[Ibon]

It's an interesting academic argument, but simply not real. People want to live. All these kids want to live, and they are not about to die because you tell them it really is best for everybody.

KJ, first of all after your retirement you have a great opportunity to join one of those anti abortion groups with your excellent use of pictures. Or one of those "save the children" charity organizations.

Everything wants to live. The salmon who survived 4 years and is just minutes away from spawning wants to live just as much as the grizzly does when he bites into that protein rich belly of the fish. The predator prey dynamics are all about both parties wanting to live and that prime directive is a big part of why we have these myriad forms of life on the planet. That ebola virus very much wants to live when it finds a new host. Everything wants to live KJ.

Nothing in nature dies because someone typing on a keyboard says so.

If we take your point of view that everyone of those starving children has a right to live and that we should do everything possible to save them then we could extend this linear one way exponential population growth from 7.3 billion forward by colonizing Antarctica and then the moon and other planets harvesting fusion energy and overcoming every pathogen and threat of famine with our compassionate technology because every child has a right to live. We could form a monoculture of humans on the solar system.

And then some alien life form will arrive when we have reached 2 trillion population and we will be all packed like sardines, each and everyone of us looking with hope to that alien with the same desperate starving eyes just like the picture you posted. Why? Because every child has a right to live and we have the obligation to make that happen.

[Lore]

Except there are almost no more sardines! The BAU crowd really doesn't get it that the planet wasn't designed just for humans to live on.

[Henriksson]

A good start if one wants to keep as many people alive as possible is to accept that climate chance is happening and plan accordingly.

[ennui2]

KJ, again and again you demonstrate an incomplete picture of the situation we're in, fixating on the energy landscape, downplaying or ignoring ecology, and then clutching at a Christopher Nolan escapist fantasy.

I've hung around doomer for so long that I've got a very clear picture of every "reaction" to taking the red-pill. So I know your flavor very well, and it is ultimately the "bargaining" stage of denial.

If we just develop zero-point-energy or find a way to get off the planet, then we're saved!

And I recognize that Elon Musk is ultimately a skilled bargainer, basically. I'm not deluded into thinking otherwise. But since people won't powerdown and they won't voluntarily limit population and they won't even see what's staring them in the face, then pretty much the only benign measures we have to work with are techno-fix bargaining and adaptation measures.

But I'm not under any illusion they will "fix" the problem. At best, blunt or stall the crash.

[KaiserJeep]

Be honest about this. I want to save as many people as possible. You AGW and Climate Change fanboys want to kill as many people as possible, as rapidly as possible, before you and your family and friends and extended family and anybody you know is inconvenienced by their presence and their needs.

So talk about salmon and bears, kudzu weeds, whatever the heck you want, just to spare yourself the thought that you want all those people to starve and die and go away before they mess up YOUR life and YOUR plans and YOUR world.

I faced this choice many years ago. I made a conscious choice that they - meaning all other humans, regardless of location and nationality and race and ethnicity - had an equal right to life as myself. I decided that we needed to kick the can as many times as possible, as long as possible, we needed to preserve BAU until we find a real solution. I knew when I consciously made this choice that we were screwing up this piece of smelly dirt we live on. I knew it was only our creche and that soon enough, we would move off this ball of dirt and multiply into our Trillions off the planet.

The rest of you, nearly everybody here in the Forum, decided that human genocide was better and kinder and the only way to preserve a myth called Gaia. So you invented a pseudo-science story about carbon dioxide and climate, to make an excuse for your murderous intent. You decided to stick your head in the sand on a "doomstead", and let the World go to He!! around you, while you tilled your little garden, spread manure on your trees, and thought pious thoughts about the death and carnage and genocide around you.

As I told you years ago, and I'm still telling you, that is what "stopping Climate Change" means - it means that you want everybody else to die as quickly as possible, before you are inconvenienced. Then you want the dying to stop at a convenient number, enough people to make the rest of your life comfortable and rewarding, and meanwhile, you talk as much as you can about polar bears swimming in the sea, shrinking icecaps, droughts in California, Democrats vs. Republicans, Marx and Engels vs. those who signed the US Constitution, anything but the choice you made to save your own sorry behinds.

They are people too. They have the same right to life as you. They think the same thoughts and feel the same emotions, and have an equal right to happiness and long life as you. It should not be news to you, they are hoping that YOU die and go away before you inconvenience them and theirs.

Now quit lying to yourself about your Earth-myth, and enjoy the rest of this day, the one we set aside to celebrate the very real human women who birthed us. Encourage your kids and grand kids to do the same. Don't even think of sharing your dark genocidal thoughts with those same kids. Tomorrow, get up, put on your pants, and go to work doing the actual thing that you really do believe in, which is Business As Usual. Do your little contribution to kicking that can as far as possible. Accept the real role that you have in life. Know that you have chosen to screw the planet and save the people.

Drive your oil-powered car and use your coal-powered electricity, just as do all the Climate Change fanboys on the Web, squalling about something they want the rest of us to do before we inconvenience them. And if you can stand that much honesty about this most difficult of choices, admit to yourself what you have been doing all along, for your entire life. Because you can THINK anything you want, but your actual true beliefs are indicated by your actions.

Reality, what a concept.

[Henriksson]

Am I understanding correctly, climate science is a conspiracy to kill as many people as possible?

[Lore]

Am I understanding correctly, climate science is a conspiracy to kill as many people as possible?

That's KJ's understanding, warped as it is.

[onlooker]

haha, using KJ rationale, if a person understands that a sufficient size meteor can devastate Earth, then that means that person wishes Earth and it's inhabitants to perish. That is lacking in any logic whatsoever.

[KaiserJeep]

Let me remind you simple-minded, Gaia-worshipping folks of a couple of things:

1) The theory of AGW remains unproven. The satellite data from NOAA shows a gentle warming over the period from 1979 to 2015, below that predicted by the entirely defective AGW theory and even below that warming predicted by Milutin Milanković.

2) There is a minority opinion in the scientific community that either does not support man-forced warming, or disputes the significance of it.

3) There is a psychological phenomenon known as "groupthink" in play where this topic is being discussed.

4) I understand astronomy and orbital mechanics better than most of you, as I minored in this subject, and it has been a lifelong hobby. For years my Jeeping trips into the mountains have been scheduled to take advantage of good observing opportunities, and I always take a telescope.

5) Your clumsy and sophomoric "humor" tells me that you either did not read or failed to understand what I said.

6) If you still hold on to your convictions about AGW and Climate Change, after thinking over what I have said, you are indeed an advocate of human genocide. But I don't think that is actually true for most of you. I think you drive cars, use electricity, swill fruits and vegetables from other countries and even the opposite hemisphere, and in every way possible save in your attitude in this the virtual reality of the Web, you are in full compliance with my beliefs and not yours, because as that tired old cliché says: "Actions speak louder than words."

[dohboi]

"I understand astronomy and orbital mechanics better than most of you, as I minored in this subject, and it has been a lifelong hobby. For years my Jeeping trips into the mountains have been scheduled to take advantage of good observing opportunities, and I always take a telescope."

One wonders what in the hell that has to do with anything under discussion.

Presumably, if KJ were a smoker, he would go around to doctors one by one, and after being told by each of the first 99 that, yes, smoking is likely to cause him to get lung cancer (or any number of other nasty diseases), he would then find some quack doc with wads of money from the Tobacco Institute hanging out of his back pocket who would tell him:

"1)The theory that cigarettes cause cancer or any other disease remains unproven. The data spoon fed me by the TI shows that the theory that cigarettes cause cancer is entirely defective...

2) There is a minority opinion in the scientific community that either does not support the theory that cigarettes cause cancer, or disputes the significance of it [all of whom also have large wads of TI money falling out of their pockets].

3) There is a psychological phenomenon known as "groupthink" in play where this topic is being discussed and that groupthink is all on the side of the vast and overwhelming scientific community and none of it on the side of those well paid few individuals who hold that the theory that cigarettes cause cancer is a hoax.

4) I understand podiatric dermitology better than most of you, as I minored in this subject, and it has been a lifelong hobby. For years picking warts off my feet have been scheduled to take advantage of good observing opportunities, and I always take zircon-encrusted tweezers."

And of course when his friends and acquaintances would start to laugh at KJ for his absurd views on the subject, he would be sure to respond with:

"Your clumsy and sophomoric "humor" tells me that you either did not read or failed to understand what I said."

Then he would go on to accuse everyone who actually follows and understands the science of cigarettes and cancer of wishing everyone in the world a horrible death from lung cancer...

Really, you can't make this level of absurd ridiculousness up--you have to read it to believe it.

Again, thanks for the entertainment value KJ, for bumping the thread, for serving as such a perfect example and proof of the claim of the title of this thread, and for prompting such excellent responses from the like of lore, ennui and onlooker.

Keep up the good work!

(Thanks also, though, for admitting in #1 that you accept that global warming is actually happening.

For those interested: Satellite data mostly leaves out the polar regions which are warming the fastest, so they underestimate total rate of GW. When that omission is accounted for, the warming over the last few decades is even more robust. Increased vulcanism--inherently unpredictable--and great absorption by oceans accounts for most of the rest. In any case, the temperature trend is not below all models, just somewhat below the mean line of all models; that is, its well within the 'error bars.')

[ennui2]

KJ, you are falling back on straw-man arguments and not learning a thing from our rebuttals. It's an endless loop of us repeating ourselves and you not listening and just calling us all liberal misanthropes.

[KaiserJeep]

No, not Liberal Misanthropes. If you advocate that we stop burning FF's before we have adequate and affordable alternative energy sources, you are in fact advocating human genocide on a scale unprecedented by any despot in history. Face the reality of it.

I am no fan of FF's. In particular I hate the burning of coal, because it kills hundreds of thousands every year, and causes respiratory problems like chronic asthma and emphysema in others. But if we were to stop burning that most dirty of FF's, then billions of people cannot pump water from wells, or have heat and light and cooking energy. Reluctantly I support the practice even though I hate it.

It would be fine and wonderful to have your peculiar and dangerous obsessions about climate if we had alternative technologies to replace the FF's. We simply do not at this time. But the longer we try to find such replacement energy sources, the more people get to live. That their continuing presence will complete the destruction of the planet is a tragedy, but unavoidable. If you believe as I do that humans are unique and worth saving, then realize that we lost all choice in the matter two centuries ago. Our planet dies in an accelerating fashion.

You can accept the situation we are in or continue to deny it. Denial serves no purpose whatsoever.

[ennui2]

No, not Liberal Misanthropes. If you advocate that we stop burning FF's before we have adequate and affordable alternative energy sources, you are in fact advocating human genocide on a scale unprecedented by any despot in history. Face the reality of it.

Nope. It's strawman. Nobody is suggesting we convert to renewables so fast that people will be dying of starvation in the streets for fear of burning any more FF, and no way in earth would such a policy actually go forward.

Can you stop, take a breath, read the above paragraph about 10x, and then agree to accept it at face value rather than continuing to paint some absurd strawman scenario?

It would be fine and wonderful to have your peculiar and dangerous obsessions about climate if we had alternative technologies to replace the FF's. We simply do not at this time.

You are setting the bar too high. It doesn't have to be 100% drop-in replacement to be worth starting the transition. Even if we can never get there, perfect is the enemy of good.

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . Kaiser Jeep

If you believe as I do that humans are unique and worth saving

Your arrogance is staggering and I find that quote almost obscene.

We are the only organism that will result in earths degradation and ultimate destruction . . . that is the only way we are "unique".

We serve no useful purpose, never have done, and never will.

Cheers.

[Lore]

Yair... Scrub Puller and well said!

Humans have done more to destroy everything around them for their own benefit then any other creature, ever! From virus to largest predator past or present. I can only conclude that we are a defective mutation with limited future survivability prospects as most mutations tend to be.

And lest you think I'm anti humanity, I'd suggest to you that Homo sapiens could have done so much more to enhance all life on this planet rather then just to consume it. We were given a Garden of Eden and instead we choose the pit of Mordor.

[Pops]

The pseudo philosophical, misanthropic one-upmanship around here is becoming quite tedious.

Makes me wonder how all you face yourself in the mirror.

[Lore]

The pseudo philosophical, misanthropic one-upmanship around here is becoming quite tedious.

Makes me wonder how all you face yourself in the mirror.

Makes me wonder why your're so seriously dissing it? This is just a online forum.

The best way to face yourself in the mirror everyday is with a smile. Makes the rest of the day go better.

[clif]

+1

[dohboi]

+2

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . Pops

The pseudo philosophical, misanthropic one-upmanship around here is becoming quite tedious.

I would not have thought there is anything too pseudo (or philosophical for that matter) in my occasional posts and I am not unsociable . . . really.

I just call it sometimes as I see but, mostly as I know it to be.

It's the bullshit bleeding heart "love for humanity" freaks that I find tedious.

Humans don't matter any more than any other organism and there is a good case do suggest they matter a bloody sight less.

Almost any other organism has its place, its niche, where it serves a useful purpose and is a hunter or the hunted. In my 73 years I have never seen any landscape that has been improved by the presence of humans.

They have the colossal arrogance to believe they can change the way natural die off and rejuvenate systems work and allow themselves to breed (say in North Africa) to unsustainable populations and then have the gall to believe they can ship in food from halfway around the world to maintain the status quo.

Cheers.