O/T:- Climate Change

[OchPie]

There's no evidence for the idea of creeping totalitarianism.

What scares me is that it seems to me, it's often the people complaining loudest about the concept of totalitarianism who seem to embrace the slow realisation of it. GB News is against free protest - supporting government moves to cut protest, and complaining about the existence of Just Stop Oil (and not just their more extreme tactics). It has been one of the mildest critics (and showed outright support) of the Online Safety Bill. It demands an end to "wokeness" in every aspect, including those calling for it - a direct attack on free speech.

For what it's worth, I don't worry about elections being effectively stopped if any of the current lot in the UK win in 2024/25, while I do think that's a very real risk if Trump is reelected.

[OchPie]

One thing is clear though - the government deliberately falsified the data to make the pandemic seem worse that it actually was. The question is, why?

Honestly, I think the question is "why is this clear?".

Counting COVID deaths is really hard. Asking "what is a COVID death" isn't nearly as straightforward as it might at first seem. You catch COVID, it has impacts all over the body, short and long term. You get over COVID, maybe it's damaged something sufficiently you still later die of it. Or you die while with COVID because it made you more susceptible to something underlying. Or you had COVID but a comorbidity was always going to finish you off anyway. How do you account for those things?

The UK government took some naive decisions which it later changed, some of which reduced COVID death numbers (e.g. imposing a 28 day cutoff from a positive test). In truth, it's pretty widely accepted that death numbers were probably understated if anything, especially early on when testing was difficult.

Similarly with climate change, the research needed to say it is happening is not simple. The mechanisms are pretty simple to explain, but the Earth has various feedback mechanisms, some of which dampen climate change and some of which accelerate it, and it's not easy to model how they interact. Those of us championing more EVs have to face that in the short term this may well increase warming because it also removes particulate matter from the air.

However very very few serious scientists now doubt climate change. The weight of evidence is absolutely massive. Contradictory evidence is tiny. There's still lots of argument around the edges, about how this or that system works or on the impact of a particular ecosystem or activity. But the change itself is happening, and it is happening because of us.

[slack_pie]

Honestly, I think the question is "why is this clear?".

Counting COVID deaths is really hard. Asking "what is a COVID death" isn't nearly as straightforward as it might at first seem. You catch COVID, it has impacts all over the body, short and long term. You get over COVID, maybe it's damaged something sufficiently you still later die of it. Or you die while with COVID because it made you more susceptible to something underlying. Or you had COVID but a comorbidity was always going to finish you off anyway. How do you account for those things?

The UK government took some naive decisions which it later changed, some of which reduced COVID death numbers (e.g. imposing a 28 day cutoff from a positive test). In truth, it's pretty widely accepted that death numbers were probably understated if anything, especially early on when testing was difficult.

Similarly with climate change, the research needed to say it is happening is not simple. The mechanisms are pretty simple to explain, but the Earth has various feedback mechanisms, some of which dampen climate change and some of which accelerate it, and it's not easy to model how they interact. Those of us championing more EVs have to face that in the short term this may well increase warming because it also removes particulate matter from the air.

However very very few serious scientists now doubt climate change. The weight of evidence is absolutely massive. Contradictory evidence is tiny. There's still lots of argument around the edges, about how this or that system works or on the impact of a particular ecosystem or activity. But the change itself is happening, and it is happening because of us.

I agree that it's not easy to pinpoint exactly what was the cause of someone's death when there are multiple factors involved. But back in 2020, if a terminally ill cancer patient contracted COVID on their death bed, that data point was presented to the public as a COVID death, not a cancer death. Now, that was either a deliberate attempt to inflate the numbers and, in the words of Matt Hancock, "scare the pants off" the public, or it was rank incompetence. Take your pick.

[Dspig]

i thought this was about Climate? ah well..... i'll go to the covid thread & maybe it continues there....

[jackal2]

i thought this was about Climate? ah well..... i'll go to the covid thread & maybe it continues there....

The climate changed...

[sidders]

The climate changed...

What a witty fellow J2, but if wit was tit you wouldn't need a bra.

[jackal2]

What a witty fellow J2, but if wit was tit you wouldn't need a bra.

Nice to see you're keeping abreast!

[jackal2]

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that climate change is real and that it's caused by human actions. These conclusions have been reached not as a matter of faith, but by using the same scientific method that's underpinned every aspect of human progress and development.

The idea that it's just scientists with their "fingers in the till" is just a conspiracy theory. Or wishful thinking.

If scientists are correct that human behaviour is on course to bring about our own self-destruction, then perhaps the people really with their "fingers in the till" are those who have calculated how much money can be made from exploiting the comically naive premise that humans are capable of mustering the willpower and co-ordinated, collective worldwide action to reverse climate change.

The most likely motivation for the 'green agenda' is savvy capitalists who have realised that, while we await the inevitable, there's a lot of money to be made from exploiting humanity's collective state of denial about where we're headed. It's a cash cow there to be milked, even if it's farts are also contributing to global warming!

[the_anticlough]

The most likely motivation for the 'green agenda' is savvy capitalists who have realised that, while we await the inevitable, there's a lot of money to be made from exploiting humanity's collective state of denial about where we're headed. It's a cash cow there to be milked, even if it's farts are also contributing to global warming!

I think discussion of climate change on this site over the last week or so has been a King Solomon moment.

You know, when he settled a dispute over two women claiming to be the mother of baby by saying he would cut that baby in two...

The shocking level of misanthropy by those saying they don't care about future generations of humanity not being able to enjoy the kind of lives we've been able to live...

It really shows what these people are about, shrivelled-up hollow shells of human beings, most likely hollowed out by the very systems they defend so mindlessly with their conservatism.

[Mark_Ross]

New thread for Climate Change debate.

Sorry folks, but this debate is depressingly familiar in its futility. People are entrenched either on the one side or the other, and there's virtually zero movement between.

All I'll say is that most people seem to be perfectly happy to trust science (and its spin-off technology) for 99% of their everyday lives - the exception being something for which they have a very strong emotional response... a "gut" feeling... and another conspiracy is born.

see also:
Religion / supernatural, also extra-terrestrial visitors
{versus Evolution through natural selection, & their non-existence}