- Re: Climate. Population. Archived Message
Posted by Ian M
on February 28, 2020, 8:04 pm, in reply to "Climate. Population."
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Hi Rhis, thanks for the reply but I don't really have the patience to go sorting through bad faith denier talking points to see if there might be a glimmer of truth behind anything they might say. Point me to peer-reviewed studies if you like and I'll be more inclined to consider them on their own merits. Otherwise you write: 'I haven't seen any conclusive rebuttals of either the idea of the long - and ultimately disaster-threatening - descent of ambient CO2' - never heard of that. Could it be lacking rebuttals cos it's total BS? CO2 levels keep on rising - they recently surpassed 416ppm for the first time since prehistoric times and no sign of dropping any time soon: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/12/saddest-thing-wont-be-breaking-news-concentration-co2-hits-record-high-416-ppm 'The whole thing begins to seem to me so baffling that it feels unwise to adopt any Gretarian angry-dogmatism about it.' - of course deniers want you baffled for precisely that reason of slowing down the adoption of essential responses. 'Dmitry Orlov doesn't make references to the material which Patrick publicises, coming at it from a different perspective, heavily research based, which feels pretty persuasive, to me.(He's living permanently back in Russia now.) Lately too he has begun to make supportive comments about closed-fuel-cycle nuclear innovations which are in development in Russia - about which I suppose we Westerners will get no honest account until Vlad announces them in a reprise of his famous 1 March speech when he unveiled the utterly game-changing new generation of Russian weaponry that is now in operation. As several Russian-originated commentators have been pointing out lately, Russian culture is different; not really Western-style at all. They are thinking for themselves and following their own lines of investigation. Can't help wondering whether some equally game-changing development with civil nuclear energy may be in some little-known Russian hitech-research pipeline right now. My long-time instinct has been against nuclear of any kind, for many years. But otoh, objective reality has to be acknowledged, on both the climate and the nuclear issues. A true servant of the classic scientific method commits to being able to say 'We were wrong about this' whenever the facts demand it.' Yes, Orlov has a hard-on for Russia and everything about it. Some of that's justified, other parts not. Their culture might be different in some ways, but on the fundamentals like industrialism, capitalism, agribusiness, economic growth, pillaging of natural resources, and arguably imperial expansion, all the 'values' are functionally identical to those of the West, ie: the poisonous outgrowths of the 10,000 year old civilised culture. It doesn't surprise me that Orlov is crowing about the latest desperate efforts to keep this machine grinding on via the latest techno miracle. I +am+ surprised that you seem to have been so easily persuaded that it's a) feasible and, more importantly, b) desirable. Are you just reacting against the 'Gretarians' because that message has finally gone mainstream and you're looking for something more fashionable on the sidelines? I bet you only like Pink Floyd's early work too  cheers, I |