151–160 of 242 posts
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That how our Representative Democracy works. Each system has its own way of voting and counting; that's ours.
And if it creates a de facto one-party state?
I don't actually believe this, but it occurred to me the other day as a funny way to look at a very sad situation: What if Trump does believe global warming is real, but recognizes that we're too late to stop its worst effects? What if he expects the world to go to hell over the next 50 years and is focused on protecting the U.S. specifically? What would he do? He'd build a wall across the lower border of the U.S. to…
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/5abz8e/why_rising...
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Fortunately, sea ice does not contribute much to the sea level because it displaces about the same volume it will add when melted.
Yep, but it does have other negative effects. https://www.carbonbrief.org/five-reasons-why-the-speed-of-ar...
Albedo is a measure of how well the earth’s surface reflects sunlight. Snow-covered sea ice has a high albedo and reflects 85 per cent of sunlight. But the open water revealed as ice melts is darker and absorbs more – reflecting just seven per cent.
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Congress has been trying to put restrictions on the DoD prohibiting them from using any money to address climate change. For instance, the Navy wants to start preparing its bases for rising sea levels, but Congress is trying to stop that (the base preparation, that is, not the rising sea levels). So even if the DoD makes some headway in getting Trump to change his mind, Congress will be right there to try to change i…
Please don't post spammy messages like this on HN.
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It's too bad Americans cannot vote for some of the most prominent cabinet members the way they vote for President/Vice-President. Many of these appointees will have a more direct impact on people's lives but yet they have no say in who will represent them. Democracy?
We have representatives that do that. The prominent cabinet members have to make it through the Senate. Rand Paul has already come out publicly against a couple of names floated for Secretary of State and is making noise that 2 or 3 other Senators (enough) are also concerned. I don't really like Rand Paul, but at the moment I'm pretty glad that he actually has a coherent and strong ideology.
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"He must believe in global warming." While I understand what motivates your thinking so, I don't think you can assume this. I haven't looked for anything that addresses Thiel's opinion on this btw, so I'm agnostic on the issue.
Peter has invested in clean tech before. He's a technologist. He wants to live forever (on a stable climate planet). We can assume he believes in global warming.
Thiel told the TechCrunch Disrupt crowd that "one potential route for cleantech energies is to work with something that’s slightly more environmentally friendly than current sources — natural gas. It's a cheaper form of energy that's much more ubiquitous, and has less of an environmental impact than most energy sources today, but has not been harnessed."
http://www.thegreenskeptic.com/2011/09/peter-thiel-cleantech...
Concerns about the environment don't necessarily mean belief in global warming.
His NYT editorial "The New Atomic Age We Need" talks about other's concerns about climate change, but never his own position on climate change, just on nuclear energy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/opinion/the-new-atomic-age...
An interview he did with Glenn Beck for the Blaze quotes him as calling climate science pseudoscience.
Thiel: I do think that having a space where you can think for yourself and where it doesn't always get second-guessed is very important. We have a we have all these monolithic debates about science or pseudoscience. Like there's the climate change debate.
Beck: Is that science or pseudoscience?
Thiel: I think it's more pseudoscience. Whenever you can't have a debate I often think that's evidence that there's a problem. When people use the word science, it's often a tell like in poker that you're bluffing. We have social science, we have political science. We don't call it physical science or chemical science, we just call them physics and chemistry because we just know they're right and you can debate the periodic table of elements. No one will be upset if you ask questions about that. We call it climate scicence. It's a tell like in poker. It's telling you that people are exaggerating, and that they're bluffing a little bit.
But I think this monolithic culture is breaking down. People are asking questions. You know the weather has not been getting warmer for the past 15 years. The hockey stick that Al Gore predicted in the early 2000s on the climate has not happened for the last decade. I think as this monolithic culture breaks down you can have more real debates and I think that would be a good thing on net.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoxxGhLFbw4
I just did the transcript myself, so there are very likely mistakes. I also tried to clean up the language a bit. I won't quibble if people point them out. If someone feels I've misrepresented what he said, please do correct me.
There's a lot of language there that sounds like that of climate change skeptics.
I'm not trying to be obstinate here. I've been surprised by many of the opinions shared by HN commenters that I would think are incongruent (and I'm sure some think the same of mine).
I guess I'm a "Peter Thiel Believes in Climate Change" skeptic. Happy to be shown I'm wrong.
Edit: I realize I'm equating "global warming" and "climate change". I don't think that changes what I've written, but if it does, please let me know.
I don't actually believe this, but it occurred to me the other day as a funny way to look at a very sad situation: What if Trump does believe global warming is real, but recognizes that we're too late to stop its worst effects? What if he expects the world to go to hell over the next 50 years and is focused on protecting the U.S. specifically? What would he do? He'd build a wall across the lower border of the U.S. to…
See, this kind of loopy apocalypse-mongering is why you guys are having such a hard time persuading average voters that your cause is legit. Under what possible worst-case scenario are Americans going to need to "flee" to Canada? Is that one-foot ocean rise over the next hundred years going to flood the United States all the way to Grand Forks?
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this. No one has a solution for climate change that doesn't involve changing personal habits. People don't want to do that. Eating less meat or a carbon tax (i.e taxing the working poor) is not a solution. It's admitting defeat. People don't need to "believe in climate change". We simply need to build a solution that is much better than what they have available now. What that…
>Eating less meat or a carbon tax (i.e taxing the working poor) is not a solution. The poor emit disproportionately little CO2. A carbon tax mostly taxes industry.
And the poor never purchase anything that was made by using industry, so they certainly wouldn't have the costs passed on to them or anything.
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On a geological timescale we are in a cooling trend, but what non-biased source grants credence to the idea that CO2 and Methane aren't warming things right now in greater amounts? It seems entirely reasonable that anthropogenic climate change is a bigger deal than ice ages and we could prevent one.
Having a higher CO2 or methan level for 100 years is on a geological timescale a rounding error. There were times in earth history (vulcano eruptions, meteor impacts) where life had to face a rapid and drastic climate change. And we are still here.
No, it's not a rounding error. It means things are changing at a speed never seen before, and it's a big fucking deal.
Disclaimer: Of course I'm not suggesting the Earth will bleed to death. I'm just highlighting the logical fallacy.
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I like that the theory has to assume that Canada is just naturally expected to take in American refugees while Mexico can go screw itself. With such ignorant American exceptionalism it's no wonder why we haven't fixed global warming yet.
You do realize a plurality of American voters voted for Hillary Clinton? She's leading by margins larger than Kennedy and Nixon. Edited to use correct terminology.
It isn't, so it doesn't.