Climate Change III - The Power of Chaos

[Zorral]

You all are kinda missin' the point which is of what these very experienced arid land farmers were doing a couple thousand years ago, and how these later farmers want to resurrect their techniques.  It worked really well until the 20th C, in most places.

You all may have noticed that the Mediterranean region has managed to fill the world's need for olive oil, wine, and all kinds of foods for a few thousand years until ... well, we know when.

There is sustainable agriculture and they did it for a very very very very long time.  Until more efficient modern technical practices were determined everywhere better -- plus, you know, fewer farmers, fewer laborers, etc.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Zorral

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You all may have noticed that the Mediterranean region has managed to fill the world's need for olive oil, wine, and all kinds of foods for a few thousand years until ... well, we know when.

I mean, NO. That's not right at all.

Aside from things like wine grapes being exported very early (it is one of the earliest things we have around the world as far as archaeology go), the 'demand' for wine was not satisfied because the notion of shipping wine regularly around the world was not remotely something people did for anyone other than the absolute rich. The demand for wine in the world - especially in places that typically do not have wine - has increased absurdly compared to what it was even 100 years ago. Wine was something local if it was anything and it was fairly rare in many places. It was also one of the very first things many people brought as soon as they got to a place. 

This has nothing to do with sustainable agriculture and everything to do with being able to actually meet real demand. Using agricultural techniques from 200 years ago will result in massive underproduction and likely will ALSO result in massive unsustainable - or unhealthy - practices. 

 

[Mentat]

15 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I come from a farmers family and you can't compare small scale farming that spans generations to industrial agriculture.

 

I have nothing against farmers. I eat food. In the current Spanish political scene they (or those representing the most prominent farmer's unions or collectives, obviously each individual farmer will have different views or opinions) seem pretty much at loggerheads with conservationists, though.

 

8 hours ago, Zorral said:

You all may have noticed that the Mediterranean region has managed to fill the world's need for olive oil, wine, and all kinds of foods for a few thousand years until ... well, we know when.

Whether this is a good idea or not is an open debate, though. Spain is currently exporting its water (in the form of juicy oranges, tomatoes and other products) to other countries with far less severe water issues, and it's doing it at a heavily subsidised price, at that.

[Zorral]

Kal -- we are talking about very different eras, Duh.

9 hours ago, Mentat said:

Spain is currently exporting its water (in the form of juicy oranges, tomatoes and other products) to other countries with far less severe water issues, and it's doing it at a heavily subsidised price, at that.

And the Saudis are taking the ground water from AZ and CA to feed and water their horses in Saudi as they don't have those resources.  So is our water and timber etc. out of the Pacific NW going to China.  And on and on and on

Before the possibilities of modern transport and technology, this couldn't happen, at least on the scale it is now.

And before that for millennia the Mediterranean did a damned good job of sustainable, and surplus agriculture.  For pete's sake, Iberia supplied Classical Rome (also the dancing girls with tambourines who famously in classical writings, as well as Islamic writings, shook their booties down to the ground) with most of its olive oil.  In fact, most of our olive oil here has been coming from Spain for decades.

[Kalbear]

34 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Kal -- we are talking about very different eras, Duh.

No, you're not. You're talking about using sustainable agriculture for 'thousands of years' to supply enough wine for people when whole areas simply could not drink wine because they could not grow grapes. There's a reason that Northern Europe doesn't have a big wine culture compared to Southern Europe and that's because they drank beer instead, and they did that because they could not grow grapes reliably in that area. 

So the whole premise - that we were practicing sustainable agriculture that could supply demand - is ridiculously flawed and luddite. 

34 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Before the possibilities of modern transport and technology, this couldn't happen, at least on the scale it is now.

And before that for millennia the Mediterranean did a damned good job of sustainable, and surplus agriculture.  For pete's sake, Iberia supplied Classical Rome (also the dancing girls with tambourines who famously in classical writings, as well as Islamic writings, shook their booties down to the ground) with most of its olive oil.  In fact, most of our olive oil here has been coming from Spain for decades.

Again you're missing the point about demand here. How much transporting of olive oil do you think was happening? How many gallons? How many people reliably used olive oil on a day to day basis? It is several orders of magnitude lower than what are being used regularly now. 

Now, if you're arguing that we should go back to a luxury goods model of things where we transport way fewer goods and make way fewer goods that's fine - say that. But it's not because of some magical agrarian practices that we're no longer doing; it's because the demand was ridiculously lower in the past. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 7/18/2023 at 7:26 AM, Week said:

An unfortunate overstatement that is directionally correct. Of course, any less than unimpeachable assertions coming from the Left, and Ilhan Omar in particular, will get the bad faith artists and reactionaries to "well ackshuley" us to death. The situation is serious enough that we don't need to give any shred of daylight for gaslighters to mock. 

It may not even be overstatement—the parameters of how her statement how wrong her statement isn’t given.

Do they think she’s likely off by one day? Two? A thousand? Because when talking about the span of 1200000 years being off by that much doesn’t matter. 
 

It’s like digging a person for saying dinosaurs died out 66 million years as too presumptive there’s no way to get the EXACT day, hour, minute the  dinosaurs died out 

On 7/18/2023 at 6:50 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

It's always the playbook to try to make the debate about trivial elements of an argument instead of the substantial core of the clear evidence about what is happening.

True creationists tend to hyper-fixate on a specific unknown or ambiguous thing regarding macro-evolution instead of explaining why it’s reasonable to think god flooded the earth, and humans nearly reached heaven by building a tower.

they often don’t even give a specific time frame on how old they think the universe is without being pressed.

If you don’t know much about evolution and aren’t attuned with rhetorical tricks a die-hard creationist can sound reasonable and informed.

On 7/18/2023 at 6:50 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

You can only really argue that climate data going back 120,000 years ago does not support the current global warming scientific narrative if you believe the universe didn't exist 120,000 years ago.

 

Yeah the backlash came mostly from people who ideologically or financially presupposed to think/argue climate change is just a scare tactic or virtue signals of people/entities they see as opposition.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/14/upshot/climate-change-by-education.html

Edited July 21, 2023 by Varysblackfyre321

[Varysblackfyre321]

The right’s anti-empiricism will kill humanity.

Also yeah there’s a gripe about how “climate-change” sounds nebulous because ACTUCKLLY the climate is always changing.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Varysblackfyre321

[The Anti-Targ]

"They" had to pivot from global warming because deniers kept pointing out that it was still cold in winter and that stupid arse argument seemed to be swaying the unwashed masses a bit. So out "they" came with climate change. It's hard to win a soundbite argument when one side is being obtuse and bad faith and the other side is using soundbites that require nuanced understanding.

If you're explainin' you're losin'.

TBH I am actually kind of impressed with humanity that the vast majority of us are actually supporting the science and climate change policy in the face of monumental effort to convince us all that up is down. Though unfortunately not supporting it strongly enough to force govts and business to more rapidly make the necessary changes. Or in the case of China and some other countries are too oppressed to really force change on the govt, though even China isn't denying reality.

[drawkcabi]

2 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

The right’s anti-empiricism will kill humanity.

Also yeah there’s a gripe about how “climate-change” sounds nebulous because ACTUCKLLY the climate is always changing.

Well " Global Warming" was tried first but that got laughed out of the building because we can still make snowballs in winter...

 

[drawkcabi]

@The Anti-Targ 

[Essan]

The other issue with "global warming" is that it's much more than just temperature - as we are seeing now, rainfall patterns are changing with more extreme flash floods and more prolonged drought.   Climate change encompasses that.  But yeah, it does then fall foul of the "but climate is always changing" argument.  

[The Anti-Targ]

At the risk of starting a whole discussion about terminology, I would say that all the other stuff has warming as the root cause...technically human release of GHGs is the root cause, but in terms of climate and weather phenomena it's warming. So global warming would still be an appropriate name to give to what is happening. It just took a while before the data was able to consistently point to years, months, weeks and days that are the globally warmest hence, literal global warming is now an established fact by direct measurement and not just theoretical projections.

[Spockydog]

As much as I feel for these people whose holidays have been ruined, why the hecc did they even get on the plane? Don't they watch the news? Yeah, stupid question. The British working class are not exactly known for keeping up with current affairs. Still, who doesn't check the weather of your holiday destination before flying out? 

 

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

They might have checked the weather, the issue are raging fires there.

[Spockydog]

Type 'Rhodes weather' into google. See what comes up.

Just a glance at the  news headlines in the past few days would be enough for a big old nope.

 

Edited July 23, 2023 by Spockydog

[Derfel Cadarn]

45 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

As much as I feel for these people whose holidays have been ruined, why the hecc did they even get on the plane? Don't they watch the news? Yeah, stupid question. The British working class are not exactly known for keeping up with current affairs. Still, who doesn't check the weather of your holiday destination before flying out? 

 

 

Saw a guy on twitter saying his travel company were telling him just to go, and it would be sorted there. Basically the companies arent advising people not to go, to avoid refunds

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Saw a guy on twitter saying his travel company were telling him just to go, and it would be sorted there. Basically the companies arent advising people not to go, to avoid refunds

JFC. Just been reading about Tui. They were flying people out there as late as last night.

[KingintheNorth4]

On 7/21/2023 at 4:17 AM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

The right’s anti-empiricism will kill humanity.

Also yeah there’s a gripe about how “climate-change” sounds nebulous because ACTUCKLLY the climate is always changing.

Ben Shapiro with facial hair looks like evil Rob Riggle.

[The Anti-Targ]

On 7/21/2023 at 9:17 PM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

The right’s anti-empiricism will kill humanity.

Also yeah there’s a gripe about how “climate-change” sounds nebulous because ACTUCKLLY the climate is always changing.

Don't Look Up!

[Spockydog]

Remain calm. Stay indoors.

Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025, study suggests

Quote

 

The Gulf Stream system could collapse as soon as 2025, a new study suggests. The shutting down of the vital ocean currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) by scientists, would bring catastrophic climate impacts.

Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years owing to global heating and researchers spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021.

The new analysis estimates a timescale for the collapse of between 2025 and 2095, with a central estimate of 2050, if global carbon emissions are not reduced. Evidence from past collapses indicate changes of temperature of 10C in a few decades, although these occurred during ice ages.