom early March. We are supposed to get three more days of snow starting this Sunday. I still have some large snow piles in the yard. I would be ‘thinking’ of getting the tiller out any day past winters. Some years I mow the lawn on New Years just to terrify my neighbour. đ
Of course weather is not climate but this year has been very different from the last 50 winters of my life. (I am 61) We have just two crocuses blooming in the yard. The yard should be a carpet of colour.
Maybe the moose will start swimming out of the mainland inlets to populate the Island. Usually, they stay about 10 km from tidal. Although, we have had migrations of grizzlies head this way. I live on the river they follow inland. Interesting, indeed.
If you want to hear something on sea levels then listen to James Hansen’s latest videos (15 Feb and 2 March 2017)
âThe seven atmospheric scientists predict a global warming of âalmost unprecedented magnitudeâ in the next century. It might even be sufficient to melt and dislodge the ice cover of West Antarctica, they say, eventually leading to a worldwide rise of 15 to 20 feet in the sea level. In that case, they say, it would âflood 25 percent of Louisiana and Florida, 10 percent of New Jersey and many other lowlands throughout the worldâ within a century or less.â
So here we are 35 years later, a third of a century has past and we have got about 90 mm (0.3 feet) of sea level raise instead of the 5 feet promised for a third of a century. So Jim has only been 94% wrong.
Here are five steps to start you on a journey to a new, honest you.
1. Admit It
The first step in any addiction and if you are a habitual liar this is an addiction, is to admit that you are a liar. Not just to yourself, but to others as well.
2. Support Team
Contact loved ones and friends. Let them know what you are trying to accomplish. You will be amazed at how much support you will get. Also, a support team is necessary to help build your confidence throughout the entire process. Sometimes a support team can also be an outside help such as a therapist or support groups that share similar interests. Therapy is another option for habitual liars. Participation in a liars group in counseling may aid you on your road to learning how to tell the truth. Discuss with the group or the therapist why it is you feel it is necessary to tell a lie. Be honest. Be open. Be yourself!
3. Indentifying Triggers
After coming to terms with yourself and admitting that you are a liar, the next step would be to identify what triggers you to lie. Some triggers are things around you or people that you are around. Take a close look at how your attitude or actions change when you are placed in certain situations. Ask yourself how you feel at that given moment. Are you angry, ashamed or happy? Perhaps the trigger is to make you feel better about yourself. This is where you have to identify what causes your emotions, which may trigger you to be in a position to lie.
4. Deciding to Quit Old Habits
Making the decision to stop lying takes a lot of guts. This is possibly the hardest step towards changing lying habits into a positive intervention. Now that you have decided to change your old habits, nothing can stop you from progressing. Take a walk over to a mirror in your home. Stand there for a few seconds with your eyes closed. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Now open your eyes. Look at yourself in the mirror. Say out loud that today is the day you will become more trustworthy. Lies will no longer define who you are. Why? Because you are in control of what happens next.
5. Changing Routes
Now that you have figured out what triggers you to lie and have decided to quit old habits, it is time to change the way you do things. Donât worry, this does not mean that everything in your life has to change, only in the areas that trigger you to lie. For example, if you know that you lie when you try to impress someone, then try to avoid that person until you are ready to step forward and introduce the real you. No lies attached. This step is simple to accomplish as long as you are willing to put forth the effort. Try it and see!
When science doesn’t accompany you, psychology will do. That’s what climatology resorts too, right? Skeptics are just not psychologically well so they can be ignored.
Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms Video Abstract
Not somebody to trust. He’s clearly a sock puppet.
Speaking of sockpuppets…
Sockpuppet Alert
Duncan Idaho
Survivalist
hightrekker23
Dave Ranning
All the same person. Probably intended to show a greater acceptance of anthropogenic climate change theory than the facts actually indicate.
Duncan Idaho/hightrekker23 is on record, telling us that the screen name he uses depends on which browser he is using to compose his posts at the time. He has not to my knowledge ever indicated that he posts under any other name. What leads you to think he is using four different names?
Writing analysis, which includes some specific idiosyncrasies. There is also a common theme of having some kind of presence in Northern California, Maui, and Mexico.
Also I suspect “Jimmy” and “James” are/were two other associated names. Jimmy was threatened with a ban for remarks towards Javier.
I don’t remember seeing Dave Ranning comments before.
I post on here under the names Duncan and Hightrekker, as stated by which browser I’m using.
But at least we know Jim Hansen’s credentials.
Precisely. He is an activist that has been arrested at anti-coal demonstrations, and whose predictions have proven to bee way off.
I wouldn’t take an activist word as he is already biased. Science requires to be as free of biases as possible.
Get a mirror buddy.
Javier isn’t an activist, he is a brainwashed tool who may even think of himself as a free thinker, and not a Republican stooge.
Hi Javier,
As an independent observer, I can safely say that you are the one that sounds biased.
If you don’t think AGW is a threat that concerns humanity, then why do you go to all the trouble to reply to every single post on the subject?
Do you realize how suspicious it looks?
Maybe you can you give us an update on how your research in the field of microbiology is coming along? I would be surprised if you have any time left for it given your online presence here! Wouldn’t it be much more interesting for you to discuss something in your own research field than having to regurgitate the same stream of denialist talking points every time someone posts a link to new research, or in this case a simple update on the arctic sea ice volume? And in case you weren’t aware, James Hansen is the former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a position he held from 1981 to 2013. He must be a very good liar to have held onto that position for so long!
Yea, I like his opinion on how Virions reveal bacteriophage genes that control eukaryotic reproduction, and the biochemical basis for increased Ebolavirus glycoprotein activity during the recent outbreak.
As Matt says the Arctic is changing climate regimes as the ice melts. Apart from all the other, not fully understood, impacts from changing circulation patterns and increase albedo, once the ice is gone for significant times the heat it used to absorb in summer can go elsewhere – possibly to faster melting of the Greenland ice cap, which would raise sea levels.
Checking the volume trend is a good indicator of the temperature changes in the Arctic as well. There aren’t many actual temperature measurements there. Some data sets use interpolation or models to give temperatures. The Hadley CRU set only reports measured numbers, it therefore mostly leaves out the Arctic, and hence generally under reports global temperature increase compared with other sets.
Also volume is a truer indicator than extent. I lived for a few years near a lake that froze in winter – it almost always got covered fully and to my naive eye looked the same each year, but sometimes you could walk on it and sometimes not. However you could tell once the thaw started – the thin years’ ice disappeared quickly.
Jet stream has gone chaotic with splits and dips and recombines. Was hitting 70 a few days ago (41 N) and now will not reach freezing tomorrow with a low of 7. Prediction two days later is high of 60F.
As Matt says the Arctic is changing climate regimes as the ice melts. Apart from all the other, not fully understood, impacts from changing circulation patterns and increase albedo, once the ice is gone for significant times the heat it used to absorb in summer can go elsewhere
The past imposes limits on what is possible. We know that during most of the Holocene there has been less Arctic sea ice than now, and yet with less sea ice the world cooled between 5000 and 400 years ago.
Checking the volume trend is a good indicator of the temperature changes in the Arctic as well.
No it is not. It is circular reasoning, as Arctic sea ice volume is modeled based on temperature changes.
“The POIM couples the Parallel Ocean Program (POP) with a 12-category thickness and enthalpy distribution (TED) sea ice model.”
It is actually an Achilles heel of the model. If the relationship between temperatures and ice is not as modeled, or constant, the model will show big deviations. Already the error bars of the modeled volume are huge.
Javier said:
“The past imposes limits on what is possible.”
Sorry. I started laughing so hard that I couldn’t read past this point.
Thanks for the chart.
This is an interesting chart for sea ice extent. Pick the data set from the top left
Since Arctic sea ice extent doesn’t show much change in the last 10 years, they now move the goal posts to sea ice volume, that as it is not measured but modeled, can be modeled on temperatures and show a decline that it is not real. How could we know? That is the problem with working with computer outputs instead of measured data.
Ice extent shows no big difference, and there is more multiyear ice than in 2009, yet somehow they claim a much lower volume. When a model doesn’t fit the data the model is wrong, except in climatology.
Stop lying Javier! Cherry picking data is a form of lying. It doesn’t fool or impress anyone here!
They claim exceptional conditions on Arctic sea ice and it is not true. Data shows it is just another year that shows no decline in Arctic sea ice.
You are just pathetic drooling over every time Arctic sea ice goes a little below, when the data shows Arctic sea ice is a lot more stable than predicted, and it isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Dennis,
Why haven’t you banned Javier?
Comic relief?
You need therapy, get some professional help!
Hey Fred, trying to convince Javier that global warming is not man made is like trying to move a 6ft. (2 m for Javier) thick concrete wall with your forehead. He is obviously a victim of the Koch funded propaganda machine, if not part of it. One wonders why he decided to use his foreign language proficiency in English to digest viewpoints of a particular flavor? Maybe he is also translating the bullshit into Spanish, the second most widely used language on the planet according to https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world, to try and spread the FUD to the Spanish speaking population of the world.
He is continuously bleating about the fact that the predicted adverse effects have not happened yet, as if this is any reason to assume that they will never happen, just like how people who don’t like the idea of Peak Oil constantly point to rising global oil production as proof that Peak Oil is bogus. All I can say is, have patience my little snowflake, we will soon see what the real deal is, both with respect Peak Oil and Global Warming.
On the other hand, maybe we won’t see. If the orange one and his bunch of goons can successfully de-fund all the relevant agencies, all this “bogus” data that is fueling “alarmism” will stop being gathered and disseminated. Everybody knows that if it isn’t reported it is not hapenning! đ
Hey Fred, trying to convince Javier that global warming is not man made is like trying to move a 6ft. (2 m for Javier) thick concrete wall with your forehead.
To be clear, I have no intention of convincing Javier of anything! Those days are long gone… These days, I’m just calling him what he is, a bald faced liar!
He most certainly is not a victim of anything or anybody. He is a perpetrator of misinformation!
You can call me all the names you want. That won’t make you any more right.
Nope!
Name calling is abusive or insulting language referring to a person or group, a verbal abuse. (Source Wikipedia)
Since you actually are a liar, what I’m doing is calling you out for what you are! I’m calling a spade a spade! A rose by any other name is still a rose and same goes for ‘liar’.
That’s the difference!
As I base what I say on scientific research, and I produce citations to back up what I say, it turns out that you are the liar here.
“Javier says:
03/04/2017 AT 5:39 PM
As I base what I say on scientific research, and I produce citations to back up what I say, it turns out that you are the liar here.”
Not really. Javier is just another version of the Gish Gallop.
Name calling is something you do without compunction. I guess you only find it distasteful when you feel it is you who are the target.
“All I can say is, have patience my little snowflake, we will soon see what the real deal is,”
Regarding climate change we have been hearing that song for 35 years. At this pace the interglacial will end before we see all those predicted effects of global warming.
Javier,
My helicopter friends broke into the industry flying off tugs to scout leads in the summer sea ice in order for northern Canadian communities to be resupplied by barge. This was in the early 90s. Those jobs don’t exist now. Why? They aren’t needed. The sea is open or the ice is thin enough to push through.
Paulo,
We know how much the Arctic ice extent has receded since 1979, because we have measured it. There’s no denying the evidence.
Do you know why the Arctic ice extent has receded? Because scientists have different hypothesis.
âWe establish a signal of pervasive and persistent multidecadal (~60â90 year) fluctuations⌠Covariability between sea ice and Atlantic multidecadal variability as represented by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index is evident during the instrumental record. This observational evidence supports recent modeling studies that have suggested that Arctic sea ice is intrinsically linked to Atlantic multidecadal variability.
Given the demonstrated covariability between sea ice and the AMO, it follows that a change to a negative AMO phase in the coming decade(s) could âto some degreeâ temporarily ameliorate the strongly negative recent sea-ice trends.â
Wyatt, Marcia Glaze, and Judith A. Curry. âRole for Eurasian Arctic shelf sea ice in a secularly varying hemispheric climate signal during the 20th century.â Climate dynamics 42.9-10 (2014): 2763-2782.
âIn recent decades, rapid changes in the Arctic have been documented (e.g. Alkire et al. 2007). Most interpretations of the recent decline in Arctic sea ice extent have focused on the role of anthropogenic forcing (e.g. Johannessen et al. 2004), with some allowance for natural variability⌠But according to stadium-wave projections, and according to our interpretation of stadium-wave evolution, this trend should reverse, under the condition that the stadium-wave hypothesis captures 20th century dynamics correctly. Rebound in West Ice Extent, followed by Arctic Seas of Siberia should occur after the estimated 2006 minimum of West Ice Extent and maximum of AMO.â
Tamino doesn’t know what he talks about. He hasn’t read the relevant scientific literature. This is a very common problem with non-scientists. They don’t know how much they ignore because they don’t do enough reading.
Despite all his analysis, Arctic sea ice has refused to melt further for 10 years now, much to the consternation of those that predicted an Arctic collapse and are now looking like fools.
Don’t believe your lying eyes!
I can always count on a little humor from Baghdad Bob—
Sea ice extent shows lots of change. You seem to have a very loose definition of what “not much” means. You’re laughable. Like a sideshow clown.
Arctic sea ice increases and decreases according to a ~ 60 year oscillation, and you are so ignorant that you think that because it went down the last 30 years the Arctic is going to melt.
This is what scientists believe was the Arctic sea ice situation before satellites starting measuring it:
GagnĂŠ, MarieâĂve, et al. “Aerosolâdriven increase in Arctic sea ice over the middle of the 20th Century.” Geophysical Research Letters (2017).
There was about the same sea ice in the Arctic around the early 1950’s, than now, and for the last 10 years the Arctic is not melting.
What a great source for your talking points Javier. Pure comedy gold. Is that who taught you to use the word ‘alarmist’ also? Now we know who briefs you.
I checked the data at the source myself, and it is correct. You can check it too if you want:
Typical debating tactics. If you cannot argue the data try to smear the opponent’s credibility with fallacies like guilt by association.
You are such a bad looser. The data is solid. The conclusion too. Science doesn’t operate with debating fallacies. It is based only on the factual nature of evidence.
“The data is[sic] solid. The conclusion too. ….It is based only on the factual nature of evidence.”
Or based on a buggy algorithm/model to convert microwave emissivity, polarization and backscatter into a picture. Zero data of actual ice age, just a model.
A model that “sees” MY ice appearing and disappearing with alarming randomness.
This model believes there was lots of MY ice up against Greenland the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in March. Then it disappeared in May.
The algorithm identifies huge areas of first year ice in the Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev and Kara Seas in March that suddenly becomes “Multi-Year” ice in May.
GIGO.
A very brief look at the output of this model would have saved Javier the embarrassment of declaring this to be “solid data” or “factual evidence”. Not sure Javier can even feel embarrassment anymore, having been proved wrong so many times.
Javier’s preference for models seems to fluctuate based on whether they back up his assertions or not. Measures of uncertainty don’t seem to hold much sway.
Piomass data is less uncertain but Javier disregards it as too uncertain for his tastes.
Arctic sea ice extent for February 2017 averaged 14.28 million square kilometers (5.51 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the 38-year satellite record. This is 40,000 square kilometers (15,400 square miles) below February 2016, the previous lowest extent for the month, and 1.18 million square kilometers (455,600 square miles) below the February 1981 to 2010 long term average.
The algorithm identifies huge areas of first year ice in the Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev and Kara Seas in March that suddenly becomes âMulti-Yearâ ice in May.
GIGO.
A very brief look at the output of this model would have saved Javier the embarrassment of declaring this to be âsolid dataâ or âfactual evidenceâ.
You are once more the one that should be embarrassed.
DMI very clearly states in its product:
“Note, that during Arctic summer season (May-September) the ice type product is dubious because melting of the ice surface obscures the ice type signals.”
So what you did was very ugly. You went to a month when the product is deprecated, May, to try to falsely show that the product is garbage. And after doing that you came to discredit me when I have used it for a month when the product is validated.
“So what you did was very ugly. You went to a month when the product is deprecated, May, to try to falsely show that the product is garbage. ”
You’re right, Javier. That’s a good point.
May is a very buggy month. Lots of garbage output. I shouldn’t have used it as an example of the model’s shortcomings. Mea Culpa.
BUT…. 2009 is a whole buggy year. Very little of the “multi-year” ice areas have any resemblance to physical reality for that year, later years look much better – the MY areas do not appear and disappear randomly after 2010. 2008 is bad, too.
But you used 2009 to compare to this year’s “multi-year” ice area. Not kosher. The obviously unstable algorithm for 2009 makes it unsuitable for comparison to later years. This is obvious with a few minutes of paging through the 2008 and 2009 daily pictures. You should know better.
Compare the ice at the start of the freezing season in 2008 – like mid October 2008. The remaining ice is not identified as MY correctly. The MY ice decreases throughout the freezing season into spring 2009. Not physically possible. Specifically, compare 2008-12-23 to 2009-1-27. Much of the MY ice next to greenland and CAA has “melted” away in midwinter in one month’s time. Some of it reappears by 2009-02-04. Not credible. This model is not believable for 2008-09 data.
Look at The Bering Sea on 2009-02-14, 2009-02-24, 2009-02-26, 2009-03-06. “MY” ice appears and disappears in an area where MY can never exist because the Bering Sea melts out every year without fail.
So, you are correct to point out that May is not valid for comparison, but all of 2008 and 2009 is almost as bad. Using it as you have to compare to 2017 is not supportable, invalid, incorrect.
Your comparison is also contradicted by EVERY OTHER multi-year ice data product. When all the data sources except one point in the same direction – the Arctic is losing ice and especially MY ice – but you choose to cherry-pick the one and only one that confirms your personal biases… then maybe it’s time to reconsider your biases in favor of looking at all the evidence.
My predictions:
The Arctic sea ice WILL set new record lows in annual average extent, area, and volume for 2017.
It will ALMOST CERTAINLY set new record lows for summer (May, June, July) extend, area and volume – that’s what matters most for its albedo feedback effect.
It will PROBABLY set new record minimum Sept lows for extend, area and volume, depending on the weather.
Unless 2018 is MUCH colder, 2018 will be even worse (less ice). There is a lag between higher temps and melting.
…….
Your predictions, Javier?
Let’s look at your past pronouncements:
01/02/2017 AT 8:19 PM
“2017 will again show more Arctic sea ice than 2007, because the trend has changed”
01/07/2017 AT 11:43 PM
“Arctic sea ice is not decreasing. There will be more of it in 2017 than in 2016. You should be happy about it.”
03/13/2016 AT 8:24 AM
“If you are capable of tracing a straight line you will see that Arctic sea ice volume has been going nowhere since 2007.”
01/10/2016 AT 8:45 PM
” it is easy to predict that in two years time, during a La NiĂąa year that is likely to take place you are very likely to get quite a lot more Arctic sea ice.”
01/09/2016 AT 3:48 PM
“Once this El NiĂąo is over by about 2017, Arctic sea ice will go back to growing”
Fortunately, we only have to put up with your inane blather for less than a year before your predictions fail, unlike your “cooling until 2030” predictions.
My sources are not weak. My sources are official research institutions or government agencies like the Danish Meteorological Institute or the European Meteorological Satellite facility, and published peer reviewed scientific literature.
It is not my fault that some scoundrel alarmists will spread lies about the work of scientists working for the Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Facility (OSISAF) trying to defend their dying doom cult.
Javier said
“… defend their dying doom cult.”
Why do you come here and dump on stuff, when we of all people know what and what is not a cult? Do you really take us for such rubes?
Three times the energy density of lithium ion, non-flammable, very fast charging, more cycles. What is not to like?
A team of engineers led by 94-year-old John Goodenough, professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery, has developed the first all-solid-state battery cells that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting rechargeable batteries for handheld mobile devices, electric cars and stationary energy storage.
Goodenoughâs latest breakthrough, completed with Cockrell School senior research fellow Maria Helena Braga, is a low-cost all-solid-state battery that is noncombustible and has a long cycle life (battery life) with a high volumetric energy density and fast rates of charge and discharge. The engineers describe their new technology in a recent paper published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
From the Puffington Host:
We all knew the Clinton Foundation was a “pay to play” money machine, but this is exceptionally interesting, with all the anti Russia propaganda stimulating the neural pathways of 70 years of propaganda.
Yes, Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid U.S. Russian Uranium Deal
(but do we really know all the facts?)
As they so famously say about ”democracy” being the worst possible form of government, except all the others” , the D party is the best one we actually have , despite it’s various warts and flaws.
The first sentence says it all, to any one who is open minded enough to understand, WILLING to understand.
“Facing a bleak electoral landscape after 2016, the brightest spot for Democrats may be President Trumpâs continued weakness with members of the Millennial generationâwho are poised to surpass the more Republican-leaning baby boomers in 2020 as the largest generation of eligible voters.”
I maintain myself as an independent,as a commenter and “wanna be author “, so as to be able to freely criticize any and all parties and politicians, and tell it like it is, or at least the way I THINK it is.
If Clinton had had less baggage, and been a better campaigner, she would be prez today, but that’s water under the bridge.
I have long maintained that our culture is evolving away from the old conventional conservative values, which is not in my opinion ALWAYS a good thing, since some babies tend to be thrown out with the discarded bath water, so to speak, and TOWARD the sort of culture that typically prevails in Western Europe.
This change is driven as much or more by demographics as any thing, but there are other very important factors in play. The rise of government sponsored safety nets is one of those things. A social worker able to dispense food stamps and other necessities, such as free or reduced rent apartment, etc, displaces church work, etc.
The rise of the two parents working family , and the rise of the one parent family, means that kids are not so closely supervised these days, or as busy, as they were in former times, and between Mom and Dad both working, or Dad not even being around, and the idiot box and other electronic gizmos being the real DEFAULT parent these days, so many hours out of so many days, well…….. Holly Wood has more to say about young people’s values than preachers, and that’s a goddamned inescapable fact.
And as we get richer, as individuals, and despite most of the hype indicating otherwise, MOST of us are not all that hard up, even those who vote R tend to support programs such as Social Security and Medicare, perhaps because they realize that, being older, pretty soon they may NEED SS and Medicare themselves, lol. Perhaps because they also tend to feel a little guilty? In the words of Kilgore Trout, I think “maybe so”!
As I see it, the D party sort of lost it’s way, perhaps for good reasons, or what were perceived to be good reasons at the time, and morphed into a REPUBLICAN LITE party, which proved to be a very costly mistake, long term. The more the D’s try to play R ball, the more R’s win elections.
You ( rhetorical as politicians and parties ) just can’t be the party of working people and minorities and the various small ( and therefore not very important on election day) constituencies such as gender changers while simultaneously being the party of corporate welfare, banksters, globalism, environmentalism, and whatever else.
The message is too mixed, and it rings false in the ears of people who are worried about their future, in too many cases.
The working classes came to feel abandoned and worse, taken for granted, or even worse, BETRAYED. Some of the minorities are now doing well enough that they pay a hell of a lot of taxes, and have an incentive to vote for less in the way of social programs.
But there is some reason, substantial reason in my opinion, to believe that the D party is well on it’s way back to its real roots and that when it gets there, it will start making up the ground lost over the last decade plus, and regain power, although getting back into control of most state governments and DC isn’t going to happen overnight.
It’s simple enough, if you believe in basic arithmetic, and accept the premise that the overall culture is growing ever more “liberal” in the sense of being less socially ” conservative”.
Old farts such as yours truly are headed to the recycling center at accelerating rates, and our places are now being taken by folks so young it makes me feel a little guilty eyeballing the girls at a Sanders rally, lol. Nearly all of them were young enough to be my granddaughters. You just don’t see that sort of crowd at R type gatherings, as a rule.
So far as I can see, there are dozens of trends that indicate a long term resurgence of the D party, or whatever party that might evolve and assume the role of the existing D party, if it continues to be a Republican Lite organization.
Women now earn more college degrees.
People in general are gradually coming to understand that we have NO CHOICE but to protect the environment.
Communications are getting continually cheaper, and we are able to move around ever more freely, and not too many of us live these days in socially homogeneous communities, as we did not that long ago. Even in my backwoods, we have openly committed lesbian couples, interracial families, and at least a handful of individuals who are followers of various religions we used to only hear about, etc.
I’m around a lot of millennials (They composed most of the workers on the ranch I was on), but they may be an exception, being mostly actors, models, and academics from the East Bay (Oakland).
They had no problem with physical labor, could think things out with just minor supervision, and had some at least minor political literacy.
They are a hopeful generation, after the last two, which lets face it, hardly got out of the shallow end of the pool.
But unless the Dim’s change, and stop being lap dogs for Wall Street and the Pentagon, they just aren’t going to get very excited.
True believing big D’s won’t read the link Hightrekker posted. Not a snowball’s chance on a red hot stove! But the ones who are capable of thinking well enough to realize that you have to take responsibility for your own losses, rather than blaming them on others, will read it, and be thinking about how to WIN in the future.
RULE ONE, start with a candidate who is truly well liked, or at least not REVILED, by most of the country. Conservatives were SURE to turn out to vote AGAINST her, and the fact that so many many Democrats, especially young ones, went for Sanders, and that he made such a phenomenal showing, considering when and how he got started, no money, no organization, no backing at ALL by the party, etc, is ample proof that a HELL of a lot of Democrats really didn’t have much use for Clinton to begin with.
Younger Democrats never believed in the Great Right Wing Conspiracy. But they believed in the secret speeches and the millions paid for them , and they believed in the millions rolling in from people dealing with the State Department, and they believed in her globalist tendencies.
Younger Democrats frequently made a joke about the line from a country western song, the one that goes about like this, who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes ?
They believed their lying eyes, the eyes that refused to NOT SEE the speeches, the globalism, the Republican Lite platform, etc.
And of course they had even LESS use for Trump.
We believe what we want to believe, and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
Trump’s a LOT worse, an order of magnitude worse, but I can say for the R party that it did not WANT Trump, whereas the D party was more or less a wholly owned subsidiary of Clinton, Incorporated, well before the nominating process even got started last election cycle. All the evidence needed for this assertion is that not a single serious challenger emerged until Sanders appeared out of nowhere, without any money or organization, and not much in the way of name recognition.
All the rest of the D’s who were in a position to run were so intimidated by their insider knowledge of Clinton’s octopus like grip on the party machinery that they didn’t even bother doing more than talk about running for a little while.
And while they never had brains enough to realize it, Clinton supporters who accused Sanders of not even being a Democrat were essentially saying we don’t even have any nominating process, we’re just having a coronation, because nobody else even made a serious effort.
It’s not like the Clintons were broke, they took the money, and taking it confirmed the prejudices of conservatives that she was a crook, and like it or not, there are a LOT of conservatives who vote.
And the taking of it went a very LONG way towards convincing ENOUGH historically reliable D working class voters that she sold them out and would continue to sell them out.
Of course Trump is FAR worse, but he had the advantage of being an even bigger and more shameless fraud, and a CONVINCING liar, comparatively speaking, and an OUTSIDER, at a time the country was screaming for CHANGE , from both sides , from both ends of the political spectrum.
Shit happens, and it has happened to us Yankees.
Here we are again. OldMacDonald aka KGB posting his hate for HRC paragraph after paragraph with a small one liner disclaimer “Trump is FAR worse”.
OldMacDonald and his asshole friends just like him are the reason America is going to face 4 years of advancing into a Trump fascist state. He has been pumping fake Republican news about HRC here for over a year.
Either your with us or against us. OldMacDonald’s hate makes him a Republican fascist Trump Troll. It’s as simple as night and day and don’t give us your Bernie excuse. He lost to HRC big time and was not an option. It was Hillary or Donald and you didn’t vote for Hillary.
But were you the one who was writing ‘Go Trump!’ just a few months ago?
If I did. It was sarcastic. Get real !
HB is and will forever remain a little lap dog true believer who is utterly incapable of thinking for himself. He shares quite a lot with many people I know who believe that no matter what happens, Jesus and his Daddy are always right,always blameless,even when their little kid dies a horrible death from a disease which can not yet be successfully treated or prevented. Even when they work themselves silly, and see some bum inherit a million and blow it all on booze.
ADULTS think about what could have been done differently, so as to get different results, when things don’t go to suit them.
SOME adults point out mistakes and potential mistakes in the making. They seldom win any popularity prizes for doing so, lol.
But I don’t post in order to win a popularity contest.
Whiney little children and nincompoops, who are never in short supply, blame others, when they don’t get what they want.
I don’t hate HRC, nor Trump, nor anybody, because I matured sufficiently, between the ears, many years ago, to understand that hate on my part reduces my own quality of life.
What I feel toward HRC is a combination of judgements, consisting mostly of contempt, with some respect and some pity thrown in.
The respect is for the good things she has done, which I need not enumerate here, we are all aware of recent American history. The pity is for her personal pain,because there is no doubt in my mind she has suffered a lot.
The contempt, which predominates, is for her being so bright and having gotten off to such a great start, still being so stupid as to throw away the ultimate prize for which she worked all her life, and for which she suffered most of the pain, putting up with Bill- who in retrospect is looking better all the time, as far as policy matters are concerned.
She had a law degree from an IVY, and she pulled the Cattle Gate scam, and every last person on the planet who is mathematically literate KNOWS it was a scam. She put in the secret email system to hide her business with shady characters. She took the banksters money, and had contempt enough for working people to do so PUBLICLY
She has SOME brains, but she failed to use them at critical points.
Now LEADERS USE HATE, to motivate true believing followers.
HB is a follower, pure and simple, and beyond that, a hypocrite who has bragged about making money at other people’s expense in the oil biz,while posing as environmentally conscious.
There will be more elections, and while I maintain my position as a writer to be as an independent, and will continue to criticize both parties, etc, I will be advocating for the truth when it comes to actual issues, and pointing out which candidates and parties are truthful and doing the right thing, environmentally, etc.
Hopefully I will by 2020 have convinced at least a few big D democrats that they should think hard about nominating a candidate who isn’t dragging a long baggage train, but rather a candidate who inspires younger voters, who does BETTER in the polls against the R candidate, who has sense enough not to take the party core for granted, who has sense enough to take bribes in only in private, etc.
In right wing forums they usually don’t call me anything any more complimentary than a panty wearing pinko commie queer socialist tree hugging whale lover, and that’s only when they are in a hurry to move on.
In the end, it did come down to Clinton versus Trump, but Virginia was safe Clinton territory, because we are now more urban than rural, and with a gazillion federal employees, etc.
It came down to Clinton because of goddamned fools who were stupid enough to believe in her, despite her record, and believe she couldn’t possibly lose.
There is such a thing as principle, in ethics, and there is such a thing as the precautionary principle, which applies in more fields than just the hard sciences.
OldMacDonald aka KGB, even an idiot knows one doesn’t campaign against their own party for 2020 before the 2016 election. You must have attended Trump University.
University of Hawaii researchers (who should know) estimate that the Earth has about 7.5 billion billion (7.5E+18) grains of sand. And even though we can see no more than a few thousand stars with the unaided eye, astronomers currently think there are about 16 sextillion stars throughout the known universe (give or take a few)–that’s 1.6E+22.
Okay, do the math. For every grain of sand on the earth, there are over 2,100 stars in the known universe.
This book is just packed full of such tidbits as the above. I simply cannot put it down.
I often wish you were nearby so we could get together over any kind of drink you like. Not many people as old as you still have the ability to see reality with a deep sense of wonder.
The number of stars blows my mind, as well.
And then think about the number of atoms in rather small sample of any common element, one mole, only twelve grams of carbon, a gram or two of hydrogen or helium, a piece of iron no bigger than a sugar cube.
six point o two two x ten to the twenty third power.
It’s astounding that our brains ever evolved to the point we can even contemplate such things.
I really wonder if there is any such THING, for lack of a better word, as ULTIMATE reality.
If so, we may never be able to grasp the nature of it, because it seems to me that we can understand things only in terms of OTHER things, some of which must be accepted intuitively, without definitions.
You explain water in terms of hydrogen and oxygen reacting together, and we explain hydrogen and oxygen in terms of subatomic particles, and we explain sub atomic particles in terms of OTHER subatomic particles or string theory or something else beyond my comprehension, and when a subatomic particle is just about well understood, it seems that somebody comes along and demonstrates that it’s not all that simple, and that it consists of YET OTHER particles, known, unknown, or speculative.
Is it possible to get down to the final layer of the onion of reality, assuming a final layer exists?
Yes there are about 16,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the known universe. That’s over 2100 times the number of grains of sand on earth, or about the same number of molecules found in 10 drops of water. Or at least that’s what David Blatner says in Spectrums.
But you are correct, the vast, vast majority of people search for, and will accept, only simple answers for the most complicated questions. Where did all those stars come from? Religious people say “God did it”. While the non-religious say, “they just popped into existence from nothing.” I just don’t believe either one of them. That is, the answer would likely be so complicated that even if we were told we would not be able to understand it.
I don’t mean that we should stop searching for the answer, even though both the religious and non-religious have stopped looking because they think they already have the answer. But the answer is just not that simple. There just has to be more to it than that.
I think there is more mind to this matter than the religious folks could ever imagine. But belief in their simplistic God will not allow any of that. And of course the non-religious will have none of that shit either. đ
Thanks Ron, just ordered the book, sounds fascinating. I agree, there has to be more than “God did it”, or “it just is”.
As you said, “there is more mind to this matter”. Maybe one day science will find God?
I do notice religions saying how flawed we are, how bad we are, which implies God made a big mistake in our creation.
We are a conglomeration of cooperative cells that in general act together to form the concert we call an organism. Our high mental factor might simply be a fluke, an idiot box topped onto a useful brain. This experiment that has replaced true natural physical ability with neo-mental ability did allow us as slow weak creatures to survive and thrive. Yet it also has brought the global ecosystem to the edge of destruction.
We may not be a viable mutation, just a short term aberration.
So enjoy it while it lasts. We are what we are.
A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)
I’m not personally interested in the God part of the discussion at all.
But I do find the question about life origin truly fascinating- Did it happen just once, or multiple times here on earth? And, did it happen just on earth, or elsewhere in the Universe as well?…
I come down on the ‘just once’ side of things. At least until we have some proof that shows otherwise. ‘Just Once’ means that it is even more precious than we can imagine, and we ought to be treating it all as such.
one reason, not that any thinking person would need one, not to listen to those who offer theories and unproven hypothesis for actual real world experience. Must be nice to live in a government sponsored and supported fantasy land…devoid of risk, devoid of loss and devoid of profits. Spewing endless words spread like manure on the internet, what a pathetic life. ??
You and Tyler don’t seem to know much about passenger railroading. They are public projects that generally lose money, like roads.
Maybe they should have made it an electric line.
Must be nice to live in a government sponsored and supported fantasy landâŚdevoid of risk, devoid of loss and devoid of profits. Spewing endless words spread like manure on the internet, what a pathetic life.
That sounds more like people who live off fossil fuel subsidies in Texas and wave US flags… as for Florida the Sun Rail is doing just fine thanks and even FPL is finally figuring out that solar makes more economic sense than fossil fuels…
And that’s under a Republican Governor since 2011!
SunRailâs southern expansion into Osceola County began April 1, 2016 with four new stations now under construction at Meadow Woods in Orange County, and the Tupperware Station, downtown Kissimmee Station and the Poinciana Station in Osceola County. Plans also include double tracking most of the corridor, improving grade crossings and building the four new stations and platforms.
Oh, and the imbecile who wrote this piece of garbage:
In Floridaâs fascinating history, perhaps no figure stands taller than the great Walt Disney, who transformed unwanted swampland into Disney World, forever changing central Florida from swamp and farmland into one of the premier vacation destinations in the world
Doesn’t have the slightest clue about the Florida ecosystem and the Everglades also known as the river of grass. The Everglades is a flowing river not a swamp!
Florida’s Everglades is a region of broad, slow-moving sheets of water flowing southward over low-lying areas from Lake Okeechobeeto the Gulf of Mexico. In places this remarkable “river of grass” is 80 kilometers wide. These images from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer show the Everglades region on January 16, 2002. Each image covers an area measuring 191 kilometers x 205 kilometers. The data were captured during Terra orbit 11072.
On the left is a natural color view acquired by MISR’s nadir camera. A portion of Lake Okeechobee is visible at the top, to the right of image center. South of the lake, whose name derives from the Seminole word for “big water,” an extensive region of farmland known as the Everglades Agricultural Area is recognizable by its many clustered squares. Over half of the sugar produced in United States is grown here. Urban areas along the east coast and in the northern part of the image extend to the boundaries of Big Cypress Swamp, situated north of Everglades National Park.
âIf you want to form an authoritarian country, the first thing you do is bash the press and try to destroy the legitimacy of the judiciary,â said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee who is leading a push to get the Department of Justice to share its information on Trump.
âAnyone who tries to destroy the press and the judiciary is setting the stage for a much more authoritarian situation, and is very dangerous,â Nadler added.
Should Trump push the country in that direction, they see the rise of a more nationalistic state that attempts to exclude people who are not part of Trumpâs America, and sets the stage for more war.
âNationalism is about creating a hierarchical society, and then syncing everybodyâs individuality into militarism, and then going to war against other people, and stereotyping and vilifying foreigners,â said freshman Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is a constitutional law professor.
âYou can see precisely where Steve Bannon wants to go,â Raskin said, noting that the presidentâs brand of populism lends itself to an authoritarian bent. âThe authoritarian populism pushed to its limits just becomes fascism,â
Maybe for the first time ever, I am in complete agreement, no reservations, with something HB has said.
Hey OldMacDonald aka KGB
Republicans released their alternative to the Affordable Care Act.
It will:
Revoke health insurance entirely for 10 million people covered by Medicaid.
Replace subsidies that make health insurance affordable for millions with a fixed value âcouponâ that many will not be able to use.
Use the savings to give a giant tax cut to the wealthiest Americans.
Your poor Trump friends who hated Hillary so much and voted against their best interest. Deserve what their having taken away.
Hi Fred,
We obviously NEED mass transit, or something equivalent to it in terms of low energy low environmental impact transportation.
The question is how we get from our HERE to that future THERE?
When I lived in a city, not a very big one, the poor people who worked downtown wanted buses, and the downtown merchants and landlords wanted buses, and the people who found it convenient to drive on streets where buses operated liked buses, because they reduced traffic so effectively, so long as they lived ELSEWHERE, meaning at least a few blocks, preferably at least four or five blocks or more from the bus route. The perfectly obvious reason was that homeowners with cars didn’t want renters without cars living close to them. Prosperous birds like to flock with similarly prosperous other birds, lol.
Property values tended to be less in parts of town where buses were routed, except for commercial properties. My house went up in value less than virtually identical houses farther from bus lines. I occasionally rode the bus , but it took so long, and cost so much that I found it far preferable to drive since I had a car ANYWAY.
Hub and spoke just don’t get it done, unless your destination is the hub and back home again.
Now when I occasionally visited New York, virtually everybody I knew or met used the subways, and if they rented, they tried for places convenient to the stations. Not many of them had cars, because traffic and parking were such problems that taking the subway was the much better deal, and in New York, you can actually get someplace on the subway in a reasonable length of time, and back home again too.
I conclude that so long as the car culture is IN PLACE, and most people can afford to drive, the mass transit is a hard sell. Once the traffic gets so bad, and the cost of driving and parking gets to be really prohibitive……. then we will change our collective mind.
But consider the man who owns a house a mile or more from a line, and who doesn’t want to go anywhere the line goes, or at least not very often. He’s apt to conclude it’s a bad deal for him, and vote against it, since he will probably have to keep his car anyway.
The car culture problem will solve itself, once cars get to be prohibitively expensive, assuming they do, and unless the renewable energy transition and electric cars are a combination blow out success ,peak oil guarantees the car culture will soon be history.
But if electric cars get to be really cheap, and I don’t see any reason they CAN’T be cheap, eventually, suburbia will live on. The size of the sunk investment virtually guarantees it.
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that almost everybody who has a mcmansion with a garage, backyard, lots of space, and tons of various toys from golf clubs to bass boats would rather drive a micro mini electric to work and to the super market than to move to a cramped downtown apartment- even if one were available at an affordable rent.
You are one of the relatively few people who understand that when the choice is intermittent renewable electricity, or no electricity at all, it’s a no brainer.
Likewise, if the choice comes down to the suburban home, and a super small electric car, one that might go only say fifty miles on a charge, versus giving up the house and losing well into six figures on the house, and moving into a rental not even half as desirable, well it’s going to be another no brainer.
If the only kind of affordable electric commuter vehicle turns out to be a fore and aft two seater that will go only thirty five mph, and only fifty miles on a charge, once gasoline is super expensive and availability is problematical, such cars will sell like ice water in hell.
P.S. Property values (both residential and commercial) go UP adjacent to subway stations, intercity train stations, streetcar stops, and even elevated rail stations.
This is in contrast to buses or (worse) highways or airports.
Worth knowing. Even the tony neighborhoods want their streetcars and they often want their train stations. The ones which already have them guard them fiercely.
Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Portends Huge Carbon Release
It’ll be interesting to see how permafrost thaw impacts the region and the planet.
Our leaders are always stepping in to make sure things are right and we are well taken care of. And they work hard at it and will keep doing so, no matter what. They are in it for us, and we all know that they will be the last to go down with the ship.
Ahh, isn’t life grand? We have taken care of everything. (BTW, as a subordinate, I really appreciate and respect my boss, manager and supervisor. Once and awhile, even, our really great regional director drops in and brings us all to a luncheon and includes on her own free time a corporate peptalk! The one that sometimes rubs shoulders with the CEO himself! I feel so good and energized after that I almost feel like I could work extra overtime hours without pay!)
So I wouldn’t worry too much about this anthropogenic climate change, even if it exists. They have it under control and are doing what is necessary, for the betterment of all.
I mean, take a look at them. Our leaders represent us, and do a damn good job of it if I do say so myself. Just look into their faces, their eyes, hear their confident and reassuring words. You can see and feel the epitome of deep wisdom and caring in them. It is a wisdom, caring and confidence that extends well beyond the pale and the likes of average people like you and me. That is why they are leaders and we are not, and why they lead and we follow, and why we need them. They are our betters and mentors. They help guide us, don’t you see? Isn’t that great? That is why we vote for them every few years. It is an honor and a privilege and sometimes I can hardly wait to do so again!
Our trust and our future is in their good hands. They will turn this planet into a no climate-change zone in no time flat! You’ll see!
You know, next time you do your tax returns, give them a little extra– no really– just to say you care. Give them a little extra helping hand. Buy some lottery tickets. Put some extra coins in the parking meters. Stuff like that. If you have any traffic tickets, pay them right away if you have the money. Why not right? đ
And on a lighter note;
“Scientists project that up to 300 billion metric tons of Arctic carbon may be released into the atmosphere by 2100. For reference, the current atmosphere has accumulated about 250 billion metric tons of carbon from around the globe since the start of the industrial revolution.”
The uptake by the ocean system will be diminished due to continued warming of the ocean. Vegetative land uptake is limited, especially as population grows. Much of the carbon release will be retained by the atmosphere.
Any estimates on ocean releases of carbon in the Arctic regions and elsewhere?
Ocean Acidification Increasing Rapidly In Western Arctic Ocean
We Should Treat Climate Change Like A Personal Illness
The Earth is not separate from your body, it is the medium that allows your body to exist and function.
For us non-scientists, the implications are clear. If you contracted HIV today, would you even consider not taking the medications and risking your life to prove the point of a non-conformist scientific minority? Thereâs an over-99.9 percent chance that youâd simply die very much earlier than you should. Would you give up your life like that, just to give the middle finger to scientific peer review?
We must apply the same thinking to climate change. Think of it as a rapidly progressing illness on the planetary body. The vast majority of scientists agree that carbon dioxide emissions are the âHIVâ that is causing this. If it were your body, would you just wait for even more evidence and hope that the disease goes away on its own? Or would you look at the statistics that point to a high possibility of you dying, and conclude that itâs best to start treatments now?
That article seems to be full of a significant amount of jargon, so let me see if I can break it down so we can all understand what it is saying.
First, we need to understand how there are two major types of peoples of the world. These two categories include people who are “feelings-centered” along with people who are “thinking-centered”. When dealing with these characteristics on political levels, we often find that those who consider themselves liberal are the “feelings-centered” types, while those who consider themselves conservative are the “thinking-centered” types.
Now understanding these issues, we can begin to understand why the two ends of the political spectrum react SO differently to the concept of human-influenced climate change. If you are of the left (politically speaking) you see climate change as important NOT due to the strength of the evidence underpinning the concept, but because of how “serious” you presume the ramifications of the concept to be. In other words, the graver (more urgent) the assertions behind a particular subject, the less motivated will the “feelings-centered”/left-leaning person be to seek out the empirical, objective evidence which proves the subject truthful. From a societal perspective, these types are are the ones who respond most negatively to ANY evidence that goes against their preconceived notions. Unfortunately, in doing so, they are also the ones most easily controlled and/or manipulated by demagoguery.
On the other side of the coin are the “thinking-centered”/right-leaning individuals. The chief behavioural concern amongst such types is a fundamental need to base opinions on a body of strong, rational, and (ultimately) impartial evidence. These types DO NOT use feelings and intuition alone to justify their positions on complex matters such as climate change, nor will they stand by their initial position if new evidence comes along to contradict it. Stated another way, as they have a stronger allegiance to the facts and the truth than how their senses make them “feel” about a subject, the “thinking-centered”/right leaning person will look for logical reasons to believe in something instead of SIMPLY committing to a particular belief while remaining ignorant of facts about the particular subject in question.
Be well,
Walt
I changed my position on climate change causes when the dominant explanation became unsupported by evidence. I have been there believing that we were absolutely responsible for the warming of the planet, so I can understand them quite well.
When I ask believers in human dominated climate change what type of evidence will take to convince them that their position is wrong I get a blank stare. They don’t contemplate that possibility and are perfectly capable of rationalizing any opposing evidence into their belief system.
Walt, we do get a lot of bullshit on this blog but your post has to top them all. Right leaning “thinking centered” people base their opinions on evidence? What a crock. Trump, and trump supporters do not think at all, they base everything on their idiotic right wing ideology. And they sure as hell don’t look at any evidence. Evidence is the right wing’s worst enemy.
What right wingers are really good at is just making up shit that fits their agenda, their ideology. And your post is the perfect example of something you just pulled right out of your ass. I had no idea that humans could pull bullshit out of their ass but you certainly have done that.
And you say left leaning people are the ones most easily controlled and/or manipulated by demagoguery. Good god almighty, no bigger demagogue ever occupied the White House, or any other political office, than Donald Trump. And you right wing idiots just lap up everything he says like it was absolute truth. And he never has any evidence for anything he claims as truth.
Your post qualifies for the “Worst Pile of Stinking Bullshit of the Year Award.”
Hi Ron, for as long as I can remember. I have said religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses. I believe Walt’s post roots comes from this fact. I’m sure the film documentary below is something that won’t surprise you, but will help confirm the ignorance that is growing in this country.
Friends of God A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi HBO Documentary
I have said religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses.
That’s the Marxist view, which is superficial and wrong, as it refers mainly to monotheistic religions and more specifically to Christian religions, with plenty of exceptions as for example the Amish. I would not expect more from someone superficial and usually wrong.
“The evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson says that one of the universal characterisitics of religions is that they depart from factual reality.
And in this regard, traditional religions are not significantly different from what he calls the âsecular stealth religionsâ of Modernism and the Enlightenment.
Hereâs a lecture to the Science Network where he talks about this:
I don’t believe in any God, but I do believe you talk about religion from ignorance. Knowing about one religion does not qualify you to make broad statements like: “I have said religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses.”
Glenn Stehle
Things are becoming clearer.
If you want to catch more of Glenn’s commentary, last I looked (two weeks or so ago), he seems to have defected to Gail’s blog.
Duncan (AKA Hightrekker?) also seems to make guest appearances there… while Ghung can be found over at Peak Oil News. And so on…
Hightrekker, I meant to ask if you’ve sometimes trekked the valleys below too. They can be nice and you can take a splash or boat down in the rivers if you get too hot and/or tired. Peru? Southeast Asia?
Naturally, the mountains can have lakes and rivers about them too though…
“Historic pre-earthquake San Francisco…
Background:
This [originally silent] film was shot on April 14, 1906, just four days before the San Francisco earthquake and fire, to which the negative was nearly lost.”
That should put the previous dreamy, my-kind-of-tune/video in a little perspective.
Some of us like our collapse blogs, beard-to-tail bone-suckin’ collapsy.
Image is of San Francisco in ruins, taken 2000 feet from an airship.
Interestingly, according to the show, the cars were planted, which would make sense at a time when cars were barely getting started.
(“Cars did not become widely available until the early 20th century. One of the first cars that was accessible to the masses was the 1908 Model T, an American car manufactured by the Ford Motor Company.” ~ Wikipedia)
Take away the plants and you get a main section of a frontier city with horses/wagons, trolleys, bikes, people on foot and that’s about it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of the intents of the film was as a kind of ad for the car.
Love the 1895 trolley.
I wonder what things will look like 111 years from now…
“Beside his work in astronomy, Verbiest also experimented with steam. Around 1672 he designed â as a toy for the Chinese Emperor â a steam-propelled trolley which was, quite possibly, the first working steam-powered vehicle (‘auto-mobile’). Verbiest describes it in his work Astronomia Europea. As it was only 65 cm (25.6 in) long, and therefore effectively a scale model, not designed to carry human passengers, nor a driver, it is not strictly accurate to call it a ‘car’ [Oh no? But it looks so comfortable.].
Steam was generated in a ball-shaped boiler, emerging through a pipe at the top, from where it was directed at a simple, open ‘steam turbine’ (rather like a water wheel) that drove the rear wheels.
It is not known if Verbiest’s model was ever built at the time, although he had access to China’s finest metal-working craftsmen who were constructing precision astronomical instruments for him.” ~ Wikipedia
Javier, David Sloan Wilson is arguing that organized religion has performed a service in cultural evolution. From your last link:
Religious organizations, he says, perform an important adaptive role in human societies. They represent culturally-evolved âworkaroundsâ that often provide unifying, coordinating, and supportive functions for large-scale human groups. In other words, moral systems may contribute significantly to our biological survival and reproduction. Other evolutionary theorists have made similar arguments over the years (Sir Arthur Keith, Edward O. Wilson, and Richard Alexander come to mind), but none (to my knowledge) has proposed it as a testable scientific hypothesis or marshaled an array of concrete evidence in support of it.
However all the mentioned above, the two Wilsons, Keith and Alexander, all agree that the story taught by religion is total bullshit. Useful bullshit they say, but bullshit nevertheless.
Nothing they say however, or anything Darwin ever said, disputes the well known fact that religion is used by the rich and powerful to control the masses. Perhaps HuntingtonBeach overstated his case. Let me reword it slightly:
At least 95 percent of all religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses.
Religious worship, from Poseidon to Thor to Yahweh may indeed have aided cultural evolution. However there is no doubt that kings, princes, chiefs, priest and witch doctors have always used religion to increase their power and control the masses.
Ron,
The issue is not if the particular set of beliefs of any religion is right or wrong. The issue is if religions provide adaptation at the group level. If true, and there is evidence that supports it, then religion is an important factor in inter-group selection. Some interesting examples are Jainism, Sikhism, or Judaism, whose members appear to be over-represented in commerce, the army or business, indicating religion can be a factor for success. And everybody knows that religion beliefs influence reproductive differences, and when there is reproductive differences evolution is acting.
“At least 95 percent of all religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses.”
A generalization that probably is sending you in the wrong direction. Every human social structure built to improve cooperation is susceptible to being co-opted by selfish people for their own personal gain. Every one.
Javier, No, no. no, no, you still do not understand. It simply does not matter that a lie is useful, it is still a lie. Organized religion, whether it be Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism is bullshit from top to bottom.
Hey, I agree with you that a lie is often very useful in cultural evolution. That does not change the fact that it is still a fucking lie.
Which is better, a useful lie or a pernicious fact?
I know, I know, a useful lie is most often better. That does not change the fact that it is still a fucking lie.
I am not arguing that. Of course religions do not represent the truth in any of the answers that they give. How could they? There is no point in stating something so obvious as that religions are a complete fabrication with little to no connection to reality.
But religions contain also moral codes, and conduct codes, and eating codes, and nearly every religion arrives to some form of the Golden Rule, at least within its members.
And since religion is a universal trait found in every human culture it requires an explanation far beyond “the opium of the people.”
Religion either responds to an intrinsic human need, or serves a useful adaptive role, or both. That religion can be corrupted or made to serve spurious interests explains nothing.
Trying to get rid of religion without understanding its purpose is likely to backfire. David Sloan Wilson defends that people are falling into what he calls stealth religions that do not contain obvious lies yet operate in the same manner.
“The main purpose of a religion or a stealth religion, however, is not to describe the real world but to motivate a given suite of behaviors. One way to do this is by creating a stylized world without tradeoffs, in which the prescribed behaviors are portrayed as good, good, good for everyone and the prohibited behaviors are portrayed as bad, bad, bad for everyone. Behaviors with mixed effects are absent from the stylized world because they do not clearly tell the believer what to do.”
Religion appears to be natural phenomena, and probably brought genetic fitness in the past through small group dynamics, and even some heath care benefits.
However, it currently is a parasitic meme set, using humans a hosts for its own replication.
Nasty stuff, causing immense ignorance and misery.
“it currently is a parasitic meme set, using humans a hosts for its own replication.”
“religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses.”
Your statements about religion are contradictory and mutually exclusive. A clear sign that you don’t know what you talk about, as usual.
Jav–
A clear sign on how confused you are.
One quote was from me, the other Ron.
And they do not contradict each other.
Actually the second quote was from HuntingtonBeach, I just modified it slightly. But you are correct, they do not contradict each other and they definitely are not mutually exclusive. A parasitic meme makes a perfect vehicle for the rich and powerful to use to control the masses.
LOL! Ron beat me to it! “Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.” – John Stuart Mill
Yair . . . .
Huntington Beach . . .
Your statement below shows a lack of understanding of the human nature and condition.
Do you really think the average Joe or Jane will think or do anything about helping alleviate climate change when they won’t do anything about maintaining a body size allowing them to sit comfortably in a normal seat or view their genitals without a mirror . . . Sheesh, what planet do you live on?
“If it were your body, would you just wait for even more evidence and hope that the disease goes away on its own? Or would you look at the statistics that point to a high possibility of you dying, and conclude that itâs best to start treatments now?”
Cheers.
It’s all about education and it’s under attack by religion and alternative facts. Your basically born with a super computer between your ears and no programming. Garbage in is garbage out.
For those of you who missed the best of SNL last night
That’s a very interesting land slide video. The articles I found regarding it state it is due to permafrost thawing. It’ll be interesting to see what the experts say on how much CO2 and methane are being released from thawing permafrost.
Global warming overall is of course at least three magnitudes more dangerous to humanity than regional floods or droughts, but floods and droughts are quite bad enough.
And when things get bad enough locally or regionally, hot war has often been the result, and may be the result again.
Most of the dams in the USA were apparently built to engineering standards based on the historical flood record, meaning that unless a five hundred year flood just HAPPENED to fall within the last hundred to two hundred years, it wasn’t taken into account. The record is not very good past about a century and a half in some parts of the American West.
But they say one man’s poison is another man’s meat.
If California dries up and blows away, or sinks beneath the sea, farmers on the Dirty Side will be in tall cotton, lol.
So will land eastern landlords, but considering how much tax Californians pay now, and how much they will CONSUME in the event of a disaster, I guess I better hope things go ok out that way. đ
I’d be interested to know your thoughts on what this fellow has to say. At min 46 second 30 into the video he presents yield variability vs temperature. Looks like a Seneca cliff to me.
If climate change is to be dangerous then we must say why. IMHO it is its potential impacts on food production.
Hi Survivalist,
I will check out the video later. If he is saying that at as the temperature rises to a certain point, and stays there for a few days or longer, at certain times, then yields drop like a rock, well…….
That’s pretty much common knowledge in the industry among people who live and work at or near the warm or hot edges of the areas suitable for the production of their chosen crops.
Standard textbook fare.
Apples for instance won’t grow worth a damn much farther south than I am located, except at high elevations. They will literally scald, more or less cook, … right on the trees, if there any on the trees, some years.
There could conceivably be a Seneca Cliff effect involving food supplies due to excessively hot weather, if it extends over large areas.
We aren’t all going to move north, but some things can be done to adjust to changing climate. Probably not enough, in the worst case.
Shit!
!geology buff but 2 observations. The road appears to have been cleaned up before. There are a couple of big structures behind, look a bit like the jibs on big coal mining machines.
NAOM
Coal mining machines? Those are power line structures.
Just the hill relaxing as it thaws. Road and power lines got in the way.
Most of the power line structures seem to be tube style towers with arms. The ones I am referring to are at around -2.55, though, yes, they may be a different type of pylon.
NAOM
Here is a great youtube channel. It’s mostly about advanced algorithms for creating and interpreting images, so it’s interesting to watch. It also shows how insanely fast software is improving.
Important Announcement: The Donald Trump Presidency Is The Best Thing That Ever Happened For Liberal Democrats!
The Donald Trump presidency has demonstrated for the nation, and for the world, what damn stupid idiots the right wing republicans are. It is costing us now but we will reap the rewards down the road. After Donald Trump nobody in their right mind can say that the republican party is the best thing for America.
Of course right wing republican religious nuts are never in their right mind. Or perhaps I am wrong, perhaps they are in their right mind. It’s just that that right mind is just so goddamn stupid.
That is what Stalin said about Hitler. He prevented the Communists from cooperating from the Socialists to oppose Hitler’s rise on the theory that someone as moronic as Hitler would prove to the world how bad fascism was.
Worked I guess. Well for a while anyway. After two generations of bragging and beating its chest about defeating Fascism, America seems to be succumbing.
For starters Hitler did prove what a terrible idea fascism was. Germany has never elected another fascist since Hitler. Secondly, Stalin had little to do with Hitler’s rise to power. He could not have prevented it nor could he have assisted him. The German populace that Hitler stirred into a rage paid little attention to the goings on in Russia.
And last but not least, you cannot compare America in the 2010s to Germany in the 1930s. Any comparison is bogus. Trump might like to have the power Hitler had but he never will. The more he tries to grab more power the more push back he faces. We are just over six weeks into the “reign” of Donald Trump and his popularity is dropping like a rock. Of course it will not drop below his base of very stupid Americans, which numbers about 35% of the populace. But it is fast approaching that number.
What kind of power and popularity did Hitler have six weeks after he took power in Germany? And where did it go from there? Anyway, Godwin’s law comes to mind:
Godwin’s law (or Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage which asserts that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1″âââthat is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler.
Regardless of Godwin’s Law Trump and his advisers have to be the stupidest bunch of imbeciles ever to have accidentally grabbed the reigns of power in the USA!
They are like the dog that caught the car and are now being dragged by it and don’t know what to do with it and are smart enough to let it go. This will probably not end very well…
Case in point: Trump’s most recent twitter shit storm accusing Obama of wire tapping Trump Towers during the election campaign.
Do the illiterate supporters of the orange headed nitwit really believe that Obama, a Harvard Law graduate and a professor of constitutional law would be so stupid as to attempt to do that?! That is beyond industrial grade stupid!
Maybe the White House staff should send Trump to his room and take away his Fox News TV and give him an audio CD of the US constitution to listen to… since he obviously has never read it and is probably incapable of reading it himself, let alone being able to comprehend the content!
Someone should write a children’s coloring book version of the US constitution and send it to Trump!
Do the illiterate supporters of the orange headed nitwit really believe that Obama, a Harvard Law graduate and a professor of constitutional law would be so stupid as to attempt to do that?! That is beyond industrial grade stupid!
Why does he make it so easy? Like shooting ducks in a pond.
There is a rather bold distinction between NSA electronic comms surveillance of world leaders and Obama tapping Trumps phone. Obama cannot order the intelligence services to bug a phone. The suggestion is ridiculous. And if obama did order it there would be a record of it and Trump could declassify it and show it to us. Trump is just deflecting. Every time the fire gets to hot under his ass he tweets some stupid BS.
Also, the Russian embassador in Washington is a very serious man. He doesn’t just drop by for tea and crumpets to shoot the shit cuz he wants new friends. FSB likely has had a laser like focus on Trump since his first visit to Russia. Whether Trump knows it or not he’s been cultivated.
Javier, you know even less about the US constitution and what a US president can or can not do, than you know about Arctic sea ice extent!
Maybe you should stick to making comments about microbiology and Spanish politics. Either that or take up a hobby like knitting sweaters for snakes…I think you’d do real well if you started a little online business selling home made snake sweaters.
Explain that to Merkel and other European leaders that were rather unhappy about it.
W.T.F. does Obama allegedly illegally wire taping Trump Towers during the presidential campaign have to do with any European leaders?!
I was talking specifically about the US constitution and the legal procedures in place that would have to be followed for a wire tap of a US citizen to occur.
Hint the US President has no power whatsoever to order such a wire tap. Meaning that the FBI would have to be breaking the law and would need to have colluded with President Obama. Anyone who seriously believes that happened is either ignorant of how the US government works or is living in La La land.
So go knit some snake sweaters…
I agree (and said) that Hitler proved how bad Fascism was.
The core part of my post was comparing your remarks about Trump being a good thing with Stalin’s strategy towards the Nazis. It think the analogy is quite good. Whether Stalin was successful is another question.
About Trumps will power, I think he is personally a weakling, but he is an enabler for the worst that America has to offer.
The Republicans are now gearing up to use their control over all levels of government to change the constitution. I doubt Trump has the energy to get involved, but that doesn’t mean it will be a good thing.
But thanks for giving me a definition of Godwin’s Law. This is the first time I ever used the internet, so I’d never heard of it.
My apologies alimbiquated, I guess I misunderstood your post.
Godwin posted his law in 1990 on Usenet. I don’t suppose many on this list remember Usenet but I used to post on it all the time. There was an atheist/religious Usenet group where I posted.
Religious and political discussions would rage for days on Usenet and you could be sure that someone would, sooner or later, bring up Hitler.
Usenet still exist but it is now nothing like it was back in those days. It was free then but now some commercial outfit has taken it over and charges a fee. But I don’t know exactly how it works now because I no longer use it and don’t know anyone that does. At any rate the new commercial Usenet is but a shadow of its former self back in its heyday.
I have posted sometimes that we need to be a little more even handed in the way we talk about renewable energy in other forums, because overly optimistic CHERRY PICKED facts and statistics on our part can be used as clubs by anti renewable types to make us look bad.
Let’s look at the annual average of temperatures north of the Arctic circle, compared to the annual average sea ice. Temps from NCEP reanalysis, ice area from NSIDC. Both temps and ice area are shown as their anomalies from the 1979 to 2016 average.
2017 has only two months data, it is the last point to the far lower right, slightly above the trend line.
Seems warmer = less ice
Seems warmer = less ice
What a socking discovery. You can gain the same insight just by looking at the mountain snow melt in spring.
Now let’s go to something a little bit more interesting, and apply your recently gained insight to this proxy reconstruction of sea ice cover in the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas:
Stein, Ruediger, et al. “Holocene variability in sea ice cover, primary production, and PacificâWater inflow and climate change in the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas (Arctic Ocean).” Journal of Quaternary Science (2017). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.2929/full
Oh, look! over 90% of the Holocene had less Arctic sea ice than now. What does that tell us about past temperatures?
A quarter after 2 in the morning in Spain and still going strong.
“Arctic sea ice is not decreasing. There will be more of it in 2017 than in 2016.”
So far your prediction is looking like a big fail.
Greenlandâs Vast Ice Sheet Is Way Less Stable Than We Thought, And Thatâs Bad News For The World
Two new studies reveal just how dynamic â and potentially vulnerable to climate change â it actually is.
âWe do what weâre doing with the atmosphere right now at our own risk,â Bierman told Time. âWeâre dealing with an incredibly complex system on Earth and we donât know the half of it. There are surprises lurking out there.â
Schaefer had a more direct warning. âWe have to be prepared that this ice sheet might go again, and it might go again soon,â he said, according to MIT Technology Review.
âSoon,â of course, is relative to geological time. It could take centuries or even millennia for all that ice to melt.
But thereâs still plenty of reason to be concerned. Greenland currently contributes about a quarter of the three millimeters that global sea levels rise every year â and climate change could greatly accelerate the speed of the ice sheetâs melting. âProjections of sea-level rise during this century hover around 3 or 4 feet, but many, including the one from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, do not take Greenland into account,â states a blog post on Columbiaâs website.
The impacts of climate change on Greenland are already being seen.
The islandâs ice mantle is melting five times faster than it was in the 1990s, according to a 2012 study.
Arctic sea ice extent for January 2017 averaged 13.38 million square kilometers (5.17 million square miles), the lowest January extent in the 38-year satellite record. This is 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) below January 2016, the previous lowest January extent, and 1.26 million square kilometers (487,000 square miles) below the January 1981 to 2010 long-term average.
Arctic sea ice extent for February 2017 averaged 14.28 million square kilometers (5.51 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the 38-year satellite record. This is 40,000 square kilometers (15,400 square miles) below February 2016, the previous lowest extent for the month, and 1.18 million square kilometers (455,600 square miles) below the February 1981 to 2010 long term average.
Your Arctic sea ice alarmism is getting more and more ridiculous, and more telling of your lack of rigor.
– Arctic sea ice extent is about the same as in 2015 and 2016. No reason to fret or spread alarm.
– There is still three more weeks until the melting starts. Arctic sea ice still has a growing trend, so it is possible that there will be more sea ice in the Arctic this month than in 2015 or 2016.
Why are you all worked up over Arctic sea ice this year? Is this some kind of religion that you are trying to spread? Repent or Arctic sea ice will be gone?
“Repent or Arctic sea ice will be gone?”
LOL. Seriously?
You are beginning to sound a bit deranged, Javier!
I just find it difficult to understand this obsession with this year’s Arctic sea ice when the data shows that there is nothing wrong with this year’s Arctic sea ice. It seems they have to worry even when there is no cause.
“The regional- to continental-scale imprint of the thaw slump disturbance regime (Fig. 2), its recent intensification, and the fluvial-geomorphic patterns of sediment mobilization (Fig. 3) indicate a rejuvenation of postglacial landscape change. We conclude that extensive glacigenic deposits imprisoned by permafrost are poised for climate-driven geomorphic transformation.”
These might sound like significant geologic changes to anyone who doesn’t know what you know!
Chilyb,
I don’t know much about permafrost, but I can give you my opinion about the changes that the climate of SubArctic regions have experienced over the past several thousand years.
Due to changes in insolation from Milankovitch orbital changes the climate of high northern latitudes during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, about 6000 years ago, was up to +5°C warmer than now. We know that the permanent sea ice line in Greenland was nearly 1000 km north of where it is now.
It is clear that at that time a lot of what it is today permafrost was not frozen during the summer. The level and increase of greenhouse gases during that time was very moderate. I see no reason why it should be different now, if permafrost becomes unfrozen during summers. We should remember that summer insolation is very low at high northern latitudes, and getting lower.
Regarding geological changes to landscape due to permafrost thawing, I really know nothing, so I cannot comment.
Javier,
I’m not disagreeing with you here, but I will point out that “…if permafrost becomes unfrozen during summers” leaves you open to critics who would point to the statement as indicating a lack of understanding of permafrost. I’d leave that statement out.
Permafrost varies in thickness from a few meters to hundreds of meters in the Arctic. The surface melts in Summer (the melt layer is called talik) except perhaps in the very coldest regions but refreezes in Winter. That’s why there is still permafrost.
Just a suggestion.
“There is still three more weeks until the melting starts.” ~ Javier
Did you just make your next failed prediction? It must get disappointing.
“If you are looking to place a bet on the date when Arctic sea ice will reach its annual maximum, March 12 would be a safe choice. Between 1981 and 2010, this has been the date that, on average, sea ice has begun shrinking.
Those with good memories will know, however, that there is a big window: in 2016, the date was March 24. In 2015, it was a month earlier. Both set new lows for sea-ice extent.”
“There is still three more weeks until the melting starts. Arctic sea ice still has a growing trend, so it is possible that there will be more sea ice in the Arctic this month than in 2015 or 2016.” ~Javier on March 7, 2016
Arctic sea ice extent annual maximum set a new record low on March 6, 2017. The new record low occurred the day before your dismal failure of a prediction.
Your predictions are getting more and more ridiculous, and more telling of your lack of rigour.
Arctic Sea Ice Volume Lowest Ever Recorded During Winter, Comparable to Summer Volumes of the Early 80s
Arctic sea ice volume for both January and February of 2017 are now far below past record low trend lines for this time of year. Present record low monthly values for this past February are around 17,000 cubic kilometers vs previous record lows for the month during 2013 at around 19,500 cubic kilometers. Last Februaryâs sea ice volume average of 17,000 cubic kilometers is about the same sea ice volume measured at the end of melt season in September of 1981. In other words, sea ice volume in winter now is comparable to sea ice volumes during the summers of the early 1980s.
Step away from politics for a minute and you’ll see, the fact is, there’s a very long term trend of decreased Arctic ice. The trend has been going on since circa 1830. In private many of the government’s scientists will admit this, even if they only discuss sea ice since 1979 in reports for public consumption.
In any event, let’s just hope the large mass gain of Greenland’s ice this year isn’t a foreshadowing of conditions to come. Most humans are more fearful of cold than they are of warmth.
“letâs just hope the large mass gain of Greenlandâs ice this year isnât a foreshadowing of conditions to come.”
Don’t worry, it’s not.
“Most humans are more fearful of cold than they are of warmth.”
Thanks for the update doc. What you do, hold a survey last night at Hooters?
And what large mass gains of greenlands ice this year are you referring to?
The trend has been going on since circa 1830. In private many of the governmentâs scientists will admit this, even if they only discuss sea ice since 1979 in reports for public consumption.
No shit, Sherlock! I guess you didn’t get the memo did you?
Detectable anthropogenic climate change began considerably earlier than previously thought, according to new research from the international Past Global Changes 2000 year (PAGES 2K) Consortium.
The new work â which involved input from 25 different researchers from across Australia, the US, Europe and Asia â found that anthropogenic warming first started all the way back in the 1830s, right in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.
Humans have caused climate change for 180 years
Date:
August 24, 2016
Source:
Australian National University
Summary:
An international research project has found human activity has been causing global warming for almost two centuries, proving human-induced climate change is not just a 20th century phenomenon.
None of which came as a big surprise to Svante Arrhenius and other scientists back in the late 19th century.
History of the greenhouse effect and global warming By S.M. Enzler MSc
History of the greenhouse effect and global warming
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish scientist that was the first to claim in 1896 that fossil fuel combustion may eventually result in enhanced global warming. He proposed a relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature. He found that the average surface temperature of the earth is about 15C because of the infrared absorption capacity of water vapor and carbon dioxide. This is called the natural greenhouse effect. Arrhenius suggested a doubling of the CO2 concentration would lead to a 5C temperature rise. He and Thomas Chamberlin calculated that human activities could warm the earth by adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This research was a by-product of research of whether carbon dioxide would explain the causes of the great Ice Ages. This was not actually verified until 1987.
We have know for quite a while now that human activities can and do have an impact on the climate. Who knows, next thing one of these drive by trolls will inform us that gravity has been discovered, imagine that!
All you pointed out here is how hypocritical your political side is when talking about how climate change is going to somehow cause the collapse of modern civilization through mass death and destruction. By yall’s own admissions, people have had a part in heating the globe since way back in the 1800’s. Yet the fact is, in that time, human society has completely flourished beyond what anybody could have ever thought imaginable. Thus, it would stand to reason to all but the most devoted leftists that continued warming is quite likely to lead to even more advancement and enrichment of humanity.
No, it doesn’t “stand to reason” at all. And “leftists” are not all of the people that are here. I am not at all to the left, but it is very clear what a destructive path we are on. Flourishing, yes. Just like the bacteria in a petri dish before the food runs out and the environment is poisoned.
All you pointed out here is how hypocritical your political side is when talking about how climate change is going to somehow cause the collapse of modern civilization through mass death and destruction.
First I’m going to attempt to clarify something. I do not have a political side, not left, nor right and not even centrist. I follow my own drum beat. To be clear I don’t even have one nationality. I’m a true a-national and multiculturalist and a polyglot.
That is one of the reasons I am an equal opportunity hater of all fascists and ultra nationalists of all countries anywhere on this planet with an unbridled passion. Since I doubt most people can even wrap their minds around what I’m trying to express here. ..
I’ll post a link to a TED talk that does it quite well. By Taiye Selasi:
So much for my political and national affiliations, they simply do not apply and no one is going to put any label on me.
Now on to your point:
Yet the fact is, in that time, human society has completely flourished beyond what anybody could have ever thought imaginable. Thus, it would stand to reason to all but the most devoted leftists that continued warming is quite likely to lead to even more advancement and enrichment of humanity.
So many logical fallacies condensed into so few words that it would take multiple dissertations to even try to address all of them. But Songster’s comment does address the most important one. Which is that humans won the fossil fuel energy lotto. Unfortunately the jury is still out on whether or not in the aggregate we are any smarter or wiser than yeast or cyanobacteria.
Yes, there is no doubt that we are very clever ingenious apes and we have come to be the dominant species on this planet. That in and of itself is no guarantee whatsoever that we will continue to flourish. It is highly doubtful that the rapid climate change being caused by our species will not have deleterious effects on multiple planetary systems.
Anyone who understands complex nonlinear systems and chaos math will tell you that the precautionary principle should be applied in spades when there is even a slight chance of pushing such systems into new and unpredictable behaviors.
Strict US auto emission and efficiency standards are history .. cough cough
“Automakers complained that only 3.5 percent of new vehicles are able to reach the federal standards set by the EPA, in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which required an average of 54.5 mpg by 2025 (compared with 36 mpg today)”
Back to the Future … long lines @ the Pump? https://chargedevs.com/newswire/us-auto-emission-standards-are-history/
Warm Winds Take Aim at Chukchi as Arctic Sea Ice Volume Hits Record Lows
Fom the article,
“Februaryâs sea ice volume average of 17,000 cubic kilometers is about the same sea ice volume measured at the end of melt season in September of 1981. In other words, sea ice volume in winter now is comparable to sea ice volumes during the summers of the early 1980s.”
Except that they have no idea because ice volume is modeled and has huge error bars.
Sea ice extent measures ice with almost no confidence. Fifteen percent ice is considered ice covered. Not a measure of actual ice concentration.
Yes, it is therefore a conservative measure, or upper bound. And it is still declining rapidly.
Due to it’s inherent definition it can be as much as 85% larger than the actual amount of ice cover. It will only be near an upper bound under specific conditions where most of the ice is compacted together. In cases where the ice is moving or disturbed by storms (often the case) sea ice extent does not even come close to representing the actual amount of ice.
The goal posts moving is becoming more and more evident. Since Arctic sea ice is not declining like alarmists would like, now it is a question of certain months having less sea ice, or certain areas of the Arctic having less sea ice. It is evident to all that when alarmists resort to this type of partial claims is because the Arctic is refusing to melt as it was promised to us, and we are going to see that all their doom predictions are equally empty. In fact we have been seeing it for over 30 years now. Yes, the world is warming a little. So what. As if cold was a good thing.
This may come as a shock to you but sea ice is a three dimensional entity. To discuss the characteristics of its dimensions is not to move the goal posts. You’re rhetoric is weak and ill informed.
It is you who presents weak arguments that Arctic sea ice is increasing. When faced with opposing evidence all you can do is cry out alarmist and doom cult. PhD indeed. You’re an embarrassment to the scientific community.
It’s not about whether or not cold is a good thing. You insist on using normative terms when what’s being discussed is facts. It’s not my fault your predictions are all wrong. Be a man and own up to your constant failures for a change instead of casting the discussion in normative terms.
You’re predictions are all just one big failure. Why would anybody believe the nonsense and ramblings of a purveyor of failed predictions. Quite some expert you are.
Temperature extremes: Effect on plant growth and development
Similar to the previous one, except PIOMAS volume.
When the average annual anomaly reaches about -10 thousand km^3, there will be essentially zero sea ice at the fall minimum and maybe late summer.
I think we are likely to reach -8 this year.
EPA to reconsider vehicle fuel standards, may move against California targets
Margo Oge, who directed the EPA’s office of transportation and air quality from 1994 to 2012, said in an email that the agency’s recent decision to lock in the fuel-efficiency rule “was made on sound science and thousands of man-hours of analysis.”
“If the Trump administration were to rely on facts and sound science, they would come to the same conclusion that the EPA staff and outside experts reached: The 2025 standards are achievable and in a way that will save consumers trillions in fuel costs,” she said.
Any decision to revoke California’s federal waiver could spur a major legal fight, and the state has already retained former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. The state will “vigorously participate and defend ourselves” on setting the state’s own air quality rules, California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols said.
Maybe Javier can explain why it’s no big deal by presenting us with something about solar cycles and the Holocene.
That’s wonderful economic news. In the short-term, Chicago will save money this year, not having to plow, sand, scrape and so on. In the long-term Illinois is a big agriculture state, but has the massive disadvantage of not being able to grow crops all through the winter months. If the weatherman’s predictions of global warming end up true, that could change. The state would be able to solve many of it’s structural economic problems by going to sustainable year-round agricultural output.
Regards,
-Ralph
Cass Tech â64
The frost free growing season is already nine days longer in that region.
Hey Ralph, you obviously never took any biology or agricultural science courses did you?! So I guess it would be pointless to engage you in a discussion about the intricacies of plant physiology or the consequences of rapid climate change on ecosystems.
From the good folk in Illinois who do know a thing or two about agriculture and science …
What has Climate Change Done?
Posted on February 2, 2017 by arielg2@illinois.edu Climate change greatly impacts the types and availability of the food that humans consume. A few examples the effects of climate change are: a year of not enough or too much rainfall, a hot spell or cold snap at the wrong time, or extremes, like flooding and storms, can have a significant effect on local crop yields and livestock production. Contrasting the negative effects of climate change, carbon dioxide emission could increase production of some crops, such as rice, soybean and wheat. (Ranger) Although there are some positive effects, the changing climate affects the length and quality of the growing season. Also farmers could experience increasing damage to their crops, caused by a rising intensity of droughts, flooding or fires. When events such as droughts or flooding occurs, it makes it more difficult to grow crops, raise animals, and catch fish in the same ways and same places that had been used in the past.
Occasional starvation is good for us. Eating less in general promotes longevity.
It’s been discovered that starving between the ages of 9 and 12 causes the next several generations to be heart and other disease resistant as well as increased longevity.
So the whole civilized idea of constant food supply decreases our health.
Natural population control. Plenty of food, population limits due to health, lack of food, population strengthens to survive. Then we go and throw a spanner in the works by inventing medicines that remove other brakes on population and we get a population explosion; which will self limit, probably drastically.
NAOM
Interesting article
“Never before has such a convoy crossed through the Northern Sea Route, from the east to the west, at this time of year.”
“Welcome to the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity. Led by Professor Tim Jackson and working in collaboration with a variety of academic and non-academic partners, CUSP is now firmly up and running.”
It’s connected to the UK parliament All Party Political Group on limits to growth. I think these APPGs last 2 or 3 years. This one is lead by the only Green Party MP, but most of the work is by academics, a lot of whom are involved with CUSP.
“Welcome to the website of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Limits to Growth, a new platform for cross-party dialogue on economic growth in a time of environmental and social transition. Our aims are: to create the space for cross-party dialogue on environmental and social limits to growth; to assess the evidence for such limits, identify the risks and build support for appropriate responses; and to contribute to the international debate on redefining prosperity.”
These are some videos that I would like to hear opinions on. I consider the group here some of the best critical thinking people I know of. This is NOT a joke, I just want to hear thoughts.
The first vid is a story about how the ritual of Christmas may have come about. The second one is regarding flat earth and no I am not kidding. I have researched it quite a bit and have come to the conclusion I no longer can believe we are living on a ball. Before you dismiss it outright which is pretty much what I did while laughing the first time I heard about a Flat Earth. Just watch a few minutes of the video please. Thanks -Dave Hicks
I have researched it quite a bit and have come to the conclusion I no longer can believe we are living on a ball.
David, I approved your post because we could all use a good laugh. Your post is hilarious. It is unbelievable. Your link, the second Youtube link, is really hilarious. I couldn’t stop laughing.
Seriously, it is obvious that the narrator of the video really believed the shit he espoused. He really believed that there is an ice wall in Antarctica that marks the end of the flat earth. Of course planes fly over this “flat earth wall” every day without finding the end of the flat earth.
But this is far more serious than the belly laugh we will all get out of it. It is an example of the very stupid things that people, people with a Western education will nevertheless believe.
If you believe there is a limit to the stupidity of the human intellect, you are mistaken. The fact that there are people who still believe in a flat earth proves that theory wrong.
Hey Ron, what gets me is that peer reviewed science says that water remains FLAT over a distance of six miles. I do understand you making fun of me (I laughed when I first heard this too), but this peer reviewed science experiment really got me and I cannot figure out where the “trick” is.
If you don’t want to waste your time with me thats fine but maybe someone else will look at the peer reviewed experiment, and the University study below that to explain what the HELL I am missing?
Below is the peer reviewed experiment that has been replicated many times to distances over water up to 100 miles (which equates to earth curvature of 1.26 miles of curve.)
The english mechanic is a peer reviewed science journal. Before round earth bias was spread they published this
“The Flat Earth: another Bedford Canal experiment” (Bernard H.Watson, et al),
ENGLISH MECHANIC, 80:160, 1904
Bedford Canal, England. A repeat of the 1870 experiment
“A train of empty turf-boats had just entered the Canal from the river Ouse, and
was about proceeding to Ramsey. I arranged with the captain to place the shallowest
boat last in the train, and to take me on to Welney Bridge, a distance of six
miles. A good telescope was then fixed on the lowest part of the stern of the last
boat. The sluice gate of the Old Bedford Bridge was 5ft. 8in. high, the turf-boat
moored there was 2ft. 6in. high, and the notice board was 6ft. 6in. from the water.
The sun was shining strongly upon them in the direction of the south-southwest; the
air was exceedingly still and clear, and the surface of the water smooth as a
molten mirror, so that everything was favourable for observation. At 1.15 p.m. the
train started for Welney. As the boats gradually receded, the sluice gate, the
turf-boat and the notice board continued to be visible to the naked eye for about
four miles. When the sluice gate and the turf-boat (being of a dark colour) became
somewhat indistinct, the notice board (which was white) was still plainly visible,
and remained so to the end of six miles. But on looking through the telescope all
the objects were distinctly visible throughout the whole distance. On reaching
Welney Bridge I made very careful and repeated observations, and finding several
men upon the banks of the canal, I called them to look through the telescope. They
all saw distinctly the white notice board, the sluice gate, and the black turf-boat
moored near them.
Now, as the telescope was 18in. above the water, The line of sight would touch the
horizon at one mile and a half away (if the surface were convex). The curvature of
the remaining four miles and a half would be 13ft. 6in. Hence the turf-boat should
have been 11ft., the top of the sluice gate 7ft. 10in., and the bottom of the
notice board 7ft. below the horizon.
My recent experiment affords undeniable proof of the Earth’s unglobularity, because
it rests not on transitory vision; but my proof remains printed on the negative of
the photograph which Mr.Clifton took for me, and in my presence, on behalf of
J.H.Dallmeyer, Ltd.
A photograph can not ‘imagine’ nor lie!” (1)
AND one other study is regarding Kansas that they say is technially flatter than a pancake. The distance across Kansas is approx 400 miles. On the calculator it says that 400 miles should equal 20 miles of CURVATURE!
Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake
by Mark Fonstad 1, William Pugatch 1, and Brandon Vogt 2
1. Department of Geography, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas
2. Department of Geography, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
In this report, we apply basic scientific techniques to answer the question âIs Kansas as flat as a pancake?â
Figure 1. (a) A well-cooked pancake; and (b) Kansas. 1
While driving across the American Midwest, it is common to hear travelers remark, âThis state is as flat as a pancake.â To the authors, this adage seems to qualitatively capture some characteristic of a topographic geodetic survey 2. This obvious question âhow flat is a pancakeâ spurned our analytical interest, and we set out to find the âflatnessâ of both a pancake and one particular state: Kansas.
A Technical Approach to Pancakes and Kansas
Barring the acquisition of either a Kansas-sized pancake or a pancake-sized Kansas, mathematical techniques are needed to do a proper comparison. Some readers may find the comparing of a pancake and Kansas to be analogous to the comparing of apples and oranges; we refer those readers to a 1995 publication by NASAâs Scott Sandford 3, who used spectrographic techniques to do a comparison of apples and oranges.
One common method of quantifying âflatnessâ in geodesy is the âflatteningâ ratio. The length of an ellipseâs (or arcâs) semi-major axis a is compared with its measured semi-minor axis b using the formula for flattening, f = (a â b) / a. A perfectly flat surface will have a flattening f of one, whereas an ellipsoid with equal axis lengths will have no flattening, and f will equal zero.
For example, the earth is slightly flattened at the poles due to the earthâs rotation, making its semi-major axis slightly longer than its semi-minor axis, giving a global f of 0.00335. For both Kansas and the pancake, we approximated the local ellipsoid with a second-order polynomial line fit to the cross-sections. These polynomial equations allowed us to estimate the local ellipsoidâs semi-major and semi-minor axes and thus we can calculate the flattening measure f.
Materials and Methods
We purchased a well-cooked pancake from a local restaurant, the International House of Pancakes, and prepared it for analysis by separating a 2-cm wide sample strip that had not had time to desiccate. We collected macro-pancake topography through digital image processing of a pancake image and ruler for scale calibration (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Pancake cross-sectional surface being digitized.
We made another topographic profile from the sample, using a confocal laser microscope. The importance of this research dictated that we not be daunted by the âNo Food or Drinkâ sign posted in the microscopy room. The microscope collects one elevation point every 10 mm and has a maximum surface diameter of 2 cm (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. When viewed at a scale of 50 mm, a pancake appears more rugged than the Grand Canyon.
We measured a west-east profile across Kansas taken from merged 1:250,000 scale digital elevation model (DEM) data from the United States Geological Survey. In general, the spacing between adjacent elevation points on the landscape transects was approximately 90 meters. We extracted surface transects and flatness estimates from the Kansas and pancake DEM data using a geographic information system.
Results
The topographic transects of both Kansas and a pancake at millimeter scale are both quite flat, but this first analysis showed that Kansas is clearly flatter (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Surface topography of Kansas and of a pancake.
Mathematically, a value of 1.000 would indicate perfect, platonic flatness. The calculated flatness of the pancake transect from the digital image is approximately 0.957, which is pretty flat, but far from perfectly flat. The confocal laser scan showed the pancake surface to be slightly rougher, still.
Measuring the flatness of Kansas presented us with a greater challenge than measuring the flatness of the pancake. The state is so flat that the off-the-shelf software produced a flatness value for it of 1. This value was, as they say, too good to be true, so we did a more complex analysis, and after many hours of programming work, we were able to estimate that Kansasâs flatness is approximately 0.9997. That degree of flatness might be described, mathematically, as âdamn flat.â
Conclusion
Simply put, our results show that Kansas is considerably flatter than a pancake.
Notes
1. The photograph of Kansas is of an area near Wichita, Kansas. It may be of significance that the town of Liberal, Kansas hosts the annual âInternational Pancake Dayâ festival.
2. To pump up our cross-disciplinary name-dropping, we should also mention that recently some quick-thinking cosmologists also described the universe as being âflatter than a pancakeâ after making detailed measurements of the cosmic background radiation.
3. âComparing Apples and Oranges,â S.A. Sandford, Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 1, no. 3, May/June 1995.
Thanks to anyone who has read this far and tells me what the hell I am missing here.
Un-fucking-believable! There are still people so fucking, down in the dirt stupid, as to still believe that the earth is flat! Yes, there is one such person and his name is David Hicks. No David, I will not lower myself to responding to your very stupid argument. That would be lowering myself to the fucking pig sty of stupidity that you live in,
Good bye.
I do not wish nor intend to imply that Obama had anything to do with a possible Trump phone tap, personally.
Taken all around, I consider him to be an exceptionably honorable man, for politician, and he was a decent to excellent prez, depending on any particular issue, if you remember that a president’s hands are often tied by circumstances, and he cannot always do what he would prefer due to having to consider the interests of his supporters and his party.
But it IS altogether possible that Trump’s, or any other persons phone has been tapped, if the FBI has reason to believe such a person is or has been involved in certain criminal activities.
There is a special more or less secret court that deals with the warrants needed for such wire taps. You seldom hear much about the activities of this court until a case is brought.
I find it amusing that everybody is forgetting what a scumbag Trump is , in order to reflexively defend Obama.
I think the odds are rather high that Trump is simply making up more bullshit lies, knowing his true believers will remember them as truths over time.
But IF there WAS or is a criminal investigation going on, it would be standard practice to deny it, according to the laws passed since nine eleven, dealing with such matters as international criminal activities, at least until the investigation is concluded, or until it is prosecuted.
Announcing or acknowledging such an investigation would effectively mean it is compromised to the point of wasting the effort.
There is also always a possibility that such activities are under taken by over eager underlings, who do occasionally cause real problems for higher up officials.
But as I said above, my opinion is that this whole thing is just more Trump bullshit.
Ron said-
“If you believe there is a limit to the stupidity of the human intellect, you are mistaken. The fact that there are people who still believe in a flat earth proves that theory wrong.”
Seriously Ron, Please. I’m pretty sure you need Universal theory of GRAVITY to explain why we stick to a round ball rotating on its axis at 1000mph, circling the sun at 70 thousand mph, while the sun hurls through space at 600,000 THOUSAND mph, all while the galaxy is moving at something in the hundreds of thousands of mph , and best yet all this while the universe is expanding at some uncomprehensible number- THATS WHAT YOU BELIEVE- cause it sure as HELL is not a fact! I DARE you to publish this comment.
I will debate anyone here openly and lets see who comes out on top. But you won’t, cause YOU can’t prove SHIT with a THEORY can you? I am saving this and I will make sure that people here see it some way.
So tell me I am wrong when I say you are using a THEORY to PROVE the earth is round which REQUIRES BELIEF! Treat me like an idiot. I DARE you to answer the gravity question and post it, but I assure you, you will make up some reason in YOUR mind for not posting this and giving a reply whether the theory of gravity proves your argument, hint- It cannot, a theory is NOT a FACT.
By the way you made me angry for implying I am stupid. I am not an stupid and I KNOW you are not an stupid. Cognitive Dissonance is BRUTAL.
Warning: Gravity is âOnly a Theoryâ
by Ellery Schempp
All physics textbooks should include this warning label:
âThis textbook contains material on Gravity. Universal Gravity is a theory, not a fact, regarding the natural law of attraction. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.â
The Universal Theory of Gravity is often taught in schools as a âfact,â when in fact it is not even a good theory.
First of all, no one has measured gravity for every atom and every star. It is simply a religious belief that it is âuniversal.â Secondly, school textbooks routinely make false statements. For example, âthe moon goes around the earth.â If the theory of gravity were true, it would show that the sun’s gravitational force on the moon is much stronger than the earth’s gravitational force on the moon, so the moon would go around the sun. Anybody can look up at night and see the obvious gaps in gravity theory.
The existence of tides is often taken as a proof of gravity, but this is logically flawed. Because if the moon’s âgravityâ were responsible for a bulge underneath it, then how can anyone explain a high tide on the opposite side of the earth at the same time? Anyone can observe that there are 2 — not 1 — high tides every day. It is far more likely that tides were given us by an Intelligent Creator long ago and they have been with us ever since. In any case, two high tides falsifies gravity.
There are numerous other flaws. For example, astronomers, who seem to have a fetish for gravity, tell us that the moon rotates on its axis but at the same time it always presents the same face to the earth. This is patently absurd. Moreover, if gravity were working on the early earth, then earth would have been bombarded out of existence by falling asteroids, meteors, comets, and other space junk. Furthermore, gravity theory suggests that the planets have been moving in orderly orbits for millions and millions of years, which wholly contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Since everything in the Universe tends to disorder according to the 2nd Law, orderly orbits are impossible. This cannot be resolved by pointing to the huge outpouring of energy from the sun. In fact, it is known that the flux of photons from the sun and the âsolar windâ actually tends to push earth away.
There are numerous alternative theories that should be taught on an equal basis. For example, the observed behavior of the earth revolving around the sun can be perfectly explained if the sun has a net positive charge and the planets have a net negative charge, since opposite charges attract and the force is an inverse-square law, exactly as the increasingly discredited Theory of Gravity. Physics and chemistry texts emphasize that this is the explanation for electrons going around the nucleus, so if it works for atoms, why not for the solar system? The answer is simple: scientific orthodoxy.
The US Patent Office has never issued a patent for anti-gravity. Why is this? According to natural law and homeopathy, everything exists in opposites: good-evil; grace-sin; positive charges-negative charges; north poles-south poles; good vibes-bad vibes; etc. We know there are anti-evolutionists, so why not anti-gravitationalists? It is clearly a matter of the scientific establishment elite protecting their own. Anti-gravity papers are routinely rejected from peer-reviewed journals, and scientists who propose anti-gravity quickly lose their funding. Universal gravity theory is just a way to keep the grant money flowing.
Even Isaac Newton, said to be the discoverer of gravity, knew there were problems with the theory. He claims to have invented the idea early in his life, but he knew that no mathematician of his day would approve his theory, so he invented a whole new branch of mathematics, called fluxions, just to âproveâ his theory. This became calculus, a deeply flawed branch having to do with so-called âinfinitesimalsâ which have never been observed. Then when Einstein invented a new theory of gravity, he, too, used an obscure bit of mathematics called tensors. It seems that every time there is a theory of gravity, it is mixed up with âfringeâ mathematics. Newton, by the way, was far from a secular scientist, and the bulk of his writings is actually on theology and Christianity. His dabbling in gravity, alchemy, and calculus was a mere sideline, perhaps an aberration best left forgotten in describing his career and faith in a Creator.
To make matters worse, proponents of gravity theory hypothesize about mysterious things called gravitons and gravity waves. These have never been observed, and when some accounts of detecting gravity waves were published, the physicists involved had to quickly retract them. Every account of anti-gravity and gravity waves quickly turns to laughter. This is not a theory suitable for children. And even children can see how ridiculous it is to imagine that people in Australia are upside down with respect to us, as gravity theory would have it. If this is an example of the predictive power of the theory of gravity, we can see that at the core there is no foundation.
Gravity totally fails to explain why Saturn has rings and Jupiter does not. It utterly fails to account for obesity. In fact, what it does âexplainâ is far out-weighed by what it does not explain.
When the planet Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, he relied on âgravitational calculations.â But Tombaugh was a Unitarian, a liberal religious group that supports the Theory of Gravity. The modern-day Unitarian-Universalists continue to rely on liberal notions and dismiss ideas of anti-gravity as heretical. Tombaugh never even attempted to justify his âgravitational calculationsâ on the basis of Scripture, and he went on to be a founding member of the liberal Unitarian Fellowship of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
It is safe to say that without the Theory of Gravity, there would be no talk about a âBig Bang,â and important limitations in such sports as basketball would be lifted. This would greatly benefit the games and enhance revenue as is proper in a faith-based, free-enterprise society.
The theory of gravity violates common sense in many ways. Adherents have a hard time explaining, for instance, why airplanes do not fall. Since anti-gravity is rejected by the scientific establishment, they resort to lots of hand-waving. The theory, if taken seriously, implies that the default position for all airplanes is on the ground. While this is obviously true for Northwest airplanes (relying on âA Wing and a Prayerâ), it appears that Jet Blue and Southwest have a superior theory that effectively harnesses forces that overcome so-called gravity.
It is unlikely that the Law of Gravity will be repealed given the present geo-political climate, but there is no need to teach unfounded theories in the public schools. There is, indeed, evidence that the Theory of Gravity is having a grave effect on morality. Activist judges and left-leaning teachers often use the phrase âwhat goes up must come downâ as a way of describing gravity, and relativists have been quick to apply this to moral standards and common decency.
It is not even clear why we need a theory of gravity — there is not a single mention in the Bible, and the patriotic founding fathers never referred to it.
Finally, the mere name âUniversal Theory of Gravityâ or âTheory of Universal Gravityâ (the secularists like to use confusing language) has a distinctly socialist ring to it. The core idea of âto each according to his weight, from each according to his massâ is communist. There is no reason that gravity should apply to the just and the unjust equally, and the saved should have relief from such âuniversalism.â If we have Universal Gravity now, then Universal health care will be sure to follow. It is this kind of Universalism that saps a nation’s moral fiber.
Overall, the Theory of Universal Gravity is just not an attractive theory. It is based on borderline evidence, has many serious gaps in what it claims to explain, is clearly wrong in important respects, and has social and moral deficiencies. If taught in the public schools, by mis-directed âeducators,â it has to be balanced with alternative, more attractive theories with genuine gravamen and spiritual gravitas.
To whom it may concern. The post by David Hicks, posted above, was held as “pending”, awaiting approval from either Dennis or myself. I thought it rather humorous so I approved it. Perhaps that was a mistake but I think not. It is a living example of the utter stupidity that plagues the human race.
We, here in the Western World, sometimes believe that we are the enlightened ones. That is that people who really believe really stupid things are confined to the undeveloped world. But no, that is just not so. Some people will believe damn near any stupid thing provided they are provided with some kind of pseudo explanation of how it is possible. This “pseudo explainer” then becomes their authority.
There can be no field of study more interesting and intriguing than the study of human nature. I have read hundred of non-fiction books on the subject. But two of the very best were Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram. Both books, especially the latter one, will blow you away as to the behavior and malleability of the human mind. People, not just a few people, but the vast majority of human beings, will believe damn near anything if only some “authority” tells them it is so.
I think this is a natural phenomenon. People are overwhelmed by the vast number of events and the weight of the data that overwhelms their daily lives. Therefore they must rely on others, authority figures whom they place their faith in.
All we can do is hear these people out, people like David Hicks, and hope that common sense will win out in the end. But the result of the last presidential election tells me that this may not be the case at all. The very stupid may get control of the government and declare that their “ideas” must be given equal weight with science. Creationist have tried it and have lost. But now they may have a majority of congress and their own man in the White House.
Can the flat earth folks be far behind?
Thank you Ron Patterson for proving my point. Science has become a religion. You “believe” in the Universal Theory of Gravity because some guys YOU consider an AUTHORITY told you that was true and that was enough, UNLESS you are going to tell me you can prove the Big Bang lololololololol!!!
Dare you to print this one too! By the way I have copy and pasted the whole thread cause I’m pretty sure this can o worms is one you wished you had not opened.
Thank you Ron Patterson for proving my point. Science has become a religion. You âbelieveâ in the Universal Theory of Gravity because some guys YOU consider an AUTHORITY told you that was true and that was enough, UNLESS you are going to tell me you can prove the Big Bang lololololololol!!!
No, most of us here studied at universities and actually took courses in math, physics, chemistry and biology. Quite a few people on this site ARE authorities with doctorates in scientific fields.
While we have had a few discussions on this site about what did or did not exist before the big bang. We have 100% proof that the big bang occurred without any shadow of a doubt. Google: cosmic microwave background radiation.
Ron, please ban this moron, climate change denial is bad enough but a flat earther is really crossing the line into insanity!
Hi Fred, I actually have read quite a bit of your posts. Rather than argue over “cosmic microwave background radiation” which I am pretty sure would take me most of the rest of my life to learn even a tiny fraction of and still not be able to understand it, lets make this as simple as possible.
Can you please just show here on earth, where it matters most, a body of water that you measure and prove the curvature of said water. Don’t you agree that would be easier to prove and for people to understand than that other stuff?
Additionally, there is the peer reviewed science that I linked above that I guess you just do NOT accept? More importantly this is a simple test that can actually be performed, by you me and even probably a well trained monkey.
But you’re right, better to ban non conformists. I’m sure when Einstein came up with the theory of relativity that everyone instantly knew he had “figured it all out” right away, no one said bullocks! This is just going from bad to worse. I would prefer you attack the arguments I brought up. And please do not tell me the bedford canal experiment was discredited from wiki. At the very bottom of their disinformation they mention that others have replicated it with results that align with flat water so….. But nope, lets move beyond the realm of physical into “:cosmic microwave background radiation” I agree much simpler. Thanks buddy you kinda prove my point AGAIN. Science has become religion.
We ban idiots, not “non-conformists”.
People here can give you ten tests to prove the curvature of the earth. Hell, I’ve personally done the calculation used by Eratosthenes (different cities, mind you).
To be clear, I have personally replicated the experiement done by Eratosthenes to determine the circumference of the Earth. So can you, if you want to get your head out of the world of conspiracy theories — it’s an easy one to replicate.
I honestly have performed the experiment myself . I think if you listen to arguements in the video linked that person at least raises valid questions about the experiment, especially the part of communicating across the distance back when they first performed the experiment.
I do believe that the earth spinning on its axis and the degree thereof is an important part of the experiment and it seems that that has to require the UNIVERSAL THEORY OF GRAVITY because you need gravity to keep every one stuck on this ball and as we now know a THEORY is NOT a FACT. Soooooooo, does not that actually technically disqualify that experiment before we go any further?
I am not trying to be smartass, its just that we have come to have a belief in this Universal Theory of gravity which just has NOT been proven. So lets stick with proving the earth is a ball, by only using what we can prove right here on THIS planet. Damn it should be so easy, show the curve in water on here where we eat and sleep and live and I get to go to sleep. I am exhausted by so many trying to take the hardest route to prove the earth is a ball when water covers the majority of this whatever you want to call it at this point. Do you see my point? Science has BECOME RELIGION. I was there too a week ago, I accepted EVERYTHING hook line and sinker. Water is the answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrP1TtVPUoU
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE watch this video of engineers, pilots sailors and railroad builders testifying they never used the curvature of the earth in there building and operating of equipment. It is CRAZY convincing. Forget about my weak argument against Eratosthenes, I’ll admit it is weak but basing an experiment on a theory is trickory also so should thus disqualify the theory no? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcgxBTrmIhU
My THEORY is that youâre an invention by Javier so, relatively speaking, he doesnât look quite so bad. BTW, Iâve never heard of the THEORY of Gravitation unless you’re referring to the general theory of relativity, which I doubt. I suggest you look up Newton’s LAW of Universal Gravitation and go from there: but not here please. This is now a climate change denial site (moderated by the aforesaid Javier) and not a wholesale science denial site.
But nope, lets move beyond the realm of physical into â:cosmic microwave background radiationâ I agree much simpler.
Cosmic microwave background radiation IS PROOF of the Big Bang, which you stated, Ron could not provide!
The Cosmic Microwave Background (or “CMB” for short) is radiation from around 400,000 years after the start of the Universe. That may sound like a long time on human timescales, but it really is the blink of an eye when compared to the age of the Universe, which is around 13.7 billion (13,700,000,000) years old. Before this time, the Universe was so hot and dense that it was opaque to all radiation. Not even simple atoms could form without instantly being ripped apart into their constituent protons and electrons by the intense radiation. The Universe was made of a “plasma”, or ionised gas, which is what the surface of the Sun is made of.
Ever since the Big Bang, the Universe has been cooling and expanding. By around 400,000 years through its life it was cool enough (though still around 3000 Celsius) for the simplest atoms to form, and it became transparent. The light from this time has been travelling through space ever since, and can be detected all around us from here on Earth or in space. We can measure the afterglow of the Big Bang.
The expansion of the Universe has stretched out the CMB radiation by around 1000 times, which makes it look much cooler. So instead of seeing the afterglow at 3000 degrees, we see it at just 3o above absolute zero, or 3 Kelvin (-270o C). Just as a burning coal (around 1500 K) glows red, and a hot bright star (around 6000 K) glows yellow or blue, the CMB glow with a characteristic colour associated with it’s temperature. However, because it is so cold, the light which was emitted by the glowing Universe now has a much longer wavelength than we can see with our eyes. The CMB is brightest at a wavelength of around 2 mm, which is around 4000 times longer than the wavelength of the visible light we see with our eyes.
.
Why are we talking about what is fairly certain and accepted?
The important talking points are getting obliterated and sidetracked.
Just because a lake might be flat, proves very little, could simply be a matter of surface tension. The not flat Earth is proved by ships and planes circumnavigating the planet. So far no edges have been found. Until there are the “theory” of somewhat spherical nature of the planet will remain a pretty good working hypothesis. đ
As Javier says, the scientists often get this stuff wrong, so perhaps somewhere on the planet someone is living on the “edge”. đ
For those who don’t get sarcasm.
I don’t believe the Earth is flat.
Some people believe anything they read.
Hi Ron,
I have run across a few people who actually believe the sort of things Hicks says, but none of them are nearly so articulate. TOO articulate to be so stupid or ignorant.
The ones who believe such twaddle are VERY few these days, even in the darkest corners of the backwoods. Not quite as rare as chicken teeth, but at least as rare as gold coins on sidewalks. I don’t think there is a single person among all the living hillbillies I know who believes in a flat earth, possibly excepting a couple who are OBVIOUSLY simply simpletons, with no sense at all, the sort who are mostly in institutions, where they are cared for, since they cannot care for themselves.
I think whoever he is, he’s maybe just having a little fun.
Twain wrote a nice little essay once about such a person, one claiming some sort of hardship. Once you read his criticism of the writing of the supposed victim, it was perfectly obvious the supposed victim could NOT have composed his sob story. It had all the hall marks of professional writing.
Now if he IS real, let him explain how you can easily see the curvature of the Earth when at sea, looking at ships ten or more miles away partly obscured by the curvature, and on dry land, by moving ten to twenty miles from one hill top to the next, and always finding that you can never see a point on the ground, even if it’s the tip of a higher hill than all others nearby, from beyond a certain distance, which is incidentally easily computed using high school math.
Incidentally, speaking as a person who has explored many miles around in the local mountains, and down into the NC piedmont, by automobile, visiting the high spots, with binoculars and girlfriend , etc, I know from PERSONAL observation what I am talking about. I’ve also been out to sea, lol.
Hells bells, you can even see the curvature by observing skyscrapers in some places, in large enough metro areas.
Oldfarmermac. I consider the words you just wrote regardingwhat I had written an honor. I literally got chills up my arms when I read what you wrote. I am definitely no where near the league in certain areas of intelligence that most of you here possess and I am often jeolous of people who have the ability to use their minds at higher levels, especially in mathmatics. I do gain tremendous satisfaction from TRUE communication, when people truly listen and then respond, ironically I am often horrible at doing myself because often once my mind is made it is made and very hard for me to change, but facts have a way of getting into what little space I leave.
I can assure you I am NOT joking about having a problem believing the earth is round. I am 45 years old, and recently have had alot of time on my hands to just do what ever interests me. When I recently heard celebrities speaking of flat earth I laughed at first. Then I heard it in the news again and again, with everyone laughing and treating with RIDICULE, those who held those beliefs. Finally, I looked into it.
One reason I started investigating is I thought why do these people want to be laughed at and they must have some reason for saying what they are saying. So down the rabbit hole I went. Immediately I noticed that most of these flat earth people focused on proving that water doesn’t curve with the earth. At some point, the water test was undeniable to me. I had chills run through my entire body when I truly started to question what I held as an undeniable FACT.
So from there I listened to arguments, learned about admiral byrds expedition and what seems like a thousand other things. I cannot prove the earth is flat and will not proclaim to be able too. It seems most of the other rational (to me) sounding flat earthers also feel that they are not proving flat earth, just that it seems the most logical explanation.
That made there credabilty stronger in my eyes. So here I am about a week later. I am VERY VERY VERY tired from reading, watching, thinking. I have been watching so many different videos on the topic, seperating the wheat from the chaffe so to speak. I do think that there are some who proclaim preposterous flat Earth ideas that help to discredit any rational person from investigating on there own, I know that sounds paranoid but whatever.
So when I started to believe something as impossible to believe as flat earth, I wanted to talk to friends and pretty much anyone I know about it. We grow up with a globe, so it is easy to understand why none of us ever really test what a globe requires to actually work. Today more and more people are testing and finding results that do NOT confirm a ball earth.
The person below seems to me to have so much knowledge about so many subjects and seems credible to me. The problem is to believe a flat earth is to believe that somehow we have been told the biggest lie ever and that we didn’t see it. I still don’t get how that is possible, but I sure as HELL don’t believe were sticking to that ball anymore either.
I honestly love reading you and rons posts the most for some reason. I often get upset with ron because he really does not see how close minded he can be sometimes, but eiither can I see it with myself often.
If you sincerely watch this video with an open mind as a starter, you may not like the the inevitable conclusion (to me) that you must come too. Good luck Oldfarmermac! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGl8I3l-5ac&t=746s
Hey oldfarmermac, couple other things. you said
“Now if he IS real, let him explain how you can easily see the curvature of the Earth when at sea, looking at ships ten or more miles away partly obscured by the curvature, and on dry land, by moving ten to twenty miles from one hill top to the next, and always finding that you can never see a point on the ground, even if itâs the tip of a higher hill than all others nearby, from beyond a certain distance, which is incidentally easily computed using high school math.
Incidentally, speaking as a person who has explored many miles around in the local mountains, and down into the NC piedmont, by automobile, visiting the high spots, with binoculars and girlfriend , etc, I know from PERSONAL observation what I am talking about. Iâve also been out to sea, lol.”
I don’t know how to do italics, sorry. Rather han just tell you to go to youtube (ton of videos of well done flat water experiments in my mind) I’ll just use a bit of logic first. Often people say well you can tell the curvature of the earth just by watching a boat disappear over the horizon which isn’t more than what 5 or 6 miles at most I would guess. But, if you were to hand those same people a telescope the boat magically reappears. More importantly though, sometimes you will hear people say you have to be above 30,ooo feet to “see” any curvature of the earth. SO which is it? I can stand on the beach and from a 5 or 6 miles see this so called curvature by the boat disappearing over the horizon or do I need to fly super high, higher than 30,000 ft to “see” curvature because I know for a fact many people have flown in a commercial jets and said, NO, I can’t really see any curvature. But we don’t need to see it do we. We already have known all all lives it curves, and so it curves.
This first link below is a mathmatical fomula that is generally accepted to describe the curvature of the earth (pretty simple math i believe). I believethe formula does NOT work beyond measuring 1/4 of the circumference of the earth but I could be wrong http://www.smokescreendesign.com/curvature-of-the-earth.html
Next is a video of a mirage. It is a mirage because the guy on tv tells you what is.
Mirage of chicago from accross lake michigan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLlNKy5j_O8
When you use the telescope to observe a ship, the part you can see is above the line of curvature. And the farther the ship is away, the LESS of it you can see, due to the curvature, telescope or not.
With a GOOD telescope, the very last thing you can see is the tip top of the highest point of the ship as the distance increases.
Ditto the mountain peaks. The higher one is , the farther away you can see it, and the higher your own elevation, the more of it you can see. In my part of the world, you can never see anything from a point on the ground, even from a mountain top, even as far as a hundred miles away, less actually, except maybe the very tip of ANOTHER mountain.
Admit it, you must be trolling, nobody who can talk and type could possibly be so stupid.
Mac wrote: “I think whoever he is, heâs maybe just having a little fun.”
Hicks word count and capitalization patterns have me half wondering if you may be the one that got a little bored out on the farm yesterday and decided to liven things up with a bit of satire.
;^)
Apology friend, don’t ever change.
With that said, thank you for your Grand illusion article you wrote, I never thought of the whole”with your genes and your background I would be you” argument. I use it all the time with friends it is so logical to me – they always look at me funny- kinda like how you are to me right now but thats ok, sometimes people get it and sometimes they don’t.
Ugo Bardi is a man to be reckoned with, when discussing the hard sciences and the behavior of naked apes. Note the similarities of what he says to many things I have said here recently. Note also that I do not claim to be an original thinker, but rather to just study the thoughts of others, and incorporate them into my own thinking. I just ran across this.
”
Years ago, I used to play chess, even though I always remained, at best, at a low-medium skill level. Once, I found myself playing with a local high-level player and I was thoroughly trashed, quickly checkmated. I offered my congratulations to him and he answered to me with something like, “Ugo, it is not that I am especially good. It is you who made mistakes with your moves. Make no mistakes, and nobody will ever checkmate you.”
(You win elections, HB, by running great candidates, not by blaming the opposition for your candidates failure to perform. )
I think that was good advice that I still try to remember after many years. If you are defeated, it may be that your opponent is especially good, but it is also likely that he or she simply exploited your mistakes. Avoid making mistakes, and your life will be easier. But you need to recognize the mistakes you made and admit them.
This seems to be the problem with the present debate on climate science. Facing aggressive criticism, scientists keep making the most elementary communication mistakes. The latest disaster for science is the recent article by David Rose in which scientists are accused to be manipulating the data. Rose, you may remember, is the journalist who first diffused in the media the idea that there had been a “pause” in global warming. His 2012 article in the Daily Mail was a milestone in the meme war; with the “pause” (or “hiatus”) still widely known and repeated as “proof” that global warming doesn’t exist or that, at least, climate models don’t work (*).
Obviously, the “pause” never was anything more than a perfectly normal oscillation – amplified by carefully choosing a specific interval of temperatures. The recent temperature increases broke all the warming records and that should have buried forever the “pause”, together with other legends such as the claimed arrival of the planet Nibiru in 2012. But, no. Now David Rose doubles down with a new article in which he, this time, accuses scientists of having manipulated the data in order to make the pause disappear.
I don’t think I need to tell you that Rose’s latest article is a textbook example of logical inconsistency. First, he claimed the existence of the “pause” on the basis of temperature data that, evidently, he trusted. Now, he says that the data shouldn’t be trusted because they don’t show a pause. If there ever was an example of motivated reasoning, this is it.
Yet, communication is not just a question of formal logic. Take a tour of the Web and you’ll see how many people are gleefully commenting on Rose’s latest broadside against science. It is a landslide; the dam has given way: it is a true disaster for science. Maybe Rose is an evil genius in communication, but I think he is not. He is just exploiting the mistakes made by climate scientists.
This story is all about an article published in 2015 by a group of NOAA scientists who claimed that there is no evidence of a slowdown in the world’s temperature increase. The article was perfectly good in scientific terms, but it was a terrible mistake in terms of communication. Why? Because it ignored a simple fact of life: in the mass media debate, mentioning a concept, even if for debunking it, has the effect of reinforcing the public perception that the concept is real.
This is a well known concept. On this issue, you may read a good article by Chris Mooney describing the “backfire effect” or, sometimes, the “boomerang effect”. Among the many cases, it was found that having Barack Obama explicitly stating that he is not a Muslim tends to reinforce some people’s belief that he is. And you surely remember the story of the “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. There never was any proof for their existence (and, indeed, they never existed). But the more the subject was debated, the more people became convinced that they existed.
( Now SOME of us think Trump is stupid. I don’t, but I do think he is evil and VERY bad for the country and the world. He UNDERSTANDS what Ugo is talking about. )
In the end, it is simple: debunking doesn’t work; on the contrary, it often reinforces the perception that the belief being debunked is true. So, it should have been obvious that a paper that attempted to demonstrate that there never was a “pause” would generate a backlash, one day or another. And it did.
Let me repeat: For what I can say, there is nothing wrong in scientific terms in the work by Karl et al. But place yourself in the shoes of a person who is not a scientist, won’t you get the impression that the scientists are fiddling with the data? That’s the point that the critics of science are making over and over and this message seems to be going through.
Maybe it was unavoidable that a review of the temperature data would lead to this result, but was it appropriate to publish a minor correction of a data set in a high-visibility journal? If it was in order to affect climate policies, it was a perfectly legitimate target, but only if based on rock-solid data. Didn’t the people involved in this work realize that their corrections are debatable, to say the least? And how is it that no one in NOAA thought that in some quarters the corrections would be understood and described as politically motivated data manipulation? Do scientists always have to be so naive?
Now, many scientists are trying to debunk Rose’s article (**), but the problem remains the same: the more you mention the “pause”, the more it becomes real for the public. And that’s a victory for the enemies of science. It seems that, as scientists, we are falling over and over into the same traps. As long as we do that, we’ll keep being checkmated by people who exploit our mistakes.
“Now SOME of us think Trump is stupid.”
No, I think Trump supporters are stupid
Some Trump supporters are stupid, quite a lot of them in fact.
Some Clinton supporters are stupid as well, but mostly not quite AS stupid, and the percentage of stupid ones is less.
And it’s a BIG mistake made all too often to assume that most Trump supporters are stupid. Ignorant would be a better choice of word in describing them, and quite a lot of them are voted their own self interest accurately, as they see their own interests.
For instance, there is a large cabal of criminal lawyers (lawyers mostly donate to Democrats) who are in love with Trump’s likely drug policies. They get rich defending drug cases.
There are millions of people with money in the stock market who also believe they will make a lot more with Trump in office. Personally I think they are badly mistaken, in respect to the longer term, but they might be right short term.
Almost everybody I know who voted for Trump did so as a result of his or her cultural preferences, rather than for any other reason, with the exception of the ones who voted for him due to having lost their jobs to offshoring, or fear of the same. That sort are EXTREMELY numerous in the South and in the Rust Belt.
Underestimating the opposition is always a STUPID mistake. The D’s REALLY fucked up big time in underestimating Trump as a politician, as evidenced by the fact he won.
If the D party had had a real nominating process, instead of being the personal property of the Clinton machine, somebody else would have been the nominee, maybe Sanders, Warren, Biden, and that somebody would be prez today.
Most people deliberately overlook the fact that I said starting years ago that the R party’s fondest hope, post Oboma, would be to run against Clinton.
And they beat her without even running a “real” Republican in the sense that Trump is an outsider who in essence hijacked the nomination.
Mac,
I disagree. The idea that game players (or anyone else) can magically make no mistakes is unrealistic. This is a form of wishful thinking, of exaggerating one’s personal power. New Age philosophies make this mistake – the idea that one can have power over one’s environment by sheer determination, and make things happen by believing in them. Just wish hard enough, and it will happen.
The end result of this kind of magical thinking is blaming the victim. After all, if anyone has total power over their environment, then everything that happens to them is their fault. The fact is, that s**t happens. People get hurt by random things, and worse, they get mugged by others.
Mugging victims shouldn’t be blamed for what has happened. The fact that they didn’t defend themselves effectively does not remove the locus of responsibility from the mugger. Muggers are the problem, not the victims.
Should everyone always work hard to develop their skills, to do better and defend themselves? Of course. But they have to realistic about their limits. Yoda, who says “size matters not”, is just fiction.
The idea that honest men can’t be conned is a fiction, promoted by con artists, in order to shame their victims into silence. Trust is the currency of life, and con artists steal that currency along with literal currency. Let’s not let help them get away with it by blaming the victim.
In this example, the scientific article only drew a backlash because of the con artists (Fox, etc) aggressively drew attention to it and told their audience what to think about it. The same is true of Iraqi WMD: there wasn’t a simple and honest public “debate”, there was an aggressive propaganda campaign to convince people that WMD existed.
“Backlash” is real: exploiters and con artists will fight back when they are challenged. But we can never let fear of backlash stop us or slow us down – that would be a victory for the exploiters and con artists.
30% of Americans believe that Obama is not native born. They didn’t dream that up on their own. They were told that idea, aggressively, by dishonest media. We should blame that media first. The audience has a responsibility, of course, to be well informed, but they are still the victims here – the fact that they didn’t defend themselves successfully doesn’t mean they weren’t the victims. And, of course, Obama was a victim too…
Hi Nick,
Suppose you say specifically what it is that you disagree with?
That the D party made a mistake in presenting the Clinton machine the nomination as a gift ?
Do you believe there was an open and honest nominating process, and that she was so well beloved that not a single D made any REAL effort for the nomination other than Sanders? Or did she have the party machinery so tightly sewn up old time style she was the de facto owner of the party?
That she was a lousy campaigner?
That she was dragging a twenty mile baggage train?
That she directed her campaign on the basis of identity politics and the elite ?
That almost every time she opened her mouth she pissed off more traditional reliable D voters by advocating globalism?
That adults learn from their mistakes and do things differently, rather than blaming their losses and mistakes on the opposition?
Your answer is mostly a straw man diversion in my estimation.
If the nomination process had been an athletic contest, any open minded disinterested coach in the country looking on would have pointed out that Sanders polled much better against Trump than Clinton, etc.
Any disinterested coach would have pointed out that she would be by far the most unpopular candidate, from the point of view of the electorate, in terms of negative perceptions, in the history of the party?
I notice that while I have consistently pointed out that both Clinton and Trump are ethical train wrecks, and thus not worthy of the presidency, hard core D’s are absolutely fucking unwilling to admit she is or was dragging that baggage train, still preferring either out of stupidity or cynical partisanship to pretend all the baggage is or was made up lies on the part of the R camp. Incidentally, quite a lot of it is or was mostly R propaganda, but not by any means all of it.
Until I hear just ONE person who is a hard core D who is also mathematically literate say what he really thinks about Cattle Gate for instance , I will persist in believing that hard core D’s are just about equally as incapable of telling the truth, except when it is advantageous to do so, as hard core Trumpsters.
Yes. Shit happens. Yes lots of people believe Obama was born outside the USA. I have not defended the Trump camp, when it comes to any particular fact or issue, and likely never will.
AND considering that virtually every body else here points out the countless shortcomings of that camp, I don’t see any need to do so myself, that ground being well covered.
The thing is that the D’s really are mostly smarter, better informed, than the R’s, and that’s a fact. The unfortunate thing is that all too many of them are in the habit of preening their moral and ethical superiority, real or imagined, and talking down to the middle of the road and the political opposition.
THAT habit as much as any thing might have cost the liberal/ D wing the presidency, and some seats in Congress as well.
When the scales are getting close to evenly balanced, politically, it doesn’t take adding much more to one side or the other to determine the outcome. It’s impossible to say which straw in particular breaks the camel’s back, but enough straw adds up to more than enough.
If you think Clinton made a stupid mistake in taking the banksters speech money, man up once and say so. If you think she made a stupid mistake in not campaigning like she meant it in the Rust Belt say so.
If you believe otherwise say so.
If you simply cannot bring yourself to say anything critical of Clinton or the D party,well I know lots of true believers from church. I know lots of Trump true believers as well.
If you do believe otherwise, I am forced to conclude that you are either a partisan mouthpiece, or politically naive. I don’t believe you are naive.You are so good at sticking to your message that I believe you are a pr pro, maybe an advertising guy, or an actual political operative.
Bernie Sandersâ Campaign Faced A Fake News Tsunami. Where Did It Come From?
The trolls set out to distract and divide the invigorated left.
WASHINGTON â Last June, John Mattes started noticing something coursing like a virus through the Facebook page he helped administer for Bernie Sanders fans in San Diego. People with no apparent ties to California were friending the page and sharing links from unfamiliar sites full of anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda.
The stories they posted werenât the normal complaints he was used to seeing as the Vermont senator and the former secretary of state fought out the Democratic presidential primary. These stories alleged that Clinton had murdered her political opponents and used body doubles.
One last post if you will allow it. I would prefer to be ridiculed over utter silence, I wanted more here to critique this information, but most especially Ron and Old farmermac, so funny you two are the only to respond so far. Unfortunately, I feel the responses leaned more toward ad hominem attacks rather than disproving the information presented.
For me, it did not take more than maybe an hour watching flat water experiments to raise questions that did not have sufficient answers. I am truly in a weird spot where I do not know what or who to believe any more. How could this be possible that water is flat over long distances yet the earth is a ball? The two are in my mind incompatable.
So if this truly sounds like the ranting of a lunatic then thank you for the brief platform. BUT, if I have raised even the tiniest bit of curiosity, I would LOVE for you to bring this to the forefront of your awesome site here, because that would bring quite a bit more credability to the subject so that people might honestly look into it and make up their own minds. Ted kaczynski ( I am by no means comparing myself just the idea) sounded like a lunatic when he wrote his manifesto. I do not think his ideas are quite so fringe as they were when he wrote them (at least in my mind). More importantly, when someone, anyone shows me with utter certitude that water here on earth, curves with the earth I will be done with this and very thankful, at this point I find that highly unlikely. How many of you have tested waters flatness over long distances to prove what you already knew?
The video link at the bottomm is of Surveyors, Engineers, Pilots and Sailors Expose the Flat Earth. It was made by the same dude as the one that Ron so insightfully commented -it sounds like this guy truly believes what he is saying. It sounds that way because he does. The words of these professionals saying they never needed to account for the curvature of the earth while performing jobs that should have required it is stunning to me, I find it incredibly hard to believe that that type of testimony can so easily be cast aside.
I think maybe you will respect these opinions more in this video because these are engineer type people speaking. Ron, THANK YOU so much for posting up as much as you have. If any people post more on this topic I would like to respond but since this is your website if you want me to leave it at this that is great too. I am pretty sure you posted my original posts to highlight my incredible stupidity and I completely 100% can understand that. What I cannot understand is that the arguments made to disprove curvature of the earth are not funny at all, especially when that is EXACTLY what they do. I truly hope I spark some doubt in at least 1 persons mind here to start them on a quest of there own because at some point weWILL reach the 100th monkey.
It’s not flat. Go to the ocean. Stay at one spot. Get a friend in a ship. Have them sail straight out into the ocean. Eventually you’ll see them “sink” — because they’re going around the curve of the earth. The water is curving along with the Earth. (Because gravity pulls towards the *center* of the earth.)
The curve is very tiny, but you can measure it even in a university physics lab if you have the right equipment.
Sailors ALWAYS have to account for the curve of the earth, no exceptions. And they do! Pilots usually have someone else do the calculations for them, but they account for it too.
Surveyors? The US west of the original 13 states was surveyed in a big grid, trying to make squares with the same amount of acreage. But… the Earth is curved. You can go find the spots where they adjusted for the curve of the earth. These are particular east-west roads. The north-south roads don’t match up on the north and south sides, because the amount of land between two meridians is getting *smaller* as you head further north.
Look up the Coriolis Effect. It’s the cause of hurricanes and tornadoes! Every meteorologist pays attention to the curvature of the Earth on a daily basis.
The curve is quite small because the Earth is huge. When your friend on the sailing ship drops over the horizon, phone him up and ask him how many miles out from shore he is. Then remember the curve only differs from a straight line by the height of the ship over the distance of that many MILES. It’s a very small curvature.
For example, the distance which a ship has to go out to disappear over the horizon, measured in kilometers, is roughly
arccos( (12742 – .01) / 12742) * 40075 * 2 Pi
Notice how many digits of precision you need to even calculate that arccosine. More than 7 digits of precision. Which means that I used too imprecise a value for the diameter of the earth and I can’t calculate it without a higher-precision value… anyway, it’s actually a hell of a lot of kilometers out. Further than you think. My rough calculation says a 10-meter-tall ship disappears below the horizon *308* kilometers away from shore (assuming you’re viewing from exact sea level — so if you’re standing up it’ll be even further).
Go ahead, get a telescope, line it up, watch that ship, it’ll disappear below the horizon eventually.
Your first point is proven false first by perspective alone. Yes the ships do vanish from your naked eye. Incredibly, if you grab a pair of binoculars the ship will magically come back into view. The human eye just cannot see that far is the explanation, but the argument you make does seem “logical” if you grow up knowing you live on a ball. The best part is you can test that tomorrow if you own a pair of binoculars, but get ready because when you see I am correct on that, your going to want to prove my other testable points and one by one they will stand firm to your arguments.
Please I BEG YOU to watch the video linked below Please take 15 minutes and watch this video with quotes from engineers, pilots, railroad builders who all contradict what you just stated. . I should have shown this first to ron. It has testimoney from engineers, pilots, railroad builders and sailors all stating they do not use convexity of the earth in their calculations when building or operating there equipment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcgxBTrmIhU
I want to thank you also for replying and taking the time to argue your points on an idea that we so easily should/could just dismiss!
Maybe you have never looked but there are numerous demonstrations of the Coriolis Effect not being reliable at all regarding water swirl. Here is one such video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODRa7muxsDM There are many others, I believe I read often it is the design of toilets that cause the direction of swirl.
Please watch the video of the engineers and silors testimony and let me know what you think. That is just the tip of the iceberg, but you have to be willing to accept where the facts lead you. It is very uncomfortable to even think about thinking the earth is not a globe lol. Please watch the video, I just watched it again myself. Just tell me where you hear something that does NOT sound rational and logical. THANK YOU again for your time.
DUDE. 308 kilometers away from shore a 10 meter tall ship disappears?? REALLY?
LOL that far out there is approximtley 4.6231 MILES of EARTH CURVE. FUCKING MILES! READ THAT AGAIN!!!!!! MILES!!!!!
Here is a curve calculator-check your math for yourself. http://www.smokescreendesign.com/curvature-of-the-earth.html
I’m out of weed maybe you could loan me some?
I’m sorry, I’m just making a point. The point is everyone says ohhhhhhh YOU don’t understand how large the earth is, YES now that I’ve read this stuff 4.6 miles of curve starts to seem incredible. Not only would the ship disappear you could hide SKYSCRAPERS. Come on COME AT ME WITH ALL YOU GOT! BUT, it’s got to be proven on this planet only, no fancy shit. I almost want to take bets now. But I still have a teeny amount of doubt so hopefully one of you bastards can get me, I don’t care if you work together LOLOLOLOL!!! Me against the ballers!
I see the drooling, glue eating, knuckle dragging villagers are getting more confident now that their leaders are in power (for a short while).
You can hide skyscrapers, dude. There are skyscrapers in London. You can’t see ’em from NY. Try as hard as you can — the round earth is in the way.
My rough calculation says a 10-meter-tall ship disappears below the horizon *308* kilometers away from shore (assuming youâre viewing from exact sea level â so if youâre standing up itâll be even further).
Bull. It’s about 11 kilometers. http://www.table-references.info/earth-table-distances.php
Well, I did say that I was using estimates for the diameter of the earth which were three significant digits short of the necessary precision. :shrug:
Being off by a factor of thirty is only to be expected when my calculations are starting with a number with an error of a factor of 1000.
Thanks for the naval chart references!
Ron, please cut the crap people are posting in this blog, I’m getting cramp in my scrolling finger.
NAOM
Yes, I agree attack the messenger. Thanks for being so intellectually lazy that you cannot take 5 minutes to tell me one experiment to perform on this planet that does not require anything based on unproven theories, to prove the earth is a ball. I am sorry, but cannot you see how EASY this should be? Honestly. Just read this entire thread, should it not be incredibly simple to use ONLY this planet to describe it. Not the sun, not gravity just this planet. WHY? Because it CANNOT be DONE!!! YOU ME and the majority of people out there ARE VICTIMS OF PROGRAMMING. WHY????
Hey stupid, when you are finished eating the paste try driving east west in Kansas and watch the cities magically rise up over the horizon and sink down out of site behind you.
Try looking at the sky and see how the clouds at different heights move in different directions.
Or maybe just take a balloon up and watch the world expand in a giant circle. On clear day of course, which I think in your case needs explicit specification.
Things weren’t looking so great before, but after reading this gibberish, my doom-meter just started spinning.
Is this intended as satire though – cross out flat earth and insert climate change and it wouldn’t look much different from a lot of blogs and threads. How can anybody write that many words, I didn’t read more than 1%, I’m sure nobody has read much more than 10%, but I presume it is in intelligible English.
Essentially I think what flat earthers are saying is using ONLY the earth, prove it is a ball. That should be sooooooooo easy, how can there even be an argument? And their lies the rub, because as soon as you start testing things in REALITY problems start popping up like fucking weeds.
Ban me do what ever you guys want, I just cannot for the life of me believe how thoroughly a human brain can be programmed. Imagine you live in a house with no windows or doors no internet no tv and you never see any one come or go your entire life until age 45 and then one day your room mate says theirs a whole world out there with grass and cars and birds and people and sun. Would you believe that person? Even if they showed you pictures you would think it impossible because of your experience.
From a young age we grow up with round globes in school, we are shown photos (nasa states clearly ALL round earth photos are composites)(also google continents change scale flat earth), we are taught about gravity from the most highly respected scientists dadadadadada, WE ARE TOLD HOW THE WORLD IS, even though in the back of your head when you were at the beach as a child you thought to yourself, how does the water not fall off the earth? But since we are told, we accept it as truth, and then even explain it by developing math equations that not 1 on 100,000 can understand but since the smartest guy in the room says its so, it becomes our reality. There is so much more that Ron Patterson one of my crankiest HERO’s who helped wake ME from my slumber by teaching me peak oil, would personally hunt me down if I were to expound on what is required to believe in flat earth. The funny thing is, it seems to me, even more is required to “believe” its a ball.
Here we are arguing over fucking equations, and radiation, and gravity, please do not bring up NASA. 1/2 trillion budget since inception, regardless I said I want proof its round from right here on the planet SHOULDNT THAT BE SO EASY 1000 ways!??? A quiet hush flows across the board- you mean something I can see and experience with my own two eyes, IMPOSSIBLE! We must use our religion!
I really make no claim as to what shape the earth is because I DO NOT KNOW, my only claim is that the evidence I have seen so far here disproves a ball earth. Come on now you guys!
It is possible you are a satirist and choose to remain in character in posting responses.
In that case, I apologize.
Otherwise, well, you are sort of like a sheltered Christian fundamentalist kid who was home schooled and got into my university, a VERY capable kid, strong in math (which you obviously are3 not unless a satirist ) , communication skills, etc.
The entire auditorium, a couple of hundred kids together for a lecture. was simply stunned into silence by this kid’s remarks about God and Creation. This was well over half a century ago, but I have never forgotten the experience. The professor halted the class, had a brief one on one with the kid, who left with an appointment to see the professor, and class resumed.
You are in the WRONG room. lol
Hi David,
Take a photo or video of the edge of the Earth and you will be believed.
The “using ONLY the earth, prove it is a ball” rule is a delightful touch.
You International Space Station folks just stay outta this. And heads up! Watch those four corners.
Someone with the ability to use Goggle to find all the crazy available on UghTube should, in theory, also be able to do a search with the words “debunk”, “refuted”, “disproved” or “myth” in front of their favorite crackpot/conspiracy theory.
If such a person persists in spewing long-debunked junk like Flat-Earth, that is a strong indicator that their motives are not genuine transparent inquiry as stated, but something troll-related.
I’m not sure what is the best way to handle this. I would have no problem with deleting every post and every response to this obvious trollery. Especially something so unrelated to the subject matter of this blog.
…
For the Goggle-impaired,
Sight-lines along the curvature of the Earth above long stretches of flat water are strongly affected by refraction caused by temperature variations of the air just above the water (usually within a meter of the surface). Under the right conditions, the curvature of the Earth can appear to be zero, or even concave. The index of refraction in air varies as a function of temperature. A strong temperature gradient can easily occur just above the surface of water that is at a different temperature than the air above it.
…
Posting seems unresponsive today, maybe I have a word that triggers a spam filter. If this is duplicated, I apologize.
This is a good lesson in how NOT to deal with trolls. Lloyd should be here to give us a lecture on the correct framing for responding to this type of troll.
In his place, I can only offer a few points that may not even be effective in this particular case…
A troll that has copy-pasted, extracted or paraphrased some centuries-old crackpot idea or conspiracy theory like Flat-Earth, Abiotic Oil, Homeopathy or Creationism may not actually be looking for a point-by-point rebuttal of his flavor-of-the-day craziness. Wasting time or diversion from the current topic of discussion might be his aim. Pointing out a flaw in his “argument” will just get ignored, followed by a Gish-Gallop of new non-sense.
I read some more of the stuff, it’s pretty funny, and well written generally. Maybe it is Lloyd.
For David,
You’ve won the day. Proved your point. Demonstrated how easy it is for online discussions to be derailed by persistent and non-responsive argumentation. You’ve cast doubt on a very basic fact to show how science is unreliable and untrustworthy – that no consensus can exist in any field, as long as trolls are willing to put in the time and effort to cut-n-paste conspiracy theories or crackpot ravings.
Post-Modernism at its finest!
Hi all,
A new Open Thread Non Petroleum thread is up.
You will need to refresh the page to see it. Not sure why this has been happening.
I have to agree with “wehappyfew”. Ideally we would limit the volume of postings that are either obviously dishonest or dramatically unrealistic.
I see no harm in allowing a flat earther to post once or twice, with someone else giving a nice rebuttal. But they shouldn’t be allowed to write 15 long comments.
I’d say the same is true for someone like Javier: on the old TheOilDrum site, a moderator would limit people to something reasonable, perhaps 20 or so comments on a particular Post. I think Javier can be useful as a teaching tool, but he shouldn’t be allowed to dominate the comments. That’s abusing the privilege of free speech, and distorting the Marketplace of Ideas by filling it with one viewpoint.
Now, I know that kind of moderation is very tiresome, and I don’t blame you at all for choosing not to do it. Heck, it’s your blog. I wouldn’t want you to feel pressured to do something you don’t want to do.
But, in an ideal world…
I believe the goal has changed to flooding the site with so much rubbish that people cease to visit or take it seriously. Trashing the site with nonsense posts. This is why I feel that a moderator is becoming a necessity.
NAOM
One hopeful thing: Ron did say that the first flat-earth comment was held for moderation, and he decided to approve it just for entertainment.
I suspect he won’t make that mistake again.
I think the posts were hilarious, and couldn’t be serious – possibly posting under the influence though. The bit about whether it’s 5 or 6 miles versus 30000′; make up your minds, that’s genius.
There are new PIOMAS numbers out for February Arctic ice volume. Generally the trend continues as before – a new daily minimum by some margin everyday.
NASA has a new prediction method for summer ice extent. They are doing a pretty good PR job these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIfijgJr0g0
This shows running average annual volume. The trends are using data to December so any change in rate can be seen – there has been a slight slowing in the curve down in February, but not enough to be seen.
This is sea ice, right? So what does this do to the sea level? Nothing.
Or am I missing something?
You are missing that weather over a sea ice free Arctic in summer will be fundamentally different from now.
Here is a study:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/future/bib/Vihma_accepted_in_Surv_Geophys.pdf
Or here:
“One of the ways Arctic sea ice melt may be impacting weather patterns is due to the reduced temperature difference between the Arctic region and the mid-latitudes, which could favor the weakening of the polar jet stream, AccuWeather Meteorologist Brett Anderson said.
Acting as a highway in which storm systems travel along, the jet stream is a fast river of air high in the atmosphere that marks the boundary between cool air to the north and warm air to the south.
“When the polar jet stream weakens it can increase the chances of a ‘blocking’ pattern over the far north,” Anderson added. “These blocking patterns can end up forcing the jet stream to buckle, allowing Arctic air to push much farther south than normal.”
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/how-rapid-arctic-sea-ice-melt-may-alter-global-weather-patterns/70000514
We are making a life experiment with the world’s climate
Thanks Matt. I agree, probably best not to mess with system. And I do support kicking fossils fuels ASAP.
Here’s another good one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6uCZ_9WIYY
Weather & Climate Summit 2017 (Part I): Dr Jim White (January 2017)
Understanding Climate Change
I live just above 50n on the BC coast and this years sagging jet stream is no joke. Our usual wet onslaught has been diverted to northern California while we have experienced cold snaps over and over again while the Arctic has warmed. Yesterday, I watched the temps drop 3 deg in an hour and the snow flakes were the size of fried eggs. Last year all our fruit trees were in bloom early March. We are supposed to get three more days of snow starting this Sunday. I still have some large snow piles in the yard. I would be ‘thinking’ of getting the tiller out any day past winters. Some years I mow the lawn on New Years just to terrify my neighbour. đ
Of course weather is not climate but this year has been very different from the last 50 winters of my life. (I am 61) We have just two crocuses blooming in the yard. The yard should be a carpet of colour.
Maybe the moose will start swimming out of the mainland inlets to populate the Island. Usually, they stay about 10 km from tidal. Although, we have had migrations of grizzlies head this way. I live on the river they follow inland. Interesting, indeed.
If you want to hear something on sea levels then listen to James Hansen’s latest videos (15 Feb and 2 March 2017)
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
Or don’t listen to James Hansen’s latest lies.
Jim Hansen has been making the same prediction since 1981.
The New York Times, August 22, 1981 Study finds warming trend that could raise sea levels.
âThe seven atmospheric scientists predict a global warming of âalmost unprecedented magnitudeâ in the next century. It might even be sufficient to melt and dislodge the ice cover of West Antarctica, they say, eventually leading to a worldwide rise of 15 to 20 feet in the sea level. In that case, they say, it would âflood 25 percent of Louisiana and Florida, 10 percent of New Jersey and many other lowlands throughout the worldâ within a century or less.â
So here we are 35 years later, a third of a century has past and we have got about 90 mm (0.3 feet) of sea level raise instead of the 5 feet promised for a third of a century. So Jim has only been 94% wrong.
Despite that, he keeps going at it knowing that he will be long dead before he is being called a lunatic. But he has no respect from his colleagues. Kevin Trenberth has said of him: “Hansenâs study is rife with speculation and âwhat ifâ scenarios, and contains many conjectures and huge extrapolations based on quite flimsy evidence.”
http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dotearth/2015/07/23/whiplash-warning-when-climate-science-is-publicized-before-peer-review-and-publication/
Not somebody to trust. He is clearly an activist.
Not somebody to trust. He is clearly an activist.
Says the lying Xavier Don Quixote de la Mancha!
http://www.compulsivelyingdisorder.com/five-steps-to-stop-lying/
Here are five steps to start you on a journey to a new, honest you.
1. Admit It
The first step in any addiction and if you are a habitual liar this is an addiction, is to admit that you are a liar. Not just to yourself, but to others as well.
2. Support Team
Contact loved ones and friends. Let them know what you are trying to accomplish. You will be amazed at how much support you will get. Also, a support team is necessary to help build your confidence throughout the entire process. Sometimes a support team can also be an outside help such as a therapist or support groups that share similar interests. Therapy is another option for habitual liars. Participation in a liars group in counseling may aid you on your road to learning how to tell the truth. Discuss with the group or the therapist why it is you feel it is necessary to tell a lie. Be honest. Be open. Be yourself!
3. Indentifying Triggers
After coming to terms with yourself and admitting that you are a liar, the next step would be to identify what triggers you to lie. Some triggers are things around you or people that you are around. Take a close look at how your attitude or actions change when you are placed in certain situations. Ask yourself how you feel at that given moment. Are you angry, ashamed or happy? Perhaps the trigger is to make you feel better about yourself. This is where you have to identify what causes your emotions, which may trigger you to be in a position to lie.
4. Deciding to Quit Old Habits
Making the decision to stop lying takes a lot of guts. This is possibly the hardest step towards changing lying habits into a positive intervention. Now that you have decided to change your old habits, nothing can stop you from progressing. Take a walk over to a mirror in your home. Stand there for a few seconds with your eyes closed. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Now open your eyes. Look at yourself in the mirror. Say out loud that today is the day you will become more trustworthy. Lies will no longer define who you are. Why? Because you are in control of what happens next.
5. Changing Routes
Now that you have figured out what triggers you to lie and have decided to quit old habits, it is time to change the way you do things. Donât worry, this does not mean that everything in your life has to change, only in the areas that trigger you to lie. For example, if you know that you lie when you try to impress someone, then try to avoid that person until you are ready to step forward and introduce the real you. No lies attached. This step is simple to accomplish as long as you are willing to put forth the effort. Try it and see!
When science doesn’t accompany you, psychology will do. That’s what climatology resorts too, right? Skeptics are just not psychologically well so they can be ignored.
Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms Video Abstract
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-cRqCQRc8
Xavier Don Quixote de la Mancha, you are a very sick liar! You are NOT an honest skeptic.
Sure and so must lie all the scientific articles that I link and show.
It is all a big conspiracy by scientists to show that the data does not support alarmism, don’t you think?
So many sick liars publishing in scientific journals.
Yep:
Yep:
Hmmm writing analysis, which includes some specific idiosyncrasies leads me to believe these last two comments are likely from the same person. Lol
“All in all it looks like 2015 will be the year of Peak Warmth for quite some time.” ~ Javier
https://archive.is/F9a1N#selection-1995.0-2021.289
Not somebody to trust. He’s clearly a sock puppet.
Speaking of sockpuppets…
Sockpuppet Alert
Duncan Idaho
Survivalist
hightrekker23
Dave Ranning
All the same person. Probably intended to show a greater acceptance of anthropogenic climate change theory than the facts actually indicate.
Duncan Idaho/hightrekker23 is on record, telling us that the screen name he uses depends on which browser he is using to compose his posts at the time. He has not to my knowledge ever indicated that he posts under any other name. What leads you to think he is using four different names?
Writing analysis, which includes some specific idiosyncrasies. There is also a common theme of having some kind of presence in Northern California, Maui, and Mexico.
Also I suspect “Jimmy” and “James” are/were two other associated names. Jimmy was threatened with a ban for remarks towards Javier.
I don’t remember seeing Dave Ranning comments before.
I post on here under the names Duncan and Hightrekker, as stated by which browser I’m using.
But at least we know Jim Hansen’s credentials.
Precisely. He is an activist that has been arrested at anti-coal demonstrations, and whose predictions have proven to bee way off.
I wouldn’t take an activist word as he is already biased. Science requires to be as free of biases as possible.
Get a mirror buddy.
Javier isn’t an activist, he is a brainwashed tool who may even think of himself as a free thinker, and not a Republican stooge.
Hi Javier,
As an independent observer, I can safely say that you are the one that sounds biased.
If you don’t think AGW is a threat that concerns humanity, then why do you go to all the trouble to reply to every single post on the subject?
Do you realize how suspicious it looks?
Maybe you can you give us an update on how your research in the field of microbiology is coming along? I would be surprised if you have any time left for it given your online presence here! Wouldn’t it be much more interesting for you to discuss something in your own research field than having to regurgitate the same stream of denialist talking points every time someone posts a link to new research, or in this case a simple update on the arctic sea ice volume? And in case you weren’t aware, James Hansen is the former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a position he held from 1981 to 2013. He must be a very good liar to have held onto that position for so long!
Yea, I like his opinion on how Virions reveal bacteriophage genes that control eukaryotic reproduction, and the biochemical basis for increased Ebolavirus glycoprotein activity during the recent outbreak.
As Matt says the Arctic is changing climate regimes as the ice melts. Apart from all the other, not fully understood, impacts from changing circulation patterns and increase albedo, once the ice is gone for significant times the heat it used to absorb in summer can go elsewhere – possibly to faster melting of the Greenland ice cap, which would raise sea levels.
Checking the volume trend is a good indicator of the temperature changes in the Arctic as well. There aren’t many actual temperature measurements there. Some data sets use interpolation or models to give temperatures. The Hadley CRU set only reports measured numbers, it therefore mostly leaves out the Arctic, and hence generally under reports global temperature increase compared with other sets.
Also volume is a truer indicator than extent. I lived for a few years near a lake that froze in winter – it almost always got covered fully and to my naive eye looked the same each year, but sometimes you could walk on it and sometimes not. However you could tell once the thaw started – the thin years’ ice disappeared quickly.
Jet stream has gone chaotic with splits and dips and recombines. Was hitting 70 a few days ago (41 N) and now will not reach freezing tomorrow with a low of 7. Prediction two days later is high of 60F.
The past imposes limits on what is possible. We know that during most of the Holocene there has been less Arctic sea ice than now, and yet with less sea ice the world cooled between 5000 and 400 years ago.
No it is not. It is circular reasoning, as Arctic sea ice volume is modeled based on temperature changes.
“The POIM couples the Parallel Ocean Program (POP) with a 12-category thickness and enthalpy distribution (TED) sea ice model.”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0493%282003%29131%3C0845%3AMGSIWA%3E2.0.CO%3B2
It is actually an Achilles heel of the model. If the relationship between temperatures and ice is not as modeled, or constant, the model will show big deviations. Already the error bars of the modeled volume are huge.
Javier said:
Sorry. I started laughing so hard that I couldn’t read past this point.
Thanks for the chart.
This is an interesting chart for sea ice extent. Pick the data set from the top left
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www.moyhu.org/blog/polview.html
Since Arctic sea ice extent doesn’t show much change in the last 10 years, they now move the goal posts to sea ice volume, that as it is not measured but modeled, can be modeled on temperatures and show a decline that it is not real. How could we know? That is the problem with working with computer outputs instead of measured data.
Ice extent shows no big difference, and there is more multiyear ice than in 2009, yet somehow they claim a much lower volume. When a model doesn’t fit the data the model is wrong, except in climatology.
Stop lying Javier! Cherry picking data is a form of lying. It doesn’t fool or impress anyone here!
They claim exceptional conditions on Arctic sea ice and it is not true. Data shows it is just another year that shows no decline in Arctic sea ice.
You are just pathetic drooling over every time Arctic sea ice goes a little below, when the data shows Arctic sea ice is a lot more stable than predicted, and it isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Dennis,
Why haven’t you banned Javier?
Comic relief?
You need therapy, get some professional help!
Hey Fred, trying to convince Javier that global warming is not man made is like trying to move a 6ft. (2 m for Javier) thick concrete wall with your forehead. He is obviously a victim of the Koch funded propaganda machine, if not part of it. One wonders why he decided to use his foreign language proficiency in English to digest viewpoints of a particular flavor? Maybe he is also translating the bullshit into Spanish, the second most widely used language on the planet according to https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world, to try and spread the FUD to the Spanish speaking population of the world.
He is continuously bleating about the fact that the predicted adverse effects have not happened yet, as if this is any reason to assume that they will never happen, just like how people who don’t like the idea of Peak Oil constantly point to rising global oil production as proof that Peak Oil is bogus. All I can say is, have patience my little snowflake, we will soon see what the real deal is, both with respect Peak Oil and Global Warming.
On the other hand, maybe we won’t see. If the orange one and his bunch of goons can successfully de-fund all the relevant agencies, all this “bogus” data that is fueling “alarmism” will stop being gathered and disseminated. Everybody knows that if it isn’t reported it is not hapenning! đ
Hey Fred, trying to convince Javier that global warming is not man made is like trying to move a 6ft. (2 m for Javier) thick concrete wall with your forehead.
To be clear, I have no intention of convincing Javier of anything! Those days are long gone… These days, I’m just calling him what he is, a bald faced liar!
He most certainly is not a victim of anything or anybody. He is a perpetrator of misinformation!
You can call me all the names you want. That won’t make you any more right.
Nope!
Name calling is abusive or insulting language referring to a person or group, a verbal abuse. (Source Wikipedia)
Since you actually are a liar, what I’m doing is calling you out for what you are! I’m calling a spade a spade! A rose by any other name is still a rose and same goes for ‘liar’.
That’s the difference!
As I base what I say on scientific research, and I produce citations to back up what I say, it turns out that you are the liar here.
Not really. Javier is just another version of the Gish Gallop.
Name calling is something you do without compunction. I guess you only find it distasteful when you feel it is you who are the target.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-591001
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-jan-8-2017/#comment-591762
“All I can say is, have patience my little snowflake, we will soon see what the real deal is,”
Regarding climate change we have been hearing that song for 35 years. At this pace the interglacial will end before we see all those predicted effects of global warming.
Javier,
My helicopter friends broke into the industry flying off tugs to scout leads in the summer sea ice in order for northern Canadian communities to be resupplied by barge. This was in the early 90s. Those jobs don’t exist now. Why? They aren’t needed. The sea is open or the ice is thin enough to push through.
Paulo,
We know how much the Arctic ice extent has receded since 1979, because we have measured it. There’s no denying the evidence.
Do you know why the Arctic ice extent has receded? Because scientists have different hypothesis.
A signal of persistent Atlantic multidecadal variability in Arctic sea ice
M.W. Miles et al. 2014. Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, 463â469.
http://folk.uib.no/ngftf/CV/PDF_Furevik/miles_et_al_grl_2014.pdf
âWe establish a signal of pervasive and persistent multidecadal (~60â90 year) fluctuations⌠Covariability between sea ice and Atlantic multidecadal variability as represented by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index is evident during the instrumental record. This observational evidence supports recent modeling studies that have suggested that Arctic sea ice is intrinsically linked to Atlantic multidecadal variability.
Given the demonstrated covariability between sea ice and the AMO, it follows that a change to a negative AMO phase in the coming decade(s) could âto some degreeâ temporarily ameliorate the strongly negative recent sea-ice trends.â
Wyatt, Marcia Glaze, and Judith A. Curry. âRole for Eurasian Arctic shelf sea ice in a secularly varying hemispheric climate signal during the 20th century.â Climate dynamics 42.9-10 (2014): 2763-2782.
âIn recent decades, rapid changes in the Arctic have been documented (e.g. Alkire et al. 2007). Most interpretations of the recent decline in Arctic sea ice extent have focused on the role of anthropogenic forcing (e.g. Johannessen et al. 2004), with some allowance for natural variability⌠But according to stadium-wave projections, and according to our interpretation of stadium-wave evolution, this trend should reverse, under the condition that the stadium-wave hypothesis captures 20th century dynamics correctly. Rebound in West Ice Extent, followed by Arctic Seas of Siberia should occur after the estimated 2006 minimum of West Ice Extent and maximum of AMO.â
This is my favorite Javier article.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/
Pure comedy gold.
Tamino doesn’t know what he talks about. He hasn’t read the relevant scientific literature. This is a very common problem with non-scientists. They don’t know how much they ignore because they don’t do enough reading.
Despite all his analysis, Arctic sea ice has refused to melt further for 10 years now, much to the consternation of those that predicted an Arctic collapse and are now looking like fools.
Don’t believe your lying eyes!
I can always count on a little humor from Baghdad Bob—
Sea ice extent shows lots of change. You seem to have a very loose definition of what “not much” means. You’re laughable. Like a sideshow clown.
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www.moyhu.org/blog/polview.html
And you are just an ignorant on Arctic sea ice.
Arctic sea ice increases and decreases according to a ~ 60 year oscillation, and you are so ignorant that you think that because it went down the last 30 years the Arctic is going to melt.
This is what scientists believe was the Arctic sea ice situation before satellites starting measuring it:
GagnĂŠ, MarieâĂve, et al. “Aerosolâdriven increase in Arctic sea ice over the middle of the 20th Century.” Geophysical Research Letters (2017).
There was about the same sea ice in the Arctic around the early 1950’s, than now, and for the last 10 years the Arctic is not melting.
What color is the sky on the planet you live on?
And global sea ice extent still in record low
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_extent_byyear_b.png
Looks like more failed predictions by Javier
Figure 1
https://www.skepticalscience.com/loehle-scafetta-60-year-cycle.htm
check out the source for Javier’s image from above.
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/02/large-increase-in-multi-year-ice-over-the-past-decade/
https://www.desmogblog.com/steven-goddard
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/01/01/tony-hellers-snow-job/
What a great source for your talking points Javier. Pure comedy gold. Is that who taught you to use the word ‘alarmist’ also? Now we know who briefs you.
I checked the data at the source myself, and it is correct. You can check it too if you want:
http://osisaf.met.no/p/osisaf_hlprod_qlook.php?year=2009&month=02&day=13&prod=Ice-Type&area=NH&size=100%25
Typical debating tactics. If you cannot argue the data try to smear the opponent’s credibility with fallacies like guilt by association.
You are such a bad looser. The data is solid. The conclusion too. Science doesn’t operate with debating fallacies. It is based only on the factual nature of evidence.
“The data is[sic] solid. The conclusion too. ….It is based only on the factual nature of evidence.”
Or based on a buggy algorithm/model to convert microwave emissivity, polarization and backscatter into a picture. Zero data of actual ice age, just a model.
A model that “sees” MY ice appearing and disappearing with alarming randomness.
This model believes there was lots of MY ice up against Greenland the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in March. Then it disappeared in May.
The algorithm identifies huge areas of first year ice in the Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev and Kara Seas in March that suddenly becomes “Multi-Year” ice in May.
GIGO.
A very brief look at the output of this model would have saved Javier the embarrassment of declaring this to be “solid data” or “factual evidence”. Not sure Javier can even feel embarrassment anymore, having been proved wrong so many times.
Javier’s preference for models seems to fluctuate based on whether they back up his assertions or not. Measures of uncertainty don’t seem to hold much sway.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/
Piomass data is less uncertain but Javier disregards it as too uncertain for his tastes.
Arctic sea ice extent for February 2017 averaged 14.28 million square kilometers (5.51 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the 38-year satellite record. This is 40,000 square kilometers (15,400 square miles) below February 2016, the previous lowest extent for the month, and 1.18 million square kilometers (455,600 square miles) below the February 1981 to 2010 long term average.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Wehappyfew,
You are once more the one that should be embarrassed.
DMI very clearly states in its product:
http://osisaf.met.no/p/ice/
So what you did was very ugly. You went to a month when the product is deprecated, May, to try to falsely show that the product is garbage. And after doing that you came to discredit me when I have used it for a month when the product is validated.
See validation here:
http://osisaf.met.no/docs/osisaf_cdop2_ss2_valrep_sea-ice-edge-type.pdf
The accuracy is within 100,000 sqkm.
WHAT A LIAR!!!
“So what you did was very ugly. You went to a month when the product is deprecated, May, to try to falsely show that the product is garbage. ”
You’re right, Javier. That’s a good point.
May is a very buggy month. Lots of garbage output. I shouldn’t have used it as an example of the model’s shortcomings. Mea Culpa.
BUT…. 2009 is a whole buggy year. Very little of the “multi-year” ice areas have any resemblance to physical reality for that year, later years look much better – the MY areas do not appear and disappear randomly after 2010. 2008 is bad, too.
But you used 2009 to compare to this year’s “multi-year” ice area. Not kosher. The obviously unstable algorithm for 2009 makes it unsuitable for comparison to later years. This is obvious with a few minutes of paging through the 2008 and 2009 daily pictures. You should know better.
Compare the ice at the start of the freezing season in 2008 – like mid October 2008. The remaining ice is not identified as MY correctly. The MY ice decreases throughout the freezing season into spring 2009. Not physically possible. Specifically, compare 2008-12-23 to 2009-1-27. Much of the MY ice next to greenland and CAA has “melted” away in midwinter in one month’s time. Some of it reappears by 2009-02-04. Not credible. This model is not believable for 2008-09 data.
Look at The Bering Sea on 2009-02-14, 2009-02-24, 2009-02-26, 2009-03-06. “MY” ice appears and disappears in an area where MY can never exist because the Bering Sea melts out every year without fail.
So, you are correct to point out that May is not valid for comparison, but all of 2008 and 2009 is almost as bad. Using it as you have to compare to 2017 is not supportable, invalid, incorrect.
Your comparison is also contradicted by EVERY OTHER multi-year ice data product. When all the data sources except one point in the same direction – the Arctic is losing ice and especially MY ice – but you choose to cherry-pick the one and only one that confirms your personal biases… then maybe it’s time to reconsider your biases in favor of looking at all the evidence.
My predictions:
The Arctic sea ice WILL set new record lows in annual average extent, area, and volume for 2017.
It will ALMOST CERTAINLY set new record lows for summer (May, June, July) extend, area and volume – that’s what matters most for its albedo feedback effect.
It will PROBABLY set new record minimum Sept lows for extend, area and volume, depending on the weather.
Unless 2018 is MUCH colder, 2018 will be even worse (less ice). There is a lag between higher temps and melting.
…….
Your predictions, Javier?
Let’s look at your past pronouncements:
01/02/2017 AT 8:19 PM
“2017 will again show more Arctic sea ice than 2007, because the trend has changed”
01/07/2017 AT 11:43 PM
“Arctic sea ice is not decreasing. There will be more of it in 2017 than in 2016. You should be happy about it.”
03/13/2016 AT 8:24 AM
“If you are capable of tracing a straight line you will see that Arctic sea ice volume has been going nowhere since 2007.”
01/10/2016 AT 8:45 PM
” it is easy to predict that in two years time, during a La NiĂąa year that is likely to take place you are very likely to get quite a lot more Arctic sea ice.”
01/09/2016 AT 3:48 PM
“Once this El NiĂąo is over by about 2017, Arctic sea ice will go back to growing”
Fortunately, we only have to put up with your inane blather for less than a year before your predictions fail, unlike your “cooling until 2030” predictions.
You do a fine enough job of smearing your own credibility Javier. Your sources are weak and your predictions are failures. Pure nonsense.
“next winter will see a larger than usual sea-ice growth. It tends to happen when the melting has been intense, like in 2013 after the 2012 melt.” ~ Javier
https://realclimatescience.com/2016/08/arctic-alarmists-screaming/#comment-16796
FAIL!
In October 2016, Arctic sea ice extent averaged 6.40 million square kilometers (2.5 million square miles), the lowest October in the satellite record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/11/sluggish-ice-growth-in-the-arctic/
In November 2016, Arctic sea ice extent averaged 9.08 million square kilometers (3.51 million square miles), the lowest November in the satellite record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/12/arctic-and-antarctic-at-record-low-levels/
Arctic sea ice extent for December 2016 averaged 12.10 million square kilometers (4.67 million square miles), the second lowest December extent in the satellite record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/01/low-sea-ice-extent-continues-in-both-poles/
Arctic sea ice extent for January 2017 averaged 13.38 million square kilometers (5.17 million square miles), the lowest January extent in the 38-year satellite record.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/02/2017-ushers-in-record-low-extent/
Arctic sea ice extent for February 2017 averaged 14.28 million square kilometers (5.51 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the 38-year satellite record.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/03/another-warm-month-in-the-arctic/
My sources are not weak. My sources are official research institutions or government agencies like the Danish Meteorological Institute or the European Meteorological Satellite facility, and published peer reviewed scientific literature.
It is not my fault that some scoundrel alarmists will spread lies about the work of scientists working for the Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Facility (OSISAF) trying to defend their dying doom cult.
Javier said
“… defend their dying doom cult.”
Why do you come here and dump on stuff, when we of all people know what and what is not a cult? Do you really take us for such rubes?
Load shedding in Australia
14 Feb 2017
NSWâs privatized giveaway coal plant causes load shedding in extreme weather
http://crudeoilpeak.info/nsws-privatized-giveaway-coal-plant-causes-load-shedding-in-extreme-weather
10 Feb 2017
NSW running low on contingency reserves during hot days
http://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-running-low-on-contingency-reserves-during-hot-days
28/1/2017
Power Supply in Australia’s New South Wales: how will it cope in coming heatwave?
http://crudeoilpeak.info/power-supply-in-australias-new-south-wales-how-will-it-cope-in-coming-heatwave
Three times the energy density of lithium ion, non-flammable, very fast charging, more cycles. What is not to like?
A team of engineers led by 94-year-old John Goodenough, professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery, has developed the first all-solid-state battery cells that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting rechargeable batteries for handheld mobile devices, electric cars and stationary energy storage.
Goodenoughâs latest breakthrough, completed with Cockrell School senior research fellow Maria Helena Braga, is a low-cost all-solid-state battery that is noncombustible and has a long cycle life (battery life) with a high volumetric energy density and fast rates of charge and discharge. The engineers describe their new technology in a recent paper published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/03/lithium-ion-battery-inventor-introduces.html
From the Puffington Host:
We all knew the Clinton Foundation was a “pay to play” money machine, but this is exceptionally interesting, with all the anti Russia propaganda stimulating the neural pathways of 70 years of propaganda.
Yes, Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid U.S. Russian Uranium Deal
(but do we really know all the facts?)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yes-cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-amid-us-russian_us_58aa5dd6e4b0fa149f9ac82f
As they so famously say about ”democracy” being the worst possible form of government, except all the others” , the D party is the best one we actually have , despite it’s various warts and flaws.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/can-millennials-save-the-democratic-party/518523/
The first sentence says it all, to any one who is open minded enough to understand, WILLING to understand.
“Facing a bleak electoral landscape after 2016, the brightest spot for Democrats may be President Trumpâs continued weakness with members of the Millennial generationâwho are poised to surpass the more Republican-leaning baby boomers in 2020 as the largest generation of eligible voters.”
I maintain myself as an independent,as a commenter and “wanna be author “, so as to be able to freely criticize any and all parties and politicians, and tell it like it is, or at least the way I THINK it is.
If Clinton had had less baggage, and been a better campaigner, she would be prez today, but that’s water under the bridge.
I have long maintained that our culture is evolving away from the old conventional conservative values, which is not in my opinion ALWAYS a good thing, since some babies tend to be thrown out with the discarded bath water, so to speak, and TOWARD the sort of culture that typically prevails in Western Europe.
This change is driven as much or more by demographics as any thing, but there are other very important factors in play. The rise of government sponsored safety nets is one of those things. A social worker able to dispense food stamps and other necessities, such as free or reduced rent apartment, etc, displaces church work, etc.
The rise of the two parents working family , and the rise of the one parent family, means that kids are not so closely supervised these days, or as busy, as they were in former times, and between Mom and Dad both working, or Dad not even being around, and the idiot box and other electronic gizmos being the real DEFAULT parent these days, so many hours out of so many days, well…….. Holly Wood has more to say about young people’s values than preachers, and that’s a goddamned inescapable fact.
And as we get richer, as individuals, and despite most of the hype indicating otherwise, MOST of us are not all that hard up, even those who vote R tend to support programs such as Social Security and Medicare, perhaps because they realize that, being older, pretty soon they may NEED SS and Medicare themselves, lol. Perhaps because they also tend to feel a little guilty? In the words of Kilgore Trout, I think “maybe so”!
As I see it, the D party sort of lost it’s way, perhaps for good reasons, or what were perceived to be good reasons at the time, and morphed into a REPUBLICAN LITE party, which proved to be a very costly mistake, long term. The more the D’s try to play R ball, the more R’s win elections.
You ( rhetorical as politicians and parties ) just can’t be the party of working people and minorities and the various small ( and therefore not very important on election day) constituencies such as gender changers while simultaneously being the party of corporate welfare, banksters, globalism, environmentalism, and whatever else.
The message is too mixed, and it rings false in the ears of people who are worried about their future, in too many cases.
The working classes came to feel abandoned and worse, taken for granted, or even worse, BETRAYED. Some of the minorities are now doing well enough that they pay a hell of a lot of taxes, and have an incentive to vote for less in the way of social programs.
But there is some reason, substantial reason in my opinion, to believe that the D party is well on it’s way back to its real roots and that when it gets there, it will start making up the ground lost over the last decade plus, and regain power, although getting back into control of most state governments and DC isn’t going to happen overnight.
It’s simple enough, if you believe in basic arithmetic, and accept the premise that the overall culture is growing ever more “liberal” in the sense of being less socially ” conservative”.
Old farts such as yours truly are headed to the recycling center at accelerating rates, and our places are now being taken by folks so young it makes me feel a little guilty eyeballing the girls at a Sanders rally, lol. Nearly all of them were young enough to be my granddaughters. You just don’t see that sort of crowd at R type gatherings, as a rule.
So far as I can see, there are dozens of trends that indicate a long term resurgence of the D party, or whatever party that might evolve and assume the role of the existing D party, if it continues to be a Republican Lite organization.
Women now earn more college degrees.
People in general are gradually coming to understand that we have NO CHOICE but to protect the environment.
Communications are getting continually cheaper, and we are able to move around ever more freely, and not too many of us live these days in socially homogeneous communities, as we did not that long ago. Even in my backwoods, we have openly committed lesbian couples, interracial families, and at least a handful of individuals who are followers of various religions we used to only hear about, etc.
I could go on all day, but it’s not necessary.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/can-millennials-save-the-democratic-party/518523/
I’m around a lot of millennials (They composed most of the workers on the ranch I was on), but they may be an exception, being mostly actors, models, and academics from the East Bay (Oakland).
They had no problem with physical labor, could think things out with just minor supervision, and had some at least minor political literacy.
They are a hopeful generation, after the last two, which lets face it, hardly got out of the shallow end of the pool.
But unless the Dim’s change, and stop being lap dogs for Wall Street and the Pentagon, they just aren’t going to get very excited.
True believing big D’s won’t read the link Hightrekker posted. Not a snowball’s chance on a red hot stove! But the ones who are capable of thinking well enough to realize that you have to take responsibility for your own losses, rather than blaming them on others, will read it, and be thinking about how to WIN in the future.
RULE ONE, start with a candidate who is truly well liked, or at least not REVILED, by most of the country. Conservatives were SURE to turn out to vote AGAINST her, and the fact that so many many Democrats, especially young ones, went for Sanders, and that he made such a phenomenal showing, considering when and how he got started, no money, no organization, no backing at ALL by the party, etc, is ample proof that a HELL of a lot of Democrats really didn’t have much use for Clinton to begin with.
Younger Democrats never believed in the Great Right Wing Conspiracy. But they believed in the secret speeches and the millions paid for them , and they believed in the millions rolling in from people dealing with the State Department, and they believed in her globalist tendencies.
Younger Democrats frequently made a joke about the line from a country western song, the one that goes about like this, who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes ?
They believed their lying eyes, the eyes that refused to NOT SEE the speeches, the globalism, the Republican Lite platform, etc.
And of course they had even LESS use for Trump.
We believe what we want to believe, and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
Trump’s a LOT worse, an order of magnitude worse, but I can say for the R party that it did not WANT Trump, whereas the D party was more or less a wholly owned subsidiary of Clinton, Incorporated, well before the nominating process even got started last election cycle. All the evidence needed for this assertion is that not a single serious challenger emerged until Sanders appeared out of nowhere, without any money or organization, and not much in the way of name recognition.
All the rest of the D’s who were in a position to run were so intimidated by their insider knowledge of Clinton’s octopus like grip on the party machinery that they didn’t even bother doing more than talk about running for a little while.
And while they never had brains enough to realize it, Clinton supporters who accused Sanders of not even being a Democrat were essentially saying we don’t even have any nominating process, we’re just having a coronation, because nobody else even made a serious effort.
It’s not like the Clintons were broke, they took the money, and taking it confirmed the prejudices of conservatives that she was a crook, and like it or not, there are a LOT of conservatives who vote.
And the taking of it went a very LONG way towards convincing ENOUGH historically reliable D working class voters that she sold them out and would continue to sell them out.
Of course Trump is FAR worse, but he had the advantage of being an even bigger and more shameless fraud, and a CONVINCING liar, comparatively speaking, and an OUTSIDER, at a time the country was screaming for CHANGE , from both sides , from both ends of the political spectrum.
Shit happens, and it has happened to us Yankees.
Here we are again. OldMacDonald aka KGB posting his hate for HRC paragraph after paragraph with a small one liner disclaimer “Trump is FAR worse”.
OldMacDonald and his asshole friends just like him are the reason America is going to face 4 years of advancing into a Trump fascist state. He has been pumping fake Republican news about HRC here for over a year.
Either your with us or against us. OldMacDonald’s hate makes him a Republican fascist Trump Troll. It’s as simple as night and day and don’t give us your Bernie excuse. He lost to HRC big time and was not an option. It was Hillary or Donald and you didn’t vote for Hillary.
But were you the one who was writing ‘Go Trump!’ just a few months ago?
If I did. It was sarcastic. Get real !
HB is and will forever remain a little lap dog true believer who is utterly incapable of thinking for himself. He shares quite a lot with many people I know who believe that no matter what happens, Jesus and his Daddy are always right,always blameless,even when their little kid dies a horrible death from a disease which can not yet be successfully treated or prevented. Even when they work themselves silly, and see some bum inherit a million and blow it all on booze.
ADULTS think about what could have been done differently, so as to get different results, when things don’t go to suit them.
SOME adults point out mistakes and potential mistakes in the making. They seldom win any popularity prizes for doing so, lol.
But I don’t post in order to win a popularity contest.
Whiney little children and nincompoops, who are never in short supply, blame others, when they don’t get what they want.
I don’t hate HRC, nor Trump, nor anybody, because I matured sufficiently, between the ears, many years ago, to understand that hate on my part reduces my own quality of life.
What I feel toward HRC is a combination of judgements, consisting mostly of contempt, with some respect and some pity thrown in.
The respect is for the good things she has done, which I need not enumerate here, we are all aware of recent American history. The pity is for her personal pain,because there is no doubt in my mind she has suffered a lot.
The contempt, which predominates, is for her being so bright and having gotten off to such a great start, still being so stupid as to throw away the ultimate prize for which she worked all her life, and for which she suffered most of the pain, putting up with Bill- who in retrospect is looking better all the time, as far as policy matters are concerned.
She had a law degree from an IVY, and she pulled the Cattle Gate scam, and every last person on the planet who is mathematically literate KNOWS it was a scam. She put in the secret email system to hide her business with shady characters. She took the banksters money, and had contempt enough for working people to do so PUBLICLY
She has SOME brains, but she failed to use them at critical points.
Now LEADERS USE HATE, to motivate true believing followers.
HB is a follower, pure and simple, and beyond that, a hypocrite who has bragged about making money at other people’s expense in the oil biz,while posing as environmentally conscious.
There will be more elections, and while I maintain my position as a writer to be as an independent, and will continue to criticize both parties, etc, I will be advocating for the truth when it comes to actual issues, and pointing out which candidates and parties are truthful and doing the right thing, environmentally, etc.
Hopefully I will by 2020 have convinced at least a few big D democrats that they should think hard about nominating a candidate who isn’t dragging a long baggage train, but rather a candidate who inspires younger voters, who does BETTER in the polls against the R candidate, who has sense enough not to take the party core for granted, who has sense enough to take bribes in only in private, etc.
In right wing forums they usually don’t call me anything any more complimentary than a panty wearing pinko commie queer socialist tree hugging whale lover, and that’s only when they are in a hurry to move on.
In the end, it did come down to Clinton versus Trump, but Virginia was safe Clinton territory, because we are now more urban than rural, and with a gazillion federal employees, etc.
It came down to Clinton because of goddamned fools who were stupid enough to believe in her, despite her record, and believe she couldn’t possibly lose.
There is such a thing as principle, in ethics, and there is such a thing as the precautionary principle, which applies in more fields than just the hard sciences.
OldMacDonald aka KGB, even an idiot knows one doesn’t campaign against their own party for 2020 before the 2016 election. You must have attended Trump University.
Your a Trump Troll
Food for thought. From Spectrums: Our Mind-boggling Universe from Infinitesimal to Infinity
University of Hawaii researchers (who should know) estimate that the Earth has about 7.5 billion billion (7.5E+18) grains of sand. And even though we can see no more than a few thousand stars with the unaided eye, astronomers currently think there are about 16 sextillion stars throughout the known universe (give or take a few)–that’s 1.6E+22.
Okay, do the math. For every grain of sand on the earth, there are over 2,100 stars in the known universe.
This book is just packed full of such tidbits as the above. I simply cannot put it down.
David Blatner on Spectrums at Seattle Town Hall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqTrpgqJS3w
Hi Ron,
I often wish you were nearby so we could get together over any kind of drink you like. Not many people as old as you still have the ability to see reality with a deep sense of wonder.
The number of stars blows my mind, as well.
And then think about the number of atoms in rather small sample of any common element, one mole, only twelve grams of carbon, a gram or two of hydrogen or helium, a piece of iron no bigger than a sugar cube.
six point o two two x ten to the twenty third power.
It’s astounding that our brains ever evolved to the point we can even contemplate such things.
I really wonder if there is any such THING, for lack of a better word, as ULTIMATE reality.
If so, we may never be able to grasp the nature of it, because it seems to me that we can understand things only in terms of OTHER things, some of which must be accepted intuitively, without definitions.
You explain water in terms of hydrogen and oxygen reacting together, and we explain hydrogen and oxygen in terms of subatomic particles, and we explain sub atomic particles in terms of OTHER subatomic particles or string theory or something else beyond my comprehension, and when a subatomic particle is just about well understood, it seems that somebody comes along and demonstrates that it’s not all that simple, and that it consists of YET OTHER particles, known, unknown, or speculative.
Is it possible to get down to the final layer of the onion of reality, assuming a final layer exists?
Yes there are about 16,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the known universe. That’s over 2100 times the number of grains of sand on earth, or about the same number of molecules found in 10 drops of water. Or at least that’s what David Blatner says in Spectrums.
But you are correct, the vast, vast majority of people search for, and will accept, only simple answers for the most complicated questions. Where did all those stars come from? Religious people say “God did it”. While the non-religious say, “they just popped into existence from nothing.” I just don’t believe either one of them. That is, the answer would likely be so complicated that even if we were told we would not be able to understand it.
I don’t mean that we should stop searching for the answer, even though both the religious and non-religious have stopped looking because they think they already have the answer. But the answer is just not that simple. There just has to be more to it than that.
I think there is more mind to this matter than the religious folks could ever imagine. But belief in their simplistic God will not allow any of that. And of course the non-religious will have none of that shit either. đ
Thanks Ron, just ordered the book, sounds fascinating. I agree, there has to be more than “God did it”, or “it just is”.
As you said, “there is more mind to this matter”. Maybe one day science will find God?
I do notice religions saying how flawed we are, how bad we are, which implies God made a big mistake in our creation.
We are a conglomeration of cooperative cells that in general act together to form the concert we call an organism. Our high mental factor might simply be a fluke, an idiot box topped onto a useful brain. This experiment that has replaced true natural physical ability with neo-mental ability did allow us as slow weak creatures to survive and thrive. Yet it also has brought the global ecosystem to the edge of destruction.
We may not be a viable mutation, just a short term aberration.
So enjoy it while it lasts. We are what we are.
A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)
I’m not personally interested in the God part of the discussion at all.
But I do find the question about life origin truly fascinating- Did it happen just once, or multiple times here on earth? And, did it happen just on earth, or elsewhere in the Universe as well?…
I come down on the ‘just once’ side of things. At least until we have some proof that shows otherwise. ‘Just Once’ means that it is even more precious than we can imagine, and we ought to be treating it all as such.
Florida’s Government Built A Train – And It Didn’t Go Well
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-04/floridas-government-built-train-and-it-didnt-go-well
one reason, not that any thinking person would need one, not to listen to those who offer theories and unproven hypothesis for actual real world experience. Must be nice to live in a government sponsored and supported fantasy land…devoid of risk, devoid of loss and devoid of profits. Spewing endless words spread like manure on the internet, what a pathetic life. ??
You and Tyler don’t seem to know much about passenger railroading. They are public projects that generally lose money, like roads.
Maybe they should have made it an electric line.
Must be nice to live in a government sponsored and supported fantasy landâŚdevoid of risk, devoid of loss and devoid of profits. Spewing endless words spread like manure on the internet, what a pathetic life.
That sounds more like people who live off fossil fuel subsidies in Texas and wave US flags… as for Florida the Sun Rail is doing just fine thanks and even FPL is finally figuring out that solar makes more economic sense than fossil fuels…
And that’s under a Republican Governor since 2011!
http://corporate.sunrail.com/expansion/phase-2-expansion
Weâve Been Working on the Railroad!
SunRailâs southern expansion into Osceola County began April 1, 2016 with four new stations now under construction at Meadow Woods in Orange County, and the Tupperware Station, downtown Kissimmee Station and the Poinciana Station in Osceola County. Plans also include double tracking most of the corridor, improving grade crossings and building the four new stations and platforms.
Oh, and the imbecile who wrote this piece of garbage:
In Floridaâs fascinating history, perhaps no figure stands taller than the great Walt Disney, who transformed unwanted swampland into Disney World, forever changing central Florida from swamp and farmland into one of the premier vacation destinations in the world
Doesn’t have the slightest clue about the Florida ecosystem and the Everglades also known as the river of grass. The Everglades is a flowing river not a swamp!
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA03703
Florida’s Everglades is a region of broad, slow-moving sheets of water flowing southward over low-lying areas from Lake Okeechobeeto the Gulf of Mexico. In places this remarkable “river of grass” is 80 kilometers wide. These images from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer show the Everglades region on January 16, 2002. Each image covers an area measuring 191 kilometers x 205 kilometers. The data were captured during Terra orbit 11072.
On the left is a natural color view acquired by MISR’s nadir camera. A portion of Lake Okeechobee is visible at the top, to the right of image center. South of the lake, whose name derives from the Seminole word for “big water,” an extensive region of farmland known as the Everglades Agricultural Area is recognizable by its many clustered squares. Over half of the sugar produced in United States is grown here. Urban areas along the east coast and in the northern part of the image extend to the boundaries of Big Cypress Swamp, situated north of Everglades National Park.
âIf you want to form an authoritarian country, the first thing you do is bash the press and try to destroy the legitimacy of the judiciary,â said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee who is leading a push to get the Department of Justice to share its information on Trump.
âAnyone who tries to destroy the press and the judiciary is setting the stage for a much more authoritarian situation, and is very dangerous,â Nadler added.
Should Trump push the country in that direction, they see the rise of a more nationalistic state that attempts to exclude people who are not part of Trumpâs America, and sets the stage for more war.
âNationalism is about creating a hierarchical society, and then syncing everybodyâs individuality into militarism, and then going to war against other people, and stereotyping and vilifying foreigners,â said freshman Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is a constitutional law professor.
âYou can see precisely where Steve Bannon wants to go,â Raskin said, noting that the presidentâs brand of populism lends itself to an authoritarian bent. âThe authoritarian populism pushed to its limits just becomes fascism,â
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/here-are-the-many-ways-trump-scares-the-crap-out-of-democrats_us_58baf22de4b05cf0f400f9ec?section=us_politics
Maybe for the first time ever, I am in complete agreement, no reservations, with something HB has said.
Hey OldMacDonald aka KGB
Republicans released their alternative to the Affordable Care Act.
It will:
Revoke health insurance entirely for 10 million people covered by Medicaid.
Replace subsidies that make health insurance affordable for millions with a fixed value âcouponâ that many will not be able to use.
Use the savings to give a giant tax cut to the wealthiest Americans.
Your poor Trump friends who hated Hillary so much and voted against their best interest. Deserve what their having taken away.
Hi Fred,
We obviously NEED mass transit, or something equivalent to it in terms of low energy low environmental impact transportation.
The question is how we get from our HERE to that future THERE?
When I lived in a city, not a very big one, the poor people who worked downtown wanted buses, and the downtown merchants and landlords wanted buses, and the people who found it convenient to drive on streets where buses operated liked buses, because they reduced traffic so effectively, so long as they lived ELSEWHERE, meaning at least a few blocks, preferably at least four or five blocks or more from the bus route. The perfectly obvious reason was that homeowners with cars didn’t want renters without cars living close to them. Prosperous birds like to flock with similarly prosperous other birds, lol.
Property values tended to be less in parts of town where buses were routed, except for commercial properties. My house went up in value less than virtually identical houses farther from bus lines. I occasionally rode the bus , but it took so long, and cost so much that I found it far preferable to drive since I had a car ANYWAY.
Hub and spoke just don’t get it done, unless your destination is the hub and back home again.
Now when I occasionally visited New York, virtually everybody I knew or met used the subways, and if they rented, they tried for places convenient to the stations. Not many of them had cars, because traffic and parking were such problems that taking the subway was the much better deal, and in New York, you can actually get someplace on the subway in a reasonable length of time, and back home again too.
I conclude that so long as the car culture is IN PLACE, and most people can afford to drive, the mass transit is a hard sell. Once the traffic gets so bad, and the cost of driving and parking gets to be really prohibitive……. then we will change our collective mind.
But consider the man who owns a house a mile or more from a line, and who doesn’t want to go anywhere the line goes, or at least not very often. He’s apt to conclude it’s a bad deal for him, and vote against it, since he will probably have to keep his car anyway.
The car culture problem will solve itself, once cars get to be prohibitively expensive, assuming they do, and unless the renewable energy transition and electric cars are a combination blow out success ,peak oil guarantees the car culture will soon be history.
But if electric cars get to be really cheap, and I don’t see any reason they CAN’T be cheap, eventually, suburbia will live on. The size of the sunk investment virtually guarantees it.
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that almost everybody who has a mcmansion with a garage, backyard, lots of space, and tons of various toys from golf clubs to bass boats would rather drive a micro mini electric to work and to the super market than to move to a cramped downtown apartment- even if one were available at an affordable rent.
You are one of the relatively few people who understand that when the choice is intermittent renewable electricity, or no electricity at all, it’s a no brainer.
Likewise, if the choice comes down to the suburban home, and a super small electric car, one that might go only say fifty miles on a charge, versus giving up the house and losing well into six figures on the house, and moving into a rental not even half as desirable, well it’s going to be another no brainer.
If the only kind of affordable electric commuter vehicle turns out to be a fore and aft two seater that will go only thirty five mph, and only fifty miles on a charge, once gasoline is super expensive and availability is problematical, such cars will sell like ice water in hell.
P.S. Property values (both residential and commercial) go UP adjacent to subway stations, intercity train stations, streetcar stops, and even elevated rail stations.
This is in contrast to buses or (worse) highways or airports.
Worth knowing. Even the tony neighborhoods want their streetcars and they often want their train stations. The ones which already have them guard them fiercely.
Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Portends Huge Carbon Release
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27022017/global-warming-permafrost-study-melt-canada-siberia
It’ll be interesting to see how permafrost thaw impacts the region and the planet.
Our leaders are always stepping in to make sure things are right and we are well taken care of. And they work hard at it and will keep doing so, no matter what. They are in it for us, and we all know that they will be the last to go down with the ship.
Ahh, isn’t life grand? We have taken care of everything. (BTW, as a subordinate, I really appreciate and respect my boss, manager and supervisor. Once and awhile, even, our really great regional director drops in and brings us all to a luncheon and includes on her own free time a corporate peptalk! The one that sometimes rubs shoulders with the CEO himself! I feel so good and energized after that I almost feel like I could work extra overtime hours without pay!)
So I wouldn’t worry too much about this anthropogenic climate change, even if it exists. They have it under control and are doing what is necessary, for the betterment of all.
I mean, take a look at them. Our leaders represent us, and do a damn good job of it if I do say so myself. Just look into their faces, their eyes, hear their confident and reassuring words. You can see and feel the epitome of deep wisdom and caring in them. It is a wisdom, caring and confidence that extends well beyond the pale and the likes of average people like you and me. That is why they are leaders and we are not, and why they lead and we follow, and why we need them. They are our betters and mentors. They help guide us, don’t you see? Isn’t that great? That is why we vote for them every few years. It is an honor and a privilege and sometimes I can hardly wait to do so again!
Our trust and our future is in their good hands. They will turn this planet into a no climate-change zone in no time flat! You’ll see!
You know, next time you do your tax returns, give them a little extra– no really– just to say you care. Give them a little extra helping hand. Buy some lottery tickets. Put some extra coins in the parking meters. Stuff like that. If you have any traffic tickets, pay them right away if you have the money. Why not right? đ
And on a lighter note;
“Scientists project that up to 300 billion metric tons of Arctic carbon may be released into the atmosphere by 2100. For reference, the current atmosphere has accumulated about 250 billion metric tons of carbon from around the globe since the start of the industrial revolution.”
https://eos.org/research-spotlights/arctic-permafrost-thaw-would-amplify-climate-change
The uptake by the ocean system will be diminished due to continued warming of the ocean. Vegetative land uptake is limited, especially as population grows. Much of the carbon release will be retained by the atmosphere.
Any estimates on ocean releases of carbon in the Arctic regions and elsewhere?
Ocean Acidification Increasing Rapidly In Western Arctic Ocean
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/03/03/ocean-acidification-increasing-rapidly-western-arctic-ocean/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170227152203.htm
Decrease in the CO2 Uptake Capacity in an Ice-Free Arctic Ocean Basin
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/329/5991/556
Ocean acidification is actually much more dangerous than global warming — it can collapse the entire ocean food chain — so this is bad bad news.
Permafrost temps Svalbard
https://youtu.be/eo9-6PNFsgM
We Should Treat Climate Change Like A Personal Illness
The Earth is not separate from your body, it is the medium that allows your body to exist and function.
For us non-scientists, the implications are clear. If you contracted HIV today, would you even consider not taking the medications and risking your life to prove the point of a non-conformist scientific minority? Thereâs an over-99.9 percent chance that youâd simply die very much earlier than you should. Would you give up your life like that, just to give the middle finger to scientific peer review?
We must apply the same thinking to climate change. Think of it as a rapidly progressing illness on the planetary body. The vast majority of scientists agree that carbon dioxide emissions are the âHIVâ that is causing this. If it were your body, would you just wait for even more evidence and hope that the disease goes away on its own? Or would you look at the statistics that point to a high possibility of you dying, and conclude that itâs best to start treatments now?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/we-should-treat-climate-change-like-a-personal-illness_us_58518847e4b0a464fad3e5a5?section=us_green
Good Evening HuntingtonBeach,
That article seems to be full of a significant amount of jargon, so let me see if I can break it down so we can all understand what it is saying.
First, we need to understand how there are two major types of peoples of the world. These two categories include people who are “feelings-centered” along with people who are “thinking-centered”. When dealing with these characteristics on political levels, we often find that those who consider themselves liberal are the “feelings-centered” types, while those who consider themselves conservative are the “thinking-centered” types.
Now understanding these issues, we can begin to understand why the two ends of the political spectrum react SO differently to the concept of human-influenced climate change. If you are of the left (politically speaking) you see climate change as important NOT due to the strength of the evidence underpinning the concept, but because of how “serious” you presume the ramifications of the concept to be. In other words, the graver (more urgent) the assertions behind a particular subject, the less motivated will the “feelings-centered”/left-leaning person be to seek out the empirical, objective evidence which proves the subject truthful. From a societal perspective, these types are are the ones who respond most negatively to ANY evidence that goes against their preconceived notions. Unfortunately, in doing so, they are also the ones most easily controlled and/or manipulated by demagoguery.
On the other side of the coin are the “thinking-centered”/right-leaning individuals. The chief behavioural concern amongst such types is a fundamental need to base opinions on a body of strong, rational, and (ultimately) impartial evidence. These types DO NOT use feelings and intuition alone to justify their positions on complex matters such as climate change, nor will they stand by their initial position if new evidence comes along to contradict it. Stated another way, as they have a stronger allegiance to the facts and the truth than how their senses make them “feel” about a subject, the “thinking-centered”/right leaning person will look for logical reasons to believe in something instead of SIMPLY committing to a particular belief while remaining ignorant of facts about the particular subject in question.
Be well,
Walt
I changed my position on climate change causes when the dominant explanation became unsupported by evidence. I have been there believing that we were absolutely responsible for the warming of the planet, so I can understand them quite well.
When I ask believers in human dominated climate change what type of evidence will take to convince them that their position is wrong I get a blank stare. They don’t contemplate that possibility and are perfectly capable of rationalizing any opposing evidence into their belief system.
Walt, we do get a lot of bullshit on this blog but your post has to top them all. Right leaning “thinking centered” people base their opinions on evidence? What a crock. Trump, and trump supporters do not think at all, they base everything on their idiotic right wing ideology. And they sure as hell don’t look at any evidence. Evidence is the right wing’s worst enemy.
What right wingers are really good at is just making up shit that fits their agenda, their ideology. And your post is the perfect example of something you just pulled right out of your ass. I had no idea that humans could pull bullshit out of their ass but you certainly have done that.
And you say left leaning people are the ones most easily controlled and/or manipulated by demagoguery. Good god almighty, no bigger demagogue ever occupied the White House, or any other political office, than Donald Trump. And you right wing idiots just lap up everything he says like it was absolute truth. And he never has any evidence for anything he claims as truth.
Your post qualifies for the “Worst Pile of Stinking Bullshit of the Year Award.”
Hi Ron, for as long as I can remember. I have said religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses. I believe Walt’s post roots comes from this fact. I’m sure the film documentary below is something that won’t surprise you, but will help confirm the ignorance that is growing in this country.
Friends of God A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi HBO Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzjUtcYBWgY
Alternative facts
That’s the Marxist view, which is superficial and wrong, as it refers mainly to monotheistic religions and more specifically to Christian religions, with plenty of exceptions as for example the Amish. I would not expect more from someone superficial and usually wrong.
The universality and variety of religions requires a more profound explanation. In that sense the attempts to look at the adaptative role of religions are at least a scientific approach that was started by Darwin himself:
Evolutionary Studies of Religiosity and Religions, started by Charles Darwin
and are continued today by people like David Sloan Wilson “Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society”
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/unmasking-darwins-cathedral/
We already discussed these issues here at Peak oil Barrel some time ago, but I see that you learned nothing from it. Not surprised.
Glenn Stehle, a very good contributor to this blog comments that is no longer around, introduced these issues several times:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/oil-forecast-from-a-reputable-firm/#comment-549607
http://peakoilbarrel.com/petroleum-supply-monthly-july-data/#comment-540924
“The evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson says that one of the universal characterisitics of religions is that they depart from factual reality.
And in this regard, traditional religions are not significantly different from what he calls the âsecular stealth religionsâ of Modernism and the Enlightenment.
Hereâs a lecture to the Science Network where he talks about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taGhwQfRpbQ
We must remember that David Sloan Wilson defines himself as a “nice atheist.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/science/conversation-with-david-sloan-wilson-origin-religions-distinctly-darwinian-view.html
“They donât contemplate that possibility and are perfectly capable of rationalizing any opposing evidence into their belief system”
Where is your evidence that there is a God ?
It is easy to prove to yourself that God is imaginary. The evidence is all around you. Here are 50 simple proofs:
https://godisimaginary.com/
I don’t believe in any God, but I do believe you talk about religion from ignorance. Knowing about one religion does not qualify you to make broad statements like:
“I have said religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses.”
Glenn Stehle
Things are becoming clearer.
If you want to catch more of Glenn’s commentary, last I looked (two weeks or so ago), he seems to have defected to Gail’s blog.
Duncan (AKA Hightrekker?) also seems to make guest appearances there… while Ghung can be found over at Peak Oil News. And so on…
Hightrekker, I meant to ask if you’ve sometimes trekked the valleys below too. They can be nice and you can take a splash or boat down in the rivers if you get too hot and/or tired. Peru? Southeast Asia?
Naturally, the mountains can have lakes and rivers about them too though…
Apart
Quantic: Time Is The Enemy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUO99uW7XTE
A Trip Down Market Street, 1906
“Historic pre-earthquake San Francisco…
Background:
This [originally silent] film was shot on April 14, 1906, just four days before the San Francisco earthquake and fire, to which the negative was nearly lost.”
That should put the previous dreamy, my-kind-of-tune/video in a little perspective.
Some of us like our collapse blogs, beard-to-tail bone-suckin’ collapsy.
Image is of San Francisco in ruins, taken 2000 feet from an airship.
A lovely day otherwise.
Show, 60 Minutes:
Historic Film: Market Street 1906
Interestingly, according to the show, the cars were planted, which would make sense at a time when cars were barely getting started.
(“Cars did not become widely available until the early 20th century. One of the first cars that was accessible to the masses was the 1908 Model T, an American car manufactured by the Ford Motor Company.” ~ Wikipedia)
Take away the plants and you get a main section of a frontier city with horses/wagons, trolleys, bikes, people on foot and that’s about it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of the intents of the film was as a kind of ad for the car.
Love the 1895 trolley.
I wonder what things will look like 111 years from now…
“Beside his work in astronomy, Verbiest also experimented with steam. Around 1672 he designed â as a toy for the Chinese Emperor â a steam-propelled trolley which was, quite possibly, the first working steam-powered vehicle (‘auto-mobile’). Verbiest describes it in his work Astronomia Europea. As it was only 65 cm (25.6 in) long, and therefore effectively a scale model, not designed to carry human passengers, nor a driver, it is not strictly accurate to call it a ‘car’ [Oh no? But it looks so comfortable.].
Steam was generated in a ball-shaped boiler, emerging through a pipe at the top, from where it was directed at a simple, open ‘steam turbine’ (rather like a water wheel) that drove the rear wheels.
It is not known if Verbiest’s model was ever built at the time, although he had access to China’s finest metal-working craftsmen who were constructing precision astronomical instruments for him.” ~ Wikipedia
Javier, David Sloan Wilson is arguing that organized religion has performed a service in cultural evolution. From your last link:
Religious organizations, he says, perform an important adaptive role in human societies. They represent culturally-evolved âworkaroundsâ that often provide unifying, coordinating, and supportive functions for large-scale human groups. In other words, moral systems may contribute significantly to our biological survival and reproduction. Other evolutionary theorists have made similar arguments over the years (Sir Arthur Keith, Edward O. Wilson, and Richard Alexander come to mind), but none (to my knowledge) has proposed it as a testable scientific hypothesis or marshaled an array of concrete evidence in support of it.
However all the mentioned above, the two Wilsons, Keith and Alexander, all agree that the story taught by religion is total bullshit. Useful bullshit they say, but bullshit nevertheless.
Nothing they say however, or anything Darwin ever said, disputes the well known fact that religion is used by the rich and powerful to control the masses. Perhaps HuntingtonBeach overstated his case. Let me reword it slightly:
At least 95 percent of all religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses.
Religious worship, from Poseidon to Thor to Yahweh may indeed have aided cultural evolution. However there is no doubt that kings, princes, chiefs, priest and witch doctors have always used religion to increase their power and control the masses.
Ron,
The issue is not if the particular set of beliefs of any religion is right or wrong. The issue is if religions provide adaptation at the group level. If true, and there is evidence that supports it, then religion is an important factor in inter-group selection. Some interesting examples are Jainism, Sikhism, or Judaism, whose members appear to be over-represented in commerce, the army or business, indicating religion can be a factor for success. And everybody knows that religion beliefs influence reproductive differences, and when there is reproductive differences evolution is acting.
“At least 95 percent of all religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses.”
A generalization that probably is sending you in the wrong direction. Every human social structure built to improve cooperation is susceptible to being co-opted by selfish people for their own personal gain. Every one.
Javier, No, no. no, no, you still do not understand. It simply does not matter that a lie is useful, it is still a lie. Organized religion, whether it be Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism is bullshit from top to bottom.
Hey, I agree with you that a lie is often very useful in cultural evolution. That does not change the fact that it is still a fucking lie.
Which is better, a useful lie or a pernicious fact?
I know, I know, a useful lie is most often better. That does not change the fact that it is still a fucking lie.
I am not arguing that. Of course religions do not represent the truth in any of the answers that they give. How could they? There is no point in stating something so obvious as that religions are a complete fabrication with little to no connection to reality.
But religions contain also moral codes, and conduct codes, and eating codes, and nearly every religion arrives to some form of the Golden Rule, at least within its members.
And since religion is a universal trait found in every human culture it requires an explanation far beyond “the opium of the people.”
Religion either responds to an intrinsic human need, or serves a useful adaptive role, or both. That religion can be corrupted or made to serve spurious interests explains nothing.
Trying to get rid of religion without understanding its purpose is likely to backfire. David Sloan Wilson defends that people are falling into what he calls stealth religions that do not contain obvious lies yet operate in the same manner.
“The main purpose of a religion or a stealth religion, however, is not to describe the real world but to motivate a given suite of behaviors. One way to do this is by creating a stylized world without tradeoffs, in which the prescribed behaviors are portrayed as good, good, good for everyone and the prohibited behaviors are portrayed as bad, bad, bad for everyone. Behaviors with mixed effects are absent from the stylized world because they do not clearly tell the believer what to do.”
Atheism as a stealth religion
Religion appears to be natural phenomena, and probably brought genetic fitness in the past through small group dynamics, and even some heath care benefits.
However, it currently is a parasitic meme set, using humans a hosts for its own replication.
Nasty stuff, causing immense ignorance and misery.
“it currently is a parasitic meme set, using humans a hosts for its own replication.”
“religion is all about the rich and powerful controlling the masses.”
Your statements about religion are contradictory and mutually exclusive. A clear sign that you don’t know what you talk about, as usual.
Jav–
A clear sign on how confused you are.
One quote was from me, the other Ron.
And they do not contradict each other.
Actually the second quote was from HuntingtonBeach, I just modified it slightly. But you are correct, they do not contradict each other and they definitely are not mutually exclusive. A parasitic meme makes a perfect vehicle for the rich and powerful to use to control the masses.
LOL! Ron beat me to it!
“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.” – John Stuart Mill
Yair . . . .
Huntington Beach . . .
Your statement below shows a lack of understanding of the human nature and condition.
Do you really think the average Joe or Jane will think or do anything about helping alleviate climate change when they won’t do anything about maintaining a body size allowing them to sit comfortably in a normal seat or view their genitals without a mirror . . . Sheesh, what planet do you live on?
“If it were your body, would you just wait for even more evidence and hope that the disease goes away on its own? Or would you look at the statistics that point to a high possibility of you dying, and conclude that itâs best to start treatments now?”
Cheers.
It’s all about education and it’s under attack by religion and alternative facts. Your basically born with a super computer between your ears and no programming. Garbage in is garbage out.
For those of you who missed the best of SNL last night
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mckinnon-snl-sessions_us_58bb97a4e4b0b9989418122f?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-brothers-snl_us_58bbd139e4b0d2821b4eb155?
Any geology buff care to comment on this “land tsunami”?
https://www.facebook.com/ExtremeWeather.co/videos/576429159215890/
That’s a very interesting land slide video. The articles I found regarding it state it is due to permafrost thawing. It’ll be interesting to see what the experts say on how much CO2 and methane are being released from thawing permafrost.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27022017/global-warming-permafrost-study-melt-canada-siberia
I wonder how many 1000’s of square miles of permafrost Russia has thawing.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vnh/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:12/plot/crutem4vnh/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/trend
I follow this young man on Twitter. He produces some great illustrations.
http://sites.uci.edu/zlabe/arctic-sea-ice-figures/
Global warming overall is of course at least three magnitudes more dangerous to humanity than regional floods or droughts, but floods and droughts are quite bad enough.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/atmospheric-rivers-california-megaflood-lessons-from-forgotten-catastrophe/
And when things get bad enough locally or regionally, hot war has often been the result, and may be the result again.
Most of the dams in the USA were apparently built to engineering standards based on the historical flood record, meaning that unless a five hundred year flood just HAPPENED to fall within the last hundred to two hundred years, it wasn’t taken into account. The record is not very good past about a century and a half in some parts of the American West.
But they say one man’s poison is another man’s meat.
If California dries up and blows away, or sinks beneath the sea, farmers on the Dirty Side will be in tall cotton, lol.
So will land eastern landlords, but considering how much tax Californians pay now, and how much they will CONSUME in the event of a disaster, I guess I better hope things go ok out that way. đ
Here’s link listing most of the biggest historical floods.
http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3754082
Hi OFM,
I’d be interested to know your thoughts on what this fellow has to say. At min 46 second 30 into the video he presents yield variability vs temperature. Looks like a Seneca cliff to me.
https://youtu.be/YToMoNPwTFc
If climate change is to be dangerous then we must say why. IMHO it is its potential impacts on food production.
Hi Survivalist,
I will check out the video later. If he is saying that at as the temperature rises to a certain point, and stays there for a few days or longer, at certain times, then yields drop like a rock, well…….
That’s pretty much common knowledge in the industry among people who live and work at or near the warm or hot edges of the areas suitable for the production of their chosen crops.
Standard textbook fare.
Apples for instance won’t grow worth a damn much farther south than I am located, except at high elevations. They will literally scald, more or less cook, … right on the trees, if there any on the trees, some years.
There could conceivably be a Seneca Cliff effect involving food supplies due to excessively hot weather, if it extends over large areas.
We aren’t all going to move north, but some things can be done to adjust to changing climate. Probably not enough, in the worst case.
Shit!
!geology buff but 2 observations. The road appears to have been cleaned up before. There are a couple of big structures behind, look a bit like the jibs on big coal mining machines.
NAOM
Coal mining machines? Those are power line structures.
Just the hill relaxing as it thaws. Road and power lines got in the way.
Most of the power line structures seem to be tube style towers with arms. The ones I am referring to are at around -2.55, though, yes, they may be a different type of pylon.
NAOM
Here is a great youtube channel. It’s mostly about advanced algorithms for creating and interpreting images, so it’s interesting to watch. It also shows how insanely fast software is improving.
This is the channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg
This is a good example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAbhypxs1qQ
Important Announcement: The Donald Trump Presidency Is The Best Thing That Ever Happened For Liberal Democrats!
The Donald Trump presidency has demonstrated for the nation, and for the world, what damn stupid idiots the right wing republicans are. It is costing us now but we will reap the rewards down the road. After Donald Trump nobody in their right mind can say that the republican party is the best thing for America.
Of course right wing republican religious nuts are never in their right mind. Or perhaps I am wrong, perhaps they are in their right mind. It’s just that that right mind is just so goddamn stupid.
That is what Stalin said about Hitler. He prevented the Communists from cooperating from the Socialists to oppose Hitler’s rise on the theory that someone as moronic as Hitler would prove to the world how bad fascism was.
Worked I guess. Well for a while anyway. After two generations of bragging and beating its chest about defeating Fascism, America seems to be succumbing.
For starters Hitler did prove what a terrible idea fascism was. Germany has never elected another fascist since Hitler. Secondly, Stalin had little to do with Hitler’s rise to power. He could not have prevented it nor could he have assisted him. The German populace that Hitler stirred into a rage paid little attention to the goings on in Russia.
And last but not least, you cannot compare America in the 2010s to Germany in the 1930s. Any comparison is bogus. Trump might like to have the power Hitler had but he never will. The more he tries to grab more power the more push back he faces. We are just over six weeks into the “reign” of Donald Trump and his popularity is dropping like a rock. Of course it will not drop below his base of very stupid Americans, which numbers about 35% of the populace. But it is fast approaching that number.
What kind of power and popularity did Hitler have six weeks after he took power in Germany? And where did it go from there? Anyway, Godwin’s law comes to mind:
Godwin’s law (or Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage which asserts that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1″âââthat is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler.
Regardless of Godwin’s Law Trump and his advisers have to be the stupidest bunch of imbeciles ever to have accidentally grabbed the reigns of power in the USA!
They are like the dog that caught the car and are now being dragged by it and don’t know what to do with it and are smart enough to let it go. This will probably not end very well…
Case in point: Trump’s most recent twitter shit storm accusing Obama of wire tapping Trump Towers during the election campaign.
Do the illiterate supporters of the orange headed nitwit really believe that Obama, a Harvard Law graduate and a professor of constitutional law would be so stupid as to attempt to do that?! That is beyond industrial grade stupid!
Maybe the White House staff should send Trump to his room and take away his Fox News TV and give him an audio CD of the US constitution to listen to… since he obviously has never read it and is probably incapable of reading it himself, let alone being able to comprehend the content!
Someone should write a children’s coloring book version of the US constitution and send it to Trump!
I wouldn’t know.
BBC: Merkel calls Obama about ‘US spying on her phone’
This also looks kind of stupid.
Javier said:
Why does he make it so easy? Like shooting ducks in a pond.
There is a rather bold distinction between NSA electronic comms surveillance of world leaders and Obama tapping Trumps phone. Obama cannot order the intelligence services to bug a phone. The suggestion is ridiculous. And if obama did order it there would be a record of it and Trump could declassify it and show it to us. Trump is just deflecting. Every time the fire gets to hot under his ass he tweets some stupid BS.
Also, the Russian embassador in Washington is a very serious man. He doesn’t just drop by for tea and crumpets to shoot the shit cuz he wants new friends. FSB likely has had a laser like focus on Trump since his first visit to Russia. Whether Trump knows it or not he’s been cultivated.
http://indianmavericks.blogspot.ca/2017/03/threads-in-djt-story.html?m=1
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/?utm_content=buffer55e4b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Javier, you know even less about the US constitution and what a US president can or can not do, than you know about Arctic sea ice extent!
Maybe you should stick to making comments about microbiology and Spanish politics. Either that or take up a hobby like knitting sweaters for snakes…I think you’d do real well if you started a little online business selling home made snake sweaters.
Explain that to Merkel and other European leaders that were rather unhappy about it.
W.T.F. does Obama allegedly illegally wire taping Trump Towers during the presidential campaign have to do with any European leaders?!
I was talking specifically about the US constitution and the legal procedures in place that would have to be followed for a wire tap of a US citizen to occur.
Hint the US President has no power whatsoever to order such a wire tap. Meaning that the FBI would have to be breaking the law and would need to have colluded with President Obama. Anyone who seriously believes that happened is either ignorant of how the US government works or is living in La La land.
So go knit some snake sweaters…
I agree (and said) that Hitler proved how bad Fascism was.
The core part of my post was comparing your remarks about Trump being a good thing with Stalin’s strategy towards the Nazis. It think the analogy is quite good. Whether Stalin was successful is another question.
About Trumps will power, I think he is personally a weakling, but he is an enabler for the worst that America has to offer.
The Republicans are now gearing up to use their control over all levels of government to change the constitution. I doubt Trump has the energy to get involved, but that doesn’t mean it will be a good thing.
But thanks for giving me a definition of Godwin’s Law. This is the first time I ever used the internet, so I’d never heard of it.
My apologies alimbiquated, I guess I misunderstood your post.
Godwin posted his law in 1990 on Usenet. I don’t suppose many on this list remember Usenet but I used to post on it all the time. There was an atheist/religious Usenet group where I posted.
Religious and political discussions would rage for days on Usenet and you could be sure that someone would, sooner or later, bring up Hitler.
Usenet still exist but it is now nothing like it was back in those days. It was free then but now some commercial outfit has taken it over and charges a fee. But I don’t know exactly how it works now because I no longer use it and don’t know anyone that does. At any rate the new commercial Usenet is but a shadow of its former self back in its heyday.
I have posted sometimes that we need to be a little more even handed in the way we talk about renewable energy in other forums, because overly optimistic CHERRY PICKED facts and statistics on our part can be used as clubs by anti renewable types to make us look bad.
Occasionally somebody else agrees with me.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-03-02/renewable-energy-advocates-hurting-climate-cause/
Let’s look at the annual average of temperatures north of the Arctic circle, compared to the annual average sea ice. Temps from NCEP reanalysis, ice area from NSIDC. Both temps and ice area are shown as their anomalies from the 1979 to 2016 average.
2017 has only two months data, it is the last point to the far lower right, slightly above the trend line.
Seems warmer = less ice
What a socking discovery. You can gain the same insight just by looking at the mountain snow melt in spring.
Now let’s go to something a little bit more interesting, and apply your recently gained insight to this proxy reconstruction of sea ice cover in the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas:
Stein, Ruediger, et al. “Holocene variability in sea ice cover, primary production, and PacificâWater inflow and climate change in the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas (Arctic Ocean).” Journal of Quaternary Science (2017).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.2929/full
Oh, look! over 90% of the Holocene had less Arctic sea ice than now. What does that tell us about past temperatures?
A quarter after 2 in the morning in Spain and still going strong.
“Arctic sea ice is not decreasing. There will be more of it in 2017 than in 2016.”
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-591556
So far your prediction is looking like a big fail.
Greenlandâs Vast Ice Sheet Is Way Less Stable Than We Thought, And Thatâs Bad News For The World
Two new studies reveal just how dynamic â and potentially vulnerable to climate change â it actually is.
âWe do what weâre doing with the atmosphere right now at our own risk,â Bierman told Time. âWeâre dealing with an incredibly complex system on Earth and we donât know the half of it. There are surprises lurking out there.â
Schaefer had a more direct warning. âWe have to be prepared that this ice sheet might go again, and it might go again soon,â he said, according to MIT Technology Review.
âSoon,â of course, is relative to geological time. It could take centuries or even millennia for all that ice to melt.
But thereâs still plenty of reason to be concerned. Greenland currently contributes about a quarter of the three millimeters that global sea levels rise every year â and climate change could greatly accelerate the speed of the ice sheetâs melting. âProjections of sea-level rise during this century hover around 3 or 4 feet, but many, including the one from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, do not take Greenland into account,â states a blog post on Columbiaâs website.
The impacts of climate change on Greenland are already being seen.
The islandâs ice mantle is melting five times faster than it was in the 1990s, according to a 2012 study.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/greenland-ice-sheet_us_584a5293e4b04c8e2baf33e5?section=us_green
Any Thoughts on this? “”The scientific research and assessments conducted by international drilling companies show that Yemen’s oil reserves are more than the combined reserves of all the Persian Gulf states,” he added.”
http://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/war-on-yemen/1537-saudi-arabia-yemen-oil-total.html
Arttua,
There’s really nothing verifiable in that statement in the article.
Interesting article aboutcarbon dioxide output in the UK
http://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-cuts-carbon-record-coal-drop
Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Portends Huge Carbon Release
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27022017/global-warming-permafrost-study-melt-canada-siberia
I have a link up column you might find interesting
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-march-3-2017/#comment-597670
Thanks!
WHO NEEDS CLIMATE SCIENCE WHEN YOU’VE GOT EXPERTS
ON TWERKING, VIRTUE SIGNALLING & GRAND THEFT AUTO
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.mx/2017/03/who-needs-science-with-experts-on.html
Arctic sea ice extent for January 2017 averaged 13.38 million square kilometers (5.17 million square miles), the lowest January extent in the 38-year satellite record. This is 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) below January 2016, the previous lowest January extent, and 1.26 million square kilometers (487,000 square miles) below the January 1981 to 2010 long-term average.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/02/2017-ushers-in-record-low-extent/
Arctic sea ice extent for February 2017 averaged 14.28 million square kilometers (5.51 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the 38-year satellite record. This is 40,000 square kilometers (15,400 square miles) below February 2016, the previous lowest extent for the month, and 1.18 million square kilometers (455,600 square miles) below the February 1981 to 2010 long term average.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/03/another-warm-month-in-the-arctic/
Your Arctic sea ice alarmism is getting more and more ridiculous, and more telling of your lack of rigor.
– Arctic sea ice extent is about the same as in 2015 and 2016. No reason to fret or spread alarm.
– There is still three more weeks until the melting starts. Arctic sea ice still has a growing trend, so it is possible that there will be more sea ice in the Arctic this month than in 2015 or 2016.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Why are you all worked up over Arctic sea ice this year? Is this some kind of religion that you are trying to spread? Repent or Arctic sea ice will be gone?
“Repent or Arctic sea ice will be gone?”
LOL. Seriously?
You are beginning to sound a bit deranged, Javier!
I just find it difficult to understand this obsession with this year’s Arctic sea ice when the data shows that there is nothing wrong with this year’s Arctic sea ice. It seems they have to worry even when there is no cause.
“next winter will see a larger than usual sea-ice growth. It tends to happen when the melting has been intense, like in 2013 after the 2012 melt.” ~ Javier
https://realclimatescience.com/2016/08/arctic-alarmists-screaming/#comment-16796
FAIL! You couldn’t predict your way out of a wet paper bag.
In October 2016, Arctic sea ice extent averaged 6.40 million square kilometers (2.5 million square miles), the lowest October in the satellite record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/11/sluggish-ice-growth-in-the-arctic/
In November 2016, Arctic sea ice extent averaged 9.08 million square kilometers (3.51 million square miles), the lowest November in the satellite record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/12/arctic-and-antarctic-at-record-low-levels/
Arctic sea ice extent for December 2016 averaged 12.10 million square kilometers (4.67 million square miles), the second lowest December extent in the satellite record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/01/low-sea-ice-extent-continues-in-both-poles/
Arctic sea ice extent for January 2017 averaged 13.38 million square kilometers (5.17 million square miles), the lowest January extent in the 38-year satellite record.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/02/2017-ushers-in-record-low-extent/
Arctic sea ice extent for February 2017 averaged 14.28 million square kilometers (5.51 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the 38-year satellite record.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/03/another-warm-month-in-the-arctic/
Javier,
I would love to hear your comments on the geologic survey of permafrost thaw in Northwest Canada.
Here is the link to the article:
http://www.nwtgeoscience.ca/sites/www.nwtgeoscience.ca/files/resources/geology-2017-kokelj-g38626.1.pdf
and the final section of their conclusions:
“The regional- to continental-scale imprint of the thaw slump disturbance regime (Fig. 2), its recent intensification, and the fluvial-geomorphic patterns of sediment mobilization (Fig. 3) indicate a rejuvenation of postglacial landscape change. We conclude that extensive glacigenic deposits imprisoned by permafrost are poised for climate-driven geomorphic transformation.”
These might sound like significant geologic changes to anyone who doesn’t know what you know!
Chilyb,
I don’t know much about permafrost, but I can give you my opinion about the changes that the climate of SubArctic regions have experienced over the past several thousand years.
Due to changes in insolation from Milankovitch orbital changes the climate of high northern latitudes during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, about 6000 years ago, was up to +5°C warmer than now. We know that the permanent sea ice line in Greenland was nearly 1000 km north of where it is now.
It is clear that at that time a lot of what it is today permafrost was not frozen during the summer. The level and increase of greenhouse gases during that time was very moderate. I see no reason why it should be different now, if permafrost becomes unfrozen during summers. We should remember that summer insolation is very low at high northern latitudes, and getting lower.
Regarding geological changes to landscape due to permafrost thawing, I really know nothing, so I cannot comment.
Javier,
I’m not disagreeing with you here, but I will point out that “…if permafrost becomes unfrozen during summers” leaves you open to critics who would point to the statement as indicating a lack of understanding of permafrost. I’d leave that statement out.
Permafrost varies in thickness from a few meters to hundreds of meters in the Arctic. The surface melts in Summer (the melt layer is called talik) except perhaps in the very coldest regions but refreezes in Winter. That’s why there is still permafrost.
Just a suggestion.
“There is still three more weeks until the melting starts.” ~ Javier
Did you just make your next failed prediction? It must get disappointing.
“If you are looking to place a bet on the date when Arctic sea ice will reach its annual maximum, March 12 would be a safe choice. Between 1981 and 2010, this has been the date that, on average, sea ice has begun shrinking.
Those with good memories will know, however, that there is a big window: in 2016, the date was March 24. In 2015, it was a month earlier. Both set new lows for sea-ice extent.”
http://arcticjournal.com/climate/2962/sea-ice-annual-maximum
“There is still three more weeks until the melting starts. Arctic sea ice still has a growing trend, so it is possible that there will be more sea ice in the Arctic this month than in 2015 or 2016.” ~Javier on March 7, 2016
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-march-3-2017/#comment-597795
FAIL! LOL
Arctic sea ice extent annual maximum set a new record low on March 6, 2017. The new record low occurred the day before your dismal failure of a prediction.
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop.ver1/data/graph/plot_extent_n_v2.csv
Your predictions are getting more and more ridiculous, and more telling of your lack of rigour.
Arctic Sea Ice Volume Lowest Ever Recorded During Winter, Comparable to Summer Volumes of the Early 80s
Arctic sea ice volume for both January and February of 2017 are now far below past record low trend lines for this time of year. Present record low monthly values for this past February are around 17,000 cubic kilometers vs previous record lows for the month during 2013 at around 19,500 cubic kilometers. Last Februaryâs sea ice volume average of 17,000 cubic kilometers is about the same sea ice volume measured at the end of melt season in September of 1981. In other words, sea ice volume in winter now is comparable to sea ice volumes during the summers of the early 1980s.
Step away from politics for a minute and you’ll see, the fact is, there’s a very long term trend of decreased Arctic ice. The trend has been going on since circa 1830. In private many of the government’s scientists will admit this, even if they only discuss sea ice since 1979 in reports for public consumption.
In any event, let’s just hope the large mass gain of Greenland’s ice this year isn’t a foreshadowing of conditions to come. Most humans are more fearful of cold than they are of warmth.
“letâs just hope the large mass gain of Greenlandâs ice this year isnât a foreshadowing of conditions to come.”
Don’t worry, it’s not.
“Most humans are more fearful of cold than they are of warmth.”
Thanks for the update doc. What you do, hold a survey last night at Hooters?
And what large mass gains of greenlands ice this year are you referring to?
http://polarportal.dk/en/groenlands-indlandsis/nbsp/total-masseaendring/
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6327/788.full
If this is all you got you’re a fool to suggest it’s indicative of a future trend.
http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
The trend has been going on since circa 1830. In private many of the governmentâs scientists will admit this, even if they only discuss sea ice since 1979 in reports for public consumption.
No shit, Sherlock! I guess you didn’t get the memo did you?
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/24/study-detectable-anthropogenic-climate-change-began-1830s-much-earlier-previously-thought/
Detectable anthropogenic climate change began considerably earlier than previously thought, according to new research from the international Past Global Changes 2000 year (PAGES 2K) Consortium.
The new work â which involved input from 25 different researchers from across Australia, the US, Europe and Asia â found that anthropogenic warming first started all the way back in the 1830s, right in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160824135035.htm
Humans have caused climate change for 180 years
Date:
August 24, 2016
Source:
Australian National University
Summary:
An international research project has found human activity has been causing global warming for almost two centuries, proving human-induced climate change is not just a 20th century phenomenon.
None of which came as a big surprise to Svante Arrhenius and other scientists back in the late 19th century.
http://www.lenntech.com/greenhouse-effect/global-warming-history.htm#ixzz4ag9VJSs8
History of the greenhouse effect and global warming By S.M. Enzler MSc
History of the greenhouse effect and global warming
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish scientist that was the first to claim in 1896 that fossil fuel combustion may eventually result in enhanced global warming. He proposed a relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature. He found that the average surface temperature of the earth is about 15C because of the infrared absorption capacity of water vapor and carbon dioxide. This is called the natural greenhouse effect. Arrhenius suggested a doubling of the CO2 concentration would lead to a 5C temperature rise. He and Thomas Chamberlin calculated that human activities could warm the earth by adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This research was a by-product of research of whether carbon dioxide would explain the causes of the great Ice Ages. This was not actually verified until 1987.
We have know for quite a while now that human activities can and do have an impact on the climate. Who knows, next thing one of these drive by trolls will inform us that gravity has been discovered, imagine that!
All you pointed out here is how hypocritical your political side is when talking about how climate change is going to somehow cause the collapse of modern civilization through mass death and destruction. By yall’s own admissions, people have had a part in heating the globe since way back in the 1800’s. Yet the fact is, in that time, human society has completely flourished beyond what anybody could have ever thought imaginable. Thus, it would stand to reason to all but the most devoted leftists that continued warming is quite likely to lead to even more advancement and enrichment of humanity.
No, it doesn’t “stand to reason” at all. And “leftists” are not all of the people that are here. I am not at all to the left, but it is very clear what a destructive path we are on. Flourishing, yes. Just like the bacteria in a petri dish before the food runs out and the environment is poisoned.
All you pointed out here is how hypocritical your political side is when talking about how climate change is going to somehow cause the collapse of modern civilization through mass death and destruction.
First I’m going to attempt to clarify something. I do not have a political side, not left, nor right and not even centrist. I follow my own drum beat. To be clear I don’t even have one nationality. I’m a true a-national and multiculturalist and a polyglot.
That is one of the reasons I am an equal opportunity hater of all fascists and ultra nationalists of all countries anywhere on this planet with an unbridled passion. Since I doubt most people can even wrap their minds around what I’m trying to express here. ..
I’ll post a link to a TED talk that does it quite well. By Taiye Selasi:
https://www.ted.com/talks/taiye_selasi_don_t_ask_where_i_m_from_ask_where_i_m_a_local
Don’t ask where I’m from, ask where I’m a local
So much for my political and national affiliations, they simply do not apply and no one is going to put any label on me.
Now on to your point:
Yet the fact is, in that time, human society has completely flourished beyond what anybody could have ever thought imaginable. Thus, it would stand to reason to all but the most devoted leftists that continued warming is quite likely to lead to even more advancement and enrichment of humanity.
So many logical fallacies condensed into so few words that it would take multiple dissertations to even try to address all of them. But Songster’s comment does address the most important one. Which is that humans won the fossil fuel energy lotto. Unfortunately the jury is still out on whether or not in the aggregate we are any smarter or wiser than yeast or cyanobacteria.
Yes, there is no doubt that we are very clever ingenious apes and we have come to be the dominant species on this planet. That in and of itself is no guarantee whatsoever that we will continue to flourish. It is highly doubtful that the rapid climate change being caused by our species will not have deleterious effects on multiple planetary systems.
Anyone who understands complex nonlinear systems and chaos math will tell you that the precautionary principle should be applied in spades when there is even a slight chance of pushing such systems into new and unpredictable behaviors.
Physics 111: Non-Linear Dynamics and Chaos (NLD)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0u3o9_BRVQ
showing February 2017 as the 2nd warmest on record globally (from 1979). Great summary:
http://climate.copernicus.eu/resources/data-analysis/average-surface-air-temperature-analysis/monthly-maps/february-2017
Strict US auto emission and efficiency standards are history .. cough cough
“Automakers complained that only 3.5 percent of new vehicles are able to reach the federal standards set by the EPA, in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which required an average of 54.5 mpg by 2025 (compared with 36 mpg today)”
Back to the Future … long lines @ the Pump?
https://chargedevs.com/newswire/us-auto-emission-standards-are-history/
Warm Winds Take Aim at Chukchi as Arctic Sea Ice Volume Hits Record Lows
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/03/06/warm-winds-take-aim-at-chukchi-as-arctic-sea-ice-volume-hits-record-lows-during-february-of-2017/
Baghdad Bob probably has a different story.
There’s quite a bit of writing on the permafrost thaw lately. And I imagine much more to come.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/environment/nwt-geological-survey-massive-loss-of-permafrost-due-to-climate/article/486868#ixzz4a23Eo2Lp
Fom the article,
“Februaryâs sea ice volume average of 17,000 cubic kilometers is about the same sea ice volume measured at the end of melt season in September of 1981. In other words, sea ice volume in winter now is comparable to sea ice volumes during the summers of the early 1980s.”
Except that they have no idea because ice volume is modeled and has huge error bars.
Not really:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6H43_DWMAAY58n.jpg
Piomass is less uncertain than your weak analysis. You should try dropping the 2006 data in and see what you can come up with there doc.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/
Sea ice extent measures ice with almost no confidence. Fifteen percent ice is considered ice covered. Not a measure of actual ice concentration.
Yes, it is therefore a conservative measure, or upper bound. And it is still declining rapidly.
Due to it’s inherent definition it can be as much as 85% larger than the actual amount of ice cover. It will only be near an upper bound under specific conditions where most of the ice is compacted together. In cases where the ice is moving or disturbed by storms (often the case) sea ice extent does not even come close to representing the actual amount of ice.
The goal posts moving is becoming more and more evident. Since Arctic sea ice is not declining like alarmists would like, now it is a question of certain months having less sea ice, or certain areas of the Arctic having less sea ice. It is evident to all that when alarmists resort to this type of partial claims is because the Arctic is refusing to melt as it was promised to us, and we are going to see that all their doom predictions are equally empty. In fact we have been seeing it for over 30 years now. Yes, the world is warming a little. So what. As if cold was a good thing.
Arctic ice is declining.
In October 2016, Arctic sea ice extent averaged 6.40 million square kilometers (2.5 million square miles), the lowest October in the satellite record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/11/sluggish-ice-growth-in-the-arctic/
In November 2016, Arctic sea ice extent averaged 9.08 million square kilometers (3.51 million square miles), the lowest November in the satellite record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/12/arctic-and-antarctic-at-record-low-levels/
Arctic sea ice extent for December 2016 averaged 12.10 million square kilometers (4.67 million square miles), the second lowest December extent in the satellite record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/01/low-sea-ice-extent-continues-in-both-poles/
Arctic sea ice extent for January 2017 averaged 13.38 million square kilometers (5.17 million square miles), the lowest January extent in the 38-year satellite record.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/02/2017-ushers-in-record-low-extent/
Arctic sea ice extent for February 2017 averaged 14.28 million square kilometers (5.51 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the 38-year satellite record.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/03/another-warm-month-in-the-arctic/
This may come as a shock to you but sea ice is a three dimensional entity. To discuss the characteristics of its dimensions is not to move the goal posts. You’re rhetoric is weak and ill informed.
It is you who presents weak arguments that Arctic sea ice is increasing. When faced with opposing evidence all you can do is cry out alarmist and doom cult. PhD indeed. You’re an embarrassment to the scientific community.
It’s not about whether or not cold is a good thing. You insist on using normative terms when what’s being discussed is facts. It’s not my fault your predictions are all wrong. Be a man and own up to your constant failures for a change instead of casting the discussion in normative terms.
” All in all it looks like 2015 will be the year of Peak Warmth for quite some time.”
https://archive.is/F9a1N#selection-1995.0-2021.289.
Fail!
“next winter will see a larger than usual sea-ice growth. It tends to happen when the melting has been intense, like in 2013 after the 2012 melt.”
https://realclimatescience.com/2016/08/arctic-alarmists-screaming/#comment-16796
Fail!
“Arctic sea ice is not decreasing. There will be more of it in 2017 than in 2016.”
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-591556
Fail!
You’re predictions are all just one big failure. Why would anybody believe the nonsense and ramblings of a purveyor of failed predictions. Quite some expert you are.
Temperature extremes: Effect on plant growth and development
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212094715300116
A new day, a new chart:
Similar to the previous one, except PIOMAS volume.
When the average annual anomaly reaches about -10 thousand km^3, there will be essentially zero sea ice at the fall minimum and maybe late summer.
I think we are likely to reach -8 this year.
EPA to reconsider vehicle fuel standards, may move against California targets
Margo Oge, who directed the EPA’s office of transportation and air quality from 1994 to 2012, said in an email that the agency’s recent decision to lock in the fuel-efficiency rule “was made on sound science and thousands of man-hours of analysis.”
“If the Trump administration were to rely on facts and sound science, they would come to the same conclusion that the EPA staff and outside experts reached: The 2025 standards are achievable and in a way that will save consumers trillions in fuel costs,” she said.
Any decision to revoke California’s federal waiver could spur a major legal fight, and the state has already retained former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. The state will “vigorously participate and defend ourselves” on setting the state’s own air quality rules, California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols said.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-epa-fuel-mileage-autos-20170303-story.html
Chicago has no snow in January and February for the first time in 146 years of recordkeeping
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2017/03/chicago-has-no-snow-in-january-and.html
Maybe Javier can explain why it’s no big deal by presenting us with something about solar cycles and the Holocene.
That’s wonderful economic news. In the short-term, Chicago will save money this year, not having to plow, sand, scrape and so on. In the long-term Illinois is a big agriculture state, but has the massive disadvantage of not being able to grow crops all through the winter months. If the weatherman’s predictions of global warming end up true, that could change. The state would be able to solve many of it’s structural economic problems by going to sustainable year-round agricultural output.
Regards,
-Ralph
Cass Tech â64
The frost free growing season is already nine days longer in that region.
Hey Ralph, you obviously never took any biology or agricultural science courses did you?! So I guess it would be pointless to engage you in a discussion about the intricacies of plant physiology or the consequences of rapid climate change on ecosystems.
From the good folk in Illinois who do know a thing or two about agriculture and science …
https://publish.illinois.edu/lfr/2017/02/02/what-has-climate-change-done/
What has Climate Change Done?
Posted on February 2, 2017 by arielg2@illinois.edu
Climate change greatly impacts the types and availability of the food that humans consume. A few examples the effects of climate change are: a year of not enough or too much rainfall, a hot spell or cold snap at the wrong time, or extremes, like flooding and storms, can have a significant effect on local crop yields and livestock production. Contrasting the negative effects of climate change, carbon dioxide emission could increase production of some crops, such as rice, soybean and wheat. (Ranger) Although there are some positive effects, the changing climate affects the length and quality of the growing season. Also farmers could experience increasing damage to their crops, caused by a rising intensity of droughts, flooding or fires. When events such as droughts or flooding occurs, it makes it more difficult to grow crops, raise animals, and catch fish in the same ways and same places that had been used in the past.
Occasional starvation is good for us. Eating less in general promotes longevity.
It’s been discovered that starving between the ages of 9 and 12 causes the next several generations to be heart and other disease resistant as well as increased longevity.
So the whole civilized idea of constant food supply decreases our health.
Natural population control. Plenty of food, population limits due to health, lack of food, population strengthens to survive. Then we go and throw a spanner in the works by inventing medicines that remove other brakes on population and we get a population explosion; which will self limit, probably drastically.
NAOM
Interesting article
“Never before has such a convoy crossed through the Northern Sea Route, from the east to the west, at this time of year.”
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2017/02/new-mid-winter-arctic-shipping-tanker-makes-it-through-bering-strait
This might be of interest to some people, it has some good articles and links (UK based and focussed):
http://www.cusp.ac.uk/
“Welcome to the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity. Led by Professor Tim Jackson and working in collaboration with a variety of academic and non-academic partners, CUSP is now firmly up and running.”
It’s connected to the UK parliament All Party Political Group on limits to growth. I think these APPGs last 2 or 3 years. This one is lead by the only Green Party MP, but most of the work is by academics, a lot of whom are involved with CUSP.
http://limits2growth.org.uk/
“Welcome to the website of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Limits to Growth, a new platform for cross-party dialogue on economic growth in a time of environmental and social transition. Our aims are: to create the space for cross-party dialogue on environmental and social limits to growth; to assess the evidence for such limits, identify the risks and build support for appropriate responses; and to contribute to the international debate on redefining prosperity.”
These are some videos that I would like to hear opinions on. I consider the group here some of the best critical thinking people I know of. This is NOT a joke, I just want to hear thoughts.
The first vid is a story about how the ritual of Christmas may have come about. The second one is regarding flat earth and no I am not kidding. I have researched it quite a bit and have come to the conclusion I no longer can believe we are living on a ball. Before you dismiss it outright which is pretty much what I did while laughing the first time I heard about a Flat Earth. Just watch a few minutes of the video please. Thanks -Dave Hicks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX2Zkzt0KMU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGl8I3l-5ac
I have researched it quite a bit and have come to the conclusion I no longer can believe we are living on a ball.
David, I approved your post because we could all use a good laugh. Your post is hilarious. It is unbelievable. Your link, the second Youtube link, is really hilarious. I couldn’t stop laughing.
Seriously, it is obvious that the narrator of the video really believed the shit he espoused. He really believed that there is an ice wall in Antarctica that marks the end of the flat earth. Of course planes fly over this “flat earth wall” every day without finding the end of the flat earth.
But this is far more serious than the belly laugh we will all get out of it. It is an example of the very stupid things that people, people with a Western education will nevertheless believe.
If you believe there is a limit to the stupidity of the human intellect, you are mistaken. The fact that there are people who still believe in a flat earth proves that theory wrong.
Hey Ron, what gets me is that peer reviewed science says that water remains FLAT over a distance of six miles. I do understand you making fun of me (I laughed when I first heard this too), but this peer reviewed science experiment really got me and I cannot figure out where the “trick” is.
If you don’t want to waste your time with me thats fine but maybe someone else will look at the peer reviewed experiment, and the University study below that to explain what the HELL I am missing?
Below is the peer reviewed experiment that has been replicated many times to distances over water up to 100 miles (which equates to earth curvature of 1.26 miles of curve.)
The earth curve math calculator I am using is to predict the above mentioned 1.26 miles of curve is: http://www.smokescreendesign.com/curvature-of-the-earth.html
The english mechanic is a peer reviewed science journal. Before round earth bias was spread they published this
“The Flat Earth: another Bedford Canal experiment” (Bernard H.Watson, et al),
ENGLISH MECHANIC, 80:160, 1904
Bedford Canal, England. A repeat of the 1870 experiment
“A train of empty turf-boats had just entered the Canal from the river Ouse, and
was about proceeding to Ramsey. I arranged with the captain to place the shallowest
boat last in the train, and to take me on to Welney Bridge, a distance of six
miles. A good telescope was then fixed on the lowest part of the stern of the last
boat. The sluice gate of the Old Bedford Bridge was 5ft. 8in. high, the turf-boat
moored there was 2ft. 6in. high, and the notice board was 6ft. 6in. from the water.
The sun was shining strongly upon them in the direction of the south-southwest; the
air was exceedingly still and clear, and the surface of the water smooth as a
molten mirror, so that everything was favourable for observation. At 1.15 p.m. the
train started for Welney. As the boats gradually receded, the sluice gate, the
turf-boat and the notice board continued to be visible to the naked eye for about
four miles. When the sluice gate and the turf-boat (being of a dark colour) became
somewhat indistinct, the notice board (which was white) was still plainly visible,
and remained so to the end of six miles. But on looking through the telescope all
the objects were distinctly visible throughout the whole distance. On reaching
Welney Bridge I made very careful and repeated observations, and finding several
men upon the banks of the canal, I called them to look through the telescope. They
all saw distinctly the white notice board, the sluice gate, and the black turf-boat
moored near them.
Now, as the telescope was 18in. above the water, The line of sight would touch the
horizon at one mile and a half away (if the surface were convex). The curvature of
the remaining four miles and a half would be 13ft. 6in. Hence the turf-boat should
have been 11ft., the top of the sluice gate 7ft. 10in., and the bottom of the
notice board 7ft. below the horizon.
My recent experiment affords undeniable proof of the Earth’s unglobularity, because
it rests not on transitory vision; but my proof remains printed on the negative of
the photograph which Mr.Clifton took for me, and in my presence, on behalf of
J.H.Dallmeyer, Ltd.
A photograph can not ‘imagine’ nor lie!” (1)
AND one other study is regarding Kansas that they say is technially flatter than a pancake. The distance across Kansas is approx 400 miles. On the calculator it says that 400 miles should equal 20 miles of CURVATURE!
Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake
by Mark Fonstad 1, William Pugatch 1, and Brandon Vogt 2
1. Department of Geography, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas
2. Department of Geography, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
In this report, we apply basic scientific techniques to answer the question âIs Kansas as flat as a pancake?â
Figure 1. (a) A well-cooked pancake; and (b) Kansas. 1
While driving across the American Midwest, it is common to hear travelers remark, âThis state is as flat as a pancake.â To the authors, this adage seems to qualitatively capture some characteristic of a topographic geodetic survey 2. This obvious question âhow flat is a pancakeâ spurned our analytical interest, and we set out to find the âflatnessâ of both a pancake and one particular state: Kansas.
A Technical Approach to Pancakes and Kansas
Barring the acquisition of either a Kansas-sized pancake or a pancake-sized Kansas, mathematical techniques are needed to do a proper comparison. Some readers may find the comparing of a pancake and Kansas to be analogous to the comparing of apples and oranges; we refer those readers to a 1995 publication by NASAâs Scott Sandford 3, who used spectrographic techniques to do a comparison of apples and oranges.
One common method of quantifying âflatnessâ in geodesy is the âflatteningâ ratio. The length of an ellipseâs (or arcâs) semi-major axis a is compared with its measured semi-minor axis b using the formula for flattening, f = (a â b) / a. A perfectly flat surface will have a flattening f of one, whereas an ellipsoid with equal axis lengths will have no flattening, and f will equal zero.
For example, the earth is slightly flattened at the poles due to the earthâs rotation, making its semi-major axis slightly longer than its semi-minor axis, giving a global f of 0.00335. For both Kansas and the pancake, we approximated the local ellipsoid with a second-order polynomial line fit to the cross-sections. These polynomial equations allowed us to estimate the local ellipsoidâs semi-major and semi-minor axes and thus we can calculate the flattening measure f.
Materials and Methods
We purchased a well-cooked pancake from a local restaurant, the International House of Pancakes, and prepared it for analysis by separating a 2-cm wide sample strip that had not had time to desiccate. We collected macro-pancake topography through digital image processing of a pancake image and ruler for scale calibration (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Pancake cross-sectional surface being digitized.
We made another topographic profile from the sample, using a confocal laser microscope. The importance of this research dictated that we not be daunted by the âNo Food or Drinkâ sign posted in the microscopy room. The microscope collects one elevation point every 10 mm and has a maximum surface diameter of 2 cm (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. When viewed at a scale of 50 mm, a pancake appears more rugged than the Grand Canyon.
We measured a west-east profile across Kansas taken from merged 1:250,000 scale digital elevation model (DEM) data from the United States Geological Survey. In general, the spacing between adjacent elevation points on the landscape transects was approximately 90 meters. We extracted surface transects and flatness estimates from the Kansas and pancake DEM data using a geographic information system.
Results
The topographic transects of both Kansas and a pancake at millimeter scale are both quite flat, but this first analysis showed that Kansas is clearly flatter (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Surface topography of Kansas and of a pancake.
Mathematically, a value of 1.000 would indicate perfect, platonic flatness. The calculated flatness of the pancake transect from the digital image is approximately 0.957, which is pretty flat, but far from perfectly flat. The confocal laser scan showed the pancake surface to be slightly rougher, still.
Measuring the flatness of Kansas presented us with a greater challenge than measuring the flatness of the pancake. The state is so flat that the off-the-shelf software produced a flatness value for it of 1. This value was, as they say, too good to be true, so we did a more complex analysis, and after many hours of programming work, we were able to estimate that Kansasâs flatness is approximately 0.9997. That degree of flatness might be described, mathematically, as âdamn flat.â
Conclusion
Simply put, our results show that Kansas is considerably flatter than a pancake.
Notes
1. The photograph of Kansas is of an area near Wichita, Kansas. It may be of significance that the town of Liberal, Kansas hosts the annual âInternational Pancake Dayâ festival.
2. To pump up our cross-disciplinary name-dropping, we should also mention that recently some quick-thinking cosmologists also described the universe as being âflatter than a pancakeâ after making detailed measurements of the cosmic background radiation.
3. âComparing Apples and Oranges,â S.A. Sandford, Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 1, no. 3, May/June 1995.
Thanks to anyone who has read this far and tells me what the hell I am missing here.
Un-fucking-believable! There are still people so fucking, down in the dirt stupid, as to still believe that the earth is flat! Yes, there is one such person and his name is David Hicks. No David, I will not lower myself to responding to your very stupid argument. That would be lowering myself to the fucking pig sty of stupidity that you live in,
Good bye.
I do not wish nor intend to imply that Obama had anything to do with a possible Trump phone tap, personally.
Taken all around, I consider him to be an exceptionably honorable man, for politician, and he was a decent to excellent prez, depending on any particular issue, if you remember that a president’s hands are often tied by circumstances, and he cannot always do what he would prefer due to having to consider the interests of his supporters and his party.
But it IS altogether possible that Trump’s, or any other persons phone has been tapped, if the FBI has reason to believe such a person is or has been involved in certain criminal activities.
There is a special more or less secret court that deals with the warrants needed for such wire taps. You seldom hear much about the activities of this court until a case is brought.
I find it amusing that everybody is forgetting what a scumbag Trump is , in order to reflexively defend Obama.
I think the odds are rather high that Trump is simply making up more bullshit lies, knowing his true believers will remember them as truths over time.
But IF there WAS or is a criminal investigation going on, it would be standard practice to deny it, according to the laws passed since nine eleven, dealing with such matters as international criminal activities, at least until the investigation is concluded, or until it is prosecuted.
Announcing or acknowledging such an investigation would effectively mean it is compromised to the point of wasting the effort.
There is also always a possibility that such activities are under taken by over eager underlings, who do occasionally cause real problems for higher up officials.
But as I said above, my opinion is that this whole thing is just more Trump bullshit.
Ron said-
“If you believe there is a limit to the stupidity of the human intellect, you are mistaken. The fact that there are people who still believe in a flat earth proves that theory wrong.”
Seriously Ron, Please. I’m pretty sure you need Universal theory of GRAVITY to explain why we stick to a round ball rotating on its axis at 1000mph, circling the sun at 70 thousand mph, while the sun hurls through space at 600,000 THOUSAND mph, all while the galaxy is moving at something in the hundreds of thousands of mph , and best yet all this while the universe is expanding at some uncomprehensible number- THATS WHAT YOU BELIEVE- cause it sure as HELL is not a fact! I DARE you to publish this comment.
I will debate anyone here openly and lets see who comes out on top. But you won’t, cause YOU can’t prove SHIT with a THEORY can you? I am saving this and I will make sure that people here see it some way.
So tell me I am wrong when I say you are using a THEORY to PROVE the earth is round which REQUIRES BELIEF! Treat me like an idiot. I DARE you to answer the gravity question and post it, but I assure you, you will make up some reason in YOUR mind for not posting this and giving a reply whether the theory of gravity proves your argument, hint- It cannot, a theory is NOT a FACT.
By the way you made me angry for implying I am stupid. I am not an stupid and I KNOW you are not an stupid. Cognitive Dissonance is BRUTAL.
Warning: Gravity is âOnly a Theoryâ
by Ellery Schempp
All physics textbooks should include this warning label:
âThis textbook contains material on Gravity. Universal Gravity is a theory, not a fact, regarding the natural law of attraction. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.â
The Universal Theory of Gravity is often taught in schools as a âfact,â when in fact it is not even a good theory.
First of all, no one has measured gravity for every atom and every star. It is simply a religious belief that it is âuniversal.â Secondly, school textbooks routinely make false statements. For example, âthe moon goes around the earth.â If the theory of gravity were true, it would show that the sun’s gravitational force on the moon is much stronger than the earth’s gravitational force on the moon, so the moon would go around the sun. Anybody can look up at night and see the obvious gaps in gravity theory.
The existence of tides is often taken as a proof of gravity, but this is logically flawed. Because if the moon’s âgravityâ were responsible for a bulge underneath it, then how can anyone explain a high tide on the opposite side of the earth at the same time? Anyone can observe that there are 2 — not 1 — high tides every day. It is far more likely that tides were given us by an Intelligent Creator long ago and they have been with us ever since. In any case, two high tides falsifies gravity.
There are numerous other flaws. For example, astronomers, who seem to have a fetish for gravity, tell us that the moon rotates on its axis but at the same time it always presents the same face to the earth. This is patently absurd. Moreover, if gravity were working on the early earth, then earth would have been bombarded out of existence by falling asteroids, meteors, comets, and other space junk. Furthermore, gravity theory suggests that the planets have been moving in orderly orbits for millions and millions of years, which wholly contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Since everything in the Universe tends to disorder according to the 2nd Law, orderly orbits are impossible. This cannot be resolved by pointing to the huge outpouring of energy from the sun. In fact, it is known that the flux of photons from the sun and the âsolar windâ actually tends to push earth away.
There are numerous alternative theories that should be taught on an equal basis. For example, the observed behavior of the earth revolving around the sun can be perfectly explained if the sun has a net positive charge and the planets have a net negative charge, since opposite charges attract and the force is an inverse-square law, exactly as the increasingly discredited Theory of Gravity. Physics and chemistry texts emphasize that this is the explanation for electrons going around the nucleus, so if it works for atoms, why not for the solar system? The answer is simple: scientific orthodoxy.
The US Patent Office has never issued a patent for anti-gravity. Why is this? According to natural law and homeopathy, everything exists in opposites: good-evil; grace-sin; positive charges-negative charges; north poles-south poles; good vibes-bad vibes; etc. We know there are anti-evolutionists, so why not anti-gravitationalists? It is clearly a matter of the scientific establishment elite protecting their own. Anti-gravity papers are routinely rejected from peer-reviewed journals, and scientists who propose anti-gravity quickly lose their funding. Universal gravity theory is just a way to keep the grant money flowing.
Even Isaac Newton, said to be the discoverer of gravity, knew there were problems with the theory. He claims to have invented the idea early in his life, but he knew that no mathematician of his day would approve his theory, so he invented a whole new branch of mathematics, called fluxions, just to âproveâ his theory. This became calculus, a deeply flawed branch having to do with so-called âinfinitesimalsâ which have never been observed. Then when Einstein invented a new theory of gravity, he, too, used an obscure bit of mathematics called tensors. It seems that every time there is a theory of gravity, it is mixed up with âfringeâ mathematics. Newton, by the way, was far from a secular scientist, and the bulk of his writings is actually on theology and Christianity. His dabbling in gravity, alchemy, and calculus was a mere sideline, perhaps an aberration best left forgotten in describing his career and faith in a Creator.
To make matters worse, proponents of gravity theory hypothesize about mysterious things called gravitons and gravity waves. These have never been observed, and when some accounts of detecting gravity waves were published, the physicists involved had to quickly retract them. Every account of anti-gravity and gravity waves quickly turns to laughter. This is not a theory suitable for children. And even children can see how ridiculous it is to imagine that people in Australia are upside down with respect to us, as gravity theory would have it. If this is an example of the predictive power of the theory of gravity, we can see that at the core there is no foundation.
Gravity totally fails to explain why Saturn has rings and Jupiter does not. It utterly fails to account for obesity. In fact, what it does âexplainâ is far out-weighed by what it does not explain.
When the planet Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, he relied on âgravitational calculations.â But Tombaugh was a Unitarian, a liberal religious group that supports the Theory of Gravity. The modern-day Unitarian-Universalists continue to rely on liberal notions and dismiss ideas of anti-gravity as heretical. Tombaugh never even attempted to justify his âgravitational calculationsâ on the basis of Scripture, and he went on to be a founding member of the liberal Unitarian Fellowship of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
It is safe to say that without the Theory of Gravity, there would be no talk about a âBig Bang,â and important limitations in such sports as basketball would be lifted. This would greatly benefit the games and enhance revenue as is proper in a faith-based, free-enterprise society.
The theory of gravity violates common sense in many ways. Adherents have a hard time explaining, for instance, why airplanes do not fall. Since anti-gravity is rejected by the scientific establishment, they resort to lots of hand-waving. The theory, if taken seriously, implies that the default position for all airplanes is on the ground. While this is obviously true for Northwest airplanes (relying on âA Wing and a Prayerâ), it appears that Jet Blue and Southwest have a superior theory that effectively harnesses forces that overcome so-called gravity.
It is unlikely that the Law of Gravity will be repealed given the present geo-political climate, but there is no need to teach unfounded theories in the public schools. There is, indeed, evidence that the Theory of Gravity is having a grave effect on morality. Activist judges and left-leaning teachers often use the phrase âwhat goes up must come downâ as a way of describing gravity, and relativists have been quick to apply this to moral standards and common decency.
It is not even clear why we need a theory of gravity — there is not a single mention in the Bible, and the patriotic founding fathers never referred to it.
Finally, the mere name âUniversal Theory of Gravityâ or âTheory of Universal Gravityâ (the secularists like to use confusing language) has a distinctly socialist ring to it. The core idea of âto each according to his weight, from each according to his massâ is communist. There is no reason that gravity should apply to the just and the unjust equally, and the saved should have relief from such âuniversalism.â If we have Universal Gravity now, then Universal health care will be sure to follow. It is this kind of Universalism that saps a nation’s moral fiber.
Overall, the Theory of Universal Gravity is just not an attractive theory. It is based on borderline evidence, has many serious gaps in what it claims to explain, is clearly wrong in important respects, and has social and moral deficiencies. If taught in the public schools, by mis-directed âeducators,â it has to be balanced with alternative, more attractive theories with genuine gravamen and spiritual gravitas.
by Ellery Schempp
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-03-02/clean-water/
To whom it may concern. The post by David Hicks, posted above, was held as “pending”, awaiting approval from either Dennis or myself. I thought it rather humorous so I approved it. Perhaps that was a mistake but I think not. It is a living example of the utter stupidity that plagues the human race.
We, here in the Western World, sometimes believe that we are the enlightened ones. That is that people who really believe really stupid things are confined to the undeveloped world. But no, that is just not so. Some people will believe damn near any stupid thing provided they are provided with some kind of pseudo explanation of how it is possible. This “pseudo explainer” then becomes their authority.
There can be no field of study more interesting and intriguing than the study of human nature. I have read hundred of non-fiction books on the subject. But two of the very best were Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram. Both books, especially the latter one, will blow you away as to the behavior and malleability of the human mind. People, not just a few people, but the vast majority of human beings, will believe damn near anything if only some “authority” tells them it is so.
I think this is a natural phenomenon. People are overwhelmed by the vast number of events and the weight of the data that overwhelms their daily lives. Therefore they must rely on others, authority figures whom they place their faith in.
All we can do is hear these people out, people like David Hicks, and hope that common sense will win out in the end. But the result of the last presidential election tells me that this may not be the case at all. The very stupid may get control of the government and declare that their “ideas” must be given equal weight with science. Creationist have tried it and have lost. But now they may have a majority of congress and their own man in the White House.
Can the flat earth folks be far behind?
Thank you Ron Patterson for proving my point. Science has become a religion. You “believe” in the Universal Theory of Gravity because some guys YOU consider an AUTHORITY told you that was true and that was enough, UNLESS you are going to tell me you can prove the Big Bang lololololololol!!!
Dare you to print this one too! By the way I have copy and pasted the whole thread cause I’m pretty sure this can o worms is one you wished you had not opened.
Thank you Ron Patterson for proving my point. Science has become a religion. You âbelieveâ in the Universal Theory of Gravity because some guys YOU consider an AUTHORITY told you that was true and that was enough, UNLESS you are going to tell me you can prove the Big Bang lololololololol!!!
No, most of us here studied at universities and actually took courses in math, physics, chemistry and biology. Quite a few people on this site ARE authorities with doctorates in scientific fields.
While we have had a few discussions on this site about what did or did not exist before the big bang. We have 100% proof that the big bang occurred without any shadow of a doubt. Google: cosmic microwave background radiation.
Ron, please ban this moron, climate change denial is bad enough but a flat earther is really crossing the line into insanity!
Cheers!
https://xkcd.com/54/
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Hi Fred, I actually have read quite a bit of your posts. Rather than argue over “cosmic microwave background radiation” which I am pretty sure would take me most of the rest of my life to learn even a tiny fraction of and still not be able to understand it, lets make this as simple as possible.
Can you please just show here on earth, where it matters most, a body of water that you measure and prove the curvature of said water. Don’t you agree that would be easier to prove and for people to understand than that other stuff?
Additionally, there is the peer reviewed science that I linked above that I guess you just do NOT accept? More importantly this is a simple test that can actually be performed, by you me and even probably a well trained monkey.
But you’re right, better to ban non conformists. I’m sure when Einstein came up with the theory of relativity that everyone instantly knew he had “figured it all out” right away, no one said bullocks! This is just going from bad to worse. I would prefer you attack the arguments I brought up. And please do not tell me the bedford canal experiment was discredited from wiki. At the very bottom of their disinformation they mention that others have replicated it with results that align with flat water so….. But nope, lets move beyond the realm of physical into “:cosmic microwave background radiation” I agree much simpler. Thanks buddy you kinda prove my point AGAIN. Science has become religion.
We ban idiots, not “non-conformists”.
People here can give you ten tests to prove the curvature of the earth. Hell, I’ve personally done the calculation used by Eratosthenes (different cities, mind you).
To be clear, I have personally replicated the experiement done by Eratosthenes to determine the circumference of the Earth. So can you, if you want to get your head out of the world of conspiracy theories — it’s an easy one to replicate.
I honestly have performed the experiment myself . I think if you listen to arguements in the video linked that person at least raises valid questions about the experiment, especially the part of communicating across the distance back when they first performed the experiment.
I do believe that the earth spinning on its axis and the degree thereof is an important part of the experiment and it seems that that has to require the UNIVERSAL THEORY OF GRAVITY because you need gravity to keep every one stuck on this ball and as we now know a THEORY is NOT a FACT. Soooooooo, does not that actually technically disqualify that experiment before we go any further?
I am not trying to be smartass, its just that we have come to have a belief in this Universal Theory of gravity which just has NOT been proven. So lets stick with proving the earth is a ball, by only using what we can prove right here on THIS planet. Damn it should be so easy, show the curve in water on here where we eat and sleep and live and I get to go to sleep. I am exhausted by so many trying to take the hardest route to prove the earth is a ball when water covers the majority of this whatever you want to call it at this point. Do you see my point? Science has BECOME RELIGION. I was there too a week ago, I accepted EVERYTHING hook line and sinker. Water is the answer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrP1TtVPUoU
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE watch this video of engineers, pilots sailors and railroad builders testifying they never used the curvature of the earth in there building and operating of equipment. It is CRAZY convincing. Forget about my weak argument against Eratosthenes, I’ll admit it is weak but basing an experiment on a theory is trickory also so should thus disqualify the theory no?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcgxBTrmIhU
My THEORY is that youâre an invention by Javier so, relatively speaking, he doesnât look quite so bad. BTW, Iâve never heard of the THEORY of Gravitation unless you’re referring to the general theory of relativity, which I doubt. I suggest you look up Newton’s LAW of Universal Gravitation and go from there: but not here please. This is now a climate change denial site (moderated by the aforesaid Javier) and not a wholesale science denial site.
But nope, lets move beyond the realm of physical into â:cosmic microwave background radiationâ I agree much simpler.
Cosmic microwave background radiation IS PROOF of the Big Bang, which you stated, Ron could not provide!
http://planck.cf.ac.uk/science/cmb
The Cosmic Microwave Background (or “CMB” for short) is radiation from around 400,000 years after the start of the Universe. That may sound like a long time on human timescales, but it really is the blink of an eye when compared to the age of the Universe, which is around 13.7 billion (13,700,000,000) years old. Before this time, the Universe was so hot and dense that it was opaque to all radiation. Not even simple atoms could form without instantly being ripped apart into their constituent protons and electrons by the intense radiation. The Universe was made of a “plasma”, or ionised gas, which is what the surface of the Sun is made of.
Ever since the Big Bang, the Universe has been cooling and expanding. By around 400,000 years through its life it was cool enough (though still around 3000 Celsius) for the simplest atoms to form, and it became transparent. The light from this time has been travelling through space ever since, and can be detected all around us from here on Earth or in space. We can measure the afterglow of the Big Bang.
The expansion of the Universe has stretched out the CMB radiation by around 1000 times, which makes it look much cooler. So instead of seeing the afterglow at 3000 degrees, we see it at just 3o above absolute zero, or 3 Kelvin (-270o C). Just as a burning coal (around 1500 K) glows red, and a hot bright star (around 6000 K) glows yellow or blue, the CMB glow with a characteristic colour associated with it’s temperature. However, because it is so cold, the light which was emitted by the glowing Universe now has a much longer wavelength than we can see with our eyes. The CMB is brightest at a wavelength of around 2 mm, which is around 4000 times longer than the wavelength of the visible light we see with our eyes.
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Why are we talking about what is fairly certain and accepted?
The important talking points are getting obliterated and sidetracked.
Just because a lake might be flat, proves very little, could simply be a matter of surface tension. The not flat Earth is proved by ships and planes circumnavigating the planet. So far no edges have been found. Until there are the “theory” of somewhat spherical nature of the planet will remain a pretty good working hypothesis. đ
As Javier says, the scientists often get this stuff wrong, so perhaps somewhere on the planet someone is living on the “edge”. đ
For those who don’t get sarcasm.
I don’t believe the Earth is flat.
Some people believe anything they read.
Hi Ron,
I have run across a few people who actually believe the sort of things Hicks says, but none of them are nearly so articulate. TOO articulate to be so stupid or ignorant.
The ones who believe such twaddle are VERY few these days, even in the darkest corners of the backwoods. Not quite as rare as chicken teeth, but at least as rare as gold coins on sidewalks. I don’t think there is a single person among all the living hillbillies I know who believes in a flat earth, possibly excepting a couple who are OBVIOUSLY simply simpletons, with no sense at all, the sort who are mostly in institutions, where they are cared for, since they cannot care for themselves.
I think whoever he is, he’s maybe just having a little fun.
Twain wrote a nice little essay once about such a person, one claiming some sort of hardship. Once you read his criticism of the writing of the supposed victim, it was perfectly obvious the supposed victim could NOT have composed his sob story. It had all the hall marks of professional writing.
Now if he IS real, let him explain how you can easily see the curvature of the Earth when at sea, looking at ships ten or more miles away partly obscured by the curvature, and on dry land, by moving ten to twenty miles from one hill top to the next, and always finding that you can never see a point on the ground, even if it’s the tip of a higher hill than all others nearby, from beyond a certain distance, which is incidentally easily computed using high school math.
Incidentally, speaking as a person who has explored many miles around in the local mountains, and down into the NC piedmont, by automobile, visiting the high spots, with binoculars and girlfriend , etc, I know from PERSONAL observation what I am talking about. I’ve also been out to sea, lol.
Hells bells, you can even see the curvature by observing skyscrapers in some places, in large enough metro areas.
Oldfarmermac. I consider the words you just wrote regardingwhat I had written an honor. I literally got chills up my arms when I read what you wrote. I am definitely no where near the league in certain areas of intelligence that most of you here possess and I am often jeolous of people who have the ability to use their minds at higher levels, especially in mathmatics. I do gain tremendous satisfaction from TRUE communication, when people truly listen and then respond, ironically I am often horrible at doing myself because often once my mind is made it is made and very hard for me to change, but facts have a way of getting into what little space I leave.
I can assure you I am NOT joking about having a problem believing the earth is round. I am 45 years old, and recently have had alot of time on my hands to just do what ever interests me. When I recently heard celebrities speaking of flat earth I laughed at first. Then I heard it in the news again and again, with everyone laughing and treating with RIDICULE, those who held those beliefs. Finally, I looked into it.
One reason I started investigating is I thought why do these people want to be laughed at and they must have some reason for saying what they are saying. So down the rabbit hole I went. Immediately I noticed that most of these flat earth people focused on proving that water doesn’t curve with the earth. At some point, the water test was undeniable to me. I had chills run through my entire body when I truly started to question what I held as an undeniable FACT.
So from there I listened to arguments, learned about admiral byrds expedition and what seems like a thousand other things. I cannot prove the earth is flat and will not proclaim to be able too. It seems most of the other rational (to me) sounding flat earthers also feel that they are not proving flat earth, just that it seems the most logical explanation.
That made there credabilty stronger in my eyes. So here I am about a week later. I am VERY VERY VERY tired from reading, watching, thinking. I have been watching so many different videos on the topic, seperating the wheat from the chaffe so to speak. I do think that there are some who proclaim preposterous flat Earth ideas that help to discredit any rational person from investigating on there own, I know that sounds paranoid but whatever.
So when I started to believe something as impossible to believe as flat earth, I wanted to talk to friends and pretty much anyone I know about it. We grow up with a globe, so it is easy to understand why none of us ever really test what a globe requires to actually work. Today more and more people are testing and finding results that do NOT confirm a ball earth.
The person below seems to me to have so much knowledge about so many subjects and seems credible to me. The problem is to believe a flat earth is to believe that somehow we have been told the biggest lie ever and that we didn’t see it. I still don’t get how that is possible, but I sure as HELL don’t believe were sticking to that ball anymore either.
I honestly love reading you and rons posts the most for some reason. I often get upset with ron because he really does not see how close minded he can be sometimes, but eiither can I see it with myself often.
If you sincerely watch this video with an open mind as a starter, you may not like the the inevitable conclusion (to me) that you must come too. Good luck Oldfarmermac!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGl8I3l-5ac&t=746s
Hey oldfarmermac, couple other things. you said
“Now if he IS real, let him explain how you can easily see the curvature of the Earth when at sea, looking at ships ten or more miles away partly obscured by the curvature, and on dry land, by moving ten to twenty miles from one hill top to the next, and always finding that you can never see a point on the ground, even if itâs the tip of a higher hill than all others nearby, from beyond a certain distance, which is incidentally easily computed using high school math.
Incidentally, speaking as a person who has explored many miles around in the local mountains, and down into the NC piedmont, by automobile, visiting the high spots, with binoculars and girlfriend , etc, I know from PERSONAL observation what I am talking about. Iâve also been out to sea, lol.”
I don’t know how to do italics, sorry. Rather han just tell you to go to youtube (ton of videos of well done flat water experiments in my mind) I’ll just use a bit of logic first. Often people say well you can tell the curvature of the earth just by watching a boat disappear over the horizon which isn’t more than what 5 or 6 miles at most I would guess. But, if you were to hand those same people a telescope the boat magically reappears. More importantly though, sometimes you will hear people say you have to be above 30,ooo feet to “see” any curvature of the earth. SO which is it? I can stand on the beach and from a 5 or 6 miles see this so called curvature by the boat disappearing over the horizon or do I need to fly super high, higher than 30,000 ft to “see” curvature because I know for a fact many people have flown in a commercial jets and said, NO, I can’t really see any curvature. But we don’t need to see it do we. We already have known all all lives it curves, and so it curves.
This first link below is a mathmatical fomula that is generally accepted to describe the curvature of the earth (pretty simple math i believe). I believethe formula does NOT work beyond measuring 1/4 of the circumference of the earth but I could be wrong
http://www.smokescreendesign.com/curvature-of-the-earth.html
Next is a video of a mirage. It is a mirage because the guy on tv tells you what is.
Mirage of chicago from accross lake michigan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLlNKy5j_O8
Flat water experiment- ( there are better ones but if you get this one you’ll find the others on your own!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tv4hyKx7Vs
OK -you ARE an idiot.
When you use the telescope to observe a ship, the part you can see is above the line of curvature. And the farther the ship is away, the LESS of it you can see, due to the curvature, telescope or not.
With a GOOD telescope, the very last thing you can see is the tip top of the highest point of the ship as the distance increases.
Ditto the mountain peaks. The higher one is , the farther away you can see it, and the higher your own elevation, the more of it you can see. In my part of the world, you can never see anything from a point on the ground, even from a mountain top, even as far as a hundred miles away, less actually, except maybe the very tip of ANOTHER mountain.
Admit it, you must be trolling, nobody who can talk and type could possibly be so stupid.
Mac wrote: “I think whoever he is, heâs maybe just having a little fun.”
Hicks word count and capitalization patterns have me half wondering if you may be the one that got a little bored out on the farm yesterday and decided to liven things up with a bit of satire.
;^)
Apology friend, don’t ever change.
With that said, thank you for your Grand illusion article you wrote, I never thought of the whole”with your genes and your background I would be you” argument. I use it all the time with friends it is so logical to me – they always look at me funny- kinda like how you are to me right now but thats ok, sometimes people get it and sometimes they don’t.
Ugo Bardi is a man to be reckoned with, when discussing the hard sciences and the behavior of naked apes. Note the similarities of what he says to many things I have said here recently. Note also that I do not claim to be an original thinker, but rather to just study the thoughts of others, and incorporate them into my own thinking. I just ran across this.
”
Years ago, I used to play chess, even though I always remained, at best, at a low-medium skill level. Once, I found myself playing with a local high-level player and I was thoroughly trashed, quickly checkmated. I offered my congratulations to him and he answered to me with something like, “Ugo, it is not that I am especially good. It is you who made mistakes with your moves. Make no mistakes, and nobody will ever checkmate you.”
(You win elections, HB, by running great candidates, not by blaming the opposition for your candidates failure to perform. )
I think that was good advice that I still try to remember after many years. If you are defeated, it may be that your opponent is especially good, but it is also likely that he or she simply exploited your mistakes. Avoid making mistakes, and your life will be easier. But you need to recognize the mistakes you made and admit them.
This seems to be the problem with the present debate on climate science. Facing aggressive criticism, scientists keep making the most elementary communication mistakes. The latest disaster for science is the recent article by David Rose in which scientists are accused to be manipulating the data. Rose, you may remember, is the journalist who first diffused in the media the idea that there had been a “pause” in global warming. His 2012 article in the Daily Mail was a milestone in the meme war; with the “pause” (or “hiatus”) still widely known and repeated as “proof” that global warming doesn’t exist or that, at least, climate models don’t work (*).
Obviously, the “pause” never was anything more than a perfectly normal oscillation – amplified by carefully choosing a specific interval of temperatures. The recent temperature increases broke all the warming records and that should have buried forever the “pause”, together with other legends such as the claimed arrival of the planet Nibiru in 2012. But, no. Now David Rose doubles down with a new article in which he, this time, accuses scientists of having manipulated the data in order to make the pause disappear.
I don’t think I need to tell you that Rose’s latest article is a textbook example of logical inconsistency. First, he claimed the existence of the “pause” on the basis of temperature data that, evidently, he trusted. Now, he says that the data shouldn’t be trusted because they don’t show a pause. If there ever was an example of motivated reasoning, this is it.
Yet, communication is not just a question of formal logic. Take a tour of the Web and you’ll see how many people are gleefully commenting on Rose’s latest broadside against science. It is a landslide; the dam has given way: it is a true disaster for science. Maybe Rose is an evil genius in communication, but I think he is not. He is just exploiting the mistakes made by climate scientists.
This story is all about an article published in 2015 by a group of NOAA scientists who claimed that there is no evidence of a slowdown in the world’s temperature increase. The article was perfectly good in scientific terms, but it was a terrible mistake in terms of communication. Why? Because it ignored a simple fact of life: in the mass media debate, mentioning a concept, even if for debunking it, has the effect of reinforcing the public perception that the concept is real.
This is a well known concept. On this issue, you may read a good article by Chris Mooney describing the “backfire effect” or, sometimes, the “boomerang effect”. Among the many cases, it was found that having Barack Obama explicitly stating that he is not a Muslim tends to reinforce some people’s belief that he is. And you surely remember the story of the “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. There never was any proof for their existence (and, indeed, they never existed). But the more the subject was debated, the more people became convinced that they existed.
( Now SOME of us think Trump is stupid. I don’t, but I do think he is evil and VERY bad for the country and the world. He UNDERSTANDS what Ugo is talking about. )
In the end, it is simple: debunking doesn’t work; on the contrary, it often reinforces the perception that the belief being debunked is true. So, it should have been obvious that a paper that attempted to demonstrate that there never was a “pause” would generate a backlash, one day or another. And it did.
Let me repeat: For what I can say, there is nothing wrong in scientific terms in the work by Karl et al. But place yourself in the shoes of a person who is not a scientist, won’t you get the impression that the scientists are fiddling with the data? That’s the point that the critics of science are making over and over and this message seems to be going through.
Maybe it was unavoidable that a review of the temperature data would lead to this result, but was it appropriate to publish a minor correction of a data set in a high-visibility journal? If it was in order to affect climate policies, it was a perfectly legitimate target, but only if based on rock-solid data. Didn’t the people involved in this work realize that their corrections are debatable, to say the least? And how is it that no one in NOAA thought that in some quarters the corrections would be understood and described as politically motivated data manipulation? Do scientists always have to be so naive?
Now, many scientists are trying to debunk Rose’s article (**), but the problem remains the same: the more you mention the “pause”, the more it becomes real for the public. And that’s a victory for the enemies of science. It seems that, as scientists, we are falling over and over into the same traps. As long as we do that, we’ll keep being checkmated by people who exploit our mistakes.
“Now SOME of us think Trump is stupid.”
No, I think Trump supporters are stupid
Some Trump supporters are stupid, quite a lot of them in fact.
Some Clinton supporters are stupid as well, but mostly not quite AS stupid, and the percentage of stupid ones is less.
And it’s a BIG mistake made all too often to assume that most Trump supporters are stupid. Ignorant would be a better choice of word in describing them, and quite a lot of them are voted their own self interest accurately, as they see their own interests.
For instance, there is a large cabal of criminal lawyers (lawyers mostly donate to Democrats) who are in love with Trump’s likely drug policies. They get rich defending drug cases.
There are millions of people with money in the stock market who also believe they will make a lot more with Trump in office. Personally I think they are badly mistaken, in respect to the longer term, but they might be right short term.
Almost everybody I know who voted for Trump did so as a result of his or her cultural preferences, rather than for any other reason, with the exception of the ones who voted for him due to having lost their jobs to offshoring, or fear of the same. That sort are EXTREMELY numerous in the South and in the Rust Belt.
Underestimating the opposition is always a STUPID mistake. The D’s REALLY fucked up big time in underestimating Trump as a politician, as evidenced by the fact he won.
If the D party had had a real nominating process, instead of being the personal property of the Clinton machine, somebody else would have been the nominee, maybe Sanders, Warren, Biden, and that somebody would be prez today.
Most people deliberately overlook the fact that I said starting years ago that the R party’s fondest hope, post Oboma, would be to run against Clinton.
And they beat her without even running a “real” Republican in the sense that Trump is an outsider who in essence hijacked the nomination.
Mac,
I disagree. The idea that game players (or anyone else) can magically make no mistakes is unrealistic. This is a form of wishful thinking, of exaggerating one’s personal power. New Age philosophies make this mistake – the idea that one can have power over one’s environment by sheer determination, and make things happen by believing in them. Just wish hard enough, and it will happen.
The end result of this kind of magical thinking is blaming the victim. After all, if anyone has total power over their environment, then everything that happens to them is their fault. The fact is, that s**t happens. People get hurt by random things, and worse, they get mugged by others.
Mugging victims shouldn’t be blamed for what has happened. The fact that they didn’t defend themselves effectively does not remove the locus of responsibility from the mugger. Muggers are the problem, not the victims.
Should everyone always work hard to develop their skills, to do better and defend themselves? Of course. But they have to realistic about their limits. Yoda, who says “size matters not”, is just fiction.
The idea that honest men can’t be conned is a fiction, promoted by con artists, in order to shame their victims into silence. Trust is the currency of life, and con artists steal that currency along with literal currency. Let’s not let help them get away with it by blaming the victim.
In this example, the scientific article only drew a backlash because of the con artists (Fox, etc) aggressively drew attention to it and told their audience what to think about it. The same is true of Iraqi WMD: there wasn’t a simple and honest public “debate”, there was an aggressive propaganda campaign to convince people that WMD existed.
“Backlash” is real: exploiters and con artists will fight back when they are challenged. But we can never let fear of backlash stop us or slow us down – that would be a victory for the exploiters and con artists.
30% of Americans believe that Obama is not native born. They didn’t dream that up on their own. They were told that idea, aggressively, by dishonest media. We should blame that media first. The audience has a responsibility, of course, to be well informed, but they are still the victims here – the fact that they didn’t defend themselves successfully doesn’t mean they weren’t the victims. And, of course, Obama was a victim too…
Hi Nick,
Suppose you say specifically what it is that you disagree with?
That the D party made a mistake in presenting the Clinton machine the nomination as a gift ?
Do you believe there was an open and honest nominating process, and that she was so well beloved that not a single D made any REAL effort for the nomination other than Sanders? Or did she have the party machinery so tightly sewn up old time style she was the de facto owner of the party?
That she was a lousy campaigner?
That she was dragging a twenty mile baggage train?
That she directed her campaign on the basis of identity politics and the elite ?
That almost every time she opened her mouth she pissed off more traditional reliable D voters by advocating globalism?
That adults learn from their mistakes and do things differently, rather than blaming their losses and mistakes on the opposition?
Your answer is mostly a straw man diversion in my estimation.
If the nomination process had been an athletic contest, any open minded disinterested coach in the country looking on would have pointed out that Sanders polled much better against Trump than Clinton, etc.
Any disinterested coach would have pointed out that she would be by far the most unpopular candidate, from the point of view of the electorate, in terms of negative perceptions, in the history of the party?
I notice that while I have consistently pointed out that both Clinton and Trump are ethical train wrecks, and thus not worthy of the presidency, hard core D’s are absolutely fucking unwilling to admit she is or was dragging that baggage train, still preferring either out of stupidity or cynical partisanship to pretend all the baggage is or was made up lies on the part of the R camp. Incidentally, quite a lot of it is or was mostly R propaganda, but not by any means all of it.
Until I hear just ONE person who is a hard core D who is also mathematically literate say what he really thinks about Cattle Gate for instance , I will persist in believing that hard core D’s are just about equally as incapable of telling the truth, except when it is advantageous to do so, as hard core Trumpsters.
Yes. Shit happens. Yes lots of people believe Obama was born outside the USA. I have not defended the Trump camp, when it comes to any particular fact or issue, and likely never will.
AND considering that virtually every body else here points out the countless shortcomings of that camp, I don’t see any need to do so myself, that ground being well covered.
The thing is that the D’s really are mostly smarter, better informed, than the R’s, and that’s a fact. The unfortunate thing is that all too many of them are in the habit of preening their moral and ethical superiority, real or imagined, and talking down to the middle of the road and the political opposition.
THAT habit as much as any thing might have cost the liberal/ D wing the presidency, and some seats in Congress as well.
When the scales are getting close to evenly balanced, politically, it doesn’t take adding much more to one side or the other to determine the outcome. It’s impossible to say which straw in particular breaks the camel’s back, but enough straw adds up to more than enough.
If you think Clinton made a stupid mistake in taking the banksters speech money, man up once and say so. If you think she made a stupid mistake in not campaigning like she meant it in the Rust Belt say so.
If you believe otherwise say so.
If you simply cannot bring yourself to say anything critical of Clinton or the D party,well I know lots of true believers from church. I know lots of Trump true believers as well.
If you do believe otherwise, I am forced to conclude that you are either a partisan mouthpiece, or politically naive. I don’t believe you are naive.You are so good at sticking to your message that I believe you are a pr pro, maybe an advertising guy, or an actual political operative.
Bernie Sandersâ Campaign Faced A Fake News Tsunami. Where Did It Come From?
The trolls set out to distract and divide the invigorated left.
WASHINGTON â Last June, John Mattes started noticing something coursing like a virus through the Facebook page he helped administer for Bernie Sanders fans in San Diego. People with no apparent ties to California were friending the page and sharing links from unfamiliar sites full of anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda.
The stories they posted werenât the normal complaints he was used to seeing as the Vermont senator and the former secretary of state fought out the Democratic presidential primary. These stories alleged that Clinton had murdered her political opponents and used body doubles.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-fake-news-russia_us_58c34d97e4b0ed71826cdb36?63g&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
Hook, Line and Sinker. You’ve been conned.
One last post if you will allow it. I would prefer to be ridiculed over utter silence, I wanted more here to critique this information, but most especially Ron and Old farmermac, so funny you two are the only to respond so far. Unfortunately, I feel the responses leaned more toward ad hominem attacks rather than disproving the information presented.
For me, it did not take more than maybe an hour watching flat water experiments to raise questions that did not have sufficient answers. I am truly in a weird spot where I do not know what or who to believe any more. How could this be possible that water is flat over long distances yet the earth is a ball? The two are in my mind incompatable.
So if this truly sounds like the ranting of a lunatic then thank you for the brief platform. BUT, if I have raised even the tiniest bit of curiosity, I would LOVE for you to bring this to the forefront of your awesome site here, because that would bring quite a bit more credability to the subject so that people might honestly look into it and make up their own minds. Ted kaczynski ( I am by no means comparing myself just the idea) sounded like a lunatic when he wrote his manifesto. I do not think his ideas are quite so fringe as they were when he wrote them (at least in my mind). More importantly, when someone, anyone shows me with utter certitude that water here on earth, curves with the earth I will be done with this and very thankful, at this point I find that highly unlikely. How many of you have tested waters flatness over long distances to prove what you already knew?
The video link at the bottomm is of Surveyors, Engineers, Pilots and Sailors Expose the Flat Earth. It was made by the same dude as the one that Ron so insightfully commented -it sounds like this guy truly believes what he is saying. It sounds that way because he does. The words of these professionals saying they never needed to account for the curvature of the earth while performing jobs that should have required it is stunning to me, I find it incredibly hard to believe that that type of testimony can so easily be cast aside.
I think maybe you will respect these opinions more in this video because these are engineer type people speaking. Ron, THANK YOU so much for posting up as much as you have. If any people post more on this topic I would like to respond but since this is your website if you want me to leave it at this that is great too. I am pretty sure you posted my original posts to highlight my incredible stupidity and I completely 100% can understand that. What I cannot understand is that the arguments made to disprove curvature of the earth are not funny at all, especially when that is EXACTLY what they do. I truly hope I spark some doubt in at least 1 persons mind here to start them on a quest of there own because at some point weWILL reach the 100th monkey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcgxBTrmIhU
It’s not flat. Go to the ocean. Stay at one spot. Get a friend in a ship. Have them sail straight out into the ocean. Eventually you’ll see them “sink” — because they’re going around the curve of the earth. The water is curving along with the Earth. (Because gravity pulls towards the *center* of the earth.)
The curve is very tiny, but you can measure it even in a university physics lab if you have the right equipment.
Sailors ALWAYS have to account for the curve of the earth, no exceptions. And they do! Pilots usually have someone else do the calculations for them, but they account for it too.
Surveyors? The US west of the original 13 states was surveyed in a big grid, trying to make squares with the same amount of acreage. But… the Earth is curved. You can go find the spots where they adjusted for the curve of the earth. These are particular east-west roads. The north-south roads don’t match up on the north and south sides, because the amount of land between two meridians is getting *smaller* as you head further north.
Look up the Coriolis Effect. It’s the cause of hurricanes and tornadoes! Every meteorologist pays attention to the curvature of the Earth on a daily basis.
The curve is quite small because the Earth is huge. When your friend on the sailing ship drops over the horizon, phone him up and ask him how many miles out from shore he is. Then remember the curve only differs from a straight line by the height of the ship over the distance of that many MILES. It’s a very small curvature.
For example, the distance which a ship has to go out to disappear over the horizon, measured in kilometers, is roughly
arccos( (12742 – .01) / 12742) * 40075 * 2 Pi
Notice how many digits of precision you need to even calculate that arccosine. More than 7 digits of precision. Which means that I used too imprecise a value for the diameter of the earth and I can’t calculate it without a higher-precision value… anyway, it’s actually a hell of a lot of kilometers out. Further than you think. My rough calculation says a 10-meter-tall ship disappears below the horizon *308* kilometers away from shore (assuming you’re viewing from exact sea level — so if you’re standing up it’ll be even further).
Go ahead, get a telescope, line it up, watch that ship, it’ll disappear below the horizon eventually.
Your first point is proven false first by perspective alone. Yes the ships do vanish from your naked eye. Incredibly, if you grab a pair of binoculars the ship will magically come back into view. The human eye just cannot see that far is the explanation, but the argument you make does seem “logical” if you grow up knowing you live on a ball. The best part is you can test that tomorrow if you own a pair of binoculars, but get ready because when you see I am correct on that, your going to want to prove my other testable points and one by one they will stand firm to your arguments.
Please I BEG YOU to watch the video linked below Please take 15 minutes and watch this video with quotes from engineers, pilots, railroad builders who all contradict what you just stated. . I should have shown this first to ron. It has testimoney from engineers, pilots, railroad builders and sailors all stating they do not use convexity of the earth in their calculations when building or operating there equipment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcgxBTrmIhU
I want to thank you also for replying and taking the time to argue your points on an idea that we so easily should/could just dismiss!
Maybe you have never looked but there are numerous demonstrations of the Coriolis Effect not being reliable at all regarding water swirl. Here is one such video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODRa7muxsDM There are many others, I believe I read often it is the design of toilets that cause the direction of swirl.
Please watch the video of the engineers and silors testimony and let me know what you think. That is just the tip of the iceberg, but you have to be willing to accept where the facts lead you. It is very uncomfortable to even think about thinking the earth is not a globe lol. Please watch the video, I just watched it again myself. Just tell me where you hear something that does NOT sound rational and logical. THANK YOU again for your time.
DUDE. 308 kilometers away from shore a 10 meter tall ship disappears?? REALLY?
LOL that far out there is approximtley 4.6231 MILES of EARTH CURVE. FUCKING MILES! READ THAT AGAIN!!!!!! MILES!!!!!
Here is a curve calculator-check your math for yourself.
http://www.smokescreendesign.com/curvature-of-the-earth.html
I’m out of weed maybe you could loan me some?
I’m sorry, I’m just making a point. The point is everyone says ohhhhhhh YOU don’t understand how large the earth is, YES now that I’ve read this stuff 4.6 miles of curve starts to seem incredible. Not only would the ship disappear you could hide SKYSCRAPERS. Come on COME AT ME WITH ALL YOU GOT! BUT, it’s got to be proven on this planet only, no fancy shit. I almost want to take bets now. But I still have a teeny amount of doubt so hopefully one of you bastards can get me, I don’t care if you work together LOLOLOLOL!!! Me against the ballers!
I see the drooling, glue eating, knuckle dragging villagers are getting more confident now that their leaders are in power (for a short while).
You can hide skyscrapers, dude. There are skyscrapers in London. You can’t see ’em from NY. Try as hard as you can — the round earth is in the way.
My rough calculation says a 10-meter-tall ship disappears below the horizon *308* kilometers away from shore (assuming youâre viewing from exact sea level â so if youâre standing up itâll be even further).
Bull. It’s about 11 kilometers.
http://www.table-references.info/earth-table-distances.php
https://books.google.com/books?id=jJ08AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA417&lpg=PA417&dq=naval+table+of+horizon+distance&source=bl&ots=a1e7luLO85&sig=e-Ys6cIH5_YFyEBpG5XlXLAxB7Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj839-AucnSAhXJbSYKHb6FAY8Q6AEIUTAJ#v=onepage&q=naval%20table%20of%20horizon%20distance&f=false
Well, I did say that I was using estimates for the diameter of the earth which were three significant digits short of the necessary precision. :shrug:
Being off by a factor of thirty is only to be expected when my calculations are starting with a number with an error of a factor of 1000.
Thanks for the naval chart references!
Ron, please cut the crap people are posting in this blog, I’m getting cramp in my scrolling finger.
NAOM
Yes, I agree attack the messenger. Thanks for being so intellectually lazy that you cannot take 5 minutes to tell me one experiment to perform on this planet that does not require anything based on unproven theories, to prove the earth is a ball. I am sorry, but cannot you see how EASY this should be? Honestly. Just read this entire thread, should it not be incredibly simple to use ONLY this planet to describe it. Not the sun, not gravity just this planet. WHY? Because it CANNOT be DONE!!! YOU ME and the majority of people out there ARE VICTIMS OF PROGRAMMING. WHY????
Hey stupid, when you are finished eating the paste try driving east west in Kansas and watch the cities magically rise up over the horizon and sink down out of site behind you.
Try looking at the sky and see how the clouds at different heights move in different directions.
Or maybe just take a balloon up and watch the world expand in a giant circle. On clear day of course, which I think in your case needs explicit specification.
Things weren’t looking so great before, but after reading this gibberish, my doom-meter just started spinning.
Is this intended as satire though – cross out flat earth and insert climate change and it wouldn’t look much different from a lot of blogs and threads. How can anybody write that many words, I didn’t read more than 1%, I’m sure nobody has read much more than 10%, but I presume it is in intelligible English.
Essentially I think what flat earthers are saying is using ONLY the earth, prove it is a ball. That should be sooooooooo easy, how can there even be an argument? And their lies the rub, because as soon as you start testing things in REALITY problems start popping up like fucking weeds.
Ban me do what ever you guys want, I just cannot for the life of me believe how thoroughly a human brain can be programmed. Imagine you live in a house with no windows or doors no internet no tv and you never see any one come or go your entire life until age 45 and then one day your room mate says theirs a whole world out there with grass and cars and birds and people and sun. Would you believe that person? Even if they showed you pictures you would think it impossible because of your experience.
From a young age we grow up with round globes in school, we are shown photos (nasa states clearly ALL round earth photos are composites)(also google continents change scale flat earth), we are taught about gravity from the most highly respected scientists dadadadadada, WE ARE TOLD HOW THE WORLD IS, even though in the back of your head when you were at the beach as a child you thought to yourself, how does the water not fall off the earth? But since we are told, we accept it as truth, and then even explain it by developing math equations that not 1 on 100,000 can understand but since the smartest guy in the room says its so, it becomes our reality. There is so much more that Ron Patterson one of my crankiest HERO’s who helped wake ME from my slumber by teaching me peak oil, would personally hunt me down if I were to expound on what is required to believe in flat earth. The funny thing is, it seems to me, even more is required to “believe” its a ball.
Here we are arguing over fucking equations, and radiation, and gravity, please do not bring up NASA. 1/2 trillion budget since inception, regardless I said I want proof its round from right here on the planet SHOULDNT THAT BE SO EASY 1000 ways!??? A quiet hush flows across the board- you mean something I can see and experience with my own two eyes, IMPOSSIBLE! We must use our religion!
I really make no claim as to what shape the earth is because I DO NOT KNOW, my only claim is that the evidence I have seen so far here disproves a ball earth. Come on now you guys!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMxLVDuf4VY
Dartmouth Professor Discusses Foucault’s Pendulum
Back atcha one more time , David
It is possible you are a satirist and choose to remain in character in posting responses.
In that case, I apologize.
Otherwise, well, you are sort of like a sheltered Christian fundamentalist kid who was home schooled and got into my university, a VERY capable kid, strong in math (which you obviously are3 not unless a satirist ) , communication skills, etc.
The entire auditorium, a couple of hundred kids together for a lecture. was simply stunned into silence by this kid’s remarks about God and Creation. This was well over half a century ago, but I have never forgotten the experience. The professor halted the class, had a brief one on one with the kid, who left with an appointment to see the professor, and class resumed.
You are in the WRONG room. lol
Hi David,
Take a photo or video of the edge of the Earth and you will be believed.
The “using ONLY the earth, prove it is a ball” rule is a delightful touch.
You International Space Station folks just stay outta this. And heads up! Watch those four corners.
Someone with the ability to use Goggle to find all the crazy available on UghTube should, in theory, also be able to do a search with the words “debunk”, “refuted”, “disproved” or “myth” in front of their favorite crackpot/conspiracy theory.
If such a person persists in spewing long-debunked junk like Flat-Earth, that is a strong indicator that their motives are not genuine transparent inquiry as stated, but something troll-related.
I’m not sure what is the best way to handle this. I would have no problem with deleting every post and every response to this obvious trollery. Especially something so unrelated to the subject matter of this blog.
…
For the Goggle-impaired,
Sight-lines along the curvature of the Earth above long stretches of flat water are strongly affected by refraction caused by temperature variations of the air just above the water (usually within a meter of the surface). Under the right conditions, the curvature of the Earth can appear to be zero, or even concave. The index of refraction in air varies as a function of temperature. A strong temperature gradient can easily occur just above the surface of water that is at a different temperature than the air above it.
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Posting seems unresponsive today, maybe I have a word that triggers a spam filter. If this is duplicated, I apologize.
This is a good lesson in how NOT to deal with trolls. Lloyd should be here to give us a lecture on the correct framing for responding to this type of troll.
In his place, I can only offer a few points that may not even be effective in this particular case…
A troll that has copy-pasted, extracted or paraphrased some centuries-old crackpot idea or conspiracy theory like Flat-Earth, Abiotic Oil, Homeopathy or Creationism may not actually be looking for a point-by-point rebuttal of his flavor-of-the-day craziness. Wasting time or diversion from the current topic of discussion might be his aim. Pointing out a flaw in his “argument” will just get ignored, followed by a Gish-Gallop of new non-sense.
I read some more of the stuff, it’s pretty funny, and well written generally. Maybe it is Lloyd.
For David,
You’ve won the day. Proved your point. Demonstrated how easy it is for online discussions to be derailed by persistent and non-responsive argumentation. You’ve cast doubt on a very basic fact to show how science is unreliable and untrustworthy – that no consensus can exist in any field, as long as trolls are willing to put in the time and effort to cut-n-paste conspiracy theories or crackpot ravings.
Post-Modernism at its finest!
Hi all,
A new Open Thread Non Petroleum thread is up.
You will need to refresh the page to see it. Not sure why this has been happening.
I am unable to fix the problem sorry.
Link to post below
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-march-9-2017/
Also a Bakken post by Ron is up link below
http://peakoilbarrel.com/bakken-january-production-data/
Dennis,
I have to agree with “wehappyfew”. Ideally we would limit the volume of postings that are either obviously dishonest or dramatically unrealistic.
I see no harm in allowing a flat earther to post once or twice, with someone else giving a nice rebuttal. But they shouldn’t be allowed to write 15 long comments.
I’d say the same is true for someone like Javier: on the old TheOilDrum site, a moderator would limit people to something reasonable, perhaps 20 or so comments on a particular Post. I think Javier can be useful as a teaching tool, but he shouldn’t be allowed to dominate the comments. That’s abusing the privilege of free speech, and distorting the Marketplace of Ideas by filling it with one viewpoint.
Now, I know that kind of moderation is very tiresome, and I don’t blame you at all for choosing not to do it. Heck, it’s your blog. I wouldn’t want you to feel pressured to do something you don’t want to do.
But, in an ideal world…
I believe the goal has changed to flooding the site with so much rubbish that people cease to visit or take it seriously. Trashing the site with nonsense posts. This is why I feel that a moderator is becoming a necessity.
NAOM
One hopeful thing: Ron did say that the first flat-earth comment was held for moderation, and he decided to approve it just for entertainment.
I suspect he won’t make that mistake again.
I think the posts were hilarious, and couldn’t be serious – possibly posting under the influence though. The bit about whether it’s 5 or 6 miles versus 30000′; make up your minds, that’s genius.