Octopus Overlords

Paingod wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 6:48 am 31.2% ... but I believe the correct answer is "All of the above"

Jeff V wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 4:39 pm Really? Only 3% of the respondents were smart enough to scroll up so they could properly order the top 5 on that last question?

Jeff V wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 4:39 pm Really? Only 3% of the respondents were smart enough to scroll up so they could properly order the top 5 on that last question?

Atmospheric levels of carbon registered 415 parts per million over the weekend at one of the world's key measuring stations, a concentration level researchers say has not existed in more than 3 million years – before the dawn of human history.

Taken at the Mauno Loa Observatory in Hawaii by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the measure continues the upward trend of atmospheric carbon concentration that lies at the heart of the global warming and climate crisis:

Kurth wrote: Sat Feb 23, 2019 2:26 pm Front page headline on CNN this morning: Dianne Feinstein's climate change talk with a group of kids gets heated

This is a terrible look for Feinstein. At the same time, this is exactly the bad position AOC and the Green New Dealers are putting Democrats like Feintstein. It really pisses me off. It also makes me very, very worried about the upcoming election.

hitbyambulance wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 10:06 pm whereas someone like Jared Diamond says "There’s a 49 Percent Chance the World As We Know It Will End by 2050"

hitbyambulance wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 10:06 pm whereas someone like Jared Diamond says "There’s a 49 Percent Chance the World As We Know It Will End by 2050"

Drazzil wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 10:26 pm Jared Diamond cant possibly predict the impact of future tech, political developments or even world events. His training, education and even life experience leading to a certain view on how things will go down.

GreenGoo wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 10:37 pm

Drazzil wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 10:26 pm Jared Diamond cant possibly predict the impact of future tech, political developments or even world events. His training, education and even life experience leading to a certain view on how things will go down.

He bases his opinion on education, experience and history. You base yours on...magic? Eternal optimism? I literally don't care what people feel personally, it's when they undermine the validity of other peoples' opinions while pumping up their own, baseless ones that I start to take notice.

Hope is fine. I even hope you're right.

I just hope the tipping point comes soon enough to save our civilization and species.

Blackhawk wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 12:03 am So, you're saying that we already have - or will have -the knowledge and tech to solve the problem, but we need the motivation before crossing the tipping point?

You're absolutely correct.

We have the knowledge and the tech either exists, or is a budget away from being developed. It has been for a while.

We need the motivation, social and political? Yes, we do. That motivation has to either outweigh - or bypass - the significant portion of the lawmakers in the United States that don't care if society falls to pieces after they die, so long as they can be rich until then. And I mean that literally. And that's just the US. The same thing has to happen worldwide. In China. In India. In Russia. All of them.

I just hope the tipping point comes soon enough to save our civilization and species.

The question is whether we get the motivation before the climate tipping point - the point of no return - gets here. There is a countdown timer on this sucker, and it is ticking, 24-style. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Do we have enough time left on it for all of those nations to build enough motivation to sacrifice their comforts to force their politicians to sacrifice their own?

And here's the thing: There is more than one timer. The one for 'human extinction' doesn't exist. The one for 'societal collapse' does, and is ticking. The one for 'ecological and financial disaster' is sitting at 00:00:00. It ran out a while back. That much is already happening, even if we can get Mega Maid to go from blow to suck and pull out all of the CO2 and methane tomorrow.

The future doesn't look bright.

GreenGoo wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 10:37 pm

Drazzil wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 10:26 pm Jared Diamond cant possibly predict the impact of future tech, political developments or even world events. His training, education and even life experience leading to a certain view on how things will go down.

He bases his opinion on education, experience and history. You base yours on...magic? Eternal optimism? I literally don't care what people feel personally, it's when they undermine the validity of other peoples' opinions while pumping up their own, baseless ones that I start to take notice.

Hope is fine. I even hope you're right.

The experts were, by and large, horrific forecasters. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting and bad at long-term forecasting. They were bad at forecasting in every domain. When experts declared that future events were impossible or nearly impossible, 15 percent of them occurred nonetheless. When they declared events to be a sure thing, more than one-quarter of them failed to transpire. As the Danish proverb warns, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”
...
Eventually, Tetlock bestowed nicknames (borrowed from the philosopher Isaiah Berlin) on the experts he’d observed: The highly specialized hedgehogs knew “one big thing,” while the integrator foxes knew “many little things.”

Hedgehogs are deeply and tightly focused. Some have spent their career studying one problem. Like Ehrlich and Simon, they fashion tidy theories of how the world works based on observations through the single lens of their specialty. Foxes, meanwhile, “draw from an eclectic array of traditions, and accept ambiguity and contradiction,” Tetlock wrote. Where hedgehogs represent narrowness, foxes embody breadth.

Incredibly, the hedgehogs performed especially poorly on long-term predictions within their specialty. They got worse as they accumulated experience and credentials in their field. The more information they had to work with, the more easily they could fit any story into their worldview.

Blackhawk wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 12:03 am The future doesn't look bright.

GreenGoo wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 2:33 am Sigh. That's moronic in this context.

Scientists are experts and they predict stuff that happens next (i.e. the future) all the time. There are no "experts" on the future, so even in the context of the article, it's a pure fluff piece.

Zarathud wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 9:48 am I'll take a 75-85% probability over wild ass guesses anytime.

Zaxxon wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 5:05 pm https://cheezburger.com/8363269/man-giv ... t-spoilers

Kraken wrote:

Zaxxon wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 5:05 pm https://cheezburger.com/8363269/man-giv ... t-spoilers

As someone who hasn't seen any of the last season yet, I appreciate the spoiler-free analysis. I presume it's in the Global Warming thread because winter is here?

Pyperkub wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 3:56 pm

Zarathud wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 9:48 am I'll take a 75-85% probability over wild ass guesses anytime.

Will someone please donate for Drazzil?

Zarathud wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 10:22 pm But then how will we trap you for our new fur farming business?

Zarathud wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 1:43 am

Marmots

Blackhawk wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:30 pm I don't think I can get any more sobered.

Blackhawk wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:30 pm I don't think I can get any more sobered.

Zaxxon wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:32 pm

Blackhawk wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:30 pm I don't think I can get any more sobered.

Next year, when we hit 420. Then 425 6 mo later...

Blackhawk wrote:

Zaxxon wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:32 pm

Blackhawk wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:30 pm I don't think I can get any more sobered.

Next year, when we hit 420. Then 425 6 mo later...

I won't be any more sobered. I'm as sober as sober can be sobered already.

Zaxxon wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 5:42 pm

Blackhawk wrote:

Zaxxon wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:32 pm

Blackhawk wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:30 pm I don't think I can get any more sobered.

Next year, when we hit 420. Then 425 6 mo later...

I won't be any more sobered. I'm as sober as sober can be sobered already.

Maybe it's time to start drinking.

The rich will not suffer from climate change, and for that reason they won’t lift a finger to avoid it. If we don’t kill and eat them, they will inherit the future.