Notices by Don Romano (alt) (thor@noagendasocial.com), page 20

Do you have a nagging feeling that you no longer know where you're going with your life?

[ ] Yes
[ ] Somewhat
[ ] No

@guizzy We used to think water downstream of sewage pipes was drinkable because the water itself would "cleanse" the sewage somehow (also, we didn't understand germ theory).

@guizzy Why did we bother with the Paris Agreement if scientific consensus hasn't been reached? Also, why would the scientific community risk putting itself in disrepute like that? To me, this just sounds like conspiracy theories. I'm aware of chaos theory, but at the same time, it seems very plausible to me that releasing large amounts of gas into the atmosphere is going to have some kind of effect.

Hitler reacts to functional programming:
https://youtu.be/ADqLBc1vFwI

@freon You've been thinking for a long time about this, haven't you?

One of the best account names in the Fediverse: @blaha

I have nothing more to say.

@mrtino Casperio, the Queer Ghost?

@skypage It's a bit more anthropocentric than that.

@bifpowell The only part of the public sector capable of innovation, and unusually rapid innovation at that, is the millitary in wartime. I count NASA during the Cold War as an extension of the military in this context, since it was essentially an arms race in civilian clothing.

@bifpowell Big pharma and the medical field in general does not have a stellar record for sound practices and transparency, no. This is very unfortunate, but if you asked a leftist about this, he'd say "...and that is why capitalism is bad!"
I'm not convinced that placing this kind of responsibility in the hands of the private sector is a good thing. On the other hand, if you placed it in the hands of the public sector, there'd be a profound lack of innovation and a horrid bureaucracy.

Sometimes, we know facts about the world, but we don't perceive them as problematic. You can stare cold numbers in the face for ages before you start thinking about real-world implications. Took us a while to start connecting the dots with asteroids, for example. We knew they had repeatedly caused mass extinctions, but it took a while before someone said "Wait, couldn't this also happen to us?" and began thinking of ways of preventing it.

Don't say that the climate is always changing. Stop saying that. That argument has already been knocked down: The rate of change is more rapid now than it has been for as far back as we can measure with historical data, ice cores and what not.

It's never been about the science, of course. Again, we've known about the green house effect long before it was politicised. It just took us a while to understand what effects the change in temperature would actually have.

What kind of evidence would it actually take to convince a climate sceptic? I get the distinct impression that scepticism surrounds this topic because it's a rare case of a scientific claim that, if true, leads to invasive measures that rub right wingers the wrong way.

The need for vaccination due to group immunity is a similar issue, and guess what: Here come the anti-vaccers!

@jeremiah Yes, science can be wrong, but should we then dismiss all science? We obviously don't. We take the independently verified stuff and roll with it.

@jeremiah Engineering is, in part, the practical application of scientific theories. Scientific theories are scientific theses that we have found evidence for.

Single scientific studies are often wrong. Anyone who bases a political decision on a single scientific study is a fool, because science is also about consensus. Multiple independent researchers must verify the results.

Meta-studies are a more useful tool for that than individual studies.

@jeremiah You could argue that it is religion of course, but I'm not sure why I can't argue the same against someone who is skeptical of it all. Perhaps his political ideology gets in the way? It's easy to argue either way...

All I know is that I owe a lot to science. My whole career, for example, and much of my childhood wonder.

@jeremiah The Internet is based on theories of electromagnetism. GPS wouldn't work without Einstein's relativity. Many fishermen would die at sea and farmer's crops would fail, if they didn't have meteorology to rely on. We would also know very little about the climate of the Ice Age without archaeology and the sampling of ice cores. Why this sudden scepticism when the science happens to affect policy?

@jeremiah This is essentially what the scientists are telling us. The data tells us it's been gradually accelerating since the industrial revolution. It's just going to look like various seemingly unrelated events, and only through statistics after the fact can we connect it to global warming. That's why it's so hard to convince people, because there is no smoking gun.

@jeremiah In fact, it's happening as we speak, and it's just too slow to alarm anybody. There won't be a dramatic moment when "it" happens. We'll just see it play out over time, and since we don't care about gradual change, we'll just adapt to it... But inland and elevated regions are going to get awfully crowded, and we'll probably see more wars breaking out in third world countries in the decades ahead, as people fight over the remaining land.

@jeremiah Climate change is a term used by those who don't want to attribute global warming to humans. Global warming itself is caused largely by the greenhouse effect, which we've been aware of at least since the 1960s.

My point is exactly that we're not "all gonna die". It's a gradual process and it won't look like death. It will look like waves of migration as coastal regions are gradually submerged. It will look like tropical species invading temperate regions.