The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> writes:

> On Thu, 16 Dec 2021 02:39:39 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
> <rogblake@iname.invalid> wrote:

>> On 2021-12-15, The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:

>>> However I do think there is no hope of serious change for the better
>>> as long as China and India get a free pass while the rest of us do
>>> what ALL of us (including them) need to be doing.
>>
>> Just what is it that you think ALL of us need to be doing?
>>
>> I'm not willing to do *anything*.

[just one big snip]

> When I said "ALL" I meant that reducing emissions is somethat that
> needs to be done to reduce warming and that that "ALL" very definitely
> DOES need to include both India and China in reducing emissions if
> there is any serious hope of controlling them.

The guy's refusal is most likely political, since renewables have tipped
from being up-and-comers to now being the cheapest energy sources in the
medium-to-long term. It's simply good economics to switch to
renewables. He's probably an anti-vaxer, too.

From those "environazis" at that communist rag _Forbes_ magazine:

"Renewable Energy Is Now The Cheapest Option - Even
Without Subsidies"

<https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/renewable-energy-is-now-the-cheapest-option-even-without-subsidies/?sh=692bae405a6b>

> In my books any "solution" that exempts those two countries is a
> non-solution and most unlikely to be effective worldwide at least
> within the timeframe we are told is needed.

If all the big countries sit on their hands and say, "You first," then
the fossil fuel industries just keep filling the Super-PACs of U.S.
politicians and nothing gets done. I want my country to do the right
thing -- also the economical thing -- and lead by example.

-Micky

Micky DuPree <MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply> wrote:
> The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> writes:
>
>> On Tue, 14 Dec 2021 22:51:00 -0600, BTR1701 <no_email@invalid.invalid>
>> wrote:
>
>>> The Horny Goat wrote:
>
>>>> Geology tells us climate change has ALWAYS been with us long before
>>>> mankind but haa been connected to 'great extinction' events a
>>>> minimum of five times in geologic history. Some of these have
>>>> involved the extinction of 90-95% of species on Earth. Most of
>>>> these have required hundreds of thousands of years (if not millions)
>>>> to correct.
>>>
>>> Those were all natural processes-- nature doing its thing-- and
>>> therefore weren't something that needed 'correcting'.
>>
>> I get that - my point was 'we already have these examples of how
>> things can go sideways WITHOUT our "help" - we need to be active and
>> not asleep at the switch'
>
> Exactly. Deadly pathogens are entirely natural, yet we still take
> "unnatural" measures not to die from them. Nature does potentially
> deadly things all the times, but we take artificial steps to correct our
> situation and not die from these things. Everyone in this conversation
> has admitted to vaccinating against natural pathogens. It doesn't
> matter if it's Nature causing climate change. We still need to take
> active measures to mitigate or even stop it.

What hubris. You want to go mucking about with the natural processes of the
biosphere, assuming you know better how the world should work than a
massively complex system that has evolved over billions of years, all
because those natural processes have become slightly inconvenient for you.

>> However I do think there is no hope of serious change for the better
>> as long as China and India get a free pass while the rest of us do
>> what ALL of us (including them) need to be doing. I'd probably feel
>> different if the holdouts were Monaco and Upper Volta but China and
>> India are both top 10 emitters.
>
> It would nevertheless help enormously if the U.S., with its economic and
> political clout, set a better example and encouraged others to follow
> suit.

Better example? Even without being a part of the useless and
virtue-signaling Paros Accords, the U.S. reduced its emissions as a
percentage of population more than any other country on earth, including
the one in which Saint Greta (peace be upon her) resides.

On 12/29/2021 2:56 AM, BTR1701 wrote:
> Micky DuPree <MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply> wrote:
>> The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> writes:
>>
>>> On Tue, 14 Dec 2021 22:51:00 -0600, BTR1701 <no_email@invalid.invalid>
>>> wrote:
>>
>>>> The Horny Goat wrote:
>>
>>>>> Geology tells us climate change has ALWAYS been with us long before
>>>>> mankind but haa been connected to 'great extinction' events a
>>>>> minimum of five times in geologic history. Some of these have
>>>>> involved the extinction of 90-95% of species on Earth. Most of
>>>>> these have required hundreds of thousands of years (if not millions)
>>>>> to correct.
>>>>
>>>> Those were all natural processes-- nature doing its thing-- and
>>>> therefore weren't something that needed 'correcting'.
>>>
>>> I get that - my point was 'we already have these examples of how
>>> things can go sideways WITHOUT our "help" - we need to be active and
>>> not asleep at the switch'
>>
>> Exactly. Deadly pathogens are entirely natural, yet we still take
>> "unnatural" measures not to die from them. Nature does potential
>> deadly things all the times, but we take artificial steps to correct our
>> situation and not die from these things. Everyone in this conversation
>> has admitted to vaccinating against natural pathogens. It doesn't
>> matter if it's Nature causing climate change. We still need to take
>> active measures to mitigate or even stop it.
>
> What hubris. You want to go mucking about with the natural processes of the
> biosphere, assuming you know better how the world should work than a
> massively complex system that has evolved over billions of years, all
> because those natural processes have become slightly inconvenient for you.

I'm not sure you know what the fuck you are saying, but what you just
said is a human being shouldn't know better than a massively complex
atmospheric system. Your horseshit ideology has made you a fucking
vegetable just like RichA and it's fucking embarrassing. What an asshole.

Going further, we should really spell out what's happening: the right
wing denies science at every turn, whether it be climate change or the
pandemic, to play a game of "look at the shiny object" with the most
ignorant of the masses. Can you imagine what would happen if the
progressives got their way and we had free college? More and more
people would be educated and Republicans will cease to exist. Here's
hoping.

Micky DuPree <MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply> wrote:

>>. . .

>The guy's refusal is most likely political, since renewables have tipped
>from being up-and-comers to now being the cheapest energy sources in the
>medium-to-long term. It's simply good economics to switch to
>renewables. He's probably an anti-vaxer, too. . . .

Jesus fucking Christ

That's a followup worthy of trotsky. Micky DuPree has let the Usenet
community know she has no argument to make, just insults.

On Wed, 29 Dec 2021 04:32:29 +0000 (UTC),
MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:

>> I'm writing this during a break from a Youtube video on the origin of
>> skin color. I'm about 2/3 of the way through and like it a lot - it's
>> NOT political and is done by a professor in evolutionary biology
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc4OFcT5m1Y
>>
>> The sort of thing you're discussing plays a big part in her video.
>
>I'm going to cheat and ask you: does she subscribe to the vitamin D
>theory? That melanin protects the skin at the equator, but that less of
>it was a favorable mutation as groups of people migrated away from
>the equator and started getting less vitamin D from direct exposure to
>the sun?
>
Her 'spin' is more than in temperate climates (e.g. North America and
Europe) that Vitamin D is produced more quickly in paler skin people
than in darker skin people but that in ancient times darker skin
people had the advantage due to where most of the human race lived at
that time. She showed a picture of a white man and black man together
and said that both were able to produce enough Vitamin D but that the
black man took about 5x as long to do so.

She also made the point that this was crucial in ice age periods as
Vitamin D deficiency led to ricketts which lowered fertility
(particularly with respect to female health in the 15-25 age group in
pre-modern times) and that over a 1000 year period it did not require
a large difference in fertility to give one group a large advantage
over another. I emphasize she was talking in terms of statistics and
evolutionary biology rather than anything remotely resembling typical
southern views 150 years ago.

As I said, it's a very interesting video if you are interested in that
sort of thing.
>>> Sometimes the inability of a system to keep up with new perturbations
>>> leads, not to compensation for the changes, but to the opposite: an
>>> acceleration in the changes. This is "positive feedback," because
>>> the net effect is to keep adding to the changes (which is one case in
>>> which something that is "positive" is a bad thing). The global
>>> climate has been able to compensate for comparatively small increases
>>> in temperature since the industrial revolution, but we're nearing the
>>> tipping point from negative feedback to positive feedback, and that's
>>> why climate scientists are worried.
>>
>> Yup - and it really doesn't matter whether the anthropomorphic portion
>> is 20%, 40%, 60% or some other number - it's an existential problem
>> mankind has to deal with. Nobody knows where the tipping point is but
>> one look at Venus demonstrates there is such a point. Obviously a
>> runaway greenhouse effect like Venus would be catastrophic for life on
>> earth.
>
>The effects are already accelerating now, with more record-breaking
>weather events in the last 20 years than in the previous decades since
>human meteorological data started being kept (and which jibes with the
>geologicial records such as ice core samples, living tree core samples,
>and tree core fossils).

While I appreciate your point it's an awkward time to be reading this
for me as our area is currently going through a cold snap (and my car
is in the shop where I've just gotten a call from the mechanic saying
it's new battery time...) Obviously my experience is a fairly small
data point in the grand scheme of things.

>> Geology tells us climate change has ALWAYS been with us long before
>> mankind but haa been connected to 'great extinction' events a minimum
>> of five times in geologic history. Some of these have involved the
>> extinction of 90-95% of species on Earth. Most of these have required
>> hundreds of thousands of years (if not millions) to correct. To me
>> that's a problem different for most to grasp. They don't know how long
>> the extinction of the dinosaurs took but it was under 10000 years (how
>> much under is unknown) which in geologic terms is the wink of an eye.
>
>What we're looking at now is much, much, much faster, taking place in
>the space of a few generations of human lives, and some of those
>generations are already behind us.
>
Regretably I know exactly what you mean. Again - I really don't care
to argue what percentage of climate change is 'anthropomorphic' as
determining where 'tipping points' might be is subjective at the best
of times.

And I remain skeptical that a true solution is possible as long as
China and India demand "free passes" on emissions. After all - I'm a
Canadian and while theoretically we could get our emissions to zero by
mass suicide it wouldn't help the planet nearly as much as a 10%
reduction by those two countries.

> Adam H. Kerman
>
> That's a followup worthy of trotsky. Micky DuPree has let the Usenet
> community know she has no argument to make, just insults

Micky DuPree is a chick also?
Damn, I'm out of the loop…

The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> writes:

> On Wed, 29 Dec 2021 04:32:29 +0000 (UTC),
> MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:

>>> I'm writing this during a break from a Youtube video on the origin
>>> of skin color. I'm about 2/3 of the way through and like it a lot -
>>> it's NOT political and is done by a professor in evolutionary
>>> biology
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc4OFcT5m1Y
>>>
>>> The sort of thing you're discussing plays a big part in her video.
>>
>> I'm going to cheat and ask you: does she subscribe to the vitamin D
>> theory? That melanin protects the skin at the equator, but that less
>> of it was a favorable mutation as groups of people migrated away from
>> the equator and started getting less vitamin D from direct exposure
>> to the sun?
>
> Her 'spin' is more than in temperate climates (e.g. North America and
> Europe) that Vitamin D is produced more quickly in paler skin people
> than in darker skin people but that in ancient times darker skin
> people had the advantage due to where most of the human race lived at
> that time. She showed a picture of a white man and black man together
> and said that both were able to produce enough Vitamin D but that the
> black man took about 5x as long to do so.

Right. At the equator, the sun's rays are more powerful. In fact, I've
heard it recommended that people of all colors supplement with vitamin D
the higher up you go in latitude, especially if you don't spend most of
your day outdoors, but the darker your skin, the more you need to
supplement.

>> The effects [of global warming] are already accelerating now, with
>> more record-breaking weather events in the last 20 years than in the
>> previous decades since human meteorological data started being kept
>> (and which jibes with the geologicial records such as ice core
>> samples, living tree core samples, and tree core fossils).
>
> While I appreciate your point it's an awkward time to be reading this
> for me as our area is currently going through a cold snap (and my car
> is in the shop where I've just gotten a call from the mechanic saying
> it's new battery time...) Obviously my experience is a fairly small
> data point in the grand scheme of things.

Adding more net energy to the system leads to overall higher *average*
temperatures, but the short-term, localized effect can just be
*stranger* weather due to air masses not behaving quite like they have in
the past.

>> What we're looking at now is much, much, much faster [than change on
>> a geological time scale], taking place in the space of a few
>> generations of human lives, and some of those generations are already
>> behind us.
>
> Regretably I know exactly what you mean. Again - I really don't care
> to argue what percentage of climate change is 'anthropomorphic' as
> determining where 'tipping points' might be is subjective at the best
> of times.

Unfortunately, so far, it seems that climate projections have been
conservative (mathematically, of course, not politically).

There are things that can be done that don't force everyone to give up
electricity and meat, but since it involves discommoding powerful
interests, it's not something that can be done just by expecting
everyone to do the right thing, or expecting the voluntary efforts of
companies if the ones who do so will be driven out of business because
their competitors will continue to profit off of burning fossil carbon
and/or destroying carbon sinks.

> And I remain skeptical that a true solution is possible as long as
> China and India demand "free passes" on emissions. After all - I'm a
> Canadian and while theoretically we could get our emissions to zero by
> mass suicide it wouldn't help the planet nearly as much as a 10%
> reduction by those two countries.

I'm positive that if the U.S. just says, "You first," to those two
countries, jack shit will happen.

-Micky

On Thu, 13 Jan 2022 04:54:08 +0000 (UTC),
MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:

>> Her 'spin' is more than in temperate climates (e.g. North America and
>> Europe) that Vitamin D is produced more quickly in paler skin people
>> than in darker skin people but that in ancient times darker skin
>> people had the advantage due to where most of the human race lived at
>> that time. She showed a picture of a white man and black man together
>> and said that both were able to produce enough Vitamin D but that the
>> black man took about 5x as long to do so.
>
>Right. At the equator, the sun's rays are more powerful. In fact, I've
>heard it recommended that people of all colors supplement with vitamin D
>the higher up you go in latitude, especially if you don't spend most of
>your day outdoors, but the darker your skin, the more you need to
>supplement.

The video I saw suggested that in less tropical climates it meant
needing to be outdoors for 5x as long if you were black and that that
might not be entirely welcome in pre-central heating societies. She
also said there were evolutionary advantages to blacks vs whites in
tropical areas.

However the main point of the presenter was that over 10 generations
(much less the 5000-10000 year periods she was discussing) even a 1%
difference in metabolizing the key vitamins was huge in evolutionary
terms (avoiding vitamin deficiency diseases, ability to bear children,
having those children survive to adulthood that sort of thing)

I emphasize this biologist was strongly non-racist but was talking in
terms of physical advantages in pre-industrial societies in
evolutionary terms. She also talked about varying abilities to
metabolize milk proteins from various animals between various human
populations particularly in children.