mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

hector

Acceptable? As manifest destiny goes.

Let's say we do destroy the earth for human life and all others that rely on the same things we do. What do you think might happen?

Or what would happen if a cataclysmic event not of human doing does the same thing? Would the same thing not happen?

Do you think we are so intelligent as a species that we can avoid the inevitable fate that has taken all the species that have been here before us?

Evolution is a bitch. And even tougher when the universe is trying to kill you. Sure we can be better human beings, a better species. Cutting carbon emissions and using less energy.....blah blah blah. But we have to curb our arrogance at some point in thinking we are responsible for everything on this planet.

So long as we keep procreating at this rate, no measure of being good to the earth is going to matter. So that is my final argument on the matter. It's not what we take/do to the earth, it's the volume of which we do it and we are not stopping at 7 billion.

z31maniac

Don't cut yourself on that edge, bro.

hector

I would say its more like saying you believe in liberal views but don't consider yourself a liberal.

​​​​​​Isn't that what I'm doing right now?

But seriously , how about you tell me which social injustices you believe in that really get you worked up? Things you cannot tolerate.

ridethecliche

iTrader: (2)

Are you honestly naive enough to believe that all liberals believe the exactly same thing?

And no, your last question has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I don't keep a list of pet issues in my back pocket with a response for why I was #triggered (I made a funny!). Your oversimplifications are incredibly amusing.

Frank has cancer. Chemotherapy exists that research has shown will prolong his life expectancy by a decade with a 75% probability. At the rate science is progressing, there's a good chance that there may be some new curative treatment is discovered based on multiple clinical trials in progress. Should Frank take the chemotherapy? Surely death is inevitable. What's the damn point anyway.

Yours is such a strangely self fulfilling prophecy. I'm having flashbacks to reading Camus for the first time in high school.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

That's pretty much how all prejudices / stereotypes work.





This is a specific scenario that I have a lot of trouble with, personally.

The return on investment for performing an appendectomy or repairing a gunshot wound on an otherwise young and healthy person is quite high. The cost (both monetarily and in resources consumed) is relatively low for those procedures, and they will allow most patients to go on living a completely normal and productive life for many years, during which time they may contribute to society.

By comparison, the ROI for providing palliative care to patients with terminal illnesses is quite low. Cancer treatment (radiation / chemo) is costly and resource-intensive over a long period of time, and provides a relatively small benefit.

I'd like to believe that if I were Frank, I'd choose death over prolonged suffering and creating a resource burden on society. I'm assuming that in this hypothetical, Frank is a relatively insignificant person like me, whose passing will not be mourned outside of his family and friends, rather than being just weeks away from perfecting controlled fusion energy or faster-than-light travel.

hector

You are referring to one humans existence. Surely that person will want to live as long as he can.

When talking about climate change, you are not dealing with one person or one generation or one century of scientific progress. Climate change advocates feel we can save the planet by changing the energy we use and the products we make among other things. What I am trying to get accross to you is that it is simply not enough as long as humans keep reproducing at the rate we are. Do you feel that 40 billion people (just a random number) can live on this earth with life as you know it right now and zero emissions energy, etc? If you do then we have starkly different views.

ridethecliche

iTrader: (2)

Depends. What if that person can keep working through chemo or therapy. Not all cancer therapy constitutes resource burden. I also don't like thinking about it that way, maybe because I'm going to be a doctor, but that person was paying into a system or had insurance then it's their right to get treatment. Treatments are often measured in QALY's as well. The math works a lot of the time. If it's a clinical trial then furthering knowledge works for some people.

I do think that there is a trade off though. I also think that we should invest more in palliative care training because we think very negatively of natural death and want to do everything to fight it. Even ignoring the cost of this, the suffering it causes to patients is often a much worse fate than death would have been. I doubt many people would want to go through it again.

So your response is that we do nothing? Why are all these things magically mutually exclusive?

Alternative energy is getting far more efficient as time goes on. These also create jobs that don't have the same debilitating on the job issues as things like coal mining do. Right now we're heavily invested in fossil fuels because those industries have a lot of lobbying power and get a lot of kickbacks. Do you have any idea how much research on green energy goes on at Exxon-Mobil? They know their day is going to come and they're investing heavily into the future because they know they can't enjoy this forever. They do so much research into biofuels that it would make your head spin.

fooger03

iTrader: (2)

I will not deny that climate change...or wait, is it global warming today?..exists. I will, however, argue that it's probably a poor idea in the current global *climate* that we continue to tackle it in the way that the environmentalists want us to tackle it. Tackling climate change costs a substantial amount of effort to make a marginal change, and we are and will continue to pay for it based on the vocal minority, but at what cost? I don't feel much pain from the minorities efforts to reverse climate change, as I'm an upwardly mobile thirty something married to another upwardly mobile thirty something. It's really the underclass that feel the greatest pain. When we go all earth friendly, the things that we produce and the energy that we consume costs slightly more money, which isn't felt by the vocal minority who make more money than they probably deserve, but rather the underclass who scrape to get by every single day. Who cares if a gallon of milk costs an extra ten cents? You can guarantee that the single mom of three kids making $12/hr cares.

Also, when we put effort into mitigating climate change, but the rest of the world doesn't give a rats *** about it, then that makes imports seem marginally more attractive, which may be enough to shift a company's long-term profit analysis from "stay in the U.S." to "manufacture internationally". Basically, if we can enforce our own environmental protection standards on the rest of the world, then it finally makes sense to apply those environment standards to ourselves.

What I will deny is that climate change is as serious as - the people who are making obscene amounts of money off of preaching it - are saying it is.

hector

My response is that even if we can get cold fusion it won't matter if the planet is overpopulated by humans that require so much other raw and organic materials to survive as we know it. You're going to be a doctor right? Read! Are you going to cure a patients brain tumor by giving him aspirin for his headaches?

But you are rather hung up on whether I believe in environmental responsibility. Yes I do but I also believe in drill baby, drill! Do I believe in climate change as being caused by humans? Not to the extent most believe in and only to this country. That is to say that I believe America is as responsible as it can be. I have no idea how life is like on the rest of the planet and how those people are treating their environment.

No I don't but I would love for you to tell me. Please, feel free to make my head spin.

I may have stated it on this site but if not I'll say it as I've always said. I hope that one day soon we can become oil independent so that the Sheiks can drink it all.

Vashthestampede

iTrader: (17)

All I can say is you guys need to work more. The time you spend online arguing with one another you could be out actually doing something. Whether it be for yourself or someone else.

If you're at work wasting your time on this ****, then shame on your boss for being ignorant to it.
If you work for yourself and this is what you choose to do with your time, good luck with that!

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

I get more work done than all my other coworkers. That's what should scare you...

Vashthestampede

iTrader: (17)

That is scary.

If I could hire more people, good people, we'd be able to take on so much additional work. Problem is, good people are hard to find and a company is only as good as it's worst guy.....

Thankfully I'm the only one that runs the office side of things. A secretary would take work I bang out in an hour and milk it for the entire week.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

for Joe P:




who needs gun control when we can weapon cars so easily!

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

Because the hottest year in your lifetime was '96. It has not gotten warmer since then. This is why they changed from crying about global warming to crying about climate change. The movement is dominated by anti-capitalists who have an agenda. Please show me on this chart where humans caused global warming:



Was it about 12,000 years ago when Mesopotamians started cultivating grain in the Tigris/Euphrates River valley and driving all of their SUV's to take their kids to soccer practice? Or was it the flatulence of all of the woolly mammoths running amok?

What about the change at 132,000 years ago that preceded the Eemian warm period. The earth was about 2*C warmer than it is right now and the sea levels were a few hundred feet higher. Florida and half of Georgia was completely underwater and the city of Memphis was on the gulf coast.

We've had a prolonged period of extremely stable temperatures in our current era and it isn't normal. Expect climate change. Expect it to be sudden, prolonged, and disruptive to most life on the planet. Expect many species to go extinct. Expect billions of people to die. Expect you will not be able to do anything to change it.



Do I believe in climate change? Of course. It is real. Am I arrogant enough to believe we are influencing it in any appreciable manner? No. I don't believe we could stop it or even moderate it if we tried.

In the 1960s, scientists who needed funding were convincing segments of the public we were causing global cooling and they needed more money for research. They actually proposed sprinkling coal dust on the polar ice caps to raise the temperature of the earth. Then it was global warming in the 1990s they needed money to study so they rang alarm bells. Then it stopped getting warmer and they changed it to climate change because they still needed funding. But the real problem is there hasn't been much real change in the last 9,000 years and it's difficult to raise funds without a crisis.

Here's a zoomed in closeup snapshot of the relative evenness of the last 9,000 years (note the last ice age was OFF THE CHART cold):



Which one of the fraction of a degree rises and falls on that chart were cause by human activity? Those are tiny changes compared to the longer duration charts above it. We couldn't stop one of those changes if we tried.

olderguy

iTrader: (19)

But then you would be able to bang the secretary and not interfere with her workflow

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

telling headlines:

Republicans Now Control Record Number of State Legislative Chambers

115th Congress will be most racially diverse in history | TheHill

Braineack

iTrader: (62)