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Author Topic: You will have to pick a side. There is no longer Room for Procrastination  (Read 9867 times)

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guest17

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I apologize for the length of this, but agelbert's post that I am responding to was VERY long.

AGELBERT WROTE:
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You consistently ignore the reality of the tsunami of propaganda out there that tells people everything is hunky dory.
AG, you are not telling the full story.

There exists a well-known and well-documented strong bias of the media for BAD NEWS, disaster news, and the reason is simple: because it has great shock (emotional) value, and people go where their emotions lead them. "If it bleeds, it leads" is the old newspaperman's motto.

Further, over many decades a TON of press has been given to doomsday visions and theories, going back to the overpopulation hype of the 1960s (and even before then), numerous environmental scares of the 70s and beyond, plus of course the Club of Rome thing. All of this was VERY  PROMINENTLY COVERED IN THE MAINSTREAM PRESS. And ALL of those doomsday predictions have proven (of course) false -- and this is a point of some significance, I believe. I wrote about this over on DD. I'm sure you saw it.

You might be able to claim, successfully, that particular issues that YOU deem of special import are not being given the attention that they deserve. But you cannot seriously claim that the media is generally Pollyanna-ish or working overtime to "tell people that everything is hunky dory". If anything, they are working overtime to tell people that crime is out of control, natural disasters are on the increase, shady and corrupt behavior is rampant, racial tensions are about to explode, etc., etc., etc.

ASHVIN wrote:
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   I'm not sure about that. Alan specifically said that our real problems are NOT material and rather "spiritual", so I am inclined to believe that he agrees with you and I about the ROOT of our situations.
Just to expand on that for a moment: I think that all the various material problems -- oil/resource shortfalls, environmental problems, etc. -- are solvable, many of them quite easily (others, not so much, but still solvable). What is hard to solve are problems like low intelligence, failure of imagination, inability to see one's own faults, greed, and numerous other things that fall under the general heading of "matters of the spirit". THAT'S where we have very serious problems. Peak oil? NBD! Peak rare earths? NBD! Peak greed? VBD! (Very Big Deal).

ASHVIN wrote:
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This is simple logic - if you yell out that incremental measures are a waste of time and there is a 95% chance of extinction in the next 100 years, people who hear and believe you will stop any "incremental" measures and GIVE UP HOPE.
I agree. This hysterical apocalypticism does nothing to help our cause. It only hurts it. It already HAS hurt it, in a big way. As I wrote back on DD, the denialist/etc. movements were born and raised -- so to say -- amidst apocalyptic/doomer predictions that ALL WERE PROVEN FALSE. Their very denialism is in part a reaction to that. It is a terrible shame, because there ARE very real risks (AGW and etc.) that must urgently be addressed.

ASHVIN WROTE:
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I'd say <1% chance of NTHE in the next 100 years. It's not backed up by anything but feeling and loose speculation.
  This is not being "the lawyer", it is being reasonable, logical and responsible. Reason tells me that it is a FOOL'S errand to assign probabilities to such a major event.
I agree: fool's errand.

ASHVIN WROTE:
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Well this is ridiculous :emthdown:, but unsurprising...
 You guys wanted an excuse to kill the dialogue, and you found it in his "PSA", which was tolerated just fine until you couldn't respond to his substantive points anymore.... Relegating him to the Dungeon is exhibit A of your cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias and general unwillingness to entertain anything that doesn't back up Doom on the horizon.
Haha! Yeah, probably. Who knows, who cares? Not worth getting in a twist about. They can have whatever kind of forum they like.

SURLY WROTE:
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Apparently he has taken his fit of pique and gone elsewhere to enlighten the unwashed.
Fit of pique? Try fit of boredom! But yes, gone to elsewhere... to have an intelligent conversation, I hope.  You should consider that having better things to do is not the same as "leaving in a fit of pique".

AGELBERT WROTE:
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Your response to Surly was way over the top. So, you think this forum is into "newspeak" or is a "propaganda outlet" that overreacts to negative news, retreating into "hysterics"?
I don't know about "newspeak", and I would not call it "propaganda", but the "overreacting to negative news" part is abundantly clear and undeniable. RE appears to LIVE for negative news. It is a sort of paraphilia.

AGELBERT WROTE:
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Your descent into derision and mockery of my position that we are in danger of extinction is sad. I am not a nervous nelly. You should be ashamed of yourself.
I take it you are talking to Ashvin. Where is his derision and mockery? I would like to see it, just to know where we all stand. Please quote it, or give a link. Thanks. (So far, all I've seen from Ashvin on this is his estimate of ~1% for NTHE. But I did not see anything that I would call derision or mockery.)

AGELBERT WROTE:
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I totally disagree with your claim that our extinction trajectory, if proven to be factual, is cause for despair.
To clarify: Ashvin did not say that it is GOOD cause for despair. He said that people who hear that kind of talk will tend to react in despair (whether good occasion exists or not). Ashvin wrote: "If you yell out that incremental measures are a waste of time and there is a 95% chance of extinction in the next 100 years, people who hear and believe you will stop any "incremental" measures and GIVE UP HOPE." Ashvin is right. That's what many of them will do -- rightly or wrongly.

AGELBERT WROTE:
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As to Alan's agreement that the root of the problem is spiritual in nature, I certainly agree. But Alan has ridiculed the faith you and I share in the past.
When did I ridicule your faith? What IS your faith? I know you are a Christian. That's all I know. I generally don't ridicule people's religious convictions -- unless they are so over the top that they deserve ridicule (e.g. some flavors of fundamentalistic abrahamic faiths).

AGELBERT WROTE:
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Perhaps he is into some Gaia faith but try not to get confused about what Alan means by "spirituality", OKAY?
I see. Perhaps alan is into some flaky Gaia faith, but let's not get confused into thinking that his understanding of spirituality is up to OUR exalted Christian level.  Is that it, AG? If so, too bad for you.

AGELBERT WROTE:
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This debate cannot address root causes until we are all on the same page about what is actually happening in the physical world of the planetary biosphere. As long as you ascribe extinction warnings to the category of hysterics and propaganda, you will question the credibility of any bit of negative data presented.
I presented this data to Alan at the start of the debate in my forum. I'm waiting for him to answer without mockery or derision.   
What data are you talking about?

AGELBERT WROTE:
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Extinct life forms aren't coming back, Alan. I don't consider that encouraging, do you?
 WE are killing those animals, not "natural" selection, Alan. Please do NOT bring the fossil fueler argument that, since 99% of all the life forms that have lived on earth have gone extinct, a few thousand more A YEAR is no big deal.
 It's a BIG deal, Alan. We can't bring them back. And we still know very little about what we will miss when they are gone. And hard science has proven that the RATE of extinctions we are witnessing is unprecedented in human history.
I agree. What is your point? What am I supposed to do? It is a VERY BAD thing that these extinctions are happening. What are we supposed to do? Conclude that human extinction is likely?

AGELBERT WROTE:
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The precautionary principle of science DEMANDS that we do everything we can to prevent pollution or cruelty or greed caused extinctions BECAUSE we are part of this biosphere and we do not fully understand how these life forms fit in to our requirements for species perpetuation.
 We are ignoring that principle.
Well, I have problems with the precautionary principle. Taken too far, it is nihilistic. If you cleave to it excessively, you will be inhibited from doing ANYTHING. I think we need the precautionary principle, but it must be accompanied by a precautionary principle pertaining to the precautionary principle itself.

AGELBERT WROTE:
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Yes, the fine print at the bottom of that graphic says it is an estimate. Do you think the count is "alarmist"? Do you think they are "exaggerating extreme outcomes"?
No, no counts or data pertaining to anything is alarmist. Only interpretations of or extrapolations from data can be alarmist. In other words: the facts are the facts. But what we MAKE of the facts -- how we interpret them, the tales that we spin FROM the facts -- is something else. If observations indicate beyond reasonable doubt that a certain specie of bear has become extinct, I believe it. What is questionable is the implications of that extinction.

 

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