a non-political climate change thread

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Chadk said:
Great story. Reminds me of the so called "gun buyback programs". People turning in trash, fake, toy, BB, and broken guns for cash to buy good working guns. Hey, but at least they did SOMETHING!! lol
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@Chadk, thanks for the kudo. I didn’t mention it in the Philippines story, but ill-conceived measures often leads to non-strategic results. In the PI we measured the success of the program on the $$ value of the property recovered when in fact our strategic goal was to reduce property theft. We should have been measured on the $$ value reduction in property loss.

There is a fantastic historical example of this that had real world implications for the lives of 1000s of merchant seaman in WWII. Prior to the US entrance in WWII, the US was sending 100s of merchant ships across the North Atlantic to re-supply Britain and Russia. Losses to aerial bombing from land based German planes based in the Baltic were extensive and unsustainable. The U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine decided to put anti-aircraft guns on merchant ships and man them with trained Navy personnel. When the program was first evaluated, the primary measure of success was the number of German aircraft shot down. When that number was so low and the U.S. entered WWII after Pearl Harbor, the Navy recommended taking the guns and crews off the merchant ships as they were needed in the Pacific. This almost happened until a savvy Merchant Marine officer challenged the decision on strategic grounds. “Why did we put the guns on the ships?” After some cajoling the answer became clear to all. We really didn’t put the guns and crews on the ship to shoot down German aircraft, we put the guns on the ships to stop the wholesale sinking of merchant ships. After honest analysis, the evidence was clear. Despite having not shot down many German aircraft, ship losses to German aircraft had dropped dramatically. Although the Navy almost abandoned the program because they needed the gun crews in the Pacific, when they looked at the strategic goal: reduce ship losses, they came to an elegant solution. They kept the guns on the ships and trained merchant seaman to load and fire the guns. It worked. Why?

When you are shot at, you change your behavior. When German aircraft weren’t being shot at, they could target ships with their bombs at 1000ft where accuracy was very high. When shot at, they were forced to 10,000ft where accuracy was significantly reduced. It really did not matter that a German aircraft was shot down or not, it only mattered that they couldn’t effectively target a merchant ship.

The lesson from this story is simply this: Measure the success or failure of your effort against the Strategic Goal, otherwise no matter how righteous you may think your tactics are, you may in fact generate non-strategic results.
 
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For non- political- this thread seems to dance with it. Our habits and abuses have to change. The ripple effect of doing so can be built on. It beats obliviousness. I purposefully chose to respond here as a human being invested in this sentient life I have and responded based on our net behavior on this planet. Politics and economics are so imbedded that even a thread claiming to be non political can’t seem to help itself from doing so. These are mere details in the pincushion. We all need to pitch in. Since money comes up all the time here in this thread, start with a better use of it. We can’t seem to help ourselves by doing so.
 
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dflett68 said:
this looks like a good chart for those who feel one person cannot make a difference - since it clearly indicates that on a per capita basis we are the biggest hitters.
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Analogy - one person one vote/ why vote? My vote doesn’t count.

One step for mankind

Every one of us matter in this protein stew.
We bury ourselves in the interconnected minutia.
 
Mike Cline said:
I'll never understand the whataboutisms as a reason for not doing shit. Thankfully, not everyone thinks that way.

This statement was made in one of the previous posts. It is indicative of what a lot of people think about the impact of climate change. If we don’t DO SOMETHING NOW we are doomed. What is worrisome about that kind of thinking is two fold. Indeed human activity may be accelerating climate change but it is a given that the earth’s climate has always been dynamic so some form of change is inevitable. However when solutions to mitigate the effects of whatever change is forthcoming rely more on fear than a real understanding of the dynamics of the earth’s climate, we significantly raise the probability that whatever solutions are posited will likely be insufficient or worst, create unintended consequences.

Here’s just one example (of countless) that illustrates the “fear” aspect of climate change doomsayers. We’ve all seen and read the doomsday articles about the “unprecedented drought” in the West caused by climate change. Yet, in 1540, well before any widespread use of fossil fuels, Europe experienced unprecedented (at least as documented historically at the time) drought.

https://joannenova.com.au/2022/08/t...-burned-and-no-one-blamed-coal-or-beef-steak/

Why the fear now? Europe and its brown trout survived.

Two, proposed solutions to any problem really do need a lot of “whataboutisms”. I would commend those who are anxious “to do something now” become familiar with the “Cobra Effect” or the idea that seemingly logical solutions can often have unintended consequences.

https://fee.org/articles/the-cobra-effect-lessons-in-unintended-consequences/

Whatever climate change solutions you might want to support really do need your conscious effort to partake in some “Whataboutisms” to at least think about the potential unintended consequences.

In thinking about this, a real world example that I experienced personally came to mind. Back in the 1980s, I was an USAF law enforcement officer stationed in the Philippines. There was a saying about theft of property on both Clark AB and Subic Naval Base: Everything is already stolen, they just haven’t figured out how to get it off the base yet. Indeed thefts of government property was a big issue. So a program was initiated to recruit and pay confidential sources to facilitate the recovery of stolen property. It worked well from the standpoint that the more we paid, the more property we recovered. Unfortunately, it didn’t deter thefts, but instead incentivized them. Over the few years I participated in the program thefts increased dramatically as did recoveries. The bad guys had developed an effective scheme. It really didn’t matter what they stole, even if it had no value, they got paid when the property was recovered. It took several years for officials to figure out the incentives were having the opposite effect. When we stopping paying sources for property recovery, property theft dropped precipitously.

Be aware of the “Cobra Effect” as it is real.
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no matter what solution we come up with, or which polar axis is running the machine at the time - the govt will do it inefficiently and wastefully and make a god damned mess of it.

that still will almost certainly be better for the human race than the "Mongoose Effect" - the seemingly logical idea that doing nothing can maintain the status quo indefinitely - this approach also has a history of unintended consequences.

like most solutions to enormous and complex problems - solutions come in stages through trial and error and they are messy and costly - but they don't come at all if you do nothing within the time-frame that a fix is possible.
 
Solar fluctuation cycles are a given. Their impact, is just that much greater as CFC's continue to erode away the proective ozone layer which filters UVB light, allowing increased UV radiation to hit the ice fields and melt them at an increasing rate, the sole causality of sea level rise.
climate.nasa.gov

Ice Sheets | NASA Global Climate Change

Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. Current news and data streams about global warming and climate change from NASA.
climate.nasa.gov climate.nasa.gov
 
"Do something. Do ANYTHING is a bad approach for anything, let alone policy changes involving trillions of dollars and impacting billions of people. We should do the right things based on the right research and right plans and be able to demonstrate the right measurable results. "
....

"Crazy talk. How can you suggest we do NOTHING???"
 
Jim in Anacortes said:
After agreeing that the climate is changing and then agreeing that "fossil fuel" use may be partially to blame, the adults in the room can discuss the matter intelligently. All the previous "doomsday" predictions have proven to be laughable. The "informative" signs at Glacier National Park had to be removed because they were so ironically incorrect about the glacier movement in full view of the tourists. IMHO all Americans should be very skeptical regarding the huge "transfer of wealth" centered around "climate change". Will that transfer of money change the Earth's climate? Of course not. In the name of "climate change" we have embarked on a fool's folly, that will do nothing to "cool our planet",, but will certainly make our enemies far more powerful, and just as certainly, rob our children of the American dream and all the freedom that we have thus far enjoyed. But hey, maybe after 50 years of suffering we might cool our planet by one tenth of one degree. Yahoooo for the new green deal!... Our youngsters are going to suffer for this foolishness,,,,.Talk about "taxation without representation" to an American that was born yesterday....those are the Americans that will inherit the poverty from our recklessness regarding "climate change"... that recklessness is making a few people extremely rich... and is not effecting our weather in any significant way.
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why do we talk like the only tax money the govt mishandles is related to politicians and issues we have a problem with? no matter what a program is ostensibly for - the machine works the same way in all cases under all administrations. it gets a little bit done (poorly) with a little portion of the money, and uses the rest to reward itself and blow hot air out the exhaust pipe. that has nothing to do with the authenticity of any given problem or need, whether it is climate change, infrastructure, education, prescription meds, covid, the auto industry failing, wall street failing.... the point is, it's a corrupt system - whatever you give them, they're going use a small amount to probably do a half-assed job on the problem itself, and consume the rest.

the polarization of the voting public enables this dynamic more than anything else. if we could all move toward the middle and elect some politicians that reflected that, we'd instantly have more sincere people at the wheel who could work better together and spend more of our taxes on the actual problems - it would take less money - not more. ditching the two party system seems like it could move us in that direction.
 
Flymph said:
I would like to thank the Mods for allowing this thread to go as far as it did. Few posters have read information from other posts or at least tried to debate with something other than spew that has already been proven incorrect.

Over one million people died because we politicized C19. How many have and will suffer because we can't reach a common goal to save our planet because of political BS?
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So… let me get this straight… No one would have died from covid if it wasn’t politicized?
 
dflett68 said:
ditching the two party system seems like it could move us in that direction.
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ditch the electoral vote and decide elections by the popular vote - most votes wins regardless of party. Then politicans would have to quit pandering to electoral vote constituents and appeal more to the center.
 
Delete. Agree with Josh.
 
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Chadk said:
No doubt. "Appeal more to the center"? So what does that mean? "White" people - since they are the majority? "Straight" people? Or perhaps that Seattle and Portland populations (large group think gatherings) should have more power over what is happening in Colville and smaller communities? So many problems with mob/majority rule.
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I always cringe when I hear people describe the USA as a democracy, when we are a constitutional republic, with each state getting somewhat equal and fair play for their unique constituents. That's enough for me. I was trying to stay out of this. I enjoy this site and don't want to get banned.
 
me too. I’ll go and look at the bears again.
 
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