For what it's worth, the only time I've ever gotten scolded by DanG was for a tongue-in-cheek reference to voluntary suicide that was a lot more subtle than this. Suggesting folks set themselves on fire is going a bit far.
Bush, Trump and Biden are all boomers, as were most people in congress. If you're blaming federal spending, it sounds like a reasonable statement to make that "boomers tanked the economy"?
No, blame the electorate, which has significant contributions from all generations (but decreasing Boomers now).
There is a doom loop of (western) democracies voting themselves welfare, wars, lower taxes, various anti-market subsidies, stimmie checks, bread & circuses... Then have the central bank print trillions $£€¥ to cover the deficits (actually quadrillions for ¥¥).
And who were the electorate? It went Silents, then Boomers, Xers, Millenials, Zoomers, and the next one A or Alpha might be starting (they don't have a slur yet). The pains of 2005-2012 and the decade of zero interest were brought about by the actions of Silents and Boomers and voted for by Silents, Boomers, and Xers in the years and decades preceeding.
Boomers are the obvious scapegoats. Who was the celebrity today I saw saying they wouldn't leave his children his $500M fortune? Mick Jagger I think. But rest of them are similar. "I won't leave my kids the house." "I'll spend everything I saved." "I got my first job walking in off the street making shoes so why don't you?" Now the government would steal large parts of these as though they didn't get a share when it was saved and the manufacturing has all been outsourced. But those things just happened. Nobody was behind them. Like a car runs into pedestrians with no driver at the wheel.
Having written all that I'm not sure whether you agree with my grandparent comment or not.
Nitpick: Biden is silent generation, not boomer. And there are still 7 other silent generation members of congress.
It's been joked about before, but I think there is some truth to the idea that kids these days are now just calling everyone from starting with older Millenials on up a boomer. At this point I'd bet a fair number of them don't even know where the word boomer even comes from, it's just slang for old person.
The media made such a big deal about Generation X back in the day that it feels a little sad to get forgotten. I'm feeling less special by the day...
I want to see young people take countries to court for their Covid response.
The mass quarantine of healthy people is unprecedented. We've quarantined the sick for hundreds if not thousands of years like Typhoid Mary. Quarantining healthy young people who are not at risk in response to a pandemic has never been done before.
because lockdowns destroyed a lot of political goodwill and have ruined a generation of children? climate change is overblown and we wont see any actual major effects for another century.
climate change believers really are just an apocalyptic cult at this point. it defies reality
there are many other, actual issues that should be addressed. housing shortages, mass illegal immigration, inflation, geriatric politicians, corruption, education, environmental protection from chemicals and other toxins, deforestation, pollution in general etc etc
climate change isn't even close to whats important. but because it has had no actual effects, and the real effects are a century away, its easy for people to posture without committing to an actual solution. there are other issues that should be addressed that people are forgetting about. its a joke
> overly cautious and compassionate public health measures
You forgot unconstitutional and ineffective.
> in an easily recoverable way
You think reversing inflation, massive debt and a historic housing price bubble is easy?
> decades-long rabid and unchecked industrialization that is irreparably destroying major parts of the planet for every generation to follow, ever
You mean the thing that has improved the lives of every human to the best level it's ever been in history? That outside of mathematical models has had very little actual measurable detrimental effect (assuming you're talking about global warming). I suppose you'll be volunteering to give up your car, house, dishwasher, laundry machines and all the other amazing things that make life vastly better and more hygienic for billions of people.
Um, mass quarantines of healthy people is not unprecedented. It was, in fact quite common through history when outbreaks seemed to be getting out of control. First they'd quarantine families. Then neighborhoods. Then entire cities. In fact, during the pre-industrial times, entire cities would be quarantined and sometimes, if anyone tried to escape, they would be executed. While a reasonable arguments can be made about whether the various flavors of Covid quarantines were necessary or effective, to say they are unprecedented is simply wrong.
This does not square with my experience. I have school-age children (currently 5th and 7th grade) and they are not behind. The year everyone came back to on-premise school was rough, certainly, but most normal kids seem to have bounced back just fine. There's a huge amount of repetition in primary and secondary school curriculum anyway.
They would lose because the response was appropriate with the given information at the time. (and the lower risk we enjoy today is thanks to vaccination and natutal immunity of the survivors).
It totally wasn't, and countries that had less heavy-handed responses such as Japan and most African countries didn't have a significantly worse outcome than the one that took dictatorship-like measures.
On the other hand the negative effects of those policies are very strong, and for some ery visible. For instance France's debt skyrocketed from 100% to about 120% of GDP in a single year. Then there is impact on mental health, education, lowered public trust in the institutions etc. It's an absolute disaster with nothing to show for it.
Yep, when you need people to start taking action to stop the world from literally burning then it's important to publicize that it's happening and people are likely to get scared
The cause of wildfires is much more complex than "global warming". It involves forestry, proper maintenance, water management and many other things up to and including fires that are set by climate activists [1].
What's your point exactly? Climate change is an important factor in causing more wildfires, and it's going to get worse. Wildfires are only one example. We have to convice the wealthy and powerful people who make the decisions to act on it now. No-one is suggesting that we can ignore the other factors that you mentioned.
From a quick scan read of the abstracts it looks to me like every result on the first page here links climate change to increased incidence of wildfires. I'm not familiar with the literature or journals in this field, but the first page results here all have at least 100 citations and one has more than 500. In my field when I was doing my PhD this would have meant the work was very well received.
I explained my methodology in my previous post, including the amount of effort I'd put in and the way I'd critically evaluated the sources I'd looked at, and that I'm trained and qualified as a scholar in a different field. When I start research in a field that's new to me, what I did in that post is generally the first step that I take.
I'm (genuinely, not sarcastically) interested to hear what research you've done in this area? Can you provide some sources published in peer reviewed journals with high citation counts which show that climate change is not a risk factor for wildfires?
Indeed, it's much better to look at all papers published on a topic and break them down into groups of papers that refute, those that support, and those that merely inform about a particular subject.
NASA put men on the moon in record time and additionally designed and launched fleets of earth monitoring satellites (multiple designs in multiple orbits), their data analysts support the notion that climate change has coincided with wildfires becoming more frequent, more likely to have several at the same time (straining resources), individually bigger, more severe, faster than ever before, and more destructive.
Of course the comeback to that is "but global total area burnt has decreased each year" .. which is, of course, a weasal point - a reduction in the 2D area of fires because of fewer light grassland fires doesn't alter the fact that the 3D volume of fuel burnt has increased - notably in dense forest areas that "normally" very rarely burn.
What part of my post, or wider argument, is incorrect?
Who funds GLAN?
How does 11-year old Mariana know what to say? How does she know helicopters-wildfires-climatechange-humanrights? Family, 'education', lawyers?
How can protection from climate change, at some unbounded cost (TBD by vested interests), possibly be declared a human right?
Change is inevitable. Nothing lasts forever. Humans adapt. Climate change is not a crisis. It is a slow chronic condition, not acute. It may cost some money. It will be fixed or ameliorated mostly by technology. The sky is not falling.
This is absolutely the right direction to take. Ambitious programs are hollowed out since voters get angry and shift to conspiracy theories and populist parties to maintain their lavish lifestyle.
CO2 emissions worldwide are still growing every year. This is painful to watch as western countries have started programs for reduction a long time ago - but they are vaporized by the strongly growing emissions by Asian countries [1].
China has a very ambitious program and will likely peak in the coming years - not being bound by short-sighted election cycles. But India is another story.
We must all realize that within our lifetimes, we need a proscription on _extraction_ of fossil fuels. Otherwise it would be a laughable attempt to collect the damage after it has occurred. And most likely, this needs to be done through the court system.
Having unelected judges dictate important economic policy instead of elected politicians is the “right direction to take?” Do you see how attitudes like that might be contributing to the rise of “populist parties?”
Unfortunately our democracies have a blind eye when it comes to internalizing external costs and executing on policies that might take 20, 30 years to get implemented. It is a process with many setbacks every other election cycle. This is one place where a king or queen actually makes sense - their interest is to leave a heritage for their firstborn. But even monarchs need to fear the wrath of the people when they do it, and besides, they might be too stupid.
Modern civilization simply isn't possible without fossil fuels. There are finite reserves of oil, gas and coal, and it is inevitable that these will continue to be exploited until it is no longer viable. Without oil it wouldn't be possible to grow or distribute enough food to feed the current human population.
Climate change is a very real threat to human civilization, but mainly because of the size and distribution of the population, and lately expectation of people. The earth has been hotter in the past, and so the CO2 locked up in fossil fuels was originally in the atmosphere.
The "earth has been hotter" take seems a bit silly. Sure it's true. But do you want to live somewhere with an average summer temperature of 100F instead of 80F or 90F? Or more extreme.
Sure, the earth and life in general will survive global warming. But humans have a good chance of not.
I've come to believe/agree that it is not possible for humanity to give up fossil fuels, but the physics of adding ever more carbon into the atmosphere is also calamitous. Taken together it seems we are on a path to certain doom.
>Otherwise it would be a laughable attempt to collect the damage after it has occurred
Why do you think that? The number of extreme climate events is higher today than in previous centuries, but the number of people killed by these events - controlled for population - is much smaller. We are WAY better at mitigating climate problems after they happen than we are at stopping them from happening
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 387 ms ] threadFor what it's worth, the only time I've ever gotten scolded by DanG was for a tongue-in-cheek reference to voluntary suicide that was a lot more subtle than this. Suggesting folks set themselves on fire is going a bit far.
No. Reckless spending by the Federal Government tanked the economy: https://www.aier.org/wp-content/webpc-passthru.php?src=https...
Started under Bush after 9/11. Trump took it to a new level under Covid. Biden got behind the wheel and floored it.
There is a doom loop of (western) democracies voting themselves welfare, wars, lower taxes, various anti-market subsidies, stimmie checks, bread & circuses... Then have the central bank print trillions $£€¥ to cover the deficits (actually quadrillions for ¥¥).
If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
Boomers are the obvious scapegoats. Who was the celebrity today I saw saying they wouldn't leave his children his $500M fortune? Mick Jagger I think. But rest of them are similar. "I won't leave my kids the house." "I'll spend everything I saved." "I got my first job walking in off the street making shoes so why don't you?" Now the government would steal large parts of these as though they didn't get a share when it was saved and the manufacturing has all been outsourced. But those things just happened. Nobody was behind them. Like a car runs into pedestrians with no driver at the wheel.
Having written all that I'm not sure whether you agree with my grandparent comment or not.
Nitpick: Biden is silent generation, not boomer. And there are still 7 other silent generation members of congress.
It's been joked about before, but I think there is some truth to the idea that kids these days are now just calling everyone from starting with older Millenials on up a boomer. At this point I'd bet a fair number of them don't even know where the word boomer even comes from, it's just slang for old person.
The media made such a big deal about Generation X back in the day that it feels a little sad to get forgotten. I'm feeling less special by the day...
climate change believers really are just an apocalyptic cult at this point. it defies reality
there are many other, actual issues that should be addressed. housing shortages, mass illegal immigration, inflation, geriatric politicians, corruption, education, environmental protection from chemicals and other toxins, deforestation, pollution in general etc etc
climate change isn't even close to whats important. but because it has had no actual effects, and the real effects are a century away, its easy for people to posture without committing to an actual solution. there are other issues that should be addressed that people are forgetting about. its a joke
You forgot unconstitutional and ineffective.
> in an easily recoverable way
You think reversing inflation, massive debt and a historic housing price bubble is easy?
> decades-long rabid and unchecked industrialization that is irreparably destroying major parts of the planet for every generation to follow, ever
You mean the thing that has improved the lives of every human to the best level it's ever been in history? That outside of mathematical models has had very little actual measurable detrimental effect (assuming you're talking about global warming). I suppose you'll be volunteering to give up your car, house, dishwasher, laundry machines and all the other amazing things that make life vastly better and more hygienic for billions of people.
There are millions of non-normal kids.
On the other hand the negative effects of those policies are very strong, and for some ery visible. For instance France's debt skyrocketed from 100% to about 120% of GDP in a single year. Then there is impact on mental health, education, lowered public trust in the institutions etc. It's an absolute disaster with nothing to show for it.
That's the sort of climate histeria that makes it difficult for rational people to take any of it seriously.
The cause of wildfires is much more complex than "global warming". It involves forestry, proper maintenance, water management and many other things up to and including fires that are set by climate activists [1].
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/radical-environmentalis...
Afaik, there's very little concrete evidence to support this claim.
There are many headlines, so please don't bother posting a bunch of junk links. I know they exist.
Hard science? Not so much.
From a quick scan read of the abstracts it looks to me like every result on the first page here links climate change to increased incidence of wildfires. I'm not familiar with the literature or journals in this field, but the first page results here all have at least 100 citations and one has more than 500. In my field when I was doing my PhD this would have meant the work was very well received.
That's exactly the sort of link I was hoping you wouldn't bother posting.
Anyone can run a Google scholar search to come up with a bunch of links to "prove" anything.
Try really researching the subject next time.
You might be surprised what you learn when you study something without assuming you already know the answer.
I'm (genuinely, not sarcastically) interested to hear what research you've done in this area? Can you provide some sources published in peer reviewed journals with high citation counts which show that climate change is not a risk factor for wildfires?
Eg: https://sciencebrief.org/topics/climate-change-science/wildf...
NASA put men on the moon in record time and additionally designed and launched fleets of earth monitoring satellites (multiple designs in multiple orbits), their data analysts support the notion that climate change has coincided with wildfires becoming more frequent, more likely to have several at the same time (straining resources), individually bigger, more severe, faster than ever before, and more destructive.
https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3066/the-c...
Of course the comeback to that is "but global total area burnt has decreased each year" .. which is, of course, a weasal point - a reduction in the 2D area of fires because of fewer light grassland fires doesn't alter the fact that the 3D volume of fuel burnt has increased - notably in dense forest areas that "normally" very rarely burn.
We know the conspiratorial MO. No surprises here.
What part of my post, or wider argument, is incorrect?
Who funds GLAN?
How does 11-year old Mariana know what to say? How does she know helicopters-wildfires-climatechange-humanrights? Family, 'education', lawyers?
How can protection from climate change, at some unbounded cost (TBD by vested interests), possibly be declared a human right?
Change is inevitable. Nothing lasts forever. Humans adapt. Climate change is not a crisis. It is a slow chronic condition, not acute. It may cost some money. It will be fixed or ameliorated mostly by technology. The sky is not falling.
CO2 emissions worldwide are still growing every year. This is painful to watch as western countries have started programs for reduction a long time ago - but they are vaporized by the strongly growing emissions by Asian countries [1].
China has a very ambitious program and will likely peak in the coming years - not being bound by short-sighted election cycles. But India is another story.
We must all realize that within our lifetimes, we need a proscription on _extraction_ of fossil fuels. Otherwise it would be a laughable attempt to collect the damage after it has occurred. And most likely, this needs to be done through the court system.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi...
In my experience, many judges make things up while not caring about the laws.
Climate change is a very real threat to human civilization, but mainly because of the size and distribution of the population, and lately expectation of people. The earth has been hotter in the past, and so the CO2 locked up in fossil fuels was originally in the atmosphere.
Sure, the earth and life in general will survive global warming. But humans have a good chance of not.
Why do you think that? The number of extreme climate events is higher today than in previous centuries, but the number of people killed by these events - controlled for population - is much smaller. We are WAY better at mitigating climate problems after they happen than we are at stopping them from happening
Can the Ukrainian government be sued for not adequately defending the Crimea in 2014?