The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Situations like Burma make it more and more evident to me that it probably isn't possible for populations that want freedom and/or democracy to get it. Dictators are too brutal and the technological differences in combat capabilities and weaponry make forcable revolution impossible. It is no longer like it was in the mid to late 1700s, when farmers were almost as well armed as the British military.

We wouldn't have won without the help of the French, period. Things aren't that much different. Rarely has a suppressed population on its own with no outside help risen to win its freedom. However, equally rarely, has providing outside help to a population that has not instigated its own revolution resulted in freedom. Whatever those odds, a successful revolution depends on there being a critical mass of people willing to, of their own accord, put their life on the line despite the risks and odds.

[scaeagles]

True indeed. Who will help? While the exportation of democracy has typically been unsuccessful, should the US or perhaps, being much closer, Japan or South Korea?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

True indeed. Who will help? While the exportation of democracy has typically been unsuccessful, should the US or perhaps, being much closer, Japan or South Korea?

We're too busy wasting our resources elsewhere to help where we might actually do some good.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

OK - let's split the 9% and 30% and go with 19.5%.

6% of 19.5% is still only just over 1% of all greenhouse gases.

You're missing the point. Not all greenhouse gasses cause warming if the amount present in the atmosphere increases. Water vapor, for example, does not cause long term warming. So when talking about factors changing the global temperature, if you can ignore water vapor then then remaining X percent of gasses are what you need to reduce if you want to try and prevent additional increases. And carbon is a very large percentage of the change causing gasses.

The source of your numbers is being willfully ignorant of the actual processes involved (and also using made up numbers).

Another analogy: a bacterial infection is causing a fever of 102 degrees. That is only a 3% contribution to the overall body temperature. Do you not fight the infection because the digestive system is responsible for 97% of the body's temperature?

Of course not, because even though it is small that 3% has huge repercussions. You're smart enough to know that increases in input do not necessarily produce linear increases in output and that closed systems can show large changes from minor perturbations.

So, why do you find it so hard to believe in this situation?

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

We're too busy wasting our resources elsewhere to help where we might actually do some good.

Does this mean you think there would be/should be support for an invasion of Burma, or for money and arms to fund the prodemocracy crowd?

Being the devil's advocate, that would be portrayed as contributing to and starting a civil war.

Politics being what they are today, there is no way we could do anything like this.

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by Alex

So, why do you find it so hard to believe in this situation?

First of all, it is portray as scientific consensus when it is far from it. There are plenty of brilliant minds that dispute the whole man caused theory.

There have been warming periods in the planets existance at regular intervals that have been far more intense than this, long before we burned one spec of fossil fuel.

I find it not coincidental that there is dramatic warming on Mars during this same time period. This would seem to logically point to solar activity as the main factor.

That's the basic gist of it.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Does this mean you think there would be/should be support for an invasion of Burma, or for money and arms to fund the prodemocracy crowd?

Being the devil's advocate, that would be portrayed as contributing to and starting a civil war.

Honestly, I don't know enough specifics to advocate or oppose giving aid (in whatever form that might be). But in my mind they've met what I believe should be requirement #1 for considering that aid, namely a self-motivate populace that is willing to take action themselves but face an insurmountable gulf in armament, and it bugs the hell out of me that helping them isn't an option at all, whether it's the right thing to do or not.

Believe it or not, despite my opposition of the Iraq war, I don't hate freedom and am not adverse to aiding the push for freedom in countries that are ready for it.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

First of all, it is portray as scientific consensus when it is far from it. There are plenty of brilliant minds that dispute the whole man caused theory.

There have been warming periods in the planets existance at regular intervals that have been far more intense than this, long before we burned one spec of fossil fuel.

I find it not coincidental that there is dramatic warming on Mars during this same time period. This would seem to logically point to solar activity as the main factor.

That's the basic gist of it.

Well now you're changing you're argument. Whether scientific consensus exists is a completely different issue than how reasonable the idea is that small changes in carbon can produce larger changes in climate.

You're also mistaken about the "dramatic" warming on Mars. The southern polar ice cap has decreased in size in recent years but that is a local phenomenon and there is no global evidence of increased temperature. Also, if you're going to put it on the sun, can you point to any increased energy output by the sun? No, you can not.

I know the Mars things has received a big boost recently because of an article that the "anti-consensus" side is eager to trumpet recently published in National Geographic. Here is how you will find such sources quoting the opening paragraph of that article:

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause...

That assumes they are even honest enough to use an ellipses. The full paragraph, with my bolding is:

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.

If you're going to blame the sun for warming on Earth and Mars, then where is the warming on all of the other planets (particularly Mercury which is much closer and has no atmosphere to moderate temperature changes? Why isn't the moon warming if the sun in which it basks is emitting more energy?

And there really is a pretty strong consensus among scientists. That isn't to say there aren't detractors. Nor does it mean that the consensus is correct. That said, for the most part detractors are not scientists and have no actual evidence beyond appeals to "common sense" (which is frequently wrong) to support them. And lacking evidence all a person is doing is picking the answer they like best and then going out and finding people who agree that it is the most preferable answer.

For the most part the pro-anthropogenic global warming side has evidence. The anti-anthropogenic global warming side just doesn't like the answer.

[Alex]

It is also interesting that the people now saying "yes it is warming but it isn't caused by man" are generally the people who a decade ago were saying "no, it isn't warming."

I expect as evidence continues to come in that the next step will be "yes, we're contributing to warming but it is a very small amount" followed by "yes we're causing global warming but that actually makes things better."

[Ghoulish Delight]

Heard an interesting theory on NPR based on the observation from ice core samples that CO2 and Methane levels seem to have been steadily increasing outside their normal cyclical rates for ~8000 years and ~5000 years respectively. Those happen to correspond to the points in human social evolution when agriculture (and thus deforestation) started to take hold (~8000 years ago), and the appearance of flooded rice patties (~5000 years ago).