Allegra Escorts Collective
Toronto Escorts

This Just In - We Are FUCKED

Jan 24, 2004
1,279
0
0
The Vegetative State
With all the current hulla-bulloo over the life or death of a single individual, it might be worthwhile to reflect on the seriously dim prospect for all of us:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4391835.stm

We are on the wrong side of a Catastrophe Curve - as time progresses, the environmental crisis requires ever more drastic solutions, and we are always about ten steps behind in our thinking. We are now in the process of enacting solutions to problems as they existed ten or fifteen years ago. That's inadequate, to understate the matter just a tad.

People ask me why I don't want to have children - the answer is simply that I have absolutely no faith that when my hypothetical children grew up they would have a world worth living in.

What disturbs me most about this is that this report pegs most of the blame with the post-WWII generations - that's you and me, folks. I think when all is said in done we may go down in history as the Worst Generation - though who will be around to write history, I don't know...
 

peteeey

Well-known member
Aug 18, 2001
1,722
150
63
What's the problem? We have the Conservatives and Republicans to look after our well being.
 

papasmerf

New member
Oct 22, 2002
26,533
0
0
42.55.65N 78.43.73W
Thank you, chicken little.
 

Truncador

New member
Mar 21, 2005
1,714
0
0
bbking said:
when you screw with the enviroment nature's little equalizer will fix it.
This naturalistic argument, restored to its original, theological form, goes something like this: "The sin of pride, through which Man in his rebellion introduced corruption and disorder into God's creation, will surely be met with a righteous vengeance"

I like Jeremiads better in this authentic, religious form than when they try in bad faith to present themselves as pseudo-science. Not only is their true nature laid bare in the open for all to see, but hell-and-brimstone fundamentalism has a certain rhetorical flair that no would-be technocrat could ever match ;)
 
Jan 24, 2004
1,279
0
0
The Vegetative State
Truncador said:
I like Jeremiads better in this authentic, religious form than when they try in bad faith to present themselves as pseudo-science. Not only is their true nature laid bare in the open for all to see, but hell-and-brimstone fundamentalism has a certain rhetorical flair that no would-be technocrat could ever match ;)
In what possible, conceivable, fathomable sense is any of this "pseudo-science"?
 

Truncador

New member
Mar 21, 2005
1,714
0
0
Drunken Master said:
In what possible, conceivable, fathomable sense is any of this "pseudo-science"?
If you're referring to the theory that Nature occasionally sends plagues to keep Man from destroying the environment- it shouldn't be hard to see that the giant invisible brain of Nature isn't something that any empirical science has ever observed or measured, or could (indeed, when pressed hard enough proponents of the Gaia theory will always proclaim the superiority of mystical intuitions to science, which they dismiss as narrow-minded and superficial).

If you're talking about the study linked in the OP: Every year for the past forty year some study or several come out which make the following claims:

-We stand poised at the brink of environemntal annihilation

-Man is the cause of the problem, and specifically:

-Excessive individual freedom is the root of the problem: the State hasn't done enough to regulate, monitor, restrict, and discipline the individual. The result is that the floodgates of insatiable greed, avarice, lust etc. have been opened, to the detriment and destruction of Nature (as an a priori, human desire is always destructive of the natural; the possibility of laissez-faire solutions to environmental problems are thus ruled out of court, it appears, as theoretically impossible in the first analysis)

-As a corollary, the "scientific" solution to environmental problems inevitably bears a striking resemblance to the pre-existing political demands of whatever socialist Leftist movement is pre-eminent at the time.

It is not hard to establish the extra-scientific origins of all these postulates. That, however, would not by itself establish this discourse as pseudoscientific. What establishes this genre as pseudoscience is that the predictions of calamity never do seem to come to pass- and yet the same predictions are made, on the basis of the same hypothesis, time after time and year after year. It is therefore clear that this discourse lacks the property of falsifiability that defines scientific discourse; like all ideology, it is a closed system of thought whose claim to the status of true knowledge takes no notice of the real (at least insofar as the real contradicts its assertions).
 

Asterix

Sr. Member
Aug 6, 2002
10,025
0
0
Truncador said:
This naturalistic argument, restored to its original, theological form, goes something like this: "The sin of pride, through which Man in his rebellion introduced corruption and disorder into God's creation, will surely be met with a righteous vengeance"

I like Jeremiads better in this authentic, religious form than when they try in bad faith to present themselves as pseudo-science. Not only is their true nature laid bare in the open for all to see, but hell-and-brimstone fundamentalism has a certain rhetorical flair that no would-be technocrat could ever match ;)
Great. I'm selfish enough that I hope to never have to endure in my natural life the final religious rationalization for why we have crapped in our own nest, and how this is somehow all of God's plan.
 
Jan 24, 2004
1,279
0
0
The Vegetative State
Truncador said:
If you're referring to the theory that Nature occasionally sends plagues to keep Man from destroying the environment- it shouldn't be hard to see that the giant invisible brain of Nature isn't something that any empirical science has ever observed or measured, or could (indeed, when pressed hard enough proponents of the Gaia theory will always proclaim the superiority of mystical intuitions to science, which they dismiss as narrow-minded and superficial).
The simplest logic, and the most sophisitication game-theory computer models, demands that a population which expands beyond the means of the available resources to sustain it will endure a crash. This is a simple feedback loop which no more requires a "giant invisible brain" to manage it than your furnace thermometer does.

If you're talking about the study linked in the OP: Every year for the past forty year some study or several come out which make the following claims:

-We stand poised at the brink of environemntal annihilation

-Man is the cause of the problem, and specifically:

-Excessive individual freedom is the root of the problem: the State hasn't done enough to regulate, monitor, restrict, and discipline the individual. The result is that the floodgates of insatiable greed, avarice, lust etc. have been opened, to the detriment and destruction of Nature (as an a priori, human desire is always destructive of the natural; the possibility of laissez-faire solutions to environmental problems are thus ruled out of court, it appears, as theoretically impossible in the first analysis)

-As a corollary, the "scientific" solution to environmental problems inevitably bears a striking resemblance to the pre-existing political demands of whatever socialist Leftist movement is pre-eminent at the time.
Would you care to advance any "laissez-faire" solutions to environmental problems, or it this another exercise in pseudo-Straussian abstract masterbation? I'd be anxious to hear them, as a matter of fact - you are right in this respect, at least, that over-regulation is not always the answer. Oh, and if you had actually bothered to read any of the environmental reports, you would realise just how deeply most enviromentalist understand the true powerlessness of the individual in these matters against States which have been all too joyfully laissez-faire in this particular area.

It is not hard to establish the extra-scientific origins of all these postulates. That, however, would not by itself establish this discourse as pseudoscientific. What establishes this genre as pseudoscience is that the predictions of calamity never do seem to come to pass- and yet the same predictions are made, on the basis of the same hypothesis, time after time and year after year. It is therefore clear that this discourse lacks the property of falsifiability that defines scientific discourse; like all ideology, it is a closed system of thought whose claim to the status of true knowledge takes no notice of the real (at least insofar as the real contradicts its assertions).
Have you been awake for the past decade? Are the melting glaciers the product of group-think? The ever-expanding holes in the ozone mere fiction from The Guardian's editiorial page? You'll retort I suppose with some academic jargon about the ideological structure of knowledge and facts blah-de-blah-blah-blah. As someone once said, the untrustworthy nature of empirical evidence doesn't make the gun pointed at your head any less loaded.

Karl Popper would remind you that theories of climate change are as subject to falsification as any other theory. What precisely about them cannot be proven false? What predictions - be specific, now - have been made that haven't come true? What portion of reality can you attest to - in the face of people who have, you know, actually gone out and collected silly things like measurements and data - that disproves anything these scientists have to say?
 

Peeping Tom

Boil them in Oil
Dec 24, 2002
803
0
0
Hellholes of the earth
The real tragedy here is that I didn't pursue junk science as a path to profit when it was still viable to do so. Now, it's a dime a dozen and under increasing disrepute, as responsible governments curtail it and the masses fall asleep over it, leaving but the idiots of the earth to continue gobbling it up.
 

Truncador

New member
Mar 21, 2005
1,714
0
0
Drunken Master said:
The simplest logic, and the most sophisitication game-theory computer models, demands that a population which expands beyond the means of the available resources to sustain it will endure a crash. This is a simple feedback loop which no more requires a "giant invisible brain" to manage it than your furnace thermometer does.
A Malthusian correction is a the result of a simple physical limit beyond which a process can't proceed any further. It doesn't need a brain of any kind to work, since it is a purely static, non-teleological and passive limit. The type of correction envisioned by the Gaia theory, which is what I was speaking to, is that of a complex system actively intervening to put a stop to a process- which, left to itself, could and would proceed much further- in order to conserve the norms of the system (or the very existence of the system itself). This type of dynamic and teleological correction does require a very sophisticated and intelligent mechanism in order to work. In the absence of mechanical linkages and/or linguistic communication between the parts that make up the "ecosystem", it's really hard to see how exactly Gaia would know that evil old Mankind is messing things up at all, to say nothing of how "she" would co-ordinate corrective action against him. I will be excused for thinking that this hypothesis belongs to mysticism as opposed to science.

Would you care to advance any "laissez-faire" solutions to environmental problems
Technology.

You'll retort I suppose with some academic jargon about the ideological structure of knowledge and facts blah-de-blah-blah-blah. As someone once said, the untrustworthy nature of empirical evidence doesn't make the gun pointed at your head any less loaded.
Where I grew up, there was this guy at the shopping mall who used to exhort passers-by that he was chosen, thousands of years ago, by a consortium of space aliens to orchestrate various historical events (the fall of the Berlin Wall among them). His claims may or may not have been true; nobody will ever know for sure. A reasonable person, however, would not take them all too seriously out of mere knowledge that delusions of grandeur and reference are not scientific theories, but a by-product of something outside of science (in this case, an organic brain disorder). Similarly, when I encounter a piece of scientific work that I suspect, upon analysis of its structure, to originate in the world of politics, I stop paying attention unless and until I'm satisfied that enough of an epistemological or practical-political break has taken place between the two to allow the science sufficient independence to be and do more than tell some pre-existing political agenda what it wants to hear. It's just easier that way. I leave it to the piece-workers and specialists to quibble over the minutiae of facts, figures, and research methodology; the truly great mind, Nietzsche said, is above such mundane detail work :D

Karl Popper would remind you that theories of climate change are as subject to falsification as any other theory. What precisely about them cannot be proven false?
At a purely logical and conceptual level, nothing. What I should have said is that the various doom prophecies seem to actively and dynamically resist falsification; they grow back after being cut down, as though so many weeds.

What predictions - be specific, now - have been made that haven't come true?
Who commits to memory all the details of this sort of thing ? I can't even remember what I did yesterday. I seem to recall, though, that the world should have ended several times over if the predictions were true- but it hasn't
 

someone

Active member
Jun 7, 2003
4,307
1
36
Earth
Drunken Master said:
Would you care to advance any "laissez-faire" solutions to environmental problems, or it this another exercise in pseudo-Straussian abstract masterbation?
I will give you two. One is the Coase theorem and the other involves tradable emission permits. Both methods have their advantages and both have their disadvantages. Likewise, methods that involve more active state intervention have their advantages and disadvantages. My point is that different tools have their roles when it comes to different environmental problems. I don’t think that looking at solutions to environmental problems in ideological terms is productive. Unfortunately, in my opinion, many environmental groups are more concerned with ideology than real analysis.
 
Jan 24, 2004
1,279
0
0
The Vegetative State
someone said:
I will give you two. One is the Coase theorem and the other involves tradable emission permits. Both methods have their advantages and both have their disadvantages. Likewise, methods that involve more active state intervention have their advantages and disadvantages. My point is that different tools have their roles when it comes to different environmental problems. I don’t think that looking at solutions to environmental problems in ideological terms is productive. Unfortunately, in my opinion, many environmental groups are more concerned with ideology than real analysis.
I agree with you 100% percent - although I think you'll agree that the success of tradable emission permits has been dubious at best.
 

onthebottom

Never Been Justly Banned
Jan 10, 2002
40,558
23
38
Hooterville
www.scubadiving.com
Interesting article, was widely reported on NPR yesterday (just their type of story...).

While there were not many details in this article it seems to say that because there are more of us (population) and we are getting richer (consuming more per person) that we are depleting and destroying the planet faster. Makes sense.

One of the challenges we face is that the two largest (population) countries in the world (China and India) are going through tremendous economic growth (consume stuff).

To come back to DM's title, I think SOME of us are "FUCKED", this will be a very uneven decline with those with too many people (China) and too little money (India) destroying their environments (China has 16 of the worlds 20 most polluted cities for instance) and ability to feed themselves (deforestation has turned 25% of China into desert).

Compare this situation with Canada which has abundant forests (one of the 4 improvements was increased forests in North America), water, fuel and a very small population. I think Canada (and many other countries like the US and Australia) are not "FUCKED" but, as usual, in a very enviable position.

This is not to say there shouldn't be a call to action to address these issues, but they need to be traded against economic development - you have to tell someone in China he can't increase his income from $900 to 1,800 to save the environment, or convince a Canadian to take a lower standard of living to subsidies the Chinese. Neither easy sells.

I distinctly remember sitting in my Ford Toreno in the mid 70s waiting to buy gas and hearing on the radio that the world would be out of oil in 25 years..... hum.

DM, on a personal note, there are many reasons to not have kids, this isn’t one of them IMHO unless you live in a very poor country (where they have too many kids)

OTB
or maybe I'm just a "flat Earth" guy.....
 

someone

Active member
Jun 7, 2003
4,307
1
36
Earth
Drunken Master said:
I agree with you 100% percent - although I think you'll agree that the success of tradable emission permits has been dubious at best.
Dubious compared to what? The idea is that government sets the total level of admission and lets firms trade emission permits so that those who can reduce emissions at a lower can cost sell permits to those for who the cost of reducing admission is higher. Thus, the idea is to minimize the cost of a given level of emissions reduction. To say that the success is dubious implies that you could have got the same reduction at lower cost by some other means.

I agree that there are many cases were tradable emission permits are not applicable. For example it is never going to be practical for automobile emissions (for that you really need higher gas prices which people in Canada are not prepared to pay). At the other extreme there will be cases where markets for the permits are very thin. Moreover, in some cases it may create local areas of a country with high concentrations of pollution (thus, it would not be an effective tool for pollution were most of the harmful effects are localized). Nonetheless, were conditions are favourable, it seems to me to make a lot of sense. Indeed, unless Canadians are prepared to pay higher fuel costs (given the why people complain every time the price of gas increases, I don’t’ think they are), I don’t really see how Canada will meet its Kyoto targets without buying permits.
 
Jan 24, 2004
1,279
0
0
The Vegetative State
The central problem is the one you point out - the size of the market. The problem is trading doesn't force the worst polluters to change their methodologies of production.

Put it this way - an incentive-side system of market incentives for good environmental behaviour is great - so long as it is also matched by a poison-pill-side system of penalties for bad behaviour. This second end has been distinctly lacking. The best economic systems know how to manage both the demand and the supply end of things...

As for fuel costs, gas prices will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. Whether we want to "get used" to the new reality of expensive oil or not, it's coming.
 

someone

Active member
Jun 7, 2003
4,307
1
36
Earth
Drunken Master said:
The central problem is the one you point out - the size of the market. The problem is trading doesn't force the worst polluters to change their methodologies of production.

Put it this way - an incentive-side system of market incentives for good environmental behaviour is great - so long as it is also matched by a poison-pill-side system of penalties for bad behaviour. This second end has been distinctly lacking. The best economic systems know how to manage both the demand and the supply end of things...
I wonder if you are missing the point of tradable emission permits. If the cost of reduction for firm A is very high and the cost of reduction for firm B is low, it makes sense to allow firm A to pollute more and make up the difference by a greater reduction for firm B. If firm A is what you call “the worst polluters”, so be it. That is efficient. The problem is that, in general, governments don't have good information on the costs to firms of reducing emissions. Both firms A and B have an incentive to claim the cost of reduction is higher for them. By just setting an overall limit on emissions, the government does not need detailed information of the cost of reduction for individual firms. The firms will reveal that when they make trades in the markets, assuming the markets are not too thin. High cost firms will have an incentive to buy permits from low cost firms (what you call "poison-pill-side system of penalties for bad behaviour"), rather than make the reductions themselves but that is efficient. The firms will reveal their costs of reduction when they make trades in the markets, assuming the markets are not too thin.

Drunken Master said:
As for fuel costs, gas prices will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. Whether we want to "get used" to the new reality of expensive oil or not, it's coming.
If they do continue to rise, it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
 

onthebottom

Never Been Justly Banned
Jan 10, 2002
40,558
23
38
Hooterville
www.scubadiving.com
Are gas prices rising everywhere or just in US Dollar terms? I would think the 50/barrel doesn't seem that bad in Euros these days.

OTB
 
Toronto Escorts