See, Kyle is doing the same crap that Son of Kirk was  - just Kyle Aaron is trying to seem more eloquent about it.

 Again its boiling down to : "If you don't think just the way I do, or believe exactly as I do - then you're obviously an idiot!"

 Which is what ticked me off about the originasl thread.

 Its a whole bunch of : You must agree with the group-think or you are an idiot. kind of shit.
 Its just as closed-minded and childish as anything they claim about other people.

 Although I do love the Catch-22 of the fact that with the Northwest passage opeinng up now - its going to be easier to get to oil in the seafloor up there. (you know what I mean).


Whats even funnier , God up in heaven? She could be saying "You're complaining about the heat and the warming ?? Oy Vey!! Fine, I'll throw another Ice Age at you!! That will cool you off for awhile. Hey, Jesus, my son...wanna create another star system ? It will be fun..." (*)


- Ed C.






* = Meant in jest, chill out everyone.

Quote from: KoltarSee, Kyle is doing the same crap that Son of Kirk was  - just Kyle Aaron is trying to seem more eloquent about it.

 Again its boiling down to : "If you don't think just the way I do, or believe exactly as I do - then you're obviously an idiot!"

 Which is what ticked me off about the originasl thread.

Of course, what got the dogpile started in the original thread was your vocal desire to not think for yourself, to sieze on contratradictory assertions as an excuse to make nice and ignore an issue.  It doesn't all boil down to conformity, Ed.  What some people are saying is, "If you don't bother thinking at all, then you're an idiot!"  Not a comforting sentiment, but it's not without its essence of truth.

Okay, no answers here, no bold assertions, no political views.  As a simple exercise in critical thinking, everyone remember to ask yourselves one question: "What shall we do?"  Whenever a tough issue of the day pops up in your face, ask yourself "What shall we do?"  You don't need solve the problem, but you need to give yourself an honest answer, and it can remain totally private.  Your answer can be that you intend to remain inactive, that you don't know what to do, or that you simply don't want to do anything, but answer the question honestly. "What shall we do?"

!i!

Quote from: Kyle AaronAlong with roleplaying, an interest/hobby of mine is permaculture, democracy, and a future for the world. In current times those turn out to be pretty strongly-connected.

And what does that mean, Klye?  How many books have you read on those topics?  How many with alternate viewpoints?  Yeah, you are "interested" and consider it a hobby but how are you any more qualified to talk about this issue than I am?

Because I've been interested in these topics for a long time, too.  Perhaps since the 1970s, when I was first bombarded with a steady diet of predictions that "The End of the World is Nigh", including an interesting little story that was published in a school magazine that I read in elementary school that told us what life would be like for school children in the future when the oil ran out (I forget the exact year in the story but I doubt it was later than 2000).  I took a college-level climatology class because I was interested in the subject.  I have a copy of Beyond the Limits, the sequel to The Limits of Growth published in 1992 concerning sustainable growth and the World3 systems dynamic model that they used to produce their scenarios.  

If you spend enough time looking at these theories and models and claims, you'll notice that they not only constantly change but are never right and often aren't even close.  We didn't run out of oil by the year 2000.  The Population Bomb never exploded.  The fairly sophisticated World3 model, for example, predicts that everything is going to start falling about around 2020 because, among other problems, it gets the population growth curve wrong.  While I don't think the World3 model is correct, I do recommend the book Beyond the Limits because it illustrates just how complex such models can be and illustrates a lot of the factors involved.

Quote from: Kyle AaronFor example, a sensible energy policy would be to have distributed renewable energy - solar panels on homes, solar thermal and/or wind in neighbourhoods, rather than One Big Facility somewhere out in the sticks. It's sensible in terms of energy security, because some day fossil fuels will run short or be prohibitively expensive; it's sensible in terms of defence security, because terrorists or an enemy state can blow up One Big Facility but not millions of small ones; and it's sensible in terms of democracy, because when people get what they need from their own backyards, it's harder for a central government to compell them.

I fully support localizing energy production for all of the security reasons that you mention.  I also think that there are economic benefits to local manufacture of energy.  Those are big reasons why I'm so interested in Thermal Depolymerization.  Solar power is fine, too, and will certainly become more economically viable as oil becomes more expensive.  As for wind power, in practice there is a lot of resistance to actually building such facilities in the United States (including some high-profile individuals who normally support environmental causes) because they are noisy, unattractive, and slice up birds.  

So I don't really have any problem with any of that.  I simply think that the change should be driven by economics and individual choices rather than a government mandate.  Out of curiosity, do you live in a home with solar or wind power?

Quote from: Kyle AaronSo, permaculture, democracy and a future for the world are things I'm interested in and study. Just as a keen D&Der can rattle off the rules without looking them up, I can rattle off this stuff without much effort.

What "stuff" can you rattle off?  Frankly, I've seen little more than a Wikipedia level of knowledge on the topic from you and no evidence that you've ever questioned anything you've read from advocacy sites.  The fact that you "rattled off" a reply that included a graph that I'd already posted a rebuttal to suggests that you really aren't all that interested in what other people have to say and have little interest in changing your mind.

Quote from: Kyle AaronYou can't change their minds, mate. Their position is philosophical. It's a worldview.

In what way have you changed your mind about this topic?  How about any other topic?  Or are you simply the pot calling the kettle "black" here?

Of course it might actually help change minds if your argument consisted of a bit more than personal attacks and a link to an advocacy web site.

Quote from: Kyle AaronSo for example we see economic rationalists and communists both say, "our system will give happiness and prosperity to all." When you point out that it's been tried and didn't work, they say, "oh but really it did work... or if it didn't work, it's because it wasn't tried properly, or for long enough." Whatever data they're given, they twist it to support their philosophy. So if communism or economic rationalism give good results, that proves they work; if they give bad results, that proves they weren't tried properly or for long enough, so obviously they still work anyway; no matter what the data, the conclusion is proven.

But that's exactly what the global warming alarmists have been doing.  If it gets warmer, it's evidence of global warming.  If it gets colder, it's evidence of global warming.  If there are more hurricanes, it's evidence of global warming.  If there are fewer hurricanes, it's evidence of global warming.  Droughts?  Global warming.  Floods?  Global warming.  And the best one of all is the theory that global warming will cause the next ice age.  So no matter what happens, the global warming advocates can claim they are right.

So based on your own indicators someone trying to prove a philosophy is right no matter what instead of making a rational assessment of the facts, how do the global warming alarmists fare?

Oh, and for your use of examples that include not only Freud's rape denial but a nearly perfect example of Godwin with your Goebbels example, Kyle, I give you the Ron Edwards award for laughably over-the-top attacks.

Quote from: Kyle AaronThat's what we're seeing in these kinds of discussions from the Morrows and Koltars of the world. It's this immersion in their own philosophy. "Because I find the world too complicated to understand, obviously no scientist could ever understand it. So I can just ignore science and believe whatever I reckon."

Not at all.

In his original Connection series, James Burke opens up one episode standing outside of a nuclear power plant and asks the viewer how they know whether nuclear power is safe or not.  The point that I took from that years ago was not that experts can't understand nuclear power but that laymen have to rely on experts and that leaves the laymen very vulnerable to manipulation or being wrong without even knowing it, because they lack the knowledge to assess the information themselves.

Later on, I did develop a great deal of skepticism over science's ability to understand complex systems and make accurate predictions of the future.  That comes from looking at history (an interest your list above was lacking) and the track record of scientists to understand everything and predict the future.  I'm not sure if you've been watching this stuff since the 1970s but I have, and the story keeps changing.  

That hardly means that I think I can ignore science and believe whatever I want.  It does mean that skepticism is warranted, especially when a claim is accompanied by demands for major expenditures or global changes to the way people behave.  And it does mean that I believe one can find a great deal of information looking at how the advocates and skeptics debate with one another.  How?  Because, like you, when people don't really know what they are talking about, they start relying on logical fallacies rather than sound arguments.

I assume you've heard of Carl Sagan?  He's the guy who came up with the greenhouse theory for the temperatures on Venus and proposed the idea of a Nuclear Winter.  In his book A Demon Haunted World, he presents his "Baloney Detection Kit" (a version can be found here, that I'll be quoting from).  No doubt you can argue that I've "misused [it], applied [it] out of context, or even employed [it] as a rote alternative to thinking", which might be true if I hadn't looked at some of the facts as well, but what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Sagan describes his Baloney Detection Kit as "[t]ools for skeptical thinking."  He says:

"What skeptical thinking boils down to is the means to construct, and to understand, a reasoned argument and -- especially important -- to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion follows from the premise or starting point and whether that premise is true."

He starts of by saying that the tools include:

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the "facts."
  
• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
  
• Arguments from authority carry little weight -- "authorities" have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
  
• Spin more than one hypothesis. If there's something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among "multiple working hypotheses," has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
  
• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours. It's only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don't, others will.
  
• Quantify. If whatever it is you're explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you'll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
  
• If there's a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) -- not just most of them.
  
• Occam's Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
  
• Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle -- an electron, say -- in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

OK.  So how do the global warming alarmist stand up to the baloney sniff test?

• Global warming skeptics have had to fight to get the raw data and models used by global warming alarmists to support their claims.
• They avoid debate of the facts and prefer to claim that the issue has been settled and attack the motives of their opponents.
• The rely heavily on the idea of scientific consensus and authority to claim that their conclusions shouldn't be questioned.
• They focus on a single cause for global warming and automatically reject any other contributing factor.
• They consider their position a matter of great urgency upon which the fate of all mankind rests.
• They often limit their data so that cut off points conveniently occur just before the data stops supporting their hypothesis.  And people should be troubled by Dr. David Deming's claims that he was told by a prominent global warming alarmist that thought he was friendly to the cause, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."
• The most alarming arguments are based on the most extreme positions rather than the most likely positions.  
• Personally, I'm not a big fan of Occam's Razor as a tool for detecting baloney, a point I'll happily discuss.  But for the sake of argument here, "The Sun" and the changes being just another of Earth's long history of climate cycles as just as simple as human carbon dioxide emissions, especially if one doesn't start their data after the Little Ice Age or ignore the Medieval Climate Optimum.
• Global warming theories are conveniently difficult to falsify global warming when no matter how the climate changes, there is a convenient global warming-related explanation for it.  What would be acceptable evidence that global warming isn't happening or that humans are not causing it?

Basically, the global warming alarmists are not talking like scientists.  They are talking like zealots and True Believers.  Ad hominem attacks?  Check.  Appeals to Authority?  Check.  Aguments from adverse consequences?  Check.  Special pleading?  Check.  And on and on.  This is not how people argue when they have the truth on their side.  

Quote from: Kyle AaronNow, this sort of thing has happened many times before in history. The world changes faster than many people can understand it, or even accept that it is changing. We've had half a century of the greatest material prosperity that the common people of an entire civilisation have ever known. That it might end is unimaginable. Oh, sure, we can imagine it intellectually, write about it - but we can't imagine it in that real gut way, that way that makes us get our shit together in a sock and wire it tight, and fucking well do something about it.

What you conveniently forget is that history is also full of examples of people taking extreme action without fully understanding the problem.  At least 20 million people have died from malaria who did not need to die because, in their zeal to ban DDT, environmentalists urged the banning of all DDT, including indoor spraying, which the UN is only now coming around to recommending.  That's at least 20 million dead, mostly third-world children.  Are you OK with that, Kyle?

In the state where I live, they tried to stop beach erosion by building jettys and beach walls which only made the erosion worse.  And there are all sorts of cases of introducing one species into an environment to solve one environmental problem, only to cause another.  So people who act before they understand the problem have a long track record of not only doing nothing but of making the problem worse.  And, in at least some cases, getting a lot of people killed.

I guess the phase, "Look before you leap," has wound up on the dustbin of parental advice along with the story about the little boy who cried "Wolf!".

Quote from: Kyle AaronReally, almost all of us are climate change deniers, if you go by our actions rather than our words. If you saw a guy on the train tracks fiddling about, and heard the horn of an oncoming train, and the guy said, "sure, I believe the train's coming," but he kept fucking about - well, you'd doubt whether he really believed it was coming.

Now, I actually do have time to argue with the guy on the tracks. But I can't really be arsed. I'm busy getting off the tracks myself. I'd rather focus my efforts on things which are productive, or at least entertaining.

And what are you personally doing to get yourself off of the tracks, Kyle?  Have you installed solar heating or power where you live?  A wind turbine?  You sure do seem to have a lot of free time to talk about role-playing games and to play role-playing games, right?  Rolling dice while Rome burns?

(ADDED:  As an FYI, my wife and I pay extra for our electricity to get electricity from alternative source energy suppliers.)

Quote from: Kyle AaronThat's far from unique in human history. Luckily, unanimity is not required for useful change. We can afford to leave a few clueless buggers lolling about saying, "well, it's a complicated problem, let's look at... let's not decide too hastily... after all, if we wait long enough maybe someone else will have to deal with it instead." Bugger that lot.

That lot is the majority.

(Sorry if there have been some minor text changes.  An attempt to add italics to a quote combined with a slow server/internet connection, caused most of my original to be lost and I had to restore it from an earlier edit I had a copy of.)

This has to be the most through eviseration of an opponent's arguements I've seen since Jimmy disected the GNS essays.

I'm starting to feel peer pressure to get banned from RPGnet myself...seems like everyone else is doing it.
It always amazes me that whatever topic is discussed over at TBP you will have posters claiming to be an expert on it.  Like anyone who makes 10 - 20 thousand posts to TBP ever gets out from in front of the computer long enough to go outside and see what the fucking temperature is anyway.
Koltar, you are better off out of that place.
I prefer to get my science news from somewhere other than Tangency.

Quote from: GrimjackI'm starting to feel peer pressure to get banned from RPGnet myself...seems like everyone else is doing it.
It always amazes me that whatever topic is discussed over at TBP you will have posters claiming to be an expert on it.  Like anyone who makes 10 - 20 thousand posts to TBP ever gets out from in front of the computer long enough to go outside and see what the fucking temperature is anyway.
Koltar, you are better off out of that place.
I prefer to get my science news from somewhere other than Tangency.

Thanks man.

 When I do I get to meet you in-person?? Or game with you ?  We're in the same town (and boy the temperatures sure have dropped recently)

Send me a PM sometime - let me know which local game stores you do your shopping at.


- Ed C.

Global warming is the biggest fucking red herring issue in all of environmental politics.  

It's pointless.  It's like the abortion debate, just a big non-issue for everyone to scream at each other about so they can avoid real problems.  

The conservative angle as been slowly giving up the fight anyway, notice the shift in the popular media discourse from "Global warming is a myth" to "well, maybe global warming is real, but here's a bunch of vague unprovable doubts about our role in the matter" to "Well, I guess global warming is real and we do have something to do with it, but here's a bunch of vague unprovable doubts as to just how much".  

And yet, in the end, it really doesn't fucking matter.  Yeah, the whole global climate catastrophe makes for scary stories to spook the younguns and everything, but the reality is, even if the whole CO2 thing is indeed a big load of fetid dingo's kidneys, there's still a whole bunch of other good reasons to cut back like limited supply, reliance on foreign sources, and all the other toxic pollutants spewed out at the same time as the dread CO2.

But by making a big show of the "debate" over global warming, it lets the politicians get away with what they love more than anything in the world, and that's blowing smoke up the collective ass on all sides of the political isle, conservative or liberal.

Actually gotta agree with you 100% there, JArcane.

More approval of JAs statement. I'm actually looking forward to English wine and some silver coins from the mines in the Italian Alps. You know, the ones abandoned to the advancing glaciers during the beginning of this last cold cycle we're just coming out of?

Another vote of confidence for JArcane's statement

Both John Morrow as J. Arcane make good solid points.

Quote from: WerekoalaMore approval of JAs statement. I'm actually looking forward to English wine and some silver coins from the mines in the Italian Alps. You know, the ones abandoned to the advancing glaciers during the beginning of this last cold cycle we're just coming out of?

My understanding of his point was that we should be limiting our consumption and waste.

Quote from: walkerpMy understanding of his point was that we should be limiting our consumption and waste.

That's just crazy talk!  It's our God-given right as Murrkuns to drive a car that only gets three miles per gallon!

Quote from: walkerpMy understanding of his point was that we should be limiting our consumption and waste.

We can do that to. MY point was, even if we do its not going to stop it, so may as well enjoy the warmer climate.

Quote from: walkerpI mean look at Burma.  Those people lived under terrible political repression and total lack of freedom and did nothing.  Take away their oil subsidies and suddenly the whole nation is on the streets.  We're pretty lame and selfish, us humans.

Hi I'm new. This is really an aside, but Burma has the longest-running insurgency in the world among its ethnic minorities--- so while its majority recently took to the streets (it hadn't for quite a while)--- there has been plenty of bloody opposition to the total lack freedom of which you speak.