from the calling-for-compulsary-education-by-skipping-education dept.
Across the world Friday, students skipped class to protest their governments failure to take sufficient measures to curb climate change.
It all started with 16 year old Greta Thunberg of Sweden:
who began holding solitary demonstrations outside the Swedish parliament last year. Since then, the weekly protests have snowballed from a handful of cities to hundreds, fueled by dramatic headlines about the impact of climate change during the students' lifetime.
Thunberg has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize for her efforts.
The protestors are calling for a list of anti-climate change actions and solutions including:
Our Demands
- Green New Deal
- A halt in any and all fossil fuel infrastructure projects
- All decisions made by the government be based on the best-available and most-current scientific research.
- Declaring a National Emergency on Climate Change
- Compulsory comprehensive education on climate change and its impacts throughout grades K-8
- Preserving our public lands and wildlife
- Keeping our water supply clean
Our Solutions
- The extraction of Greenhouse Gases from the atmosphere
- Emission standards and benchmarks
- Changing the agriculture industry
- Using renewable energy and building renewable energy infrastructure
- Stopping the unsustainable and dangerous process of fracking
- Stop mountaintop removal/mining
In a speech Friday outside the United Nations HQ in New York, Alexandria Villasenor, one of the founders of Youth Climate Strike U.S. said:
world leaders weren't listening. "Our world leaders are the ones acting like children," she said. "They are the ones having tantrums, arguing with each other and refusing to take responsibility for their actions while the planet burns."
At one of these planned protests a year or two back, permission forms were sent home in advance so kids could get parental permission to participate in skipping school and protesting. Kids who didn't participate were taunted and harassed by the other kids.
How does your school treat such events?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday March 16 2019, @07:57AM (31 children)
The so-called teachers that set this absurdity up need to be named, shamed, and to work far away from children.
And maimed.
WTF!?!?!?!
For once I am unironically thinking of the children. As a child, there are all sorts of indignities you must endure. This scat shouldn't be part of that.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:02AM (28 children)
So your worldview can't allow this to be the children thinking for themselves? Or are the teachers guilty if they taught the children to think?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:06AM (17 children)
Doen not matter anyway. If greta had been against predatory banking instead, she would still be alone outside the parliament.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Arik on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:14AM (16 children)
Their security are not encouraged to consider their orders in any way beneath the law.
This is a "protest" carefully orchestrated by privileged elements of society.
And, I'll say it, perverted elements. Not in a sexy way.
Just ick.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Touché) by sjames on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:33AM (12 children)
So if I have this right, not wanting the Earth turned into a hellworld is just some crazy conspiracy from the tri-lateral commission of some junk?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aiwarrior on Saturday March 16 2019, @09:14AM (4 children)
To be honest I find a protest like this much more legitimate than the corporativist society that runs in my country, always squeezing the tit of the taxpayer for public worker raises.
Furthermore at least in my country this was a grassroots campaign outside traditional parties of the oligarchy. Maybe this makes their campaign weaker now, but developing a civic consciousness for something which is dear, our land and soil (and oceans) is a kind of civics that have not been in the news for some time.
Something that worried me though is that most of the protestants were girls. More and more I think boys are being left out. Not completely out of their own fault of course, but worrying nonetheless. Their unfitness to the modern school system and a care-free attitude may be very harmful for their potential
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Saturday March 16 2019, @10:36AM
Entirely unsurprising. If the plan was instead "dig a tunnel under the Swedish parliament and pack it with explosives" most of the participants would have been boys. As a sweeping generalisation, males strongly prefer direct action over sitting around discussing things. Which also goes to your point about boys being left out in the school system. I do not claim to be an education expert but even I am aware that being required to sit in a classroom; behaving; advantages those who are predisposed to it already. Which; as we noted above; appears to be be strongly correlated with gender.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:50AM (1 child)
Boys have been hearing for 30+ years that they don't matter, that the future belongs to girls. So it's not surprising they feel less responsibility to shape their own future -- if they do, they're much more likely to be villified for it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aiwarrior on Saturday March 16 2019, @07:36PM
I actually do not feel like we have been told anything like that. I actually think we had a head start and squander the initiative natural to the masculine gender on bullshit like getting high and looking "cool". More: the competitiveness of the modern world should be a boon to masculinity!
Instead boys become soft and looking for aesthetics and meaningless dabbling instead of trying to beat the game. We see girls playing the long game, showing daring behavior for their interests. Beating the modern game of media and civic action.
PS: One thing that always annoyed me about people who were great at having fun is that they destroyed their lives with no accomplishments and enter the age of responsibility with no accomplishment. Very clever and dear people who literally wasted their lives and will have a very hard time recovering. This is related to my biggest grudge with weed: Not that it is immoral, but a waste of humanities' best asset if done daily: it's intellect.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 17 2019, @07:59PM
On the other hand, police are less likely to rough up a girl...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday March 16 2019, @09:56AM (5 children)
Nobody disputes the importance of the stated goal. Which means nothing. Everyfuckingbody states a noble ultimate goal. Free the oppressed from the nobles, free the proletariat from the bourgeois, avenge the oppressed German people, make America great again...
What is happening is a reorganization of leftists. You cannot leave the youth getting their info from meme laden Chan's so you organize protests are n the most unifying theme.
Now, it is entirely possible that a truly global movement succeeds in reducing emissions but Arabs China and Russia and the Pentagon must be on it, for real. Remember the recent CFC in the atmosphere. But that list of demands points in the other direction, a generic scope under which whatever monstrosity can be done, and we all know how socialism, red or black variety, seems to always end up in such things.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday March 16 2019, @10:19AM (3 children)
Lol and forgot, the cult of personality. Hail Greta. At least other movements like Italian cinquestelle try to break free from it. In fact cinquestelle is the closest thing to a left wing movement and lefties hate it...
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 16 2019, @07:27PM (2 children)
yes, of course, a 16 year old girl is plotting world domination and she's duped the entire left for her evil machinations.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 17 2019, @10:54AM (1 child)
>is plotting world domination
Is this really the complete space of possibilities you could come up with? Do you even 8-bit?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 17 2019, @07:57PM
You're the one that invoked a salutation to the Emperor of Rome.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @03:10PM
There will be lots of pollution as long as China is populated. The pentagon can fix that.
The same goes for the rest of the world, really. Eliminating non-Americans would make world pollution much less significant.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:22PM
It's a nice emotion. But is it really worth making things worse in order to show that you care? Nope.
What's going on here is that a bunch of schools (including some around Denver where I'm currently staying) which shutdown completely or partially, creating all kinds of unnecessary wastes of resources, time, and effort, just so some educators could virtue signal. Even with global warming, Earth is not going to be a hellworld. And disrupting society for one's faddish cause of the day isn't going to improve anything.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:32PM (2 children)
That is, after all, how women's lib got started. Bunch of old rich women at the country clubs, bored to tears with their worthless lives, decided they should have all the rights that men have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:08AM (1 child)
Women's lib was not an engineering problem. CO2 emissions are. To solve this engineering problem, stay home form school kids.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:17AM
Women's lib was a social engineering problem.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Arik on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:09AM (2 children)
Unfortunately, when they do, they're labeled as problems.
This is not independent thought. It's carefully regurgitated and preprogrammed.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:25PM (1 child)
You seem to have labelled these kids as a problem. Ergo, these kids are thinking independently. Oops? Stop contradicting yourself.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 17 2019, @10:57AM
>You seem to
Wrong premise leads to wrong conclusion.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:07PM
Irony of ironies, this.
It's widely been written out of history of education, but a strong force in the so-called "high school movement" of the early to mid 1900s was to get politicized teenagers off the streets and to curb their dangerous impulses that could be politically disruptive (in the U.S., this was often framed in terms of concerns about socialists).
Prior to this time, most teens just went directly into the workforce after primary school (some even earlier). The major driving force for public education in the late 1800s had been training good industrial workers with basic skills like reading and arithmetic. Why should we waste time on the masses with high school, though?
Because new child labor restrictions meant it was getting more complicated to just work kids to death... meaning kids had more time, and youth back then (as today) were likely to be swept into radical ideologies and movements.
So, we jail them in schools to (1) give some "civics" instruction (indoctrination), and (2) break their spirits through structured time that discourages independent thought.
And now we apparently find it shocking that students will skip school for political protest!? This is the very reason we put them in schools in the first place -- to prevent this sort of dangerous radical nonsense!
Thanks to Arik for reminding us of the true roots of public education and its purpose. We definitely need to beat this crap down immediately.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rich26189 on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:27PM (5 children)
Yes, it's possible the teachers taught the children to think. Another possibility, there was a lot of coaching and prompting.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 16 2019, @07:48PM (4 children)
As opposed to the ideologically neutral education you received when you were that age?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 17 2019, @10:59AM (3 children)
I think he received little education, or he would not be posting here. You too.
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 17 2019, @08:02PM (2 children)
I note that you are posting here as well...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday March 18 2019, @01:30PM (1 child)
Thank you to explaining the joke.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 18 2019, @06:49PM
You're welcome.
(Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:23AM
Relax. The day ending in "y" is a solid enough excuse for teenagers to skip school. I went to school with folks who would have skipped to protest women's suffrage. About half of them female. Even among those who knew what "women's suffrage" meant.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @10:05PM
Read your own words and contemplate just who is the bigger danger. People advocating for their home (planet) or someone advocating draconian punishments for people they don't agree with.
The ignorant are just SO ANGRY that anyone pops the bubble of their worldview that they advocate killing the educators. Astounding.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:04AM (14 children)
>All decisions made by the government be based on the best-available and most-current scientific research
My AI wonders... what such a government would do on overpopulation studies.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Touché) by MostCynical on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:07AM (1 child)
Soylent green.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Funny) by robpow on Saturday March 16 2019, @09:15AM
That’s News to me!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:12AM (1 child)
What really rustles my jimmies is the fact that very few of those students really want that. They don't want nuclear at all. Instead, what they truly want is bellythink PV solar and wind because they understand it, or so they think.
I'm so tired of both sides of this climate change business. Either they don't believe it or they do, but none want a real modern solution.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:39PM
There is no drama in a solution. Historically, women often get pissed at men who offer solutions. The women prefer to sit around, and talk about their feelings and shit. If a problem is solved, then those feelings are no longer legitimate, so the women have to seek out another problem to boo-hoo over.
It's amazing how much politics are like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:17AM (1 child)
The obvious solution is to have an AI decide on how to resolve that problem, and just remove people from the decision-making process entirely since everyone is biased.
What could possibly go wrong? [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday March 16 2019, @03:49PM
You'll just get something indecipherable. 42 for instance.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aiwarrior on Saturday March 16 2019, @09:24AM (3 children)
Your AI would probably distribute next day pills which cannot be controlled by men. Your AI also would reduce birth mortality and infant death, because there is evidence that it reduces the number of children per couple.
Another thing your AI would do is force schooling of girls and empower them without fear of repression. Wherever women have a say in society the fertility numbers drop abruptly. If your AI was the Stalin kind (no people no more problems) it would probably execute men for domestic violence crimes. Domestic violence is a very complicated problem and a plight of our human condition :(
And hey! I am a man and would like to have 4 children, to which my wife said: "Keep dreaming". Of course in another society I would just override my woman into her "role", but alas this is not the way things work, and she is a "Turing test passing being" that has the $DEITY given right to freedom.
I really would like all prejudices to treated with a Turing test. That is how i guide my moral compass. If a person spoke with me and I would not distinguish her/him from any other through her conversation then there is freedom to be respected.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Saturday March 16 2019, @09:43AM (2 children)
Well, technically she can't completely prevent you from having 4 children ...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday March 16 2019, @10:21AM (1 child)
My sister says Bobbitt.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Saturday March 16 2019, @07:59PM
Jesus I did not know this Bobbit affair.
I actually interpreted that the possibility of having 4 children would be through extra love making and polygamy :D
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday March 16 2019, @10:27AM (1 child)
I think this already happened, and they hired a consultant ... Thanos, I think his name was?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:25PM
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:59PM (1 child)
One child policy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_planning [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 17 2019, @11:02AM
MY AI reads one child policy and thinks 6999999999 children too much.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:34AM (18 children)
Swiss TV interviewed a bunch of high schoolers who are involved in this. They mean well, but they are so naive that it hurts. I suppose we were all that young once.
The moderator tried to guide a discussion between the kids and some elder politicians and business types. At least they had one person on the show who dared question the climate change "consensus". All sides were polite (this is Switzerland, after all), but they were completely talking past each other. Absolutely zero communication.
It was just too painful to watch. I had to turn it off...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday March 16 2019, @09:50AM
I mean, they are a form of skills, and they *are* kids, so ... yeah, they haven't learned this stuff yet. I agree completely, though -- maybe they all need some basic training in this kind of televised debate/interview.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:10AM (13 children)
The part I find most sad is that older people know instinctively that most of what these teenagers want will come to nothing when the get a few more years under their belt. It's not that older people don't care about the environment - it's that the entire topic is more nuanced than a bunch of slogans.
Corporations don't usually have comic-book evil CEOs holding a lever marked "dump toxic waste into stream". Corporations by-and-large are owned by other large institutional bodies - like superannuation funds. Which bring us to the ironic situation that the middle class is ultimately responsible for great deal of corporate behaviour. Or; to put it another way; the students' parents. Yes, your parents might separate their garbage like good stewards of the environment, but their pay-cheque (and by extension, the student's existence) isn't all that squeaky-clean.
The best solution I have yet seen to this problem is The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement [vhemt.org]. Whilst I wish Greta Thunberg and her compatriots all the best, my prediction is that within fifteen years she will be a mother and; as such; causing even more damage to the environment.
Every little bit counts, so it's good that the next generation is taking steps. But then again, the Boomer generation had its hippies, Gen X had Captain Planet [wikipedia.org] and we still have a problem. Most people care about the environment, but that never seems to trickle down to walking instead of driving to ballet lessons or agreeing to pay twice as much to heat the house in winter.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:36AM
I agree with most of what you said, but:
Whilst you're very probably right here, I know that as a teenager I would have found this sort of attitude deeply insulting. It might be true as a trend, but it's basically a form of ageism. You're robbing them of their own personal agency in a way because no matter what they do or say, their age is one thing they cannot change (without some help from good old Father Time). The other comment about them appearing very naive in an interview is fairer because it still gives them the chance to buck the trend, get informed and deny the preconceptions about their age group.
All that said, what's happened in the past is every generation has had a handful of serious environmentalists that will stick to their beliefs throughout their life and then a whole load of other fickler, more impressionable people that just jumped on the bandwagon at the time and abandoned those principles when their lives changed. That doesn't mean that these kids aren't different this time, so I hope you're wrong.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday March 16 2019, @12:23PM (6 children)
Voluntary extinction?? How can you possibly be any more cynical than that?
> Corporations don't usually have comic-book evil CEOs
Disagree. I've seen and heard some of the bozos who landed in a CEO position through inheritance or some other criteria that had nothing to do with merit. The way they talk and think really is comically evil. Let me relate the main points of a speech the CEO of a major HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) manufacturer gave the troops one evening that I attended the (unpaid, of course) gathering:
1. He whined that he could have made more money if he'd sold the company and invested the proceeds in the stock market. He was disappointed that we were not working harder, making it worth his while to do us the favor of staying in his CEO position. We had let him down. But, for our sakes, so that we would all have jobs, Daddy stuck with us helpless children even though he felt we weren't really deserving. Wasn't he a swell guy? He was patting himself on the back so hard he must have wrenched his brain where it was connected to his shoulder.
2. He didn't believe in this Global Warming nonsense. But, if it was true, then GOOD, because the company would get to sell more air conditioners. Bring on the warming!
The audience mostly looked fidgety, uncomfortable, embarrassed, and bored. They were all waiting for him to shut up and sit back down. No one dared talk back. Probably anyone who did speak up would've been fired on the spot. He of course was clueless about his audience's real feelings. Not that he gave a damn anyway.
So, maybe Global Warming is not the root cause of our woes. Global Warming is merely a symptom. Maybe it's our institutions that give great power to such idiocy. I have always found it weird that our democracy stops at the corporate border. Our corporations are run like medieval feudal societies, not modern democracies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @12:40PM
No one forces you to work for this company, not sure what you are whining about.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:46PM (1 child)
Some of us non-conforming assholes look for opportunities to "talk back". "Hey, boss, you're so full of shit, you're embarrassing the adults here!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @06:35PM
Helps to have "fuck you" money.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by acid andy on Saturday March 16 2019, @04:15PM (2 children)
This is one of the most valuable quotes I've seen here in a long time. It becomes particularly relevant as the size and power of corporations begins to dominate all of society, as it has now.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 16 2019, @05:39PM (1 child)
Butbutbutbut MUH FREE MARKET! WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA AND FREEDOM YOU FUCKIN' COMMIE?! Which is basically what we're told whenever we point that out. I have no idea how this happened; maybe it's just greed being that powerful and ignorance being that pervasive.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 17 2019, @11:25AM
Corporations are the result of the free market like the corrupt bureaucrat is the result of socialism. The probably intended result, in fact there seem not to be a moment when free market exists before big interests, or when socialism exists before a statal bureaucracy. The french revolutionaries had their red hat (o look ancient religious symbol) from day 0.
Democracy? What do you mean? When we the people say "do one thing" and representatives conform? Just look at brexit. Just don't look at the 90% yea to the abolition of subsidies to political parties in Italy (if you find problems in determining the year, we voted in 78 93 and 00). Did that stop the subsidies? YES They are now called reimbursements.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:36PM (4 children)
No, they are holding a leaver called "need my fucking stock options and golden parachute" and fuck the collective world. Most of these people don't do evil to do evil. They do anything to make money for themselves, not shareholders. And if that includes some evil, then fuck the peasants and shareholders. Just look at most of the large companies and where most of the profits go. Look at how GE fucked over recently all because of bad bad management. Look at how BA keeps lying to everyone that "plane safe" but had a program that relied on a 1 sensor entry to crash a plane. Same for FAA that certified such a monstrosity.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday March 16 2019, @04:10PM (2 children)
So what? The results are exactly the same. Even most comic book baddies have motives. And quite a few of these CEOs and politicians are certainly psychotic enough to be at least partially motivated by an enjoyment of the non-consensual infliction of suffering.
The other half of the problem that I've mentioned before is the massive, almost infinite, dilution of responsibility that human society and the corporate system particularly instigates. Employees do as they have been trained to do. Consumers do as those around them do. Their actions have negative effects, but no-one is directly responsible for the harms that happen. The problems are far, far deeper rooted in humanity than any one person or group of people. If some people refuse to behave in line with the corporate norm, others will be brought in to carry it on. Because the decision making process is incredibly spread out across many thousands of people and also learned from and developed in reaction to millions more, it's almost impossible for any one person to fix it. We're all a part of this. Our actions do indirect harm yet we continue them because of the culture we were conditioned to be a part of.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Informative) by deimtee on Sunday March 17 2019, @03:44AM (1 child)
This is actually one of the things that Mr Orwell explained in his rather famous book, but it was apparently a bit too subtle and is often missed.
It is the use of power that these people find exciting.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 17 2019, @12:24PM
I call it "control", the deepest ring in my model of hell. Lust for money, then wealth, then power, then control, hello satan. I never thought about my model of paradise but it must be some mirror image, like: charity, authority (over self, mind you), justice, sacrifice.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @04:24PM
a. adjust the trim wheel at least once per 5 seconds
b. set the flaps down at least 1 notch
Either will do, disabling the software. Adjusting the trim wheel is something that a pilot can be expected to do, perhaps with a bit of bewildered cursing about why the setting keeps getting undone every 5 seconds.
If the sensor isn't bad, another option is autopilot.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:16AM
Politicians in the making? ;)
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:33AM
It always elevates any discussion to include at least one flat earther or antivaxxer.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @06:31PM
We were that young once, but back then we could have had radical but diverging opinions without being unpersoned (as much as today).
The students have been conditioned the last 10 years or so that "Freedom of the press" is great (everything the press says is true!), "Science" is great (once hypothesized, it never changes!). The press has been trumpeting a Chicken Little story on Global Warming, insinuating that "science has proven it".
Since Trump, besides having beat the chosen candidate Hillary, doesn't pay absolute lip service to the one acceptable opinion on Global Warming, he gets named in every "End of the world is nigh" and "It rained in California" story for his foolhardy intransigence. The students are concerned, good on them for taking interest in their world, but they are not being taught to be critical about media anymore (they risk their lives to inform us!). That has become crimethink.
The elder politicians and business types know not to believe everything that's in the paper. But if they fall out of line too much, the unpersoning and deplatforming mobs will come after them too. Better to just wait it out, once they're dead, the living can fuck things up as much as they want.
It's not about communication, it's about grandstanding, virtue signalling, and trying not to be "called out" and shunned for saying crimethink. Just like trying not to get burned for heresy in 16th century Spain.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @10:47AM
Funny how the science of climate change can insult their religion so much.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:22AM (5 children)
"How old are you?" Dianne.
"I’m 16. I can’t vote." The girl.
"Well, you didn’t vote for me." Dianne again. foxnews.com/politics/dianne-feinstein-scolds-kids-who-pushed-her-to-back-green-new-deal-i-know-what-im-doing [foxnews.com]
Green New Deal, by the way, check the Price Tag on that one. $93 trillion according to our American Action Forum. Lot of money. And we just did the biggest Tax Cut in history, where's the money. Oh, we left it in the pockets of the American Companies (& People). Sorry!
(Score: 2, Informative) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:47AM (1 child)
(cont) By the way, the Link. Where they have the Itemized Break Down of the $. And its so much money it might litterally break our Dollar. The biggest Items being the Guaranteed Jobs costing up to $44.6 trillion. And, the Universal Health Care costing $36 trillion. americanactionforum.org/research/the-green-new-deal-scope-scale-and-implications [americanactionforum.org]
Very expensive and I'm doing those for a lot less. I've repealed burdensome regulations and instituted very tough Tarriffs, while lowering Taxes massively, allowing our magnificent Industries to create millions of jobs.
And I'm working with our best people in Congress to pass the Universal Health. That one is going to be called Trumpcare. It's going to be like what they have in Canada. What they have in U.K. But, without the horrible taxes they have. Same thing, a lot less money -- it's what we do. Need to get that one through very quickly. Because ObamaCare is imploding FAST!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @04:25PM
Wow...all this for your Eiserner Vorhang.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:55AM (1 child)
Yep. The cost was $30 trillion ten years ago. And the cost will be $300 trillion ten years from now. Who's gonna pick up that tab?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:41PM
How about we don't do that? Instead, let's rationally look at what works and what doesn't. For example, US society works great, despite repeated claims to the contrary. It's not going to work any better, if we drop into full austerity mode because we borrowed far more than we already have.
And how about instead we take a hard look at our spending, cut back on the corporate welfare crap, the reverse-Robin Hood entitlements (like Social Security and Medicare) that take from the needier, and the regulations that impose far more cost than benefit? I think that'll have a far better price tag and benefit than the Green New Deal will.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 17 2019, @12:30PM
> check the Price Tag on that one. $93 trillion
If this gets through, this is the highest allowance for kids on record, ever. Wow.
Account abandoned.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @12:21PM (1 child)
Nothing to see here for now. The only possible thing of interest is who is pulling the strings of the barbie dolls.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:46PM
Looks like some snowflake was triggered.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:18PM (1 child)
if they can acctually propose nonsense like carbon trading then one wonders
why something technically simple like "netmetering" isnt implemented?
carbon trading isnt about installing some "meter" at the exhaust pipe/stack
but rather measuring how much (liters or tons or cubic meters) of carbon is present BEFORE
oxidizing it.
if you want a quick honest and big leap towards solving global warming then ALLOW netmetering.
no new tech needs to be installed. for old and reliable "spinning wheel" meters nothing needs to be done.
absolutly nothing.
for dumb "smart meters" its reprogramming or flipping a switch to tell it to not ignore electricity production.
in switzerland the feed in tarif is utterly miserable. in thailand they benovelently allow you to install
grid synced solar but wont count backwards and will give you NOTHING for overproduction.
i am sure both countries when to admire the eiffel tower ...
both policies give close to NO incentive to install grid synced solar whilst "netmetering" would ...
and hand wringing and lamenting continues. fake, duplicite and evil is all that comes to mind.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:42PM
You know that SOx trading has been extremely successful and why most of North America doesn't need to worry about acid coming down from the sky anymore. I know that most people don't remember how shit pollution was back in the 60s, but maybe stop using your rose colored glasses and see how bad it used to be. SOx trading saved North American forests.
Same shit with CO2 trading. You set some limit for industry and then those that implement tech that saves emissions, can trade their CO2 to someone else for whom it's not economical (yet). And just like SO2, CO2 doesn't care where it comes out of, as long as it comes out. You can have Carbon Taxes (simpler than trading), but trading is not inherently bad because you don't agree with it.
Anything is better than nothing. When shitting in your environment has no cost, then you'll get more shit in it. It's as simple as that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:57PM (22 children)
All we had was snow. Now you can script school on drought and heavy rain too.
In all seriousness well done kids, but it's going to take more than that to get the attention of the adults who don't give a fuck about the planet.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:59PM (21 children)
Because that's the problem, right? The US, for a glaring example, used to have an awful pollution problem in 1950s and 1960s. But it got fixed, because of those adults who supposedly don't give a fuck about the planet. Hopefully, some day you'll see that just saying something doesn't make it real. A real thing is the vast improvement in the human condition since the beginning of the Industrial Age, including pollution. An imaginary thing is the idea that certain vague parties are holding us back with their bad attitudes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 16 2019, @05:44PM (17 children)
It got "fixed" mostly by outsourcing it to the third world, shithead. And, this may surprise you, but up in the atmosphere there aren't any national borders, and things like osmosis and the jet stream don't respect those anyway. We no more "fixed" the problem than a child who shoves all her laundry and toys under her bed has "cleaned" her room.
The one major example of something we DID fix, the CFC issue, was brought to awareness this way as well. Why, oh why, do I have a feeling that if you'd been around and politically active in the 80s you'd be spouting the same shit about people trying to get the Montreal Protocol passed?
And to top it all off, you have the utter, concentrated, Pyrex-corroding *gall* to accuse THEM of selfishness, inaction, naivete, and ignorance. Go to Hell.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by khallow on Saturday March 16 2019, @06:40PM (14 children)
Ah, yes. There's that irrelevant talking point. It remains true that pollution was vastly reduced in the developed world despite what the peanut gallery says. And as more of the world achieves developed world status, contrary to the narrative, the places that heavily pollute will continue to decline.
While it doesn't take much courage to oppose the minor evils of the world, truth is still an absolute defense against your accusations.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 16 2019, @06:54PM (13 children)
You're beyond redemption. It was outsourcing that pollution to the underdeveloped world that made the developed world less polluted. That was mainly in the form of manufacturing. Where will the developing world outsource ITS manufacturing pollution to to become developed, huh? How do you propose to make the entire world "developed?" The places which continue to pollute are doing it at the behest of other places, "developed" places, which are cynically taking advantage of their lax pollution and workers' rights laws to get the goods without the consequences. Which, as we are seeing, doesn't work. And yet you blame them. You may as well have blamed the slaves in the 19th century for getting captured.
Truth would be a defense against my accusations, *If you had the truth.* You do not, and so you stand not only accused, not only a liar, but perhaps incapable of telling truth from falsehood any longer. Irredeemable. And I will continue to point this out in excruciating detail for anyone who has the misfortune to stumble across your self-serving horseshit on this forum.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 16 2019, @07:57PM (12 children)
Your coin is worthless! I do what I feel is right. Not what will get me ahead in some imaginary karma piggy bank.
[...]
There's been a remarkable global trend towards greater wealth, lower fertility, better health, lower pollution, etc throughout the world. These don't all happen at the same time and same rate, but every part of the world is seeing these improvements. When there's no more places for pollution to be "exported to" because everyone has become developed world? Then there's no more of that pollution. It's pretty simple.
Their lax pollution and worker's rights laws happen because they are poor not because of some exploitation which actually makes the situation better. Being "exploited" by a multinational business means that one is tapping indirectly into the wealth of the developed world and more quickly improving one's circumstances than being "exploited" by the local, poorer businesses. That in turn means that the society is more rapidly approaching the time when they too can have good pollution and workers' rights laws among other things.
Funny how you have zero evidence for your blathering. I'll continue to point that out for the hapless reader as well.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 17 2019, @05:36AM (11 children)
You're, again, irredeemable. You're another self-serving thoughtless hack who thinks the way to end poverty is to keep overstuffing the already gluttonous, crapulent rich so that maybe, maybe, MAYBE, a few more table scraps will fall to the ground for the poor to fight over, conveniently ignoring the fact that the rich simply build larger tables, as it were, when this happens. You are deliberately ignoring what is being said to you and simply restating the very talking points that have already been debunked.
We get it, "my coin is worthless" and "you do what you feel is right." Thanks for at least admitting that "muh feelz" is the start, end, and middle of your epistemology. I mean it's not like that wasn't already completely obvious, but thanks for saying it explicitly anyway.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:14AM (10 children)
The very definition of moral bankruptcy. You continue to spend and I continue to not care.
The pattern of unfounded accusations continue. Worthless.
When the "debunking" is nonsense, then there really isn't anything else to do.
The difference between us is that I thought about it. My feelings line up with my rationality. That's why you have so much trouble with morality beyond the reach of your arms. You're just an animal who happens to know how to type. I think you can do better, but the real challenge is for you to think to be and do better.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:39AM (9 children)
You may have actually outdone Uzzard for the All-Soylentil Projection Championships with that one. You are fooling no one but yourself; just because you've managed to convince yourself that you're correct doesn't mean you are. In any insane asylum there are people who believe as fervently as you do, and they are equally deluded. You haven't lined your feelings up with your rationality; you've *justified them to yourself* using your own self-serving bullshit.
I cannot imagine being that self-absorbed, that selfish, that utterly self-involved. Your mind must be like a black hole. I leave you with a warning: the saying "hell is other people" is 100% completely antipodally wrong, and you are going to find out all too soon why this is so.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:53AM (8 children)
And yet, there you are. You went through the effort of constructing this imaginary khallow straw man. It wasn't for our benefit. Did you even bother to read a word I wrote?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:51PM (7 children)
What strawman? It's your own words. Anyone who reads your posts and peruses your post history will come to the same conclusion. This place is infested with human Klein bottles and you're one of the type specimens.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 18 2019, @05:27PM (6 children)
You didn't quote me even once. It's not my own words.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday March 18 2019, @09:35PM (5 children)
Your own words are what are condemning you. I don't need to quote you, because this is a text forum and people can read your bullshit the first time. Why would I waste the space? Keep it up, jackoff.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 19 2019, @12:28AM (4 children)
Then there's not much going on.
Meanwhile I quote you so those same people know which bit of bullshit I happen to be referring to.
Argue rationally and on topic. Present a more convincing argument. Even make it so that the reader doesn't even need to read the "bullshit" the first time, if they so choose.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 19 2019, @12:40AM (3 children)
You're an endless fountain of masturbatory bullshit. No one is going to out-argue you, because you've decided ahead of time that they won't. I'm not engaging with you for your sake, you worthless sack of crap; I'm doing it, as has been stated many times before, for the sake of anyone unfortunate enough to stumble across your corrosive idiocy.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 19 2019, @05:14AM (2 children)
Well, remember you weren't trying, and apparently never have tried. So how would you know?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 19 2019, @06:49PM (1 child)
Oh, is *that* what you tell yourself? My God, you really are a living, breathing (your own jenkem), walking Klein bottle.
The upside to your permanent case of rectocranial inversion is that, like the others on this site who suffer from it, you don't comprehend the amount of damage you do to yourself just by posting. Really, nothing I say or do damages you more than you do; I'm just running a highlight reel, basically.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday March 20 2019, @01:07PM
Let's look at that post again.
You're just making a bunch of noise because the reader somehow will be impressed by that. That's what you said, not what I'm telling myself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @06:42PM
Recycling is mostly a sham. We are swimming in a sea of plastic one use containers. Then pretend we are recycling by putting them in the green bin. I saw this years ago and people would get very angry at me for pointing it out. I was not 'environmentally conscious' for pointing out we ship our garbage to china and africa.
What I used to buy my coca cola in
https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/GUEST_9de8872b-bd33-4793-b6eb-f58de3d3e90a?wid=488&hei=488&fmt=pjpeg [scene7.com]
What I buy my coca cola in now.
https://previews.123rf.com/images/kornienko/kornienko1512/kornienko151200005/51774341-chisinau-moldova-november-12-2015-photo-of-coca-cola-plastic-bottle-isolated-on-white-background-coc.jpg [123rf.com]
I picked that example because they are the ones who funded that campaign in the 60-70s with the crying italian actor dressed as an indian. We are manipulated at a vast scale. The advertising agencies can control what we think. They do not even really mean to do it. They just want to make a buck. Coca cola did it because their bottle reuse program cost a fortune. By getting us to pick up the trash they can save billions. We just get to pay for it with pollution.
trying to get the Montreal Protocol passed
Calm down you are creating a hallucination and then attacking it. It is easy to get worked up. We have no idea how that person would have acted. Even if getting rid of that stuff helped us quite nicely.
I was in high school. To call these kids naive or anything is silly. There were a few nutters in the crowd that were really into it. The vast majority saw these things as skip days. Hopped in their cars and hit the malls. We want to pretend as we get older that somehow these kids are stupid or whatever we make up. But they are just people like us. They have the same motivations (mostly selfish). For a kid in school a basically sanctioned skip day they are going to be all over that. I know me and my friends would have. You may think I am a terrible person because of that. It may be true. But it is true what I say wither you like it or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:16AM
It got fixed By catylitic converters and increased combustion efficiency, also hydroelectric and nuclear power and scrubbers on coal plants. Now we switched largely to natural gas power. There's some wind power, in areas too. We are not using less power.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday March 16 2019, @09:29PM (2 children)
Some don't give a fuck, but I'd say the more serious problem is that sense of helplessness and futility, and the lack of good options. What can one person do? There's a lot that can't be be changed quickly.
I switched to compact fluorescent lighting, and now to LED lighting. I went for low power computers, first going for the 80plus power supplies, and setting them to sleep and hibernate (and fighting the problems of PCs having buggy hibernate functions that were not tested under Linux). I pushed the family to accept higher indoor temperatures in the summer and lower ones in the winter. There was lots of whining and pushback about that. However, it worked. I cut my parent's annual energy usage from 10,000 kWh to 5200 kWh.
I've thought of getting solar for the roof, but I don't feel comfortable with the numbers. A 30 year payback is just too long. A solar water heater is a great idea, but I have found none at a reasonable price anywhere within 1000 miles of where I live. I hear solar water heating is real common in Israel, and California of course has that sort of stuff. But here? One business was asking $15k to convert a home. That's just crazy, when I can buy a new water tank for under $500, and 20 years worth of energy for heating water for $5000.
Commute to work by bicycle, in America? Likely to get your ass run over if you try that. Seriously, the transportation system in America is majorly hostile to all forms of transport other than the almighty car. Biking lanes and sidewalks have gaps. Biking takes longer, and everyone is always in such a big hurry. And you'd arrive at work all sweaty and stinky. Maybe you could do grocery or pizza runs by bicycle? It's bad enough trying to dodge cars while riding an unencumbered bike. Try that while carrying a load of groceries. There are even hostile drivers who think bicycles shouldn't be allowed on streets and they will purposely run you off. When I was a kid, an old lady who must've been going senile did that to my brother. Would have seriously injured or perhaps killed him if he had not jumped the curb and leapt off his bike. She yelled at him through her opened window to get out of the way and stay off the streets, as if she hadn't attempted vehicular assault and the whole incident was his fault. Those sorts of considerations are what makes it so tough to quit the car.
Many times I have tried to walk only to be thwarted by a bridge that has no room at all for pedestrians. One bridge I walked had a shoulder, but no curb, and damned if a senile old fart didn't nearly take me out by accident. You know, the kind of old man driver who can't take a corner very well any more, misjudges his speed and goes way too fast, and not only crosses inside the white line on the inside of the curve, but even gets 2 of his wheels completely off the pavement and into the dirt, and just keeps right on motoring ahead, oblivious. He almost scraped the side of his car on the bridge railing as I was approaching on foot. Since that incident, I've gotten a lot more picky about the sort of bridge I'll attempt on foot. And that, by the way, was in Austin, Texas, a city which has a reputation of being a teensy bit more environmental. Feels like we have little choice but to wait for baby boomers and their deeply ingrained car habits to die off.
Attitudes about cars are especially exasperating. Okay, fine, for now it's impractical to eschew the car. However, we could at least have better cars, starting with much, much better aerodynamics. But you can't even get people to let go the oversized front grill opening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @12:06AM
Where I live, every now and then, there is a campaign to promote changing heaters or HVAC systems to more efficient ones... but fixing the insulation, installing heat exchangers for air and water... those have way less campaigns, sometimes zero (exchangers? what is that?). When the proper thing is to fix the insulation first, and any new houses be built with best insulation possible, best general orientation (not possible in cities, but fine in single houses) and other things that cost zero like selecting window size based in Sun.
But you probably know why: because those measures could mean a house that has even less consumption. Same about longer lasting things or small gardens for self consumption. Economy, or better said "must grow at all costs market" is between the sword and a hard place. After the automation factor, it gets even worse. If you don't push the crap of your field (let's say toys), you don't eat or get clothes, and the neighbour will lose the job too later when you can't buy his crap (say shirts). Death hug.
BTW, last LED light we are getting here fail worse than crappy CFLs of years past, and those were already worse than first CFLs. Price is similar, but we are buying them faster, so more money... and more waste. Last batch even stopped liying about duration, down from 40000 to 15000 hours, but diying in two years (always on would be less than 18000h). Last CFLs I remember were marked as 10000, and lasted around that. The circuits and general soldering of LEDs are crappier (one lamp flicks for first 10-30 secs when cold), and the designs seem to be infradimensioned for heat output and uncapable of limiting current once one part fails, when with LEDs those factors are key (one I opened had chips with black dots). And no, I am not imagining it, I started marking lamps when transitioning to CFLs, so I know when they were installed and can estimate daily usage.
Some cars of the 80s had aerodynamics (Cx) as good as current, and they were smaller too (Cx per surface), making them better. The 90s or 00s had worse Cx, and the size has gone up, so they are worse in general. Past week I saw a modern 5 door (hatchback) VW Polo [wikipedia.org]... as I don't follow cars much I thought it was a Golf, because it was as big as 90s ones [wikipedia.org] (it looked bigger, probably optical effect, they are becoming "visually heavier" as time passes, and until recently, also "fatter in kg"). The front grill was small, mostly closed, some European brands just use colors to fake the size.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:38AM
If this were in the US, you'd be speaking of somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 per year, which includes cost of resources and human labor, but probably not all of the externality of the power. Even in a place like Germany which supposedly has factored in those externalities , it's still $1000-1500 per year. That's just not much return on a considerable imposition.
If there was nothing more important than the conservation of physical resources, then human extinction would be a reasonable strategy. No humans to consume resources is optimal after all.
But since we don't want that, we have to consume resources in order to survive and to do the things we want to do. It turns the easy problem into a hard one.
And one thing to remember about optimization is that one can only optimize so far. For example:
Much, much better aerodynamics isn't much better than the present aerodynamics. Even perfect aerodynamics will experience wheel friction loss and similar things.
I find it telling, for example, that Ford and GM are planning to abandon all vehicles subject to CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy). The economics of mandating very high levels of fuel efficiency are backfiring in this ending of significant parts of the US economy.
Another example is from the AC replier to your post:
But if you're look for larger vehicles, because you want or need one, then it's no longer better to get a small vehicle. Larger vehicles haul more stuff, are more comfortable, and do better in crashes, for example. "Better" is relative.
My view is that extreme conservation of resources is misguided. We don't use resources merely because we want to waste resources or we hate Gaia. It's because we do things that are more valuable than those resources which are consumed. Even modest impositions can be more costly than they're worth. Getting a car that doesn't do what the driver needs it to do is an even bigger waste of resources.