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[ED NOTE: Editors discussed whether we should even run this story. I decided to take a chance. BUT, it's up to the community how this goes. Feel free to downmod comments that attack the *commenter* rather than *add* something to the discussion.--martyb]
Growing extremism can and has turned almost anything into a political struggle in which people pay diminishing attention to the topics and more to the 'tribal' group that they may be associated with. We've seen the effects on the functioning on the US congress, as well as in how laws on various topics have been playing out lately.
But the idea that without a center, things fall apart, may be more real than we thought, as this article at ScienceBlog about a Cornell study describes: https://scienceblog.com/527200/tipping-point-makes-partisan-polarization-irreversible/
It seems that up to a point, it is possible to reverse the polarization. Beyond that tipping point, it cannot. From what I've seen, the US is probably in the vicinity of that tipping point. The pattern described here sounds an awful lot like the period-doubling path to chaos, a mathematical construct in which a function that has a single stable state in one range of numbers starts developing two stable states, and then four, until stability is lost and the set devolves into chaos. If this reflection has any validity in the political or social realms, then we should also have seen the same pattern play out within discussions that turn to chaos.
Is there predictive power in this observation by the researchers at Cornell? If so, can anything be done to head it off, or are we all doomed to watch it play out?
Journal Reference:
Michael W. Macy, Manqing Ma, Daniel R. Tabin, et al. Polarization and tipping points [$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2102144118)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:47AM (61 children)
Came here searching for the place to say much the same.
I didn't know that there ever was a time when the "fabric" was whole. The center has never ruled, at least not in the US. Probably nowhere, ever. Human history is filled with violence because humans are violent.
Tipping point? I have no idea where the tipping point was, but I think we've passed it. https://soylentnews.org/breakingnews/article.pl?sid=21/12/12/0338238 [soylentnews.org] We have Soylentils gloating that people died in a red state, FFS. Journal entries have been posted on the same theme - gloating over dead people in red states.
The crazies are out in full force. I know which camp I'll gravitate toward. I won't be joining the camp, but I'll be around. I hope to see some of you there!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @06:00AM (50 children)
Toldja warming's coming with extreme weather events, ye didn't listen at the time and went ahead act crazy just to spite me. Ye started it, asshole.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Sunday December 12 2021, @06:26AM (14 children)
And I toldja that extreme weather events would happen anyway, no matter how climate changes. Here's another thing I toldja [soylentnews.org]:
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Sunday December 12 2021, @04:00PM (2 children)
Mathematically, they won't. Eventually, almost all weather becomes mundane, because the extremes will already have been hit in the past. It's only if there's an underlying trend moving the average that extremes will continue to be made.
Note - I'm not saying that this season is or isn't an extreme one, I'm simply addressing the mathematics of your claim.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:41PM (1 child)
Technically, given how crazy the world has been over its few billion year lifespan, would any sort of weather be extreme by your meaning above? Unprecedented weather is a subset of extreme weather which means merely weather well outside the present norm. The present norm would still exist even in the absence of climate change (which yes, I acknowledge is ongoing).
(Score: 3, Touché) by hendrikboom on Monday December 13 2021, @04:34AM
After al, remember the old days when rocks kept falling out of the sky -- enough to keep the ground molten?
Neither do I. I'm only 75 years old.
I don't remember that kind of climate.
maybe ari?
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Sunday December 12 2021, @06:21PM (10 children)
this is dwarfed by non-climate factors like idiots building in harm's way
Can you name a single spot on Earth that is immune to natural disasters? The tornadoes weren't a flood in a flood plain, your statement is like Reagan saying "a rising tide lifts all boats" when only those who paid capital gains taxes had their boats lifted. Yes, people build in flood plains but these people didn't build their houses somewhere like Oklahoma where you can expect tornadoes. THIS WAS A HISTORIC EVENT, with the longest track and the most tornadoes in history. There is no way to prepare for tornadoes except to make sure you have a basement, which will save your life but not your house or its contents. Global warming is, in fact, what is causing the record breaking weather events almost annually for the last decade, Mr. Ostrich.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 13 2021, @02:54AM (5 children)
>Global warming
Thanks to the polar oscillation, which is causing record lows to be set in North America and Europe, we don't call it that anymore.
Now it's Climate change.
And, yes, those record lows are caused by unprecedented (in recorded human history) amounts of energy trapped in the atmosphere by CO2 and other factors.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 14 2021, @07:31PM (4 children)
Climate change is caused by global warming, which is the rise in the Earth's average temperature. To speak of one is to speak of both.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 14 2021, @09:00PM (3 children)
But, to call it warming when record low temperatures are being recorded is to invite idiots' derision and give them more fodder to yuk it up with their fellow idiots about how "dem scientists don' kno' nuttin!"
Climate change, due to increased retention of heat energy, is the less easily lampooned and more complete description.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 18 2021, @08:50PM (2 children)
Yes, that is indeed why they don't want to say "global warming" even though both the mean and median temperatures are rising, but I don't say or refrain from saying something just because people are stupid and ignorant. Stupidity is to be pitied, not kowtowed to.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 19 2021, @05:32AM (1 child)
Making it harder for idiots to ignore the facts is far from kowtowing - it's edjamuhkashun.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday December 19 2021, @06:04PM
Education is explaining the facts to them. Yes, idiots are hard to teach, but it ain't rocket surgery.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday December 13 2021, @04:36AM (2 children)
And when Antarctica melts completely, sea level will rise to something like 90 metres.
I'm in Montreal. I thought I was on high ground. Guess not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @01:02PM
There has to be a joke about Montreal and high ground hidden in there . . .
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 14 2021, @07:34PM
By the time it's that bad, everyone will be long dead.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @10:58PM
Bunches. Most of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico, for example, excluding California, obviously.
No risk of major earthquakes. Little tiny ones happen sometimes.
Not enough trees for a wildfire.
Much too far from the ocean for a hurricane or tsunami.
Tornadoes really only happen farther east.
There are no deadly diseases, like malaria.
Too warm for a destructive winter storm.
Too dry for a flood.
No active volcanoes nearby. Even the Yellowstone supervolcano is out of range if you go far enough south, not that it's a realistic threat on the timescale of a human lifetime.
The only major thing that might happen is an asteroid strike. Obviously, that can happen anywhere, but the risk of it happening in any particular place is extremely small.
Beyond that, your biggest risk is getting bitten by a rattlesnake.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 12 2021, @07:14AM (33 children)
When I was just a little boy, I sat in a classroom, and listened to a teacher explaining about the end of the ice age. It was an awesome story, with mastodons, and saber tooth tigers, and all sorts of really cool stuff. I listened to the history of the world warming, and I asked way back then, "Well, how warm is it going to get?" It doesn't take a freaking genius to figure it out. You don't need a rocket scientist, or even a rocket surgeon. No need to spend 18 years acquiring a super-duper doctorate's degree in interpretive underwater basket weaving. We were exiting an ice age, the earth was warming up, and a lot of history demonstrated that the earth was continuing to warm.
Maybe, just maybe, the earth is 3 degrees warmer today than it would be if there were no men on the planet. Maybe. But, the earth was going to warm, with or without men.
How many of you understand that Antarctica was once a tropical paradise? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/17/antarctica-tropical-climate-co2-research [theguardian.com]
Hey, people. The earth is growing warmer.
Adapt.
Adapt, or die. Your choice. You decide. Just please stop your incessant whining. And, turn down CNN noise - it grates on my nerves.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @07:37AM (2 children)
> No need to spend 18 years acquiring a super-duper doctorate's degree in interpretive underwater basket weaving.
> We were exiting an ice age, the earth was warming up, and a lot of history demonstrated that the earth was continuing to warm.
And then we burnt 65 million years worth of trees in 100 years.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @08:09AM (1 child)
Yeah - we did that. Now, show us cause and effect, and prove it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @03:52AM
"Yep, we did it, and you'll never prove it."
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @08:27AM (2 children)
(the disconnect is strong with this one)
only to switch ye saying t'
Shuddup, Runaway, an' git busy adapting. Or die, ye choice.
An' yeah, realize (or learn) mah gloatin' has no bearin' on your choice, nature will deepfuck ye asshole anywho. And your granddaughter's too, her even deeper then yours, 'coz things ain't gonna get better.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @10:21AM (1 child)
What you're saying is that he's chosen the, "molest your own kids in the (rain)showers", method spoused by Biden [then24.com]?
It's a free country--he can clearly fuck his own kids.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:46PM
Josh Duggar? Is that you come to lecture us on morality?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @03:29PM (11 children)
I guess nobody ever explained Continental Drift to you or that Antarctica hasn't always been at the South Pole?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 12 2021, @03:57PM (10 children)
Continental drift takes millions of years. For Antarctica to have "drifted" to the south pole in less than 100,000 years, the crust of the earth would have been so fluid that the continents should have sunk into the molten lava beneath them.
And, it didn't take thousands of years for Antarctica to ice up, either. Didn't take tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. I've searched and searched for an ancient article I read many years ago.
They took an ice core, something like 2 kilometers of ice in the core. Sectioned it up, and started analyzing what they found. They found tropical ferns at the bottom. Not some rotten sludge that eventually got frozen, but fern leaves. Tropical ferns that were obviously alive and healthy, then frozen overnight, and encased in ice before they could decompose.
Perhaps the entire continent wasn't frozen overnight, but it didn't take hundreds of thousands of years either.
Again, they have found the remains of mammals and marsupials in Antarctica. Dinosaurs are no surprise - dinosaurs were around for many millions of years, and your continental drift theory allows for them to be there. But mammals and marsupials haven't been around all that many millions of years.
The icing of Antarctica is a much more recent event that previously thought.
I suppose it's time for you to fall back on carbon in the atmosphere as "proof" of something or other. Except, some studies have shown that temperature rose before triggering carbon release, while other times, the carbon seems to have triggered a rise in temperature.
What it all comes down to is, we don't understand climate change nearly so well as so-called scientists want to pretend.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @04:19PM (2 children)
They certainly understand it better than Runaway does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @04:34PM (1 child)
Nice post. You demonstrate an understanding of - nothing.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @04:55PM
the crust of the earth would have been so fluid that the continents should have sunk into the molten lava beneath them.
Continents "float". Didn't they tell you that on Fox News?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:49PM (2 children)
> What it all comes down to is, we don't understand climate change nearly so well as so-called scientists want to pretend.
And so....? Shut down monitoring stations? Nobody understands the tides, God did it, I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 13 2021, @02:10AM (1 child)
So...can you explain what the Little Ice Age [wikipedia.org] was all about, then? It was an abrupt, significant shift in climate that happened within recorded history. Did reforestation efforts in Asia bring about the drop in temperatures because it pulled too much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere? Was it the climb in the whale oil trade that was responsible for dumping enough CO2 back into the air to warm things up again?
After all, if all climate change is anthropogenic then there must have been something in their climate accords and industrial policies then that caused it, right?
Or, maybe it's possible for the climate to change quickly without humans having much to do with it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @11:26AM
Sure. Look at the mass extinction boundaries. Lots of events can occur.
But "climate change gaused mass extinctions in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event [wikipedia.org] without humans involved" doesn't in any way imply that human-driven climate change isn't powering a mass extinction, right now, as I type and as you read.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday December 12 2021, @06:32PM (1 child)
Perhaps the entire continent wasn't frozen overnight, but it didn't take hundreds of thousands of years either.
It wouldn't have to. An asteroid strike like killed the dinosaurs or bigger, perhaps coupled with volcanic activity could cause a rapid global cooling. There was an item on Nova last week about the rise of mammals that stated that global cooling helped kill off the dinos; it got cold rapidly and took years to recover.
Imagine if an asteroid hit Yellowstone? We wouldn't have to worry about global warming any more, North Americans would be dead and Europeans, South Americans, Asians and Africans would be scrambling to stay warm, even on the equator.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @04:40AM
Younger Dryas Impact was the most recent asteroid strike. Right around the area you mentioned (US/Canada northwest). Did exactly what you surmised. Climate went mental for about 2000 years afterwards.
I wonder how long it takes a planet to return to a climatic "normal" after such an event...12800 years is peanuts when discussing events of that magnitude.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @12:15PM (1 child)
Yeah, it took a few million years to ice over.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/how-long-has-antarctica-been-frozen/ [sciencefocus.com]
Sorry for quoting the ENTIRE thing there, I hope it's not too long.
Just because you have something intact in ice, doesn't mean conditions changed instantly. They just changed instantly for that one thing at that particular time. Also, ever heard of this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicksonia_antarctica [wikipedia.org]
So, it survives just fine, like many many plants, in the frozen areas. You have ice there and the plant and the plant still alive. It's not exactly a tropical sweet potato that was found in ice now, was it?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 13 2021, @12:40PM
The terms used were "tropical fern", not "arctic fern". Nice try though.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:06PM (14 children)
Yes, the Earth would likely get warmer anyway, but it's a question of rate. The change of rate since the start of industry is quite extreme.
Here's the obligatory XKCD:
https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:29PM (13 children)
Yeah, Randall buys into Al Gore's hockey stick chart. We've known that ever since Randall published that particular comic. Let's remember, it is a comic.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mhajicek on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:34PM (12 children)
A comic based on real data. There are many such charts from many different sources, and they have slight variations. The overall result is the same though. In order to disbelieve the hockey stick, you have to ignore all the data.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:42PM (7 children)
Then where are the error bars?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:52PM (2 children)
What is this, peer review? You're a comic, dude.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 12 2021, @06:23PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @01:26AM
lolbags
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @06:27PM (3 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 13 2021, @12:22PM (2 children)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @05:01PM (1 child)
The point is you are an anti-science shill who uses pseudo science to sow doubt. You are the W O R S T sort.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 13 2021, @11:54PM
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 12 2021, @07:39PM (2 children)
Whoa now! Waitaminit! You're going to act like Al Gore's hockey stick was REAL DATA?!?!?!?! Even die-hard man-made climate change fanatics have disowned Al Gore's chart. If that chart had any relationship to reality, we should almost all be dead by now. It should be 100 degree F or more at both of the poles.
Any chart that resembles Al Gore's chart is a comic.
And, I thought you were being serious for awhile there. You fooled me!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @07:42PM
https://news.yahoo.com/ocasio-cortez-world-going-end-150517060.html [yahoo.com]
This is the kind of moronic shit flowing from the mouths of liberals that make you all look stupid. Lay off the hyperbole, and stick to some kind of rhetoric that associates with reality from time to time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @12:14AM
And 'ere ye go crazy again [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 13 2021, @02:59AM
>you have to ignore all the data.
No, you don't. You only have to ignore the data which disagrees with your point of view, like they always have done anyway. The fact that 99% of the data disagrees with their point of view this time is immaterial, all that other data wasn't collected by "their people" the ones they trust, the ones who tell them what they're paid to tell them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @02:20PM
And you'll accept that anyone who lives in CA and complains about earthquakes or fires is a fucking retard?
(Score: 5, Touché) by helel on Sunday December 12 2021, @03:01PM (3 children)
I don't feel like one AC troll is proof of much at all. If people posting stupid and hurtful things online was the point of no return we'd have passed it in, what, 1985?
When you have leaders you consider bad but everyone agrees on the systems used to put them in power and replace them later you get the (relative) stability we've enjoyed. The problem comes when a large enough group stops accepting the systems of power exchange and starts breaking the rules, both legal and conventional, to exclude their opponents. How would requiring prospective voters to show their vax card before casting a ballot sound to you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:54PM
That sounds like enhanced election security. Gotta stop them darn legals from voting.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 13 2021, @03:09AM (1 child)
I'm pretty sure we had flame wars on BBSs in 1982, at 300 baud it was hard to tell sometimes, but there was definite animosity in those short discussion threads.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @01:09PM
We had flame wars on the town square in 1482.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @03:20PM
Let's Go Newsom!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @06:10PM (1 child)
Because you did it to yourselves you idiots.
Scientists and the left have been warning you for decades.
And even this won't convince you of the need to make changes to reduce AGW.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 14 2021, @01:41AM
Why should it? You've already mentioned one of the problems with the narrative. There's been a lot of warning with significantly less climate change for decades. If that change is slow enough (and well, I think it at present is slow enough), then the need to make changes to reduce AGW is in the future not the present. We have other important tasks than just maintaining a particular level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 13 2021, @11:59AM (2 children)
Actually in most places for most of the peaceful, sane times where you can leave the house and not be summarily detained, those are the times ruled by the CENTER. Maybe you just don't recognize what CENTER actually means -- it means people from different sides of the debates can understand each other and come to sane conclusions. You know, like a compromise.
I don't know any such gloating but it seems like a logical conclusion, no? You don't want vaccine, you are more likely to be dead. Period.
You know what a sane center on this debate would look like?
1. one side wants mandatory vaccines to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. Let's call them ANTI-VIRUS or AV group
2. one side wants freedom from vaccine (and even little things like masks) and doesn't believe virus leads to overwhelmed hospitals contrary to evidence. Let's call them PRO-VIRUS or PV group
compromise -- since AV values hospital access over freedom and PV values freedoms over hospital access, mandate priority access to hospital for non-COVID patients. For COVID patients, AV group is priority and PV group only on best-effort basis provided there is ample spare capacity. Then AV group will stop insisting on vaccine checks and mask mandates.
Can we live with that compromise or is it all-or nothing plan?
As a centrist, this would be a good compromise and since we have vaccines now, it's one way to start to "live with the virus" as it's definitely not going away. I would be more than happy to live with this compromise.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 13 2021, @01:16PM (1 child)
And, when exactly was that time, in US history? Americans have ALWAYS HAD a boogeyman to worry about. Right up until the late 1890s, Native Americans were subject to massacres, on the whim of any Army officer in the neighborhood. Then there's the racist anti-black history of the Democrats and their military arm, the KKK. Since 1900, we've had fewer, but continuing, actions against Native Americans, Blacks, Asians, two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and dozens of less publicized military actions around the world.
Now you go ahead and find me a couple of peaceful months in the history of the US.
We've always been at war with someone. Are you saying that the rational, sane center is responsible for all that killing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 14 2021, @12:30PM
What I'm saying is this,
https://www.history.com/news/the-story-behind-the-famous-little-rock-nine-scream-image [history.com]
On one side you have the extremists that are afraid of things like having black people in same room. On the other, you want people to have instant-integration and to beat the bigots into submission. The result is small steps, one at a time, that pulls the extremists towards the center. Once you lose that pull and compromise, that's when trouble starts.
And about "always at war with someone", that's a completely different topic that has little to do with internal cohesion in the country.