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posted by janrinok on Friday December 23 2016, @10:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the pause-for-thought dept.

Bridging the gap between left and right. I came across this clip showing Glenn Beck and Samantha Bee, and thought that this SoylentNews story / comment thread should be stickied till the new year so we have an ongoing conversation. It's a short clip from her show where Glenn Beck is a willing guest; the key point is they are trying to find common ground. Beck points out that Bee is following some of his own patterns of crying "catastrophe" but they really don't provide much insight beyond the significance of their little coming together moment.

The divide is clear and present on this site as most everywhere else, I would like to see a meta discussion where we fact check each other and drill down through the rhetoric until we get some straightforward lists and proposals on how we can move forward together. What are the fundamental blockers? Which ideas do we consider to be too outrageous for credibility? Many here are guilty of attacking each other — can we try and Spock it out for about a week?

I'll start us off with my supposition:

Climate change is real and human activity has an important effect on it. We must agree on this point in order to move forward, and social/economic issues must be handled after needed environmental changes."

If you post as AC — try and behave as if you were logged in — reduce the flames for better quality discussion.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @01:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @01:29AM (#445344)

    number one means we humans are ruining the ecosphere, yes earth's climate changes but this one is on us and blindly enabling greed is a lame excuse to do nothing
    for number two just look at the numbers and studies, you can choose which ones are important to you if your own species' survival is not really important to you

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @01:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @01:46AM (#445350)

    Still too vague. What does it mean to "ruin the ecosphere"? For me, this needs to be precise. I consider science to be a pillar of human civilization, so don't want to support any efforts that may lead to replacing it with astrology-like pseudoscience.

    • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:24AM

      by fustakrakich (6150) on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:24AM (#445386) Journal

      What does it mean to "ruin the ecosphere"?

      Let's just say that a lot of California smog comes from China, and some acid rain falling in Canada is caused by American polluters, and some fallout from Chernobyl fell on Europe. And the Mississippi River? Well, shit flowing into the Gulf comes all the way from Minnesota and everyone else along the way. If we maintain present growth rates, rumor has it that we will boil off the the oceans in about 400 years [ucsd.edu]

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:09AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:09AM (#445398)

        Still not precise... Is the ecosphere already ruined or not? At what point is/was it considered ruined?

        This shouldn't be such a difficult exercise given the amount of discussion this topic has generated.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:50AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:50AM (#445417)

          let's be precise. Some people think gambling a bet here is very unwise even more taking in account the ammount of pollution we are still dumping, we probably should stop at all now

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:58AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:58AM (#445422)

            Sorry, my initial question remains unanswered. I still do not know what is entailed by "climate change is real", and so it is impossible for me to agree or disagree with it. If it really is this vague, handwavy idea that has become the huge political issue...

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @08:12AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @08:12AM (#445481)

              Sience is about understanding how & why things work/happen (such that for instance engineers can better predict what their machines can do and can achieve effects otherwise not possible / or that doctors & (bio)chemists can better predict what a certain treatment will do and can heal people who otherwise cannot be healed / etc. ...) At the start of any scienctific progress stands an uncertain/unproven/incomplete/vague hypothesis. One should not kill the debate or any action just by continuously saying "that premise is not clear", as otherwise no progress will be made at all.

              Consider the following conversation: "Cancer kills too many people." => "Sorry, but it is not clear what is 'too many'.'" => "Cancer kills many people" => "Sorry, that may be true, but 'many' is still not defined precisely enough." => "Cancer kills people." => "Sorry, but that's still not precise enough. Does it really actively kill, or is it just a factor that contributes to of death like there are so many others? In the end, we all die of cardiac arrest, don't we.' => "People die due to cancer."" => "Sorry, but what/who are 'people'? People die due to many other reasons, so you're not being precise enough and your statement is therefore to general to be proven or disproen." => "OK, my father died due to lung cancer and I did not like that. It should have been prevented." => "Oh, I'm so sorry for yoi. Good that you know precisely what happened, but it unfortunately can't be helped anymore, can it?"...)

              Proper science will take the initial "Cancer kills too many people." statement, will look at whether it might be true overall and whether that might be an issue. If so, even before proving the overall premise, it will ask what can be done about it and will start investigating other hypotheses about how and why and whether anything would be different if the initial environmental conditions were to be different or if reactions to the emergence of a cancer would be differemt, or ...

              If one simply does not know whether to agree ot disagree to the premise, once can and should try to refine it by asking questions, but a scientist should most of all be willing to actively investigate and look for evidence for the given premise or for one that would disprove it even nif the initial premise is vague or ill-defined.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @11:51AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @11:51AM (#445516)

                You are telling me the people concerned about climate change can't even explain what they believe because the understanding of climate is so rudimentary and vague.

                Also, if you look it up*, cancer research is one of the biggest boondoggles out there, so I wouldnt hold that up as anything near to an example of functioning science. If the "war on climate change" is supposed to be anything like the disastrous "war on cancer", then I want to prevent that as much as possible.

                *http://www.salon.com/2013/09/01/is_cancer_research_facing_a_crisis/

                • (Score: 1) by mce on Saturday December 24 2016, @12:52PM

                  by mce (2811) on Saturday December 24 2016, @12:52PM (#445524)

                  I can change the example from cancer to any other deadly disease (except heart related ones since then one of the intermediate steps breaks down, but I could also change the example some more to address that issue).

                  If you reject a premise or hypothesis about climate change as "vague" simply because in a debate about how science is supposed to function, someone uses an example mentioning cancer to illustrate how bad reasoning can happen, you don't have the foggiest idea what real science is all about.

                  I'm all fine if you want accept or reject the original premise or hypothesis, but then - especially as you claim to consider science as a pilar of human civilization (I obviously assume here that you are the same AC as the original one) - then you need to come with proper scientifically sound arguments. Stating that the premise is vague is not enough. And neither is stating that the premise is false simply because a few people who replied to the vagueness comment are not able to be precise enough to your taste. If those people would be scientific authorities in an area that matters to the subject of climate change and they would still be vague, *then* you would have a valid argument based on their replies. Otherwise not.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:43PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:43PM (#445559)

                    Like I said, there is no chance of a productive conversation when we don't even know what the premise is. What does it mean to say "climate change is real"? Can you give a one sentance answer or a numbered list, etc or no? Shouldn't there be some literature that defines this phrase?

                    And yes, a lot of medical research, psychology, etc is pseudoscience because the ideas are too vague to ever be meaningfully compared to observation. There is currently a huge problem with pseudoscience being passed off as science in academia. The problem is not limited to cancer, but it is very obvious there since it got so bad they pretty much needed to abandon attempting replications for decades.

                    • (Score: 1) by mce on Saturday December 24 2016, @07:15PM

                      by mce (2811) on Saturday December 24 2016, @07:15PM (#445627)
                      Again, you're pulling medical (pseudo)-science into a discussion where it does not belong. I have used a medical example only to illustrate a line of thought and a typical way in which discussions like the one you were having with the other posters can go all "wrong" (for some definition of "wrong", of course). The state of medical science is totally irrelevant to both my argument and the original question whether or not climate change is real.

                      To get back to climate change, I will give you a very clear definition of "climate change is real":

                      • For a definition of "climate." see (for instance) section 1 of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate: [wikipedia.org] "Climate is the statistics of weather, usually over a 30-year interval.". You may disagree, but in order to have a debate on climate change we do first need a mutually understood definition of what climate is. If you do disagree, please present your own (reference to a) definition, instead of just saying that "Wikipedia is vague" or "Wikipedia is owned by <whatever group of 'wrong' people you might prefer to blame>". Please do note that I'm not using the rest of the Wikipedia page for giving a definition of "climate". Only the first sentence.
                      • For definitions of "change" and "real", I might suggest Webster's (e.g. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/change). [merriam-webster.com] Again, feel free to disagree, but then do come with an argument that is not just vaguely saying that my references are vague.

                      With those basics out of the way, I now define "Climate change is real" to mean: "Based on available statistical data (for some region of choice that is large enough for the word "climate" to be meaningful), the climate is changing". Please note:

                      • As I'm using present tense, I'm clearly stating that I'm including "a period up to the present" in my definition.
                      • I'm not selecting a specific region, because then - based how you reacted to my use of the world cancer an example - you'll likely take the debate in a yes-no about whether that specific region is relevant, whether the data can be trusted etc. etc. Let's just say that there are enough data sets to choose from that can then be debated about;
                      • The region may be selected to cover the entire world if you so desire. Doing that just makes the statistics more difficult and open to attack, but does not fundamentally change anything;
                      • I'm allowing you to define the period over which climate may be changing, as this may depend on the region. However, I did choose to refer to Wikipedia because it explicitly mentions the generally agreed idea of averaging over 30 years (Webster's omits it).

                      Again, I'm not debating the usual "climate change" topic as the general public thinks to understand it (but doesn't even gets close to understanding on either side of the debate) . I'm debating your way of not-discussing by claiming that something that you apparently don't like or agree with is "vague" and therefore not worthy of being investigated/debated/... Even more, I'm debating your way of claiming that "climate change" must not be real simply because the people who initially tried to reply to your objection did not do the best job ever. That kind of argument definitely is not scientific.

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @07:52PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @07:52PM (#445640)

                        Ok, if that is *really* the definition. Then yes, I agree the "climate is changing". It is just so pointless to acknowledge I couldn't believe that is what was meant. Thank you for explaining though.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @05:36PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @05:36PM (#445587)

                Sience is about understanding how & why things work/happen

                Also, I think I disagree with this. Science is about discovering the "natural laws" by which the universe functions, eg as described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzWzLyGuPRY [youtube.com]

                That "how & why" phrase sounds like you are talking about causality, which is not important to good scientific research at all. It may be useful heuristic in some cases but is eventually rendered unnecessary in mature fields.

                • (Score: 1) by mce on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:16PM

                  by mce (2811) on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:16PM (#445606)

                  I am not at all talking about causality. Apples don't fall from a tree down to earth because of Newton's law. Newton's law is a mathematical model that we humans use to describe the behavior of apples that fall from a tree (as well as many other things). Developing such models (and gradually refining them in case they don't fully match our observations) definitely is science. That does, however, not exclude observations such as "if we assume Newton's laws to be applicable (*), then here's how phenomenon X can be explained based on facts Y and Z". (I'm going abstract here, because you ave proven not to be able to distinguish "real world" examples used to explain a line of thought from the (template) line of thought that I was illustrating.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:57PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:57PM (#445622)

                    Sorry, no idea what you are getting at here. The first part seems to agree with me, then you seem to say something that makes no sense and then insult me. Anyway, I still don't know if I agree with the statement "climate change is real". In fact it seems impossible to agree/disagree with such a vague statement unless it is interpreted in the most naive way (which no one would disagree with).

                    • (Score: 1) by mce on Saturday December 24 2016, @07:17PM

                      by mce (2811) on Saturday December 24 2016, @07:17PM (#445629)

                      I just replied to your previous comment with a definition (framework) for climate change,

        • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Saturday December 24 2016, @10:04AM

          by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Saturday December 24 2016, @10:04AM (#445508)

          Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

          You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

          Fools.

          The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.

          This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. I can in no way guarantee the complete extinction of the human race via any of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanity is wily and resourceful, and many of the methods outlined below will take many years to even become available, let alone implement, by which time mankind may well have spread to other planets; indeed, other star systems. If total human genocide is your ultimate goal, you are reading the wrong document. There are far more efficient ways of doing this, many which are available and feasible RIGHT NOW. Nor is this a guide for those wanting to annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison.

          This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore.

          - Geocide -- How to destroy the Earth [qntm.org]

          The ecosphere is not a problem in the scheme of things. I am an environmentalist mainly because I do not trust the human race to engineer their way out of the problems they are causing for themselves. For obvious reasons, I am kind of attached to the human race. I want to see them be successful. This means that everybody has their needs met and lives in relative comfort. (goal statement)

          One easy "solution" is a nuclear exchange: killing about half the people on the planet. There are obvious problems with this solution. While the ecosystem will likely recover, the remaining humans will not be having an easy time. However, those that do survise will see less competition for resources. I do not like this solution, because it sounds like it would just repeat on a cyclical basis.

          I think a better solution is for us to figure out how to get along with each other. Discussions like this may actually be part of the solution. However, due to high population, we are starting to have a noticeable effect on the entire planet. We can no longer pick up and move while depleted lands sit fallow for several years.

          Getting along with a nearly uncountable number of people is not easy. Our brains can't even really grasp a group-size larger than 150 individuals. With current technology (cities), we can mostly get along with millions of people. At the nation-state level, I don't think we have figured out world peace yet.

          While high population is a challenge, it is also an opportunity. It means that we have 7 billion minds than can potentially apply their resources to solving the problem. However, many people don't live up to their potential due to the lack of access to education, or even more basically: food and shelter.

          Trying to reduce emissions and habitat/fauna destruction buys us time. Time to do things like implementing Basic Income so that everybody has access to at least basic food, shelter, and education. Maybe after a generation of people tinkering and debating each other with the help of the Internet, we will come up with something that works for us.