Politics: The Undiscovered Country

[Malcador]

Seems like no one here is an alarmist, but I guess shadow enemies are the best kind.

 

Hm, DX should have used that angle more, Illuminati trying to take over the world via climate change concern

[Maedhros]

4 minutes ago, Malcador said:

 Illuminati trying to take over the world via climate change concern

 

@Skarpen - Fair enough, I misunderstood you. I guess it depends on how you define "catastrophe" though. The world won't end in 10 years, or 20, or 30...but the consensus seems to be that we're in for a tough beating.

Edited September 25, 2019 by Maedhros

[213374U]

19 hours ago, Skarpen said:

http://www.thegwpf.com/european-climate-declaration-there-is-no-climate-emergency/

So much for consensus on climate catastrophe. 

This are the guys I can get behind on climate issues. Not some deranged teenager screaming idiocy.

That's a think-tank with ties to Koch-funded advocacy groups, "free market" UK organizations manned by past and current BoJo staffers, the Cato institute, etc.

I mean, it may be technically true that the group comprises "500 prominent climate scientists and professionals" if there's at least one astrophysicist who published an error‑laden paper and the rest are former Shell employees like the founder of the group, but in general I wouldn't trust them to know enough science to change a lightbulb.

Edited September 25, 2019 by 213374U
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Malcador]

Transcript released, well a form of it, I assume. Sort of feel sorry for anyone listening to that conversation.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/25/trumps-phone-call-with-ukraines-president-read-the-full-transcript

Edited September 25, 2019 by Malcador

[Maedhros]

40 minutes ago, 213374U said:

The article claims 97% "consensus", but if you actually go to the referenced study, only ~33% of of the articles endorse AGW in the abstracts, while ~66% were found to have "no position" on it. It is only a 97% consensus when they looked at which amount of authors whose studies endorse AGW... who then also agree that humans are the primary cause of anthropogenic global warming. In other words, do you agree that human-caused global warming is caused by humans? 97% say yes.

The author dismissed these observations as a result of authors "not wanting to state the obvious" and abstracts being "valuable real estate". He even threw in an appeal to authority (to himself, ofc), in case you weren't suspicious enough.

This kind of numerical misrepresentation shouldn't go unchallenged, even if one agrees with the author's position. This is the kind of stunt you'd expect from FOX and CNN, not scientists.

I'm aware of this, but my impression was that the "no position" articles are stated to be as such because they don't at any point claim "I/we believe climate change is man made". But if you actually read the "neutral" articles it's clear that they've moved on from such speculation, and are instead working on solving stuff related to it. For example one study attempts to discern the impact of rising sea levels.

[pmp10]

14 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

You don't get a peep about our population growing 25% in 5 years here because it makes the economy look like it's growing and they can kick the superannuation can down the road for another decade, but huge tracts of productive agricultural land are going into McMansions with all that lovely CO2 generated by the concrete, machinery etc. Instead we have to focus on methane which doesn't even accumulate and avoiding highrises because that's for overseas slums.

It's not that simple.
Migration is an issue and as usual left-leaning politicians and scientists will look the other way but priority for the moment should be power generation as it's the lowest hanging fruit.
How do you handle the source of that population growing in numbers in developing countries is another matter.
Telling them that they must stay poor or that they must educate their population (yay for next best thing to sterilization) is quite the hypocrisy on our part.
That and part of methane does breaks down into CO2 so it accumulates to some extend. 

[213374U]

3 minutes ago, Maedhros said:

I'm aware of this, but my impression was that the "no position" articles are stated to be as such because they don't at any point claim "I/we believe climate change is man made". But if you actually read the "neutral" articles it's clear that they've moved on from such speculation, and are instead working on solving stuff related to it. For example one study attempts to discern the impact of rising sea levels.

From what I gathered from the study, they only considered abstracts. If the abstract made no explicit or implicit reference to AGW, then it was cataloged as "no position", according to the following criteria: 

• Explicit endorsement with quantification — Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming   
• Explicit endorsement without quantification — Explicitly states humans are causing global warming or refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a known fact 
• Implicit endorsement — Implies humans are causing global warming. E.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause

 

Article bodies weren't considered for the study. The second part of the study, where they e-mailed a subset of authors so they could self-rate the papers brought the AGW endorsement up to ~63%. Still a far cry from the 97% headline, and it's important to note that this was with only a 14% reply rate from authors.

Don't get me wrong, I'd still agree that this constitutes "broad" consensus. But playing fast and loose with figures is a hard no for someone who 1) portrays themselves as a scientist, and 2) is purportedly trying to fight scientific misinformation.

[HoonDing]

It's just the sun.

[Bartimaeus]

Official WH (edited and redacted) "recollections" (note: not an actual transcript - the top very clearly states it is a memo, not a transcript) of the alleged Trump-Ukraine collusion incident: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf

Reading Trump's (...and, surprisingly, the Ukraine president's) ramblings is difficult, but this blasted memo does seem to confirm the worst. Zeleneskyy talks about cooperation between the Ukraine and the EU and how they aren't doing enough, then compliments the US by saying that the US is the one actually doing the most, then talks about buying weapons from us. Trump then segues from that particular point straight into "getting to the bottom of it" regarding the "Crowdstrike" issue. He also specifically mentions wanting the Attorney General (Barr) to call the Ukraine president and talk about it. Zeleneskyy sidesteps it with a whole lot of nonsense about diplomatic relations and having our countries get closer, and that any possible investigations would be done properly. Trump then immediately goes back to the Crowdstrike issue and mentions specifically Biden by name and looking into what he did or didn't do, and that he'll have Giuliani (his personal lawyer!) and Barr call.

A little additional context for this is the President personally ordered the withholding of $400 million dollars of military aid to the Ukraine days before this call for unstated reasons. In other words...it looks and awfully sounds like he was using $400 million dollars of federal aid money as a bribe to dig up political dirt on a competing political candidate for campaign election purposes. And this is heavily edited and redacted "memo"...what in the world's not included here that they felt the need to release THIS rather than let the whistleblower talk?

(e): Also, just a reminder that no-one has seen the full Mueller report besides the people responsible for redacting it...and the redacted version of that was already bad enough, too. Completely unrelated article titled That time Nixon released doctored transcripts during Watergate.

Edited September 25, 2019 by Bartimaeus

[Gfted1]

Why would we need Ukraine to dig up dirt for us? Maybe he thought they wouldn't snitch? Seems like there are many other apparatus that could have been used.

Anywho, what time do we light our soiled undies on fire and throw them over the WH fence?

[Bartimaeus]

I think you'd have to ask Trump that, haha. What in the world was he thinking? And again, this is their heavily edited "memo", not even a transcript, so...this is the best they could spin it. Now I really want to hear the whistleblower talk about it... Like Nixon, it's only thanks to a whistleblower whose conscience was pushed too far that we even start really digging into this. It's a shame that whistleblowers haven't been afforded protected near as much as they deserve in recent administrations, including Obama's.

Edited September 25, 2019 by Bartimaeus

[Elerond]

 Emperor has spoken

[Bartimaeus]

lmao, that'll surely help his case

[Zoraptor]

4 hours ago, pmp10 said:

It's not that simple.
Migration is an issue and as usual left-leaning politicians and scientists will look the other way but priority for the moment should be power generation as it's the lowest hanging fruit.
How do you handle the source of that population growing in numbers in developing countries is another matter.
Telling them that they must stay poor or that they must educate their population (yay for next best thing to sterilization) is quite the hypocrisy on our part.
That and part of methane does breaks down into CO2 so it accumulates to some extend. 

Ultimately it is that simple, if you want less resource usage then you fundamentally need to have fewer people using the resources. The other stuff will help- renewable energy, better use of resources etc- but if there's difficulty having enough resources for the planet's current population then there's extra difficulty when there's an extra 50-100% of said population. Nothing that can be done about India or China or Nigeria in that regard, but if New Zealand really wanted to do well on the green front (we don't, just have to look at the average lake or river here to see that) then no net population growth or population decline is what we need to do. Controlled population is also ultimately far better than the likely alternative- mass starvation, war, no water etc.

Here at least we have almost no residual fossil fuel power generation left. There's one coal power plant in Huntly that is used for emergencies and load balancing basically, so the only low hanging fruit left is sticking excise on cars- while disproportionately effects poor people who cannot spend 50k on an electric car and who cannot rely on the utter crap public transport system which most of our ultra low density cities have and which focus on serving tourists and rather ludicrously the people who can afford electric cars anyway- and agriculture. The latter is ludicrous here because 98% of our animals are fed on grass in situ, so they don't have the problem the typical US or Euro livestock has of having its food trucked or shipped in from Brazil or Iowa burning diesel or fuel oil all the way. The CO2 from methane is also more or less irrelevant, since it comes from CO2 sequestered into grass in the first place and unless the grass doesn't grow due to, say, sticking a gaudy 270m^2 bungalow on it it will go back into the grass to be eaten again.

 

[Malcador]

Wonder what he thought that would mean

Speaking of that, Trump's press conference is off to an incoherent start.   Yeah, that didn't get any better.  Amazing how he can't avoid boasting

Edited September 25, 2019 by Malcador

[Amentep]

1 hour ago, Gfted1 said:

Why would we need Ukraine to dig up dirt for us?

Allegedly the Ukraine was being recruited because the alleged "dirt"  allegedly involves a Ukrainian company that Biden's son is on the board allegedly being protected by Biden when he called for the resignation of an allegedly corrupt prosecutor who was allegedly looking into alleged corruption allegedly involving the company.

[Bartimaeus]

I wonder what the record for the number of times "alleged" has appeared in a single, coherent sentence before. That one's got to be up there.

[Gromnir]

5 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

Why would we need Ukraine to dig up dirt for us? Maybe he thought they wouldn't snitch? Seems like there are many other apparatus that could have been used.

 

the scandal would be better or worse if were the President leveraged the fbi to investigate a political rival? recall how trump were screeching his conspiracy theories 'bout how obama had trump tower bugged? if were any truth to that, woulda' been a p00pstorm o' epic proportions.

is also kinda difficult for the fbi to investigate overseas, if only from a practical perspective. is not the kinda thing the nsa investigates. cia? is a gap 'cause trump wants investigation o', 'mongst others, a US citizen's activities while on foreign soil. 

could cia be directed to investigate? reddit conspiracy mongers no doubt believe the cia is current already investigating biden... and that little swedish girl, but intelligence gained by cia would be less useful in a future election fight 'cause sources would need remain secret. given how trump has helped fabricate and embolden a fake news culture, such sources is easily dismissed.

wouldn't doubt trump asked same questions as you and then pompeo and others (maybe bolton) explained why what trump were asking were either illegal or impractical... which is precise why it were trump and his personal attorney (really?) who were negotiating with a foreign power to dig up dirt on a political rival.

regardless, the whistleblower complaint has now been seen by Congress and they will, in short order, get actual hard copies o' the complaint. along with the other whistleblower complaint nobody is talking 'bout, the one which accuses irs o' mishandling the President's taxes, things is gonna get lively in washington.

HA! Good Fun!

 

[Agiel]

Given the circumstances of the release of the "transcript," one distinctly recalls a certain episode of "Yes, Prime Minister":

 

 

[ManifestedISO]

couple quotes appreciated recently

'Rudy Giuliani is the Trump administration’s point man on Ukraine. Just remember that, and everything else will make a lot more sense.'  - Gail Collins

'Once you realize that "deep state" is code for "the rule of law," you can translate their jibberish into something more like English.' - David Frum 

 

[Skarpen]

So people are waiting for someone to tell them what they just read? And from a guy who didn't read it?

Sounds like Mueller testify all over again.

[smjjames]

10 hours ago, HoonDing said:

It's just the sun.

Inb4 the sun turning into a red giant five billion years early.

 

8 hours ago, Elerond said:

 Emperor has spoken

He's trying pretty hard to construct his own reality isn't he?

Edited September 26, 2019 by smjjames

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, Agiel said:

Given the circumstances of the release of the "transcript," one distinctly recalls a certain episode of "Yes, Prime Minister":

vid

 

is one reason our focus, from start, has been the whistleblower complaint itself, and white house efforts to impede communication o' the findings.

should not be forgotten how the only reason why we have this story gracing front pages o' newspapers and getting so much airtime on tv news broadcasts is the ig, a trump appointee, informed Congress o' the existence o' an urgent and credible complaint after the acting dni failed to communicate findings. the trump administration tried hard to make the whistleblower complaint disappear with doj and wh counsel enlisted to help in such efforts. 

now that trump has released after-the-fact transcripts and the whistleblower complaint has managed to reach Congress, the wh efforts to impede and obstruct is already becoming yesterday's news? once again we get deflection, false equivalency, fake news & deeps state conspiracies while a fundamental attack on rule of law becomes a side issue. makes our brain itch. 

HA! Good Fun!

 

[Bartimaeus]

It's kind of incredible that he somehow keeps appointing people of at least some integrity completely accidentally and to his great detriment. A lot of people have worse integrity than you might think when it comes down to actually taking a stand against everyone else...but it turns out, some people are surprisingly better, too. Even total political appointees like Jeff Sessions somehow have had some integrity and refused to pledge their their total allegiance to the monster mash.

Edited September 26, 2019 by Bartimaeus

[ManifestedISO]

was incorrect about 'falsifying' the call's record ... appears to have been manipulated in favor of the president by 'overclassifying'