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talkpoliticsDear Progressives,
Turn-about being fair play, I figured that I'd write a mirrior of Bean's post But where to start?
A couple months back Johnathan Korman wrote an excellent post on the poles of american politics. In it was the following line ...the correct social order is natural but not effortless — without devotion to the correct social order, conservatives believe we devolve into barbarism.
Do you genuinely believe that if you'd been transported back to fifteenth-century London as a baby, you'd realize all on your own that witch-burning was wrong, slavery was wrong, that every sentient being ought to be in your circle of concern? If so I'd like to know why,because as far as I can tell Homo Sapiens today are no more mentally capable than the Homo Sapiens of 500 years ago. I assert that our current high quality of life has more to do with culture and technology than it does with any inherent superiority to those who came before us. The fact of the matter is that we live in a civil society where, for the most part, people raise their kids to obey the law, pay their taxes, and generally not kill each-other without a damn good reason. It is this state of civility that conservatives seek to conserve.
The majority of these conservation efforts focus on individual and family responsibilities/virtue. They operate on the theory that if you want innovation you need to reward innovation. If you want virtue reward virtue. If you want stable kids reward stable families, because barbarity is never more than a generation or two away. If you want good social order we must reward virtue and punish vice.
It is in this space that intent runs head-long into perceived intent, and I start to turn into my grandad...
Using anfalicious' recent example, I am simply flabbergasted that a "post-gendered society" is even a topic of discussion outside of science fiction. Feminism has moved from arguing that women should be treated equal and have the same rights as men, etc... To that that men and women should be interchangeable. I am expected ignore the fact that the burden of reproduction is carried disproportionately by the female of the species. I am expected to ignore the differences in biology. To ignore the different strengths and weaknesses of both and how they compliment each other. I am expected to be genderless. I am not therefore I am a misogynist.
Global warming is based on computer models that keep failing. Catastrophic predictions are constantly proven wrong and (surprise, surprise) the only solution ever proposed is higher taxes and greater regulatory powers. I suspect that a dog is being wagged therefore I am a "denier".
I don't want to live in a world of "Honor Killings" and medieval torture and I refuse to coddle or kow-tow to those that do therefore I am a Islamiphobe.
I oppose gun control therefore I want children to die.
I support voter ID laws therefore I am a Racist.
Fascist.
Terrorist.
Killer.
I could go on...
These are labels that have been applied to me by my so-called intellectual and moral "betters" in an effort to shut me up.
I am a dinosaur. Hear me roar.
Turn-about being fair play, I figured that I'd write a mirrior of Bean's post But where to start?
A couple months back Johnathan Korman wrote an excellent post on the poles of american politics. In it was the following line ...the correct social order is natural but not effortless — without devotion to the correct social order, conservatives believe we devolve into barbarism.
Do you genuinely believe that if you'd been transported back to fifteenth-century London as a baby, you'd realize all on your own that witch-burning was wrong, slavery was wrong, that every sentient being ought to be in your circle of concern? If so I'd like to know why,because as far as I can tell Homo Sapiens today are no more mentally capable than the Homo Sapiens of 500 years ago. I assert that our current high quality of life has more to do with culture and technology than it does with any inherent superiority to those who came before us. The fact of the matter is that we live in a civil society where, for the most part, people raise their kids to obey the law, pay their taxes, and generally not kill each-other without a damn good reason. It is this state of civility that conservatives seek to conserve.
The majority of these conservation efforts focus on individual and family responsibilities/virtue. They operate on the theory that if you want innovation you need to reward innovation. If you want virtue reward virtue. If you want stable kids reward stable families, because barbarity is never more than a generation or two away. If you want good social order we must reward virtue and punish vice.
It is in this space that intent runs head-long into perceived intent, and I start to turn into my grandad...
Using anfalicious' recent example, I am simply flabbergasted that a "post-gendered society" is even a topic of discussion outside of science fiction. Feminism has moved from arguing that women should be treated equal and have the same rights as men, etc... To that that men and women should be interchangeable. I am expected ignore the fact that the burden of reproduction is carried disproportionately by the female of the species. I am expected to ignore the differences in biology. To ignore the different strengths and weaknesses of both and how they compliment each other. I am expected to be genderless. I am not therefore I am a misogynist.
Global warming is based on computer models that keep failing. Catastrophic predictions are constantly proven wrong and (surprise, surprise) the only solution ever proposed is higher taxes and greater regulatory powers. I suspect that a dog is being wagged therefore I am a "denier".
I don't want to live in a world of "Honor Killings" and medieval torture and I refuse to coddle or kow-tow to those that do therefore I am a Islamiphobe.
I oppose gun control therefore I want children to die.
I support voter ID laws therefore I am a Racist.
Fascist.
Terrorist.
Killer.
I could go on...
These are labels that have been applied to me by my so-called intellectual and moral "betters" in an effort to shut me up.
I am a dinosaur. Hear me roar.
(no subject)
Date: 9/9/13 19:54 (UTC)David King notes that heat and cold are treated differently in the records. Rain and snow are measured in accumulated inches over an entire season, but heat and cold are daily records. If instead of showing the high for the day and moving on, one noted the length of time the temperature never fell below X, that heat wave was one of the most destructive climatic events in recorded history.
. . . but don't let that distract us from the very important work centralizing all political power into an unaccountable technocracy.
I've never understood this reasoning. Climate scientists are anything but "unaccountable." They have to defend their conclusions against the harshest critics of all, their peers. Seriously, science is anything but a laid-back paycheck. It is as cutthroat as any corporate board room, and sometimes even nastier. There's a reason for the phrase, "Science advances one funeral at a time."
This constant review has made the IPCC conclusions weak at best; since no one can agree on the conclusions, they have low-balled the estimates on how bad things could get.
As for the technocracy, well, I really don't know how to comment. I personally favor low-tech, distributed, decentralized solutions (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1711249.html), but even these are going to need some funding, or at least biasing. Because of the nature of my preferred solutions, though, that funding can go to individuals—not scientists, not corporations—in ways that better everyone, the end user and the atmosphere.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 06:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 18:14 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 19:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 19:55 (UTC)Are they off to steal some horses? Hey, where's Billy the Kid at? LOL
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 20:05 (UTC)Looks like a Tippman Model 98 with cut down barrel and external air hose removed.
ETA:
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 20:48 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 02:28 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 18:12 (UTC)Short of a apocalyptic catastrophic that reverts us back to the stone age, and then I'm not even sure about that.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 19:32 (UTC)AGW advocates tell us that unless we dramatically re-order society and take extreme measures to ensure that the poor remain poor and above all do not breed we are all doomed.
My question is "how doomed?", Is the likely cost of mitigating that doom greater than the human cost of averting it? I'm betting "no" because doomsday predictions have a fortunate (though inconvenient in the eyes of the doomsayers') habit of not living up to the hype.
The doomsayers will of course respond with obfuscation, shaming, and TTCs because that's what doomsayers do.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 19:52 (UTC)You are making a little sacrifice sound like a grand conspiracy of oppression for the sake of oppression.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 20:39 (UTC)You are making a little sacrifice sound like a grand conspiracy of oppression for the sake of oppression.
And you are making it sound like "a little sacrifice" rather than the vast anti-humanist agenda that it is.
Even if they aren't advocating oppression for oppression's sake they might as well be. Does the question of malice vs incompetence even matter if the end results are the same?
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 01:25 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 21:41 (UTC)I really don't want to over simplifying it that much, but I'm not grasping where you are getting this information so I'm kind of forced to. How can I make it any more clear that supporting clean energy does not equal denying people energy, in fact it is trying to find better ways to provide people with energy! We still have fossil fuel plants, those aren't going away anytime soon! We'll likely be burning coal and oil until we completely run out of the stuff, and then we are even trying to produce more of it artificially.
I. Don't. Get. Your. Logic!
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 23:03 (UTC)As stated in other threads there are approximately 1.3 billion people who have no electricity at all. If we are to raise their standard of living to 1st world levels reducing overall energy production and consumption is a non starter. If anything we must increase it dramatically.
The question thus becomes how to do this.
Wind is too unreliable and Solar has issues with density and storage. Barring a major technological breakthrough in the form of room-temperature super-conductors or hyper-efficient batteries neither is up to the task of replacing our existing electrical sources. Sure you can put some panels on your roof and use them to charge your cell phone, but there's simply no way to run something as energy intensive as a MRI Machine or Desalinization Plant on solar alone.
Of the stuff we already know how to build that leaves coal, Oil/Gas, Hydro-electric, Geo-thermal, and Nuclear Fission.
Coal is off limits for obvious reasons.
Converting coal plants to oil or natural gas would significantly reduce CO2 emissions but this option has been taken off the table by the whole "OMG Fracking!" controversy.
Hydro-Electric and Geo-Thermal are, for the most part, up to the job but are location dependent and hated by environmentalists for obvious reasons.
Which leaves nukes, and if given the choice between building nukes and fucking over the poor most people will choose "fuck over the poor" in a heartbeat. NIMBY
Thus we arrive at our current impasse.
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 23:21 (UTC)No it's not and this is not obvious, while we are seeking alternatives we still are currently using coal power plants. My own city uses coal, and over the years there has been ways to make it cleaner then it used to be.
"Hydro-Electric and Geo-Thermal are, for the most part, up to the job but are location dependent and hated by environmentalists for obvious reasons."
For obvious reasons, you keep using that phrase. Most environmentalists understand that energy options are not perfect but there are better ones and worse ones out there.
"Which leaves nukes, and if given the choice between building nukes and fucking over the poor most people will choose "fuck over the poor" in a heartbeat. NIMBY"
Especially when you put it that way, nuclear power plants are not the same thing as nuclear weapons, "nuke" suggests the building of nuclear weapons. And is there a survey out there for this? Because I don't think most people like the idea of having only those two options.
All this illustrates is that energy options are not perfect, and solutions for it are more complicated then just going wholesale on one solution over another. What this does not illustrate is that people who are for environmentalism are not supporting the denial of energy solutions to "the poor". You list a bunch of energy sources and list their shortcomings, without even thinking about situational solutions and maybe using more then one energy solution. No one solution out there is perfect, but you cannot let the perfect get in the way of the good. The error I think here is suggesting that there is a perfect solution out there and rejecting all the others that may not solve everything but are still helpful.
(no subject)
Date: 12/9/13 16:43 (UTC)No it's not and this is not obvious
The Idea is to reduce CO2 emissions, not increase them.
For obvious reasons, you keep using that phrase. Most environmentalists understand that energy options are not perfect but there are better ones and worse ones out there.
Most environmentalists are all about "clean energy" until the moment someone suggests building a damn or drilling in a national park.
Especially when you put it that way, nuclear power plants are not the same thing as nuclear weapons, "nuke" suggests the building of nuclear weapons. And is there a survey out there for this? Because I don't think most people like the idea of having only those two options.
I think you underestimate the level of opposition and irrational fear associated with nuclear power.
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 02:44 (UTC)AGW advocates tell us that unless we dramatically re-order society and take extreme measures to ensure that the poor remain poor and above all do not breed we are all doomed.
W . . . T. . . . F. . . ? No, no, no. First of all, one can recognize the science behind the AGW theory as sound and well-supported without becoming an "advocate" for any remediation policy, just as one can recognize that gravity is a natural phenomenon without offending certain religious folks (http://www.theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-refute-gravity-with-new-int,1778/). More seriously, there's a big jump between recognizing gaseous composition and how infrared radiation reacts therein and instituting top-down mandates on social order and reproduction.
I don't know where you're getting this sloppy dreck, but I would seriously consider listening to those sources with greater skepticism.
My question is "how doomed?", Is the likely cost of mitigating that doom greater than the human cost of averting it?
A good question! There are as many ideas about mitigation out there as there are carbon molecules in the atmosphere, and most of these ideas are crap. That's why I linked, once again, to solutions that improve human life as well as provide low-cost remediation (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1711249.html), rather than draconian money pits designed to pay silly people to do expensive things that only work while the silly people are being paid. With just one of these solutions, the biochar, if adoption increases at just a few percentage points per year—displacing fossil fuel sources in the process and helping as well to restore damaged soils, increasing crop yields in the process—we could drop back to pre-industrial levels of CO2 in decades, not centuries.
The problem—and it's a doozy—is that carbon concentration changes seem to affect the climate 200 or so years after the concentration tipping point (either high or low) is reached. Meaning, given current concentrations, we literally have no historical precedent to "how doomed" we might be. If the human cost is, say, half the world's population shed in a few decades of famine, drought and the ancillary deadliness that accompanies these goodies, what "cost" is worth the effort to avoid it? (I say this as a human who likes to eat and drink on a regular basis.)
If someone points to an approaching hurricane and says, "Maybe we should find some shelter," is he a "doomsayer?" The only difference between that and AGW might be the known versus the unknown level of impending doom. Just as churches are built for Easter and not just a non-holiday crowd, perhaps preparedness should be based on a worst case scenario . . . just in case.
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 06:52 (UTC)Bullshit! Failure to support the remediation policy being discussed makes one a "denier" Full Stop.
If what you are saying were actually true in practice it wouldn't have made the list.
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 18:25 (UTC)Bullshit on that call of bullshit! Some points in my favor:
Yes, there is recognition that we need to reduce carbon emissions (which no one knows how to do without destroying the current economic configuration) and some how sequester—suck up and lock away—what's already in the air (the many methods of which my link addresses, meaning there is no agree path to take). Beyond that, this is new, new, new, and hardly decided.
A "denier" is someone who denies, as in the AGW problem, not the solution. So far, there is no solution, at least not one universally recognized as the best way to go.
Again, I don't know who/what you're listening to to get to this conclusion, but I would strongly advise skepticism. I am in fact curious to know who is so widely disseminating such blatant bullshit.
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 18:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 18:51 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 18:50 (UTC)In the minds of the true believers failure to support any and all proposed remediation policies means that one does not believe that AGW is a problem and thus that person is a denier.
There is no remediation policy
...Only because those asshole deniers refuse to let the AGWers have their way with out a fight. In an Ideal world such people would be rounded up and shot. (http://www.climatedepot.com/2009/06/05/Update-Romm-defends-remarks-as-not-a-threat-but-a-prediction--Strangle-Skeptics-in-Bed-An-entire-generation-will-soon-be-ready-to-strangle-you-and-your-kind-while-you-sleep-in-your-beds/)
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 19:26 (UTC). . . is belief! Fluff and nonsense! That's all! Nothing to see, nothing to consider. This goes for anyone who professes true belief, be they pro- or anti-AGW. Belief? It is but opinion, and opinions are like assholes: we all have them, true; but only when we start showing them in public does the shit fly.
That's why I concern myself with facts, the verifiable kind. And those AGW facts are more concrete: There is proof, and there are people (paid handsomely, often) who lie about the proof in the hopes of muddying the waters to opaque.
I ignore the fever pitch of rhetoric no matter which side is the source, and so I missed what you were discussing.
I do have a nagging question, the answer to which (since I avoid the fighting fray of belief online) I cannot say I even remotely know: On which side of this "debate" about verifiable scientific fact does one see the most "strangle in bed/round up and shot" rhetoric, the activists or the deniers?
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/13 20:52 (UTC)Why you would wear a shoe that doesn't fit is beyond me.