US Politics: YOUTUBE LINKS OR GTFO

[Maithanet]

5 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

The difference is Dems aren't just agreeing with their party. They're also agreeing with over 90% of people who have studied this is enough depth (the scientists) to form an opinion. And frankly looking at the fucking crazy weather patterns that are happening world wide as it was predicted they would.

90% is a really conservative estimate.  I work in the climate change field, and I've never met an out and out climate change denier who approached the issue with any kind of scientific rigor.  There are a few people who disagree on the margins, for example "the evidence that climate change leads to increased severity of hurricanes is mixed!"  I'm sure that someone with an agenda could put that person in the "climate change skeptic" camp, but that isn't what they are saying.

I'm sure there are a few people out there who are looking at climate data and think it is not anthropogenic, but in my experience they are as rare as unicorns.  And it's not like DT or Republicans in Congress are questioning the climate change with science based evidence.  Instead they just repeat discredited arguments over and over again and hope the issue goes away.  

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

You all may or may not be familiar with the successful sf writer, Charlie Stross.  He lives in Scotland, is Jewish and thinks of these matters in the US and the UK hard and constantly.  Here are some scenarios he's been coming up with that develop directly in a straight line to what the christofascists and repugs promulgate:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/02/some-notes-on-the-worst-case-s.html#more

That's brilliant.
I've read before that the Syrian mess could arguably be blamed on climate change and that similar crises are likely to multiply in the next decades. It just hadn't occured to me that white supremacists could actually be taking this into account (now or at some point in the future). But it does make sense.
There's just one problem: no one knows how climate change is going to play out. It's just dumb to imagine that the West will be spared thanks to geographical considerations. The 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow featured a reverse scenario ; and though an ice age is unlikely, it's perfectly possible that Western countries will suffer some unforeseen consequences.
Still, in the short term, it's essentially correct that countries like Bangladesh are likely to be wiped off the map soon enough, and that closing borders now is a very cynical way to indirectly perform genocide on a massive scale.
 

[Fragile Bird]

Ok guys.  This administration has stopped being funny, for sure now.

The rumour in Ottawa is Sarah Palin will be named ambassador to Canada.

 

   

[Fragile Bird]

BREAKING NEWS - the travel ban decision is about to be announced.

ETA:  About to be announced....before the close of business.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Rippounet said:

That's brilliant.
I've read before that the Syrian mess could arguably be blamed on climate change and that similar crises are likely to multiply in the next decades. It just hadn't occured to me that white supremacists could actually be taking this into account (now or at some point in the future). But it does make sense.
There's just one problem: no one knows how climate change is going to play out. It's just dumb to imagine that the West will be spared thanks to geographical considerations. The 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow featured a reverse scenario ; and though an ice age is unlikely, it's perfectly possible that Western countries will suffer some unforeseen consequences.
Still, in the short term, it's essentially correct that countries like Bangladesh are likely to be wiped off the map soon enough, and that closing borders now is a very cynical way to indirectly perform genocide on a massive scale.
 

No one knows, but there are very few weird gotchas that are likely to happen like the above. Instead, we can look at basic overall scenarios and decide how they're going to likely affect the world. Rising sea levels, rising heat, bigger freak weather incidents, bigger cases of prolonged drought are all likely. They're not necessarily going to happen, but you can project based on current behaviors how things will shake out if they do.

And the US is simply not super vulnerable to climate change compared to, say, Bangladesh or much of Africa or India or China. At least not at the same levels. The US will be affected, but it isn't likely to have, say, half of its population starve like Bangladesh may. 

The Syrian mess is almost certainly caused by climate change, or at least a climate event - major droughts caused a lot of rural Syrians to move to the cities, where they faced unemployment and poverty. Estimates were something like 2-3 million people moved. When you have that big of a change, you get more unrest and a lot more drama - and that's precisely what happened. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Swordfish said:

They should've known it was going to be an uphill battle.  There were plenty of signs of it over the past decade or more.

In terms of it being an uphill battle to get a third term for a Democrat, sure. But that would apply to any Democratic nominee. It's important to remember that Clinton was very popular, both with the party and with the nation as a whole, before the email scandal broke. The Benghazi nonsense only played to a small crowd, and most of the other potential landmines were more embarrassing than they were discrediting. I'm sure they expected them to come up and that they had some type of plan to refute and/or ignore. What they couldn't have predicted was Trump and his willingness to sink into the mud in a way that had never been seen before. I don't blame them for missing that, because almost all of us did.

3 hours ago, Swordfish said:

like i said, it's possible, but i wouldn't bet the homestead on it if I were the DNC, for reasons that should be obvious.

it it possible?  Sure.  but if the dems want to stop getting their asses handed to them at virtually every level of government, they might want to reconsider that as a strategy. 

Perhaps we're talking about two different things. I was specifically talking about Presidential races, in which the "lesser of two evil" narrative is used all the time and has been shown to work rather well. But if we're talking about lower level races, then yes, it's a terrible strategy.

4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Doesn't "easy D", like, mean an alternative way to say "easy word-for-a-penis"?

Trump still doesn't let other people read his tweets before he sends them out?

Guuuuurl, you so nasty!

And yes, that's what it means, which makes the tweet so incredibly funny.  

[Swordfish]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

In terms of it being an uphill battle to get a third term for a Democrat, sure. But that would apply to any Democratic nominee. It's important to remember that Clinton was very popular, both with the party and with the nation as a whole, before the email scandal broke.

There was plenty of information about how she would do based on just 2008 alone. The email scandal broke well in front of the election, it started in what, 2013?

That's just one more piece of baggage they willfully ignored because they had set their hopes on he long ago, and were too stubborn to move on.

Quote

The Benghazi nonsense only played to a small crowd, and most of the other potential landmines were more embarrassing than they were discrediting.

Since she lost, i'm not sure what there is to gain from arguing about whether she was electable or not.  She clearly wasn't, and a lot of that had to do with her real and perceived issues.

Quote

I'm sure they expected them to come up and that they had some type of plan to refute and/or ignore. 

Which was obviously wishful thinking on their part.  They should have moved on.

 

Quote

Perhaps we're talking about two different things. I was specifically talking about Presidential races, in which the "lesser of two evil" narrative is used all the time and has been shown to work rather well. 

Didn't work so great in this election, despite the fact that she was up against the greatest of all evils that we've seen in recent memory.  

I'm not sure why that is controversial at this point, and I don't see why people feel the need to defend them.  They blew it, and they need to do something different.  Alternately, they can stick to the 'lesser of two evils strategy' (which failed them this time), consider this business as usual, and hope for the best,  but that seems pretty foolish to me.

 

[Fragile Bird]

31 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

That's brilliant.
I've read before that the Syrian mess could arguably be blamed on climate change and that similar crises are likely to multiply in the next decades. It just hadn't occured to me that white supremacists could actually be taking this into account (now or at some point in the future). But it does make sense.
There's just one problem: no one knows how climate change is going to play out. It's just dumb to imagine that the West will be spared thanks to geographical considerations. The 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow featured a reverse scenario ; and though an ice age is unlikely, it's perfectly possible that Western countries will suffer some unforeseen consequences.
Still, in the short term, it's essentially correct that countries like Bangladesh are likely to be wiped off the map soon enough, and that closing borders now is a very cynical way to indirectly perform genocide on a massive scale.
 

Just wanted to add something else.

I heard a story about the effect of climate change on parts of the coastline of Africa. There is drought in many parts of Africa (and the world), not just Syria, and along coastal areas where there is drought the water table is dropping, allowing salt water to infiltrate the water table and poison the coastal aquifer with salt. Wells are poisoned and crops die.

Since the heaviest populated areas in many countries are on the coasts, it's not hard to imagine social disruption and new waves of refugees coming to countries less affected by such events.  Florida, I believe I read, is also starting to feel the effects of salt water infiltration.

And most famously, the US military identified climate change as an immediate threat to the security of the US a number of years ago.

[Altherion]

36 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I've read before that the Syrian mess could arguably be blamed on climate change and that similar crises are likely to multiply in the next decades.

31 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The Syrian mess is almost certainly caused by climate change, or at least a climate event - major droughts caused a lot of rural Syrians to move to the cities, where they faced unemployment and poverty.

The next time you see people disparaging the validity of anthropogenic climate change, please remember statements like these. What you are doing is taking something scientifically proven to a reasonable degree of certainty, tying it to something that may or may not be true and then tying that to a social phenomenon that has at least a dozen of plausible causes. To wit:

1) The heating of the planet due to the carbon dioxide we release by burning fossil fuels is a scientific fact. There is uncertainty on the extent of it (different models provide different results), but on the whole it is not disputed except for people with an agenda.

2) There is far less consensus on the relationship between this warming and any specific climate or weather event. It is plausible that such events would be altered by the warming, but it is really difficult to prove for any given one. After all, there have been plenty of droughts, floods, typhoons, etc. before humans were able influence the climate and longer-term changes have likewise occurred throughout history. For example, at certain points in time the Sahara desert wasn't a desert and at others, the desert extended further than it does today.

3) There is even less consensus on what exactly is to blame for a conflict in a given region. The region specific to this case has been the site of conflict throughout recorded history.

[Rippounet]

27 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

No one knows, but there are very few weird gotchas that are likely to happen like the above. Instead, we can look at basic overall scenarios and decide how they're going to likely affect the world. Rising sea levels, rising heat, bigger freak weather incidents, bigger cases of prolonged drought are all likely. They're not necessarily going to happen, but you can project based on current behaviors how things will shake out if they do.

And the US is simply not super vulnerable to climate change compared to, say, Bangladesh or much of Africa or India or China. At least not at the same levels. The US will be affected, but it isn't likely to have, say, half of its population starve like Bangladesh may.

Playing the devil's advocate here...
Of course, developing countries in Africa or Asia will suffer dramatic consequences in the next decades. I'd be careful about assuming the US or other Western countries are not also super vulnerable to climate change though. We don't have widespread heat-resistant crops just yet (as far as I know), and the US is already having problems with its droughts. And no one knows what unpredictable consequences the rising heat will have. You could have a terrible pandemic coming from pretty much anywhere for instance, and what we see as geographical advantages today could turn out to be terrible weaknesses tomorrow. Shorter and warmer winters could give rise to a crop-killing disease eliminating some of our agricultures overnight. A collapse of our electrical grids due to constant tornadoes and hurricanes could throw back our modern countries to the stone age in a few years. A couple of bad tsunamis (or whatever freak weather incident) could lead to nuclear disasters. Etc...
My point is, while some predictions seem safe, we don't know what's going to happen at all, and thus don't have any way of knowing which countries will be able to adapt/survive best in the long run. Betting on an apocalyptic environmental catastrophe to wipe out your neighbors but spare you is a nice SF story, but a risky plan IRL. Which is why, of course, we want to avoid it, or work together to adapt to it.
I think what Stross's scenario underlines though is that the coming global environmental crisis will only make some current political trends worse, which means that instead of having the nations of the world collaborating to face this common problem we are more likely to fight each other and enter a new dark age. Pockets of civilization will survive (behind walls most likely), and billions will perish.
Yikes, now I'm starting to think like a survivalist. I need a whisky and a smoke.

[JGP]

Denied by the 9th Circuit.

 

[gets popcorn, logs into Twitter]

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

The 9th circuit court says the immigration ban will not be re-instated while it waits a review on its legality! 

They just said it as breaking news on my local channel, so no links yet

 

ETA:  LINK - NY Times

[maarsen]

Bangladesh is not the only place in the world that is just meters above sea level.  Ever been to Florida?

[Commodore]

most overturned court in the country makes questionable ruling, surprising no one

[JGP]

5 minutes ago, Commodore said:

most overturned court in the country makes questionable ruling, surprising no one

Mmn... but if POTUS pushes it all the way to the SCOTUS and he gets denied again, Trump the ill-Advised and his Administration will be responsible for a curtailing of the Presidents' authority on these particular matters.

Also, I've read that a preliminary filling for impeachment has been initiated. Looking for more info...

[Rippounet]

6 minutes ago, Altherion said:

The next time you see people disparaging the validity of anthropogenic climate change, please remember statements like these. What you are doing is taking something scientifically proven to a reasonable degree of certainty, tying it to something that may or may not be true and then tying that to a social phenomenon that has at least a dozen of plausible causes.

I think both Kalbear and I were careful to add a little nuance to our original claims.
I'm aware that even assuming climate change played a role in the Syrian crisis it would still be one factor among many others.
But that's the thing: many developing countries will suffer disastrous consequences if that one extra factor is added to a mix of religious and/or ethnic tensions, bad government, crippling poverty, geopolitical rivalries... etc. Yes, blaming the Syrian crisis on climate change is an intellectual shortcut today. But it's still a good example of the kind of crises that will actually occur in the next decades.
To sum up: point taken, but irrelevant in the context of our discussion.

[Zorral]

18 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Playing the devil's advocate here...
Of course, developing countries in Africa or Asia will suffer dramatic consequences in the next decades. I'd be careful about assuming the US or other Western countries are not also super vulnerable to climate change though. We don't have widespread heat-resistant crops just yet (as far as I know), and the US is already having problems with its droughts. And no one knows what unpredictable consequences the rising heat will have. You could have a terrible pandemic coming from pretty much anywhere for instance, and what we see as geographical advantages today could turn out to be terrible weaknesses tomorrow. Shorter and warmer winters could give rise to a crop-killing disease eliminating some of our agricultures overnight. A collapse of our electrical grids due to constant tornadoes and hurricanes could throw back our modern countries to the stone age in a few years. A couple of bad tsunamis (or whatever freak weather incident) could lead to nuclear disasters. Etc...
My point is, while some predictions seem safe, we don't know what's going to happen at all, and thus don't have any way of knowing which countries will be able to adapt/survive best in the long run. Betting on an apocalyptic environmental catastrophe to wipe out your neighbors but spare you is a nice SF story, but a risky plan IRL. Which is why, of course, we want to avoid it, or work together to adapt to it.
I think what Stross's scenario underlines though is that the coming global environmental crisis will only make some current political trends worse, which means that instead of having the nations of the world collaborating to face this common problem we are more likely to fight each other and enter a new dark age. Pockets of civilization will survive (behind walls most likely), and billions will perish.
Yikes, now I'm starting to think like a survivalist. I need a whisky and a smoke.

Also we need to keep in mind just how much of what we eat is imported from other countries, particularly Mexico and South America.

Also how very vulnerable cities are to disruption in supply of food.

Not to mention just how much of our water supply has toxic levels of lead and other elements poisonous to human beings -- even, as we see in places like Flint, for washing.  What will happen to the beer supply?

Heat kills in North America too.  The poles have been the planet's a/c system and they're being destroyed rapidly.  Not to mention what's going on with the Gulf Current.  This affects all of the western hemisphere from the Caribbean on up, and to the British Isles and elsewhere in Europe. The UK is really going to be creamed by climate change.

 

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 He's going to take this all the way to the top...

 

 

/JUDGE WAPNER IS A FAIR MAN! 

[Fragile Bird]

20 minutes ago, Commodore said:

most overturned court in the country makes questionable ruling, surprising no one

Well, duh, it's California, first of all.

But secondly, lol, Justice Roberts is responsible for reviewing the decisions of the 9th, so a conservative judge makes the decision about what appeals will be heard.