51% of GHG Emissions are attributable to livestock!
If it's even close to true then anyone who advocates for mitigation of AGW should also be vegetarian (or better yet vegan), if they want to practice what they preach. Of course Al Gore gets a "pass" for his 10k sq ft house and his membership in the global jet-set. So maybe we can all give ourselves a pass for claiming to worry about AGW while snacking on beef jerky.
*snacks on a beef jerky stocking stuffer while awaiting a reply*
Yes Al Gore, gets a pass. Because he's not flying solo on a custom Boeing 747 traveling to places to play jet set tourists. He travels to advocate. Then again, no one stands up to Ralph Nader (literally doesn't stand up... the man is a walking skyscraper :) who dresses plainly, doesn't even own a television or a car, and takes mass transit whenever possible.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yes Al Gore, gets a pass. Because he's not flying solo on a custom Boeing 747 traveling to places to play jet set tourists. He travels to advocate. Then again, no one stands up to Ralph Nader (literally doesn't stand up... the man is a walking skyscraper :) who dresses plainly, doesn't even own a television or a car, and takes mass transit whenever possible.51% of GHG Emissions are attributable to livestock!
If it's even close to true then anyone who advocates for mitigation of AGW should also be vegetarian (or better yet vegan), if they want to practice what they preach. Of course Al Gore gets a "pass" for his 10k sq ft house and his membership in the global jet-set. So maybe we can all give ourselves a pass for claiming to worry about AGW while snacking on beef jerky.
*snacks on a beef jerky stocking stuffer while awaiting a reply*
I don't give Al Gore a pass at all. In fact, he's basically a hypocrite.
With how big his carbon footprint is unnecessarily, he's one of the bigger hypocrites out there.
I voted for the guy way back when, but I would also say he's in it for political and other reasons, not necessarily to help the earth.
Going by the universal rule that left to its own devices, energy will always flow down the path of least resistance...... we will go nuclear and just start dumping the waste on the moon and/or somewhere in the solar system!!!
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Going by the universal rule that left to its own devices, energy will always flow down the path of least resistance...... we will go nuclear and just start dumping the waste on the moon and/or somewhere in the solar system!!!
Congratulations.
You've found a way to make nuclear even more prohibitively expensive. :]
You've found a way to make nuclear even more prohibitively expensive. :]
Ahhh but thats the crux of the matter you see.... money isnt going be the issue going forwards. After all 'money' is a human construct....its not a scientific obstacle like time travel or warp drives!
Its a simple case of increasing population vs decreasing resources.
Nuclear even as it stands now is a relatively cheap long term option and is relatively enviro-friendly at least in the short-med term..... the space dumping I kid you not could very well work out!
It really would not remotely surprise me..... all nuclear using nations would be forced to pay a fee towards the dumping costs!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Not to mention...the last thing you want to accidently explode in the atmosphere is a rocket full of nuclear waste
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
money isnt going be the issue going forwards
Oh, we're done with 'money'? I hadn't heard.
Say... could you send me all of yours? It might make neat memorabilia some day.
After all 'money' is a human construct
<looks around>
You... do know that WE are humans, right?
The planet is run by humans. Fundamental human social constructs are thus very much 'the issue going forwards'.
ts not a scientific obstacle like time travel or warp drives!
...and that has been true for the entirety of written human history. During which time we have continued to use money.
Your argument that humanity will fundamentally change because of conditions which are exactly the same as they have been for thousands of years is... unconvincing.
Nuclear even as it stands now is a relatively cheap long term option
No... as it stands now, of the energy sources which can cover global electricity demand, nuclear is the most expensive and shortest lasting.
The issue with livestock is not the carbon generation by their emissions, but of the incredible inefficiency that goes into making a pound of beef. An amazing proportion of our agricultural production, goes simply into making feed stock for beef, which basically gives it a hell of a carbon footprint. Other forms of protein, such as poultry are of an order of magnitude less in such demands.51% of GHG Emissions are attributable to livestock!
No.
Note that your source isn't a scientific paper, but rather an advocacy article.
Likely the most egregious error is factoring in "Overlooked respiration by livestock" as 13.7% of all GHG emissions. As has been explained previously in this thread, breathing (by animals or humans) is not factored in to GHG emissions because it is inherently in equilibrium. That is, if a cow exhales an atom of carbon into the atmosphere it HAD to have gotten that carbon atom from something it ate (e.g. grass)... which in turn had to have taken that atom OUT of the natural atmospheric carbon cycle (e.g. the grass used atmospheric CO2 for photosynthesis).
Basically, respiration does not change atmospheric CO2 levels. That article including it as such a major factor indicates either that they have no idea what they are talking about... or were hoping that their readers didn't.
As to the current refugee crisis vs climate refugees... the civil war in Syria was triggered by massive drought. In short... those arguably are climate refugees.
This isn't going to go away. Because even if we stop eating beef, the animals will still be around unless we simply murder them all. Which will anger the animal rights activists and put cattle on the endangered species list.
We'll just end up raising even more plants to replace the meat we were eating, resulting in agriculture having an even worse carbon footprint than now.
Want to solve the agriculture issue? Reduce the human population. That's the only viable solution.
Not to mention...the last thing you want to accidently explode in the atmosphere is a rocket full of nuclear waste
This is why I don't think we'll ever have nuclear power in space unless we mine the uranium in space.
Not to mention...the last thing you want to accidently explode in the atmosphere is a rocket full of nuclear waste
Agreed, but future methods of entering orbit won't rely on rockets of today. In effect, the contemporary rocket is the horse and buggy of space flight. Better solutions will come along, but much people of the 17th century imagining a Ford GT40, it's hard to know exactly what the future will look like.
Technological innovation will happen, assuming that the human race is still alive.
|
|
We'll just end up raising even more plants to replace the meat we were eating, resulting in agriculture having an even worse carbon footprint than now.
Actually very untrue. Any time you have something eat something else, you have losses (basically the 2nd law of thermodynamics). One term for this is "Feed Conversion Ratio." The first page of this conference proceeding has a nice summation. Note that you could feed a steer 8 pounds of silage and only get 1 pound of growth out of it.
Basically, we're already growing more plants (with industrial agriculture, obviously - growing plants wouldn't be a problem GHG-wise if we had sustainable soil use and didn't use fossil fuels to power machinery and ship food) to feed the animals we eat. Protein-rich crops may require a little more acreage per pound of edible* material produced than feed corn** does, but when you factor in the efficiency gained by directly feeding the plants to humans rather than feeding them to cattle and then feeding the cattle to humans, protein-rich plants win out. Here's a rundown of the best options by land area required. (It's missing chicken, but if memory serves chicken meat is actually surprisingly efficient.) Or if you want a more recent source, this looks at specific diets.
*To humans; **Feed corn silage is edible material for cows
Anyway, that slippery slope hypothetical you gave is some "bull." There is no way we are going to spontaneously all stop eating beef at the same time. There's not even a way every person will stop eating beef given 20 years. If the US was to reduce its beef consumption, it would do so slowly, giving markets plenty of time to adjust (most commercial beef cattle have very short lifespans). Maybe some meat would get to supermarket freezers and then go to waste, and ag companies would start downsizing and stop breeding so many calves. Even if we did all stop eating meat spontaneously, I doubt any farmer interested in turning a profit is going to let some a**%&&* PETA activist tell them not to slaughter cattle that are eating money. The point is that we should eat less beef, not collectively stop eating it altogether. (The contentious article closes with a similar statement.)
We'll just end up raising even more plants to replace the meat we were eating, resulting in agriculture having an even worse carbon footprint than now.Actually very untrue. Any time you have something eat something else, you have losses (basically the 2nd law of thermodynamics). One term for this is "Feed Conversion Ratio." The first page of this conference proceeding has a nice summation. Note that you could feed a steer 8 pounds of silage and only get 1 pound of growth out of it.
Basically, we're already growing more plants (with industrial agriculture, obviously - growing plants wouldn't be a problem GHG-wise if we had sustainable soil use and didn't use fossil fuels to power machinery and ship food) to feed the animals we eat. Protein-rich crops may require a little more acreage per pound of edible* material produced than feed corn** does, but when you factor in the efficiency gained by directly feeding the plants to humans rather than feeding them to cattle and then feeding the cattle to humans, protein-rich plants win out. Here's a rundown of the best options by land area required. (It's missing chicken, but if memory serves chicken meat is actually surprisingly efficient.) Or if you want a more recent source, this looks at specific diets.
*To humans; **Feed corn silage is edible material for cows
Anyway, that slippery slope hypothetical you gave is some "bull." There is no way we are going to spontaneously all stop eating beef at the same time. There's not even a way every person will stop eating beef given 20 years. If the US was to reduce its beef consumption, it would do so slowly, giving markets plenty of time to adjust (most commercial beef cattle have very short lifespans)....
I'm a professional spin doctor. Do you honestly think I'm going to fall for my own tactics?
Let's be blunt: Most, if not all, calls to end beef consumption are calls to end it now. No decades of step-down. No waiting. Just end it. That's why I point out the animals are still going to be around. Because I know there is no way anyone who calls for it is going to be happy to learn they might die of old age before it's phased out.
You apparently don't know anything about the Endangered Species List. It's not maintained by PETA, but by The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This is why it's sometimes snarkily referred to as the Endangered Species Hitlist. Any species on that list can render a land completely unusable and leave the owner of it with a financial obligation they can't do anything about, so some people simply kill and hide the bodies when they discover a listed species on their land. Except cows are far too large to do that with.
Now, here's where your argument completely falls apart: Where is the fertilizer for those crops now consumed by humans going to come from?
One of the major reasons why agriculture is such of a carbon footprint nightmare is fertilizer. Specifically, fertilizer containing nitrogen. That has to come from somewhere. We can make it, but you're talking about a very fossil-fuel heavy process if we're chemically engineering it from scratch. Or, we can go all-natural... and then we're going to need more cows, since the entire U.S. cattle population is too small to meet the fertilizer needs of crops. Keep in mind that before artificial fertilizers were invented, we were facing a very real threat of increasing global starvation using natural fertilizer sources.
Now, the next question: Where are we going to grow these new crops? And, yes, I say "new" crops because corn will not replace the vitamin loss from moving away from cattle. We will have to find a different crop to grow in the place of all of that corn or face health problems in the human population. And none of the current B12 sources are anywhere near capable of being farmed on that level (which is why most B12 supplements come from animals).
That's where this entire idea of doing away with cattle falls apart. It's not just a case of feeding corn to the people instead of cows, but of adjusting our infrastructure, resource management, and crop growing patterns to fit a new dietary paradigm.
Now, some might say to replace cows with chickens. Except then we'll be having this same conversation, only about chickens. Or, given most chickens are factory farmed, we'll end up talking about the even worse carbon footprint and environmental disaster.
That you're a spin doctor and can't resist using your tactics is what leads you into such trouble here. Your clever tactics don't work.
That said, one more round: Sure, the calls may be to "end it now", but that's not going to magically happen. If it did and there was somehow a nationwide instant conversion to veganism, the scenario you describe would happen - along with all sorts of other massive economic disruptions.
But it won't. Nothing on the scale of the US economy changes overnight. Any such change would happen over at least years, though not necessarily "die of old age" territory. Leaves plenty of time for the cows raised for beef to phased out - we'd just breed less of them as demand dropped.
Strictly speaking you'd only need a couple of years, since cattle are slaughtered between 1-2 years of age. Dairy cows and the like would be around longer, of course.As for fertilizer, I'm still not convinced. We use enormous amounts of fossil fuel based fertilizer now, much of it to grow the crops to feed the animals you're proposing as a source of natural fertilizer. Switching away from such fertilizer sources would be hard no matter what, but I'd need to see hard numbers to convince me there's a net gain in fertilizer from animals - that it doesn't take as much or more to feed them than you get from them.
Personally, I do think we need to switch away from a diet as heavy in meat as is common in the US to one more reliant on vegetables, but not necessarily give up meat entirely. From an agricultural land-use perspective, there are plenty of places that are better suited to raising animals or growing feed crops than to growing people food crops.
My clever tactics are mainly for use on politicians. As educated as you'd expect them to be, most are not. And despite what you'd think, the parties are the exact opposite of what most people expect as far as education.
Yes, I am certain that it will be a "die of old age" problem. The reason is because people resist change. There are any number of issues I could point to as part of it, but a major aspect is in the very topic we're discussing. The public has been discussing the issue of climate change for thirty years now, and science for longer. Yet, we're still here, discussing how little has actually been done and wondering where all of these conspiracy theories come from and why it is that we're not moving faster on this topic.
If we started trying on the government level to get a phase-out done, we might have the groundwork to begin it in thirty years time (based purely on the current efforts elsewhere in climate change legislation). Then, including government changes and major party resistance, we're probably talking another twenty years of not going anywhere before we begin a fifty-year phaseout. And that's accounting for upcoming climatic upsets that we're due to have as time goes on for why it's fifty years instead of thirty.
With a maximum human lifespan of... I think 130 years? I need to check that ...there is very likely going to be maybe four people currently on the planet who live to see it.
And, you're right; there are no numbers to support the idea animals can supply our fertilizer needs in the quantities we want. In order to accomplish one major environmental goal for agriculture, we have to sacrifice a far more major environmental goal for the world (well, technically, we have to sacrifice it anyway; see my next paragraph). The idea of raising even more cows is simply a hypothetical, and every projection I've seen of it agrees that it's a guaranteed environmental disaster. After all, cow manure is a minor environmental disaster now, and I'm talking about making that far worse.
Oh, and that "now" in your sentence? I work for a green lobby. There's nothing in the pipeline to replace fossil fuels for fertilizer. There's a few ideas, but so far none of them are panning out. If fossil fuels run out, agriculture is f&%^ed.
The problem with the land-use argument is the Dust Bowl. Some of the land currently better for growing animals was once the best for growing crops. That's part of why the U.S. is still so fertilizer-dependent; we're still recovering from one of the worst agriculture-related environmental disasters in the past two hundred years. Otherwise, we likely wouldn't even be having a discussion about fertilizer, but talking pure land-use. As it stands, we have to deal with the fact the U.S. soil fertility is pretty much artificial and account for that in any projections of land use. As you can imagine, this causes a lot of headaches, since the degree of acceptable artificiality is still under debate.
Oh, I'm sure it will be a die of old age problem too, but that's because there's no political will behind it not because it's not technically feasible to transition faster.
That's got nothing to do with "what do we do with all the animals?!!?!!" That's a b+!!#*!+ argument that you're now avoiding defending.And you admit your other claim that we can't cut back on animals without cutting back on growing vegetables as well doesn't hold up, so what was the point of your earlier posts where you argued both of those things?
"What will we do with the animals" is part of the technical feasibility.
If you're wondering why, the answer is the dairy lobby. You don't want to know the hornet's nest they've built to keep cattle from being phased out, and they built it using much of the existing network for the American bison. It's almost beautiful in how it makes elected officials wet themselves at the thought of being in the center of that fight.
The point of my earlier posts? To show that agriculture is pretty much a nightmare all around on the environmental front. We can't do away with artificial fertilizers which rely on fossil fuels, and even if we could we would only be making things worse. At the same time, the animals are not going anywhere because there are laws completely unrelated to carbon footprint that will come into play if we try. And even if we still manage to succeed in getting cows out of the picture, we're only going to end up losing a larger fight to win a smaller one. It's a classic Morton's Fork.
That's why it is you pretty much can't do anything with agriculture without getting in the middle of a fight where the environment is going to lose no matter what you do and you're so deep in politics we technically shouldn't even be discussing the subject.
There are laws that require farmers to breed more animals than there is demand for? Nonsense.
It's called the Endangered Species Act. Give it a read sometime. You'll find it interesting what the federal government can and cannot regulate where it comes to preserving an animal species.
And that's not counting the state laws along the same lines.
And in any kind of a non-magical phasing out of meat that's all that's required. There's no reasonable scenario where you wind up having to slaughter vast herds of cattle because we've given up meat. The "What will we do with the animals" question is nonsensical. There's no "technical feasibility" related to it. What we will do with them is stop breeding so many. That's it. Nothing else.
Which misses the fact this entire discussion started with a complaint about how much feed cattle eat. I said that problem isn't going to go away, even if we reduce the cattle. What you just stated backs that up.
And you're still saying we're only going to reduce the number of cows being bred. Not eliminate them. So, answer this: What are we going to do with the cows that will remain alive? Even with population reductions, they still need land, food, water, and shelter and we've eliminated the primary source of income for providing those.
If your point was to demonstrate that people will make up stupid objections to keep from doing things they don't want to do, consider it proven.
It was also to demonstrate that many who support this have no idea for how to implement the logistics for dealing with what cattle will still be alive afterwards. Thanks for aptly demonstrating that.
The primary problem with solutions like this is they are fuzzy solutions; they are items that feel good to contemplate, but have no real structure to them to actually implement. And typically, solutions with no structure to implementation only cause more problems than they solve.
What are you talking about? After what?
What income source did I eliminate? We have to have millions of cows and an entire industry to feed them because of the Endangered Species Act?
After we reduce the cattle population, then what?
Also, we don't have an entire industry to feed cattle. Cattle are primarily fed by the corn industry, which until recently made a lot of its money off American biofuel efforts and still makes a lot of money off American ethanol efforts. Feeding cattle is only a small part of the usage of corn. The beef and dairy lobbies butt heads with the green and corn lobbies over this all of the time.
And, yes, we would still likely need quite a lot of cows because of that law due to the need for stable breeding populations. Remember, stable breeding populations are measured by region and not by species total. That's how the American bison can be considered still at risk despite having a species population of half a million.
What are we going to do with the reduced number of cows being bred? We're going to eat them. Just like we do now. Just less of them.
Are you talking about some legal ban on eating meat or something?
We don't just eat them. We also export them to other nations to eat, and use them for milk and leather. And at least one of the nations we export to has a growing demand for beef. So, if we're assuming that people are still going to be eating them and knowing that other nations eat American cows as well, how much do you think the population will be reduced and how long do you think it will stay reduced?
That's why I skipped just to people not eating them. Logistically, it's much easier to figure out than trying to work out a cattle population reduction using a dietary change only in one nation. Otherwise, we get into a nightmare scenario of trying to have America control the diets of other nations.
The reason I say "America" in that is the discussion so far has been about primarily-American methods of feeding cattle. A number of nations don't use the American method but instead rely more heavily on grazing and less-intensive crops for their animal feed, resulting in a much lower carbon footprint for them. I'm honestly surprised I wasn't called on that America-centric viewpoint.
One more time: Reducing the amount of beef we eat leads to a reduction in demand for beef, which leads to a reduction in the number of cattle bred, which leads to less crops needed to feed them, which leads to less fossil fuel fertilizer needed to grow those crops. It also, as a side effect leads to less manure to use as fertilizer, but if that is as I suspect smaller than the amount of fertilizer used to grow the crops to feed the cattle, it's still a net gain.
This process could in theory happen in only a few years without leaving a huge problem of unneeded cattle, since beef cattle are slaughtered around 1-2 years anyway. The process of reducing the demand is going to be a far longer one than that.
I think I've aptly demonstrated why the process of reducing demand is going to take a century or more in just how I've argued.
If you're still talking about some magical instant "No more eating beef", then yes, we'd have a problem. But that's not going to happen, so it's not worth worrying about. Meanwhile, every bit of reduction helps and as long as it's not instant and total we don't run into these weird cases you focus on.
And yet, it's the primary endpoint of the argument nearly every single time this comes up. What's the solution I see nearly every single time someone brings up the idea of cattle eat too much? No more beef. And sadly, that includes the lobbyist level.
Now, what are we going to replace those feed crops with? The population growth isn't going to go away, and in time the cattle population will either be forced to start growing into the insane population it is today or we're going to have to find a replacement to avoid simply delaying the current problem a few generations.
So far, I have nothing to answer that last question with. Population growth remains the #1 problem with agriculture.
Welcome to why I don't advocate anything related to agriculture at work. There's too much unrelated bull&*%^ involved.
Unfortunately, these are the arguments that stand in the way of getting anything done related to climate change in American agriculture. And that's before you hit the hornet's nest.
This is quite possibly the most Byzantine mess of a topic I've ever encountered at my job.
Twenty years ago? Maybe a step-down of beef consumption to a more reasonable level would have been the logical conclusion for what someone was arguing. Today? I'll admit this is the first time in five years I've seen it.
I argue against what I encounter most. And, yes, there is a lot less of advocating for reasonable timeframes and step-downs these days then when I started. As time has passed, there's been an increase in polarization.
And that's the real cause of the conspiracy theories this topic was brought up to discuss. You have two sides that are so polarized the most public of their supporters would rather invent conspiracy theories about each other than work together to find a compromise. And the deniers are the loudest group of all, so naturally they invent most of the conspiracy theories.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Twenty years ago? Maybe a step-down of beef consumption to a more reasonable level would have been the logical conclusion for what someone was arguing. Today? I'll admit this is the first time in five years I've seen it.
I argue against what I encounter most. And, yes, there is a lot less of advocating for reasonable timeframes and step-downs these days then when I started. As time has passed, there's been an increase in polarization.
And that's the real cause of the conspiracy theories this topic was brought up to discuss. You have two sides that are so polarized the most public of their supporters would rather invent conspiracy theories about each other than work together to find a compromise. And the deniers are the loudest group of all, so naturally they invent most of the conspiracy theories.
No.
There is a conspiracy theory about climate change denial because there actually are people spending a great deal of time, money, and political influence to keep us on fossil fuels for the express and rather obvious purpose that they make their money selling us fossil fuels and if we stopped using quite so much of them they wouldn't make quite so much money. That conspiracy is not only sensible, it's evidenced to the point of being a fact.
Contrast that with the conspiracy theory for Global warming. A massive group of scientists, technicians, experts, politicians, are perpetuating a hoax for the purpose of... S&G ? Win free trips to the arctic? There's no evidence that they're doing this and there isn't even a plausible explanation for WHY they would do that. It makes absolutely zero sense.
These two ideas are not the same. The two sides of every issue are not equally and oppositely wrong. The Golden mean fallacy is a fallacy, not an ideal for human thought.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
This isn't going to go away. Because even if we stop eating beef, the animals will still be around unless we simply murder them all. Which will anger the animal rights activists and put cattle on the endangered species list.
We'll just end up raising even more plants to replace the meat we were eating,...
If we stop eating beef, we don't need to maintain an artificially high cow population, in one generation that population resolves itself. Eating our food directly from plants would be the highest efficiency ration of food over energy spent to make it. It would drastically reduce our carbon footprint from agriculture. So would switching our protein intake from beef to chicken, because chickens are much more efficient in conversion from plant matter to proteien. If we switched our protien intake from beef to chicken, we would eliminate about 75 percent of agriculture's carbon footprint.
Twenty years ago? Maybe a step-down of beef consumption to a more reasonable level would have been the logical conclusion for what someone was arguing. Today? I'll admit this is the first time in five years I've seen it.
I argue against what I encounter most. And, yes, there is a lot less of advocating for reasonable timeframes and step-downs these days then when I started. As time has passed, there's been an increase in polarization.
And that's the real cause of the conspiracy theories this topic was brought up to discuss. You have two sides that are so polarized the most public of their supporters would rather invent conspiracy theories about each other than work together to find a compromise. And the deniers are the loudest group of all, so naturally they invent most of the conspiracy theories.
No.
There is a conspiracy theory about climate change denial because there actually are people spending a great deal of time, money, and political influence to keep us on fossil fuels for the express and rather obvious purpose that they make their money selling us fossil fuels and if we stopped using quite so much of them they wouldn't make quite so much money. That conspiracy is not only sensible, it's evidenced to the point of being a fact.
Contrast that with the conspiracy theory for Global warming. A massive group of scientists, technicians, experts, politicians, are perpetuating a hoax for the purpose of... S&G ? Win free trips to the arctic? There's no evidence that they're doing this and there isn't even a plausible explanation for WHY they would do that. It makes absolutely zero sense.
These two ideas are not the same. The two sides of every issue are not equally and oppositely wrong. The Golden mean fallacy is a fallacy, not an ideal for human thought.
How does this contradict with what I said?
If we stop eating beef, we don't need to maintain an artificially high cow population, in one generation that population resolves itself. Eating our food directly from plants would be the highest efficiency ration of food over energy spent to make it. It would drastically reduce our carbon footprint from agriculture. So would switching our protein intake from beef to chicken, because chickens are much more efficient in conversion from plant matter to proteien. If we switched our protien intake from beef to chicken, we would eliminate about 75 percent of agriculture's carbon footprint.
There is no natural cow population. Any domestic cow population above zero is automatically artificially high due to the fact the domestic cow is an artificial species ('artificial' meaning one created by humans). Note that I am not counting an American bison or similar wild cattle species as a cow for this; my comments are limited entirely to Bos taurus.
And, again, that depends on where the food is grown, what food is grown, and what we do with most of it. For example, in America cows actually make up a small portion of corn usage, despite being the primary consumers of corn (they massively outnumber humans). Most corn produced in the U.S. is used in efforts to create biofuel, of which high-fructose corn syrup is a bi-product (corn subsidies are why HFCS spent so long cheaper than sugar). Even if you eliminate cows, you're still not going to make a dent in the carbon footprint from corn because the majority of that carbon footprint has nothing to do with consumption-as-food.
It also depends on how the cows are raised. America tends to rely on a much more grain-intensive method, while other nations rely more on grazing. Some nations even rely entirely on grazing due to local climate, allowing them a carbon footprint that is near-zero when compared to the American footprint.
And, now my question: Are you calling for the elimination of the entire artificial population (basically, the extinction of Bos taurus), or a reduction? If an extinction, the Endangered Species Act is going to stand in your way. If a reduction, you still have to deal with the fact that we will have cattle that, if we switch entirely to chicken for a protein instead of meat, will have no use but still require a heavy resource investment, even at low population levels, to prevent their extinction.
Also, you are just trading one problem for another. Just picking a link at random from Google, I come up with a consumption figure in 2013 of 25.8 billion pounds provided by 33.2 million cattle. The chicken amount for that year was 38.4 billion pounds provided by 8.6 billion chickens. Using a rough guess, you're talking about increasing the chicken population by 7 billion birds. Nearly doubling the amount of chickens, most of which will be raised in factory farm conditions. While true that chickens are much more efficient than cows (around ten times, I think?), it also takes over 200 times as many chickens to get the same amount of meat.
How does this eliminate 75% of the carbon footprint?
Now, to cover eating plants: That's not a real solution. That's a delay. It reduces it for now... but we're still going to be relying on fossil fuels for fertilizers. And we're only going to need more of them as time goes by and the population grows. So instead of dealing with this now, we'll end up dealing with it 20 years from now.
How does this contradict with what I said?
You have two sides that are so polarized the most public of their supporters would rather invent conspiracy theories about each other than work together to find a compromise
1)If one side actually has a conspiracy then the other side is not making up conspiracies about the other side.
2) You cannot compromise on facts. Reality is what it is whether Bob and Jeff agree on it, if bob thinks its 200 and jeff thinks it's 0 it's not going to change just because jeff moves and decides it's 100.
How does this contradict with what I said?
You have two sides that are so polarized the most public of their supporters would rather invent conspiracy theories about each other than work together to find a compromise1)If one side actually has a conspiracy then the other side is not making up conspiracies about the other side.
2) You cannot compromise on facts. Reality is what it is whether Bob and Jeff agree on it, if bob thinks its 200 and jeff thinks it's 0 it's not going to change just because jeff moves and decides it's 100.
1a) Using money to buy people and advance your political goals is not a conspiracy; if it was, then both sides would be guilty of conspiracies against each other. I should know, since I'm one of the people bought by the green lobby.
1b) Not everyone who opposes a topic is paid for. There are a lot of people who invent a conspiracy that ExxonMobil pays random people to just wander around and comment on every environmentalist site possible, despite a complete lack of evidence this is happening. That is still inventing a conspiracy where none exists, even though the oil giant does fund denialist research.
Note I am not going to talk about ExxonMobil's relationship with climate research fully. Let's just say they're massive hypocrites and leave it at that.
2a) Your example doesn't state which one is right. Reality is what it is even when everyone involved is wrong. For example, let's use an actual bit from history: Galileo believed the Jupiter orbits the Sun and the Pope believed Jupiter orbits the Earth. The truth is, they're both wrong. If both Jeff and Bob were wrong and it really was 100, then neither one willing to move would not have resulted in anyone having the right answer.
2b) Compromise does not have to be on facts, but can be on action... which is 90% of the opposition to climate change.
Thejeff presents a good compromise on the idea of beef consumption, and we could probably get the beef and dairy lobbies onboard by agreeing to help lower the feed cost portion of their overhead. If feed is cheaper for them, say because we're going more crops and sending them the cheaper excess instead of making them rely entirely on the corn industry, then they still potentially maintain the profits they had while we also stimulate several agricultural industries that would help supplement the beef reduction in the American diet. Plus, fewer cows would mean they would need to employ fewer workers (lower overhead again)... who, in turn, can work in these newly-created jobs raising crops.
There are ways to get the results we want without impacting those fields to the point they are unwilling to work with us.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
2a) Your example doesn't state which one is right. Reality is what it is even when everyone involved is wrong. For example, let's use an actual bit from history: Galileo believed the Jupiter orbits the Sun and the Pope believed Jupiter orbits the Earth. The truth is, they're both wrong. If both Jeff and Bob were wrong and it really was 100, then neither one willing to move would not have resulted in anyone having the right answer.
Only if you're being extremely pedantic, given that the Sol-Jupiter barycenter lies entirely within the Sun.
Galileo's main problem was that he was truly one of the most obnoxious individuals ever to walk the planet. And he had the extremely poor judgement to break the word he'd given to someone almost as convinced of his "rightness" as he was. and to be in the wrong while doing so.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Twenty years ago? Maybe a step-down of beef consumption to a more reasonable level would have been the logical conclusion for what someone was arguing. Today? I'll admit this is the first time in five years I've seen it.
I argue against what I encounter most. And, yes, there is a lot less of advocating for reasonable timeframes and step-downs these days then when I started. As time has passed, there's been an increase in polarization.
And that's the real cause of the conspiracy theories this topic was brought up to discuss. You have two sides that are so polarized the most public of their supporters would rather invent conspiracy theories about each other than work together to find a compromise. And the deniers are the loudest group of all, so naturally they invent most of the conspiracy theories.
No.
There is a conspiracy theory about climate change denial because there actually are people spending a great deal of time, money, and political influence to keep us on fossil fuels for the express and rather obvious purpose that they make their money selling us fossil fuels and if we stopped using quite so much of them they wouldn't make quite so much money. That conspiracy is not only sensible, it's evidenced to the point of being a fact.
Contrast that with the conspiracy theory for Global warming. A massive group of scientists, technicians, experts, politicians, are perpetuating a hoax for the purpose of... S&G ? Win free trips to the arctic? There's no evidence that they're doing this and there isn't even a plausible explanation for WHY they would do that. It makes absolutely zero sense.
These two ideas are not the same. The two sides of every issue are not equally and oppositely wrong. The Golden mean fallacy is a fallacy, not an ideal for human thought.
This illustrates the near total failure of journalism in the last generation. Journalists have been so hopped on remaining neutral, that they almost invariably inject false equivalence when examing two sides to an argument.... or two candidates for President. It's no wonder that so many distrust journalism.... because it's abandoned honesty and objectivity for crouching in safe positions by "not taking sides". Save that by doing so, they invariably take the position of supporting the false side, and deflating the importance of facts, observation, and logic.
Newt Gingrich recently said. "Facts don't matter". This is why he was right.
2a) Your example doesn't state which one is right. Reality is what it is even when everyone involved is wrong. For example, let's use an actual bit from history: Galileo believed the Jupiter orbits the Sun and the Pope believed Jupiter orbits the Earth. The truth is, they're both wrong. If both Jeff and Bob were wrong and it really was 100, then neither one willing to move would not have resulted in anyone having the right answer.
Only if you're being extremely pedantic, given that the Sol-Jupiter barycenter lies entirely within the Sun.
Galileo's main problem was that he was truly one of the most obnoxious individuals ever to walk the planet. And he had the extremely poor judgement to break the word he'd given to someone almost as convinced of his "rightness" as he was. and to be in the wrong while doing so.
Well, there is the theory that none of the planets in our solar system orbit the Sun, but instead all of them orbit the Sol-Jupiter Barycenter. Making our system a binary star system.
While this doesn't have much effect on our system due to where that barycenter is, it apparently has a massive effect on other solar systems. Including that we now know it is possible for a planet to orbit between two, or even three, stars. I put it down to the universe itself being pedantic just to spite us.
And, yeah, he was. A major, major jerk who deserved it.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well, there is the theory that none of the planets in our solar system orbit the Sun, but instead all of them orbit the Sol-Jupiter Barycenter. Making our system a binary star system.
Again, that's really fiddling nits there. Sol has what 100-300 times Jupiter's mass, which in itself outweighs the rest of the planets combined. But Jupiter isn't a star, not even close to being a brown dwarf, so anyone calling this a binary star system on that basis, is reaching to a degree that most astronomers won't accept. And like I've said before, given that the barycenter is that close to the center of Sol, for casual purposes purporting that the planets orbit around the Sun is not a false statement.
Well, there is the theory that none of the planets in our solar system orbit the Sun, but instead all of them orbit the Sol-Jupiter Barycenter. Making our system a binary star system.Again, that's really fiddling nits there. Sol has what 100-300 times Jupiter's mass, which in itself outweighs the rest of the planets combined. But Jupiter isn't a star, not even close to being a brown dwarf, so anyone calling this a binary star system on that basis, is reaching to a degree that most astronomers won't accept. And like I've said before, given that the barycenter is that close to the center of Sol, for casual purposes purporting that the planets orbit around the Sun is not a false statement.
Not every binary star system has two suns at current. Many black holes are currently detected because the black hole is the second "star" in a binary system. The idea of a planet being the other part of a binary system equation isn't too far-fetched.
Of course, as you said, that doesn't change where the center of our system is. So, I admit I am not arguing you are wrong.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well, there is the theory that none of the planets in our solar system orbit the Sun, but instead all of them orbit the Sol-Jupiter Barycenter. Making our system a binary star system.Again, that's really fiddling nits there. Sol has what 100-300 times Jupiter's mass, which in itself outweighs the rest of the planets combined. But Jupiter isn't a star, not even close to being a brown dwarf, so anyone calling this a binary star system on that basis, is reaching to a degree that most astronomers won't accept. And like I've said before, given that the barycenter is that close to the center of Sol, for casual purposes purporting that the planets orbit around the Sun is not a false statement.Not every binary star system has two suns at current. Many black holes are currently detected because the black hole is the second "star" in a binary system. The idea of a planet being the other part of a binary system equation isn't too far-fetched.
Of course, as you said, that doesn't change where the center of our system is. So, I admit I am not arguing you are wrong.
On the other hand there seems to be some unexpected clearing going on in the Kuiper Belt, so there shall be some interesting observations going on as New Horizons hurtles to it's next encounter in a few years.
Not to mention...the last thing you want to accidently explode in the atmosphere is a rocket full of nuclear wasteAgreed, but future methods of entering orbit won't rely on rockets of today. In effect, the contemporary rocket is the horse and buggy of space flight. Better solutions will come along, but much people of the 17th century imagining a Ford GT40, it's hard to know exactly what the future will look like.
Technological innovation will happen, assuming that the human race is still alive.
Technological progression isn't infinite. While Ford's Model T was vastly different than the horse and buggy that preceded it, modern cars aren't that substantially different from the Model T, only a refinement of the basic principle in how it works. The same can be said about rockets today. Falcon X is vastly superior to Goddard's primitive rocket, but it still works the same way.
As long as getting into orbit involves throwing out 90 percent of your liftoff mass out the rear of your spacecraft, we won't have spaceships like the Millenium Falcon or even the Shuttlecraft Galileo which could be stowed in an automobile garage.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
2a) Your example doesn't state which one is right. Reality is what it is even when everyone involved is wrong. For example, let's use an actual bit from history: Galileo believed the Jupiter orbits the Sun and the Pope believed Jupiter orbits the Earth. The truth is, they're both wrong. If both Jeff and Bob were wrong and it really was 100, then neither one willing to move would not have resulted in anyone having the right answer.
NO.
Right and wrong is not binary.
Galileo is close. He's pretty damn close The fact that jupiter is big enough to put the orbit of the two around an object just outside of the sun doesn't change that.
The pope is absolutely wrong. The point being closer to earth or not isn't even true: sometimes it's further away from it.
Furthermore, nothing the pope is doing leads to galileo making his idea more right. It just makes it that much harder for him to do research and convinces others not to do said research.
A clock that 10 minutes slow and a clock that is absolutely broken are not both equally wrong. This is epistemic nihlistic sillyness.
1a) Using money to buy people and advance your political goals is not a conspiracy;
con·spir·a·cy
kənˈspirəsē/noun
noun: conspiracy; plural noun: conspiracies
a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.
"Hey, lets bribe politicians into keeping us on our product so we can sell more of it and make money even though its causing environmental devistation" is certainly harmful even if certain policies have made it legal.
Compromise does not have to be on facts, but can be on action... which is 90% of the opposition to climate change.
They are unwilling to concede basic facts because once those facts are accepted they will have to make concessions on action, which will cost them vast amounts of money.
There are ways to get the results we want without impacting those fields to the point they are unwilling to work with us
No. There is not.
Those fields are run by corporations, a business entity running as a defacto AI with the only objective being to maximize profits. Nothing else enters into the decision making process. Accepting meaningful changes to energy policy hurts their bottom line severely and thus is to be avoided at all costs. This is considered an ethical duty by members of the corporation.
NO.
Right and wrong is not binary.
Galileo is close. He's pretty damn close The fact that jupiter is big enough to put the orbit of the two around an object just outside of the sun doesn't change that.
The pope is absolutely wrong. The point being closer to earth or not isn't even true: sometimes it's further away from it.
Furthermore, nothing the pope is doing leads to galileo making his idea more right. It just makes it that much harder for him to do research and convinces others not to do said research.
A clock that 10 minutes slow and a clock that is absolutely broken are not both equally wrong. This is epistemic nihlistic sillyness.
At the time, the evidence Galileo had was faulty. We know he's (somewhat) right now, but the evidence standards he had from his observation through telescopes would not hold up to today's evidenciary standards, and it only held up as a possible theory at the time. A theory sound enough that he even had the very Pope he made it a point to argue with give him the go-ahead to publish his theory. The only requirement was he publish the other theory that fit the evidence of the period.
Remember, the only evidence he had was what he could see from a telescope. This kind of evidence resulted in such wildly inaccurate ideas as Mars having a civilization on it. So this is more of a clock that was set by glancing at the sky and giving a best guess about the current time (and which turned out to be off by ten minutes).
con·spir·a·cy
kənˈspirəsē/
noun
noun: conspiracy; plural noun: conspiraciesa secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.
"Hey, lets bribe politicians into keeping us on our product so we can sell more of it and make money even though its causing environmental devistation" is certainly harmful even if certain policies have made it legal.
The key word there is "secret." ExxonMobil has never kept it a secret that they buy politicians, political groups, or even entire science organizations. They just don't advertise it, making people think it's a secret when they stumble across evidence of it. Which is why people tend to be shocked to learn that ExxonMobil is one of the biggest funders and grant providers of the Geological Society of America. A group that, among other things, has a policy statement supporting the fact humans are causing climate change on their website. And that's just one of the many science groups that is tight with ExxonMobil, yet accepts the science on climate change.
ExxonMobil isn't even the only oil company doing this. Just the most blatant and shameless about it.
There's your conspiracy. ExxonMobil is saying they're anti-climate change while quietly funding both sides of the fight.
They are unwilling to concede basic facts because once those facts are accepted they will have to make concessions on action, which will cost them vast amounts of money.
They don't have to accept those facts. Just convince them there's more money to be made by supporting the correct actions. Because there is. Alternative energy alone is a potential boom industry that could easily dwarf oil.
No. There is not.
Those fields are run by corporations, a business entity running as a defacto AI with the only objective being to maximize profits. Nothing else enters into the decision making process. Accepting meaningful changes to energy policy hurts their bottom line severely and thus is to be avoided at all costs. This is considered an ethical duty by members of the corporation.
Potential market dominance in an untapped market. Or potential for future dominance in the current market by adapting ahead of the competition. Corporations are quite willing to pursue the new if they think it will maximize profit in the long run. If they weren't, do you really think we would be arguing about this over the internet?
You have to know how to sell it to them. I've been in my career long enough to know that it's just a matter of making them see the right perspective. And to recognize when a group is saying they're against it while actually trying to delay things until they can gain a market dominance over everyone.
At the time, the evidence Galileo had was faulty.
We know he's (somewhat) right now, but the evidence standards he had from his observation through telescopes would not hold up to today's evidenciary standards
The epistemic nihlist does not get to tut tut evidence that doesn't meet the impossible standards from the comfort of a 21st century armchair that probably has more than a few parts that wouldn't exist if his evidence hadn't been right.
No. You do not get to do this.
No, this is not a valid, sensible argument.
If you need to put the pope and Galileo on equal footing in their scientific accuracy to try to make a point you have clearly lost. You are using the UR example of someone having the evidence and being right as an example of both sides having a point and.. wow. Is it not working. The pope was not in any way, shape, or form right. The pope's opposition was not meaningul, evidence based, nor did it (as you implied) help make Galileos theory better or lead to advancements.
I'm sorry that Galileo'sscientific breakthroughs don't meet your exalted standards of being right enough. Be sure to spend 400 years calculating the amount of global warming out to 12 decimal places instead of 1, because thats going to be incredibly important to the Fennec eared mutants crawling underground in our salt mines worshiping the great god J'hn De'R. Hey, we could have averted that bad future but the thought of some philosopher of science from the year 2400 turning up his nose at our inaccurate work was just too much to bear so we had to spend a few hundred years contemplating our navels instead of fixing the problem.
The real world is fuzzy. The real world is innacurate. The real world is complicated. Every single advancement in science has failed to meet your standards. There is a time when you have to say that we have enough evidence, we're acting on it.
Remember, the only evidence he had was what he could see from a telescope. This kind of evidence resulted in such wildly inaccurate ideas as Mars having a civilization on it. So this is more of a clock that was set by glancing at the sky and giving a best guess about the current time (and which turned out to be off by ten minutes)
A moon is a little easier to spot than the difference between an old river bed/wind channel and a canal.
The key word there is "secret." ExxonMobil has never kept it a secret that they buy politicians, political groups, or even...
And yet most people don't know about it, or believe it and they're not in jail for bribery. Plausible deniability is the only standard they're going for, and they have it. It's secret enough
The epistemic nihlist does not get to tut tut evidence that doesn't meet the impossible standards from the comfort of a 21st century armchair that probably has more than a few parts that wouldn't exist if his evidence hadn't been right.
No. You do not get to do this.
No, this is not a valid, sensible argument.If you need to put the pope and Galileo on equal footing in their scientific accuracy to try to make a point you have clearly lost. You are using the UR example of someone having the evidence and being right as an example of both sides having a point and.. wow. Is it not working. The pope was not in any way, shape, or form right.
I'm sorry that Galileo'sscientific breakthroughs don't meet your exalted standards of being right enough. Be sure to spend 400 years calculating the amount of global warming out to 12 decimal places instead of 1, because thats going to be incredibly important to the Fennec eared mutants crawling underground in our salt mines worshiping the great god J'hn De'R. Hey, we could have averted that bad future but the thought of some philosopher of science from the year 2400 turning up his nose at our inaccurate work was just too much to bear so we had to spend a few hundred years contemplating our navels instead of fixing the problem.
The real world is fuzzy. The real world is innacurate. The real world is complicated. Every single advancement in science has failed to meet your standards.
It doesn't care. It works without your approval.
The thing is, the key point of my even bringing the two up was to show that the example you used relied on a flaw: It did not state what the right answer is, so there was no way your example showed what you had in mind. The Galileo-Pope argument was to show that it is possible for two sides to discuss a topic and neither to be right as an argument that your example did not prove your point.
The fact you have since argued with me over whether or not Galileo was accurate enough rather than fix your flawed example shows an attempt to distract from the fact your example was simply bad and you were caught on it.
Top it all off, your reply to the idea that his scientific evidence was not enough to prove his own theory even by the looser standards of his era is to chide me for looking back on it and judging it by modern standards while sitting there and going on and on about his breakthrough using evidence that came long after his death. In short, you are using modern evidence to try to prove a scientific theory while chiding me for pointing out that, by modern standards and the standards of his era he did not have enough evidence to prove his theory.
Do I even need to point out the word that applies at this point?
Also, you are saying science fails to meet my standards? I used frickin' NASA to show that Galileo was wrong. The only way your idea that science doesn't meet my standards makes any logical sense is if you are arguing that NASA doesn't do anything related to science.
A moon is a little easier to spot than the difference between an old river bed/wind channel and a canal.
The "canals" of Mars are not canals or river beds/wind channels. They're gullies that likely don't have anything to do with liquid water.
And the orbit of Jupiter is likely a lot harder to determine, since there is a lot of it he would not have been able to directly observe due to daylight hours and the times Jupiter is not within viewing range of where he was on Earth.
And yet most people don't know about it, or believe it and they're not in jail for bribery. Plausible deniability is the only standard they're going for, and they have it. It's secret enough
Nah. They've made plenty of statements in the past where they outright acknowledged how much climate research they fund. They even have a statement about it on their website. It makes me chuckle every time I read it, since I know parts of it are utter bull*^%&. They definitely suppressed science.
They're going more for the "people are gullible and stupid" angle. Relying on a media who hates them and climate science supporters thinking they're going to fall to make themselves appear weak. Standard Art of War stuff.
The thing is, the key point of my even bringing the two up was to show that the example you used relied on a flaw: It did not state what the right answer is, so there was no way your example showed what you had in mind.
You seemed to have figured it out anyway.
The Galileo-Pope argument was to show that it is possible for two sides to discuss a topic and neither to be right as an argument that your example did not prove your point.
except for neither to be right your definition of right has to exclude anything short of perfect: which would mean that climate change is just as wrong as climate change deniers as long as they have ANY mistakes.
Believe me. They do have mistakes. They are definitely more wrong than the (right depending on the year) idea that the solar system orbits around the sun.That is a given. What you're arguing is that that puts them on equal footing with the climate change deniers, which gives you no reason to believe one or the other and that is utter nonsense. You are refusing to differentiate between a scooch off and completely wrong. Those are very, distinct things even in science. Especially in science.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Not to mention...the last thing you want to accidently explode in the atmosphere is a rocket full of nuclear wasteAgreed, but future methods of entering orbit won't rely on rockets of today. In effect, the contemporary rocket is the horse and buggy of space flight. Better solutions will come along, but much people of the 17th century imagining a Ford GT40, it's hard to know exactly what the future will look like.
Technological innovation will happen, assuming that the human race is still alive.
It's possible at some future time, space travel will be safe and cheap enough that it's worth packaging up all the old nuclear waste we barbarians left to trouble the future people and shooting it into the sun or something.
Hopefully by that time innovation will have found them a better source of power.
It's more than possible, I'd put massive odds in favor of it. It's like betting that eventually computers will get faster and smaller.
You seemed to have figured it out anyway.
Then please forgive me for this, but what was the point of even bringing it up?
except for neither to be right your definition of right has to exclude anything short of perfect: which would mean that climate change is just as wrong as climate change deniers as long as they have ANY mistakes.
Believe me. They do have mistakes. They are definitely more wrong than the (right depending on the year) idea that the solar system orbits around the sun.That is a given. What you're arguing is that that puts them on equal footing with the climate change deniers, which gives you no reason to believe one or the other and that is utter nonsense.
Did you notice I specifically switched away from discussing climate change for that part about Jeff and Bob? There was a reason. I didn't think your example really added onto the argument you were making, so I switched gears for that bit to show that.
Then please forgive me for this, but what was the point of even bringing it up?
Because your ideas about compromising on positions of facts is fruitier than toucan sam in Carmen Miranda headgear. You gain nothing by compromising with someone that doesn't have fact based ideas. Even if you are slightly innaccurate there's no guarantee that a compromise has will make your position more accurate. In short, you're touting the golden mean fallacy and that is a horrendously bad idea on so many levels.
Did you notice I specifically switched away from discussing climate change for that part about Jeff and Bob?
And then continued to double down on the same fallacy. Big time.The fallacious reasoning you were trying to say you weren't engaging in was rife in your example.
There was a reason. I didn't think your example really added onto the argument you were making, so I switched gears for that bit to show that.
And yet you got the point anyway. So perhaps declaring which one was right wasn't actually necessary because it was entirely beside the point. You're complaining about something that's irrelevant.
Because your ideas about compromising on positions of facts is fruitier than toucan sam in Carmen Miranda headgear. You gain nothing by compromising with someone that doesn't have fact based ideas. Even if you are slightly innaccurate there's no guarantee that a compromise has will make your position more accurate. In short, you're touting the golden mean fallacy and that is a horrendously bad idea on so many levels.
Right. Which is why I immediately argued, in that same post, that you don't have to compromise on facts on this one. In the same section in reply to the Bob and Jeff argument where I actually addressed climate change.
And then continued to double down on the same fallacy. Big time.The fallacious reasoning you were trying to say you weren't engaging in was rife in your example.
Doubled down in what way? Show me the quotes with posts linked so people can see the context.
And yet you got the point anyway. So perhaps declaring which one was right wasn't actually necessary because it was entirely beside the point. You're complaining about something that's irrelevant.
And yet, we've been arguing about it ever since I brought it up in this post.
And this is the amount of effort you put into arguing this irrelevant complaint:
31 lines of text across 4 posts is quite a lot for something irrelevant. You're not someone who wastes words.
Edit: And I'm headed to bed. Catch you tomorrow to see if you've replied.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Doubled down in what way? Show me the quotes with posts linked so people can see the context.
No. I am not linking the posts. You are being ridiculous.
You argued that climate change deniers and environmentalists were equally disingenuous is making up conspiracy theories about each other, that they were just being polorized and that was the problem.
You went all golden mean fallacy on Geocentricism vs Heliocentrism. If you're going to say that THAT issue needs a compromise because the heliocentrists are slightly off you are going to commit the golden mean fallacy on everything, so your accusations of the environmentalists being just as much to blame as the climate change deniers is blatantly illogical. You have absolutely no ability to say that one side is right and the other side is wrong and that is a very important ability to have in science and decision making in general.
And yet, we've been arguing about it ever since I brought it up in
No, you've been obsessively nitpicking over an objectively irrelevant detail that doesn't matter thinking it crashes the entire argument while ignoring the utter lunacy in your own words and I've mostly been ignoring it by responding to things that matter, AND demonstrating that the detail was in fact irrelevant. If you somehow got the impression that most of my response was to your obsessive nitpicking over that irrelevant detail you're mistaken.
And this is the amount of effort you put into arguing this irrelevant complaint:
You link THIS but handwave in the general direction of where you say you don't need to compromise? The only thing i see is that you can't figure out how to have fewer cows without killing any cows. (Hint:How does france have a negative population grown rate without killing anyone?)
No. I am not linking the posts. You are being ridiculous.
You argued that climate change deniers and environmentalists were equally disingenuous is making up conspiracy theories about each other, that they were just being polorized and that was the problem.
You went all golden mean fallacy on Geocentricism vs Heliocentrism. If you're going to say that THAT issue needs a compromise because the heliocentrists are slightly off you are going to commit the golden mean fallacy on everything, so your accusations of the environmentalists being just as much to blame as the climate change deniers is blatantly illogical. You have absolutely no ability to say that one side is right and the other side is wrong and that is a very important ability to have in science and decision making in general.
The entire discussion between us has been ridiculous since the beginning. Why stop being ridiculous now when you have been since you first replied? Except you're not stopping, you're just refusing to provide any evidence. Because at this point, you are not relying on fact at all.
It doesn't help that what you're stating is blatantly false. So blatantly false I don't even have to try to spin words. Here's what I said:
"And that's the real cause of the conspiracy theories this topic was brought up to discuss. You have two sides that are so polarized the most public of their supporters would rather invent conspiracy theories about each other than work together to find a compromise. And the deniers are the loudest group of all, so naturally they invent most of the conspiracy theories."
Note the sentence I bolded. I made it quite clear I didn't think the two sides are equally disingenuous. I did say polarization is a problem, but later on highlighted that this problem is in getting anything done, not in agreement on fact.
Now, the part about holding both Galileo and the Pope as equal... let's take a look at where I actually said that.
"At the time, the evidence Galileo had was faulty. We know he's (somewhat) right now, but the evidence standards he had from his observation through telescopes would not hold up to today's evidenciary standards, and it only held up as a possible theory at the time. A theory sound enough that he even had the very Pope he made it a point to argue with give him the go-ahead to publish his theory. The only requirement was he publish the other theory that fit the evidence of the period."
Note the bolded part. The evidence of the period. As in, the evidence they had on hand at the time. Not the evidence that came after, but the initial set of proof used at the time.
There are a lot of scientific theories, including a few about climate change, that early on simply are one of several guesses about what's going on based on the evidence when they are first proposed. Then, as time goes on, the theories are disproved or modified as new evidence comes up. As we know today, heliocentrism and geocentrism are both wrong because of evidence that came centuries later. Wrong to the point that our models of other solar systems have changed, much like our model of our own did when heliocentrism was the best-fit theory for the evidence (when they changed from the solar system orbiting Earth to it orbiting the Sun).
So, yes. By modern science, both heliocentrism and geocentrism are equal in that they both produce utterly wrong models of solar systems. This is science fact at current, and it remains true whether or not you like it.
However, we also know that, at least with our solar system (as I admitted in this post), the Sun remains at the center of the solar system, even if slightly off, and a heliocentric model is accurate enough for us. Note I admitted that before you even got a chance to argue with my stance, so at this point you're arguing a stance you can't even say I held at the time you replied.
No, you've been obsessively nitpicking over an objectively irrelevant detail that doesn't matter thinking it crashes the entire argument while ignoring the utter lunacy in your own words and I've mostly been ignoring it by responding to things that matter, AND demonstrating that the detail was in fact irrelevant. If you somehow got the impression that most of my response was to your obsessive nitpicking over that irrelevant detail you're mistaken.
Anyone who looks at my posting history knows I can argue for weeks about details about don't matter at a length that rivals college textbooks and on a level of nitpicking that makes even the most OCD of examinations think I'm going too far. And yet... I devoted only three lines to it in this post, conceded that Galileo's model is accurate enough for our solar system in this post, and even admitted he's accurate enough in the modern era while pointing out his evidence issues were mostly in his own era in this post.
I devoted... 41 lines of text across 7 posts to this topic while discussing it with two different people. And in that set of lines, I've admitted Galileo is accurate enough, pointed out is problems in his era were the evidence he had at hand, and pointed out the work of NASA for why he's wrong in the modern era. And it wasn't even a major point when I originally stated it, but just pointing out a flaw in your example.
You've devoted... 43 lines of text across 5 posts on the subject while addressing one person. In that time, you have tried your best to argue that Galileo was some kind of genius who accomplished a lot with heliocentrism (it wasn't even his theory), challenged the scientific standing of NASA, fabricated or misrepresented far more than I care to count about my own words, and are now making defending Galileo your last stand.
I get it. It sucks when someone you view as a hero turns out to have been a villain or just wrong. But defending an outdated solar system model isn't going to magically make it accurate or redeem that person.
You link THIS but handwave in the general direction of where you say you don't need to compromise? The only thing i see is that you can't figure out how to have fewer cows without killing any cows. (Hint:How does france have a negative population grown rate without killing anyone?)
And, again, this entire thing is disproven by fact. Here's me discussing the idea of reducing the cattle population and why a simple reduction might not work out as well as we hope. Took me all of five seconds to find that post and prove you're not using facts.
Seriously, I said a lot of things that are wrong, insane, or rely on a version of reality that has nothing to do with the real world... and so far, you have touched none of them. Instead, you're misrepresenting reality of what words I used and focused on the areas where what is provably real is something you don't like.
The problem you have isn't that I'm saying insane things. The problem you have is that reality isn't living up to your expectations.
Edit: The alias use is an accident, but I think I'll leave it. It amuses me on some level.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So, yes. By modern science, both heliocentrism and geocentrism are equal in that they both produce utterly wrong models of solar systems
There is no attempting to claim the factual position when you need to try to make this point a fact. At all. This is wrong. Everything you say is wrong. Case in point.
challenged the scientific standing of NASA
No. Challenging your wacky adherence to absolute pedantic perfection or nothing is not challenging NASA. I am not challenging the idea that the center of the solar system is the ever shifting center of mass of all the objects in the solar system, I'm challanging your idea that "the difference between the ever shifting center of mass of all the objects in the solar system" and "the sun" is a big enough difference to be called wrong.
And the deniers are the loudest group of all, so naturally they invent most of the conspiracy theories."
You don't get it.
The deniers are not inventing conspiracy theories because they are loud. They are inventing conspiracy theories because they need to make claims that go against a vast amount of evidence and going against that much evidence requires a vast and utterly nonsensical conspiracy theory. It doesn't matter that it's nuts, it doesn't matter that it's stupid, it doesn't matter that it makes absolutely no sense: the only two explanations is that there is an insane conspiracy or the environmentalists are right, and if the environmentalists are right then we lose money and we cannot lose money.
You cannot and will not change this line of logic by making your facts better, either with the people perpetuating the misinformation or from those who believe it. The facts do not matter because they are not being used.
You cannot equate people that have the facts on their side and those that don't.
You cannot equate climate change scientists and clime change deniers
You cannot equate Galileo and the pope
You cannot equate "slightly inaccurate" with wrong. EVERYTHING is slightly inaccurate in real life. So everyone is wrong, so no one is more right than everyone else. You are calling Galileo wrong for being (at worst) 800,000 kilometers off in a solar system that's 75 BILLION kilometers across. A 0.001% margin of error. By that stanards yes, the climate scientists are wrong. They will be the first ones to tell you that the system is too complicated to predict with that much accuracy.
That is not a useful paradigm for policy. you need to get off of a binary right/wrong paradigm and move on to close enouh to be useful.
A philosophy professor is brought into a room. He's told that on one side of the room is a chair that he'll be placed in. On the other side of the room is a pizza. .every 15 seconds he'll be moved halfway to the pizza. He scoffs "I'll never reach the pizza!" and leaves.
A scientist is brought into the room and told the same deal. They sit down. He's told "but.. you'll never get to the pizza" Scientist shrugs. "I'll get close enough for all intents and purposes" and readies his knife and fork*.
(*obviously they picked a scientist from the department of evil for this joke)