ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP

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Aim_Deep wrote:

Only [Removed by Support] think Trump has anything to do with Russia.

Trump's known ties to Russia goes back to 1984.

In 1984, "Trump meets with David Bogatin, a Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich who buys five condos from Trump at that meeting that are later seized by the government for being used to launder money for the Russian mob."

Here's the source and an interesting list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections#Before_Donald_Trump's_candidacy

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Raycheetah wrote:

You really have to wonder about the try-hards posting here on a computer gaming discussion forum about what they present as a world-threatening global crisis. Instead of going out and making real efforts for the change they seek, they hang out here, insulting other posters they know won't ever be convinced of their positions.

Seems legit. =0[.]o=

I'd rather not derail discussion about politics and science in a factual, evidence based approach, with addressing this, but since it pretty much is directed at me, and perhaps some others, I'll bite and defend myself a bit.

If you must know, I do a lot regarding climate change and reducing or offsetting my carbon footprint. Obviously everyone could do more, but I do try. Actually, the biggest impact anyone can do, is unfortunately through politics.

It really is a shame that something as robust and clean/pure as science, has to trudge through the filth that is politics, to get things done quickly and effectively. The actual science behind ACC anthropogenic climate change, has been settled for a couple decades now...But getting countries to act on it? We are heading rapidly in the wrong direction.

If you vote an anti-science, corrupt man to lead your nation, then really I don't know why people are surprised that he dismisses (his own administration's!) scientific reports on the matter. The best thing anyone can actually do, is forget about misguided partisan loyalties and politics for a minute, research the science, come to a conclusion, and vote accordingly.

"

Instead of going out and making real efforts for the change they seek, they hang out here, insulting other posters they know won't ever be convinced of their positions.

Now, I think I've been pretty polite and not resorting to personal attacks against video gamers on a video gaming forum. If you think I've insulted specific posters in this thread, do let me know, quote me, and I will for sure apologise and hope to improve. By the way, I've been reading some of this thread's past comments, and I just wanted to point out that maybe you shouldn't be the one calling people out on insults...

And if someone is arguing in bad faith, i.e. no amount of evidence-based facts or science or logic or reasoning, will EVER influence them, because of a fanatical cultish belief system or crazy misguided partisan loyalty or magical turtles, then I will just hop on to one of my many other outlets for discussion...which I do anyways.

This actually happened in the climate change thread just above, where the main proponent of anti-ACC tried to dispute it with some reasoning, just said 'Actually nothing will convince me regarding the science except something completely unrealistic and I magically get a few billion from the green economy'.

It's when people start talking about magical turtles, that you go and make yourself another coffee.

My understanding is that an important reason that elected Republicans typically deny climate change is because it is a Koch brothers hot topic. The Koch brothers donate very large sums of money to Republicans. Their donations are strongly tied to supporting their vast income which is based on them getting a paid for every gallon of gas refined.

When you say climate change thread above. You mean the earlier discussion in this thread because I didn't see a climate change thread in Off Topic?

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Turtledove wrote:

My understanding is that an important reason that elected Republicans typically deny climate change is because it is a Koch brothers hot topic. The Koch brothers donate very large sums of money to Republicans. Their donations are strongly tied to supporting their vast income which is based on them getting a paid for every gallon of gas refined.

When you say climate change thread above. You mean the earlier discussion in this thread because I didn't see a climate change thread in Off Topic?

No, I meant the 'US extreme weather climate change report' thread thingie just above, but I'm not really bothered about only talking about climate change in that specific thread.

I think Trump, has a lot to answer for when it comes climate change, so talking about it here is completely warranted, in my opinion.

Koch brothers - I think it's no secret that they fund some think tanks related to environmental policy, and obfuscate science doing so.

Lookup the Heartland Institute and Anthony Watts from wattsupwiththat, to see more specifically.

I think it odd that any corrupt obfuscation regarding science comes from allegedly the one side only, which is apparently Al Gore and Leo Dicaprio and anyone with a vested interest in the green economy, and then pretend the 4 trillion dollar fossil fuel industry has no motive to 'muddy the waters' a bit and confuse non-scientific people.

There's a decent documentary out there by a scientist, Naomi Oreskes, you know the lady who first published a paper on the consensus on ACC?

It's called 'Merchants of Doubt'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ii9zGFDtc

The similarity to how the tobacco industries lobbied for their interests and obfuscated science, is striking to how the Heartland Institute and others are doing it now.

They did some really ugly things to her, were quite nasty :(

"

rojimboo wrote:

I don't think I'm getting my point through to you...

Because the point you are thinking I am arguing for is not the point I made. YOU believe the environment will be worse under Trump. I don't think it will be worse at all. Regulations do not automatically equal improvement. There are times when regulation is definitely required and times when regulation just results in very expensive costs and no benefits whatsoever.

The yellow river was just another example where the EPA thought they knew what they were doing and did far more damage in their effort to improve something.

Would GGG produce a better game if they had 250,000 employees and had to report to 17 international agencies to get any game changes done?

When agencies become too large, with too big a budget and very low accountability they become corrupt. Corruption brings failures and a subversion of the original intent as people spend their careers trying to become personally rich.

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rojimboo wrote:

I am talking about Individual 1 (lol) and his damaging environmental policies, and you, out of nowhere, justify the damaging environmental policies, by pointing out that Individual 2 also had damaging policies.

Once again, it is your belief those policies are damaging. I brought up individual #2 Obama, because I believe he did more harm to the environment than good. Intentions don't equal results. Legislation doesn't equal results.

"

rojimboo wrote:

Anyone with a rudimentary physics knowledge, upon examining the evidence, WILL acknowledge anthropogenic climate change.

This again, is an assertion of your opinion.

You could have chose to say "Most people with ...." but, by choosing "anyone" - you made an absolute statement which equivocates to stating that ALL people with a rudimentary physics knowledge...

Using the scientific method, we can test your hypothesis to see if it can be disproved.

Item 1:

Dr. Leslie Woodcock, emeritus professor at the University of Manchester (UK) School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, is a former NASA scientist along with other impressive accomplishments on his distinguished professional resume.

In an interview, he laughed off man-made climate change as nonsense and a money-making industry for the green lobby, which approaches the subject with a religious fervor.

You can dispute his climatology credentials, but I'd daresay he has more than a rudimentary knowledge of physics.


Items 2-5:


David Douglass, physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester

William Happer, physicist, emeritus professor, Princeton University.

Henrik Svensmark, physicist, Danish National Space Center.

Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of nuclear physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists


You theory that ANYONE with a rudimentary physics knowledge, upon examining the evidence, WILL acknowledge anthropogenic climate change is proven false.

The President of the United States happens to be an ACC skeptic. He isn't someone that is convinced by overwhelming numbers of people's opinions.

If you did a study, I strongly suspect that you would find a very large overlap between the ACC supporters and people that thought Hillary was obviously going to win.

That makes her president doesn't it? Consensus, and all that malarkey.

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rojimboo wrote:

It's true I only looked at the beneficiaries of denying ACC (Big Oil, big polluters etc.). Trump cannot as acting president profit personally, to my knowledge. So I assume his motive must be to his buddies.

The last I saw a tallied figure, Trump has lost about $700 million since becoming president. He isn't in it for the money. His wealth isn't built on big oil, and he stands to lose far more money than anything he could gain.

There are other motives you should also take into consideration -
1) Trump is a natural skeptic
2)Trump's real life experiences have taught him something different than what he is being told
3)Trump doesn't like other people telling him what to do or what to think.

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rojimboo wrote:

Now, this is something we haven't touched upon, but you seem to be implying that ordinary people benefit from corporation profits as well?

Corporations, like small businesses, can be good or bad.

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rojimboo wrote:

I don't actually think Dyson disputes ACC, to my knowledge?

He's been doubting and questioning it for several decades now. It is normal for scientists to disagree on complex theories. That dispute and the testing that goes on by various factions is healthy for science.

I can't emphasize that enough. The disputes in science are healthy. They promote further research and end up developing even more data. The data can promote one theory for a long time and then suddenly that theory is overturned. Other times, the theory is confirmed and the data reveals a different aspect of it that explains things even better.

Don't think of people as deniers of ACC or cultists of ACC. Most people aren't in either camp. They use the knowledge and experience they have and then apply that to whether or not they trust certain aspects of climate change.

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rojimboo wrote:

You know value of the fossil fuel industry? That you subsidise to pollute and cause climate change for future generations? About 4trillion USD...

If the ACC industry continues on its present course, it will overtake oil in 50 years.

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rojimboo wrote:

And by the way, the green economy is rapidly overtaking the fossil fuel sector, so it's actually not half a trillion, nowhere near that, globally.

Some aspects of the "green" economy will provide benefits and continue to grow. Others will be proven to be useless and will be discarded. I think it is great that people care and want to make things better. Not all things that appear to be improvements actually are.

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Turtledove wrote:

My understanding is that an important reason that elected Republicans typically deny climate change is because it is a Koch brothers hot topic. The Koch brothers donate very large sums of money to Republicans. Their donations are strongly tied to supporting their vast income which is based on them getting a paid for every gallon of gas refined.

When you say climate change thread above. You mean the earlier discussion in this thread because I didn't see a climate change thread in Off Topic?

The Koch brothers hate Trump. They contributed very little, if anything towards his presidency (IIRC), so that wouldn't explain Trump's position.

For many GOP members, you are partially correct. They do depend on the Koch brothers contributions, and they do listen very intently to what they have to say.

I wouldn't want to be a person caught with a tape recording of what the Koch brothers say in private conversations where they "interview" a political candidate to see if they will support them. I'd probably wind up a drowning victim in the Sahara desert with two sharks to the back of my head.

"

rojimboo wrote:

Actually, the biggest impact anyone can do, is unfortunately through politics.

This is where we fundamentally disagree. Likely true, political action will have the greatest effect; implicit in your statement is that this effect will be the greatest good, or even good at all.

I asked you a few pages back, something to the effect of, is it fair to believe democrats are evil? It was a legitimate question which you did not answer. You have a way with deflecting questions while simultaneously accusing others of the same.

The people advocating political action towards climate change are the same people with a long history of corruption, mishandling money, running up debt, stifling economic growth, on and on. Add to that the appearance of universities politicizing heavily toward the left, and you have the recipe for the layman’s skepticism. Not some denier strawman—which by the way is an example of religious devotion to a political ideology, lending yet further to the layman’s skepticism.

Anything politics touches is at risk of being misused towards the accumulation of power. I’ve outlined it before: power -> corruption -> power -> corruption. It is my opinion that politics is absolutely the worst place to affect any positive remedy, and you are actively disadvantaging our species by participating. Solutions that prescribe global wealth redistribution do so at the detriment of the single greatest source of innovation in human history: the free market.

I’m not suggesting that unrestrained markets are our salvation, but I am suggesting that in this case, freer markets guided by well designed incentives will lead to more impactful innovations in practices and technology.

Edit: addendum: In the other thread you asked what the single greatest threat to the human species was (or something to that effect). The answer is the same it has always been: the acquisition and distribution of resources essential to warding off the elements, predation, and starvation. Something the civilized world seems to take for granted.

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rojimboo wrote:

By the way, I've been reading some of this thread's past comments, and I just wanted to point out that maybe you shouldn't be the one calling people out on insults...

I’ll speak on my behalf here, regardless of whether this comment was directed at me. I come here, a game forum, to post sometimes outlandish ideas specifically to have them challenged. I grew tired of people, and one pompous bigot in particular, assuming moral authority over me rather than argue the ideas. That’s leftist culture for you. This is a game forum, after all, I come here almost exclusively for cigarette breaks, and ya’ll bore me with your mental gymnastics. So I said fuck it, for a while, and favored hyperbole.

I guess civil wars do make sense now.

If "climate change" was so critical and settled science, the political solutions proposed to fix this problem would not be so bad, completely giving a pass to heavy polluters that are classified as "countries in development" (China & India), while heavily penalizing countries that are already at the forefront of applying clean energy (Europe).

The climate change solutions would also address the skyrocketing population growth in the 3rd world and include a stop to all migration into the 1st world - since, as you know, people living in the West produce more emissions - you'd logically want less people living in USA / Europe, not more ;)

I dunno if climate change is real or not (otoh, I know that pollution & destruction of the environment is real), but the proposed accords are 100% bollocks and should not be supported because it all smells like a global socialist / bureaucratic scam.

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DalaiLama wrote:

Because the point you are thinking I am arguing for is not the point I made.

Ok, adding inability to meet people half-way, to blatant science denialism, to the list.

Great.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

YOU believe the environment will be worse under Trump. I don't think it will be worse at all.

I'm at core quite a simple guy. You tell me a pollutant is harmful to health after a threshold (it could be 0 or something very low), and that you plan to allow more pollution by not limiting the amount of the pollutant being released, I assume that's a bad thing for people.

Unless you can show that more pollution is beneficial to health, through some super complicated chemistry, case closed.

Let's have an example here, something concrete.

Obama EPA vs Trump EPA
Clean Power Plan vs Affordable Clean Energy

Obama CPP:
The EPA estimates the Clean Power Plan will reduce the pollutants that contribute to smog and soot by 25 percent, and the reduction will lead to net climate and health benefits of an estimated $25 billion to $45 billion per year in 2030. That includes the avoidance of 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks among children and 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths.[28] EPA projects that the plan will save the average American family $85 per year in energy bills in 2030, and it will save enough energy to power 30 million homes and save consumers $155 billion from 2020–2030. The plan would create 30 percent more renewable energy generation in 2030 and help to lower the costs of renewable energy.[29] It also would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, according to the NRDC.[30]


Trump ACE:
https://news.syr.edu/blog/2017/10/10/study-clean-power-replacement-worse-than-nothing-costs-more-than-3500-lives-and-33b-yearly/

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A new map released today by scientists at Syracuse and Harvard universities shows that, compared to doing nothing, replacing the Clean Power Plan with a narrower option would make air quality worse and endanger more lives, on top of the 3,500 premature deaths and $33 billion in health costs already estimated.

Let's just read that again.

Trump EPA's ACE Affordable Clean Energy rule, is worse for the environment, pollution and human health, than doing NOTHING.

Good job, Trump and your Environmental Pollution Agency!

Bring back coal! Coal is good for you! Eat coal!

"

Regulations do not automatically equal improvement. There are times when regulation is definitely required and times when regulation just results in very expensive costs and no benefits whatsoever.

Tell me, how does a free market deal with market failures like negative externalities (pollution)? Or others like monopolies, cartels etc.?

Isn't it so that market failures are just that, failure of the free market to deal with these issues?

Very few (informed) people argue against anti-cartel or anti-monopoly laws.

Why exactly is government intervention EVILLLL when it comes to limiting pollution?

I will ignore the 'b-bu-but regulations aren't immediately pollution reductions' silly argument.

"

The yellow river was just another example where the EPA thought they knew what they were doing and did far more damage in their effort to improve something.

Gold King Mine incident was an accident. Yes, mistakes were made, in hindsight things could have been done differently. To blame the problem on increased environmental protection by Obama and the EPA baffles believe though. I don't know what kind of mental acrobatics you would have to perform to arrive to that conclusion. It was necessary to do something about the pollution blocked and trapped in the mine, due to acid seeping out and killing and polluting the surrounding waterways.

"

Would GGG produce a better game if they had 250,000 employees and had to report to 17 international agencies to get any game changes done?

Wow, what an exact analogy when discussing one agency and a handful of pollutants...this isn't hyperbole at all.

"

When agencies become too large, with too big a budget and very low accountability they become corrupt. Corruption brings failures and a subversion of the original intent as people spend their careers trying to become personally rich.

Speaking of corruption, letting polluters pollute more because you destroyed the counter-force against them by putting a corrupt former coal lobbyist to head an environmental agency, is pretty funny.

"

"

rojimboo wrote:

Anyone with a rudimentary physics knowledge, upon examining the evidence, WILL acknowledge anthropogenic climate change.

This again, is an assertion of your opinion.

No no no, I disagree. I clearly referenced that assertion with a bibliography of peer reviewed science....

Of course it's an opinion....!!!

"

You could have chose to say "Most people with ...." but, by choosing "anyone" - you made an absolute statement which equivocates to stating that ALL people with a rudimentary physics knowledge...

Using the scientific method, we can test your hypothesis to see if it can be disproved.

Item 1:

Dr. Leslie Woodcock, emeritus professor at the University of Manchester (UK) School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, is a former NASA scientist along with other impressive accomplishments on his distinguished professional resume.

In an interview, he laughed off man-made climate change as nonsense and a money-making industry for the green lobby, which approaches the subject with a religious fervor.

You can dispute his climatology credentials, but I'd daresay he has more than a rudimentary knowledge of physics.


Items 2-5:


David Douglass, physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester

William Happer, physicist, emeritus professor, Princeton University.

Henrik Svensmark, physicist, Danish National Space Center.

Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of nuclear physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists


You theory that ANYONE with a rudimentary physics knowledge, upon examining the evidence, WILL acknowledge anthropogenic climate change is proven false.

That's hardly the scientific method but ok. Let's just pretend that's all I said, cherry-pick stuff out of context and just argue that strawman. good.

By the way, if you must know, I've clarified a couple times now that I don't believe deniers are not bright or intelligent, nor that Trump is dumb. People have incentives to not believe something scientific sometimes, and they think they benefit from non-belief. I still maintain anyone with a rudimentary physics knowledge that familiarises themselves with the science, will come to the conclusion there is no other major contributor for the recent rapid warming than human activities, *unless* they have some incentive/benefit for non-science belief.

Let's go through the list, shall we?

1. Woodcock
He states in an interview to a local newspaper his thoughts on climate change.

First claim by him:
"There is no reproducible scientific evidence CO2 has significantly increased in the last 100 years."

Errrr.

What.

Stopped reading there.

This is literally like saying water is not wet. Literally.

It is unequivocal, that CO2 emissions have increased and we've not only have a continuous direct measurement from Mauna Loa for decades, but also proxy data that goes back much further.

I will not even go through the other points, I suspect the man with the sheep was very very drunk when he had this interview, despite his accredited engineering degree in his past life.

"

Consensus, and all that malarkey.

Considering you ran away from that discussion, I would not bring up the consensus argument again, unless you were prepared to discuss it again.

"

"

rojimboo wrote:

I don't actually think Dyson disputes ACC, to my knowledge?

He's been doubting and questioning it for several decades now.

That's not disputing it...you can point out inaccuracies in methodologies all day, but the underlying thesis should be attempted to be disproven and/or thoroughly debunked mountain of evidence, possibly proposing some sort of alternate theory....

"

It is normal for scientists to disagree on complex theories. That dispute and the testing that goes on by various factions is healthy for science.

I can't emphasize that enough. The disputes in science are healthy. They promote further research and end up developing even more data. The data can promote one theory for a long time and then suddenly that theory is overturned. Other times, the theory is confirmed and the data reveals a different aspect of it that explains things even better.

Don't think of people as deniers of ACC or cultists of ACC. Most people aren't in either camp. They use the knowledge and experience they have and then apply that to whether or not they trust certain aspects of climate change.

I'm not sure why I am getting lectured by someone who does not seem to have any experience in science and quotes bogus wishful thinking as an alternative to peer reviewed science, but whatever.

"

"

rojimboo wrote:

You know value of the fossil fuel industry? That you subsidise to pollute and cause climate change for future generations? About 4trillion USD...

If the ACC industry continues on its present course, it will overtake oil in 50 years.

That's a strong assertion...considering coal is dead, and we have to stop fossil fuel usage way before 2068, I imagine it would be a lot sooner.

How is the ACC industry defined by the way? Where did you get that number?

"

CanHasPants wrote:

"

rojimboo wrote:

Actually, the biggest impact anyone can do, is unfortunately through politics.

This is where we fundamentally disagree. Likely true, political action will have the greatest effect; implicit in your statement is that this effect will be the greatest good, or even good at all.

It's so surprising to find someone who disagrees with me on this thread.

You can speculate as to my meaning by examining each word of each sentence all day long. I mean, if it were me, I would just read the sentence and infer the meaning from the words used. IKR, crazy.

"

Actually, the biggest impact anyone can do, is unfortunately through politics.

Shall we cherry-pick that and pretend he actually said:

"The greatest benefit (greatest good) for all can be achieved through politics"

Even I could argue that strawman all day.

OR

Shall we read on, perhaps rojimboo the nitwit has expanded a bit on his ideas:

"

It really is a shame that something as robust and clean/pure as science, has to trudge through the filth that is politics, to get things done quickly and effectively.

We are in a hurry, due to [insert scientific reason here that nobody will refute nor read].

The quickest way to reduce emissions globally, is via global politics, as in something like a UN Paris agreement.

If we leave it to the free market, it will be too late.

"

I asked you a few pages back, something to the effect of, is it fair to believe democrats are evil? It was a legitimate question which you did not answer. You have a way with deflecting questions while simultaneously accusing others of the same.

Deflecting your deflection like Mr. Teflon, I didn't think it was a serious question as we were doing memes at the time.

It was a seriously loaded question though:
(rojimboo posts meme that Khoranth thinks all democrats are eviiiiil)

CanhasPants replies:
"Is there anything wrong with that opinion? I mean, I’ve got a pretty strong gut feeling that they’d do or say anything for power." (posts evil emperor meme)

Do I have a completely non-sensical partisan view and treat opposing politically affiliated human beings as EVIL?

Um.

No.

"

The people advocating political action towards climate change are the same people with a long history of corruption, mishandling money, running up debt, stifling economic growth, on and on.

If you say so. Democrats are like evil jedi. Grey, and smelly.

"

Add to that the appearance of universities politicizing heavily toward the left, and you have the recipe for the layman’s skepticism. Not some denier strawman—which by the way is an example of religious devotion to a political ideology, lending yet further to the layman’s skepticism.

I didn't quite follow this, maybe expand if you like. Universities have always been leftist, as education, altruism, and socialism correlate for whatever reason.

"

Anything politics touches is at risk of being misused towards the accumulation of power. I’ve outlined it before: power -> corruption -> power -> corruption. It is my opinion that politics is absolutely the worst place to affect any positive remedy, and you are actively disadvantaging our species by participating. Solutions that prescribe global wealth redistribution do so at the detriment of the single greatest source of innovation in human history: the free market.

I discussed the market failure and negative externality in a free market, that is pollution. You need government intervention sometimes, no matter the waste and possible corruption.

I would also argue there are degrees of corruption in politics in different countries, you can't assume a politician is automatically corrupt to the core by participating in politics. Well, depends where you are, I guess.

"

I’m not suggesting that unrestrained markets are our salvation, but I am suggesting that in this case, freer markets guided by well designed incentives will lead to more impactful innovations in practices and technology.

What if, you could combine the two? Legislate and mandate by government to reduce emissions, and leave the free market to come up with their own most efficient way of doing that?

"

Edit: addendum: In the other thread you asked what the single greatest threat to the human species was (or something to that effect). The answer is the same it has always been: the acquisition and distribution of resources essential to warding off the elements, predation, and starvation. Something the civilized world seems to take for granted.

Warding off elements - like climate change?