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| It's Cold Outside...; and I'm like a block of ice | |
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| Topic Started: Jan 14 2009, 08:07 PM (646 Views) | |
| Oak | Jan 19 2009, 11:54 PM Post #31 |
Battle Angel
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It's an Internet forum. Tone is perceived in textual dialogue, not sound. As such, when I make statements about what I am and am not trying to do, those statements are meant to replace the normal body language communication one receives in real-life conversations that equates to tone. (There is no need to point out at length how much simpler or more enjoyable it is to debate and discuss in-person over debating and discussing via text replies.) Since there was no sarcasm in what I wrote, everything can be assumed sincere. You may have felt antagonized to some extent, but that means you can write, "I felt antagonized." (At which point I could reply with a clarification if necessary. When sound/body language is missing, text sometimes must be read from start to finish more than once to gain the intended meaning, and it might have to be re-read at a later date if more data taking the place of sound/body language is sent to clarify any confusion.) That does not mean, however, that "[my] tone bears at least a little antagonism." That would be an unverifiable statement of opinion (assuming that there was no sarcasm in what I had written in the previous post). Am I nit-picking? Some may feel that way, and some may not feel that way -- but I work this way for a reason. I try to create as controlled an environment as possible so that something useful can come out of a debate or a discussion. I try to separate fact from opinion, and I try to separate fact-based opinion from anecdotal opinion. I hope this serves as a sufficient prologue for the rest of my reply. ---------- Concerning the long-term climate change that is commonly regarded as valid (that there have been Ice Ages, warmer eras, etc.), there are two points that I want to make. ---> 1) If it can be called "extreme topsy-turvying," (though "topsy-turvying" would suffice since it denotes the state of reversing conditions over some period of time), then I think that the time-scale should be mentioned. These changes happen over a relatively (with regard to the human lifespan) long period of time. You say that "only creatures who are adapted to hotter temperatures can survive, and vice versa with the cold" -- but I think the predicate should instead concern creatures "who can adapt." If only creatures "who are adapted" in advance can survive, then that would imply a) their genes/lifestyles are an improbability in relation to the chaotic nature of weather, b) natural selection or some other reported force of nature or supernature would have had to encode this in order for such species to live on (and by extension, it then becomes a possibility that the climate is NOT chaotic and that it CAN be predicted with much more precision than currently found on the 7-day forecast or on a 10-year forecast), AND/OR c) something other than what I have suggested here (I admit to not having run the full implications through my mind to obtain all reasonable outcomes of your use of "who are adapted."). However, I doubt you meant to say "are adapted" with such an intention. I'm fairly certain that you meant "can adapt." But without this nit-picking, more unspoken assumptions would have been necessary on my part, which would have lead to greater chance for later uncertainty. --->2) Your sentence "IF humanity wants to survive in the long-run... then.. what do we do?" is based off of assumptions that I do not find reasonable without proof -- namely, a) that humans cannot adapt to changes in the climate, b) that the climate will change to such an extent as to kill off humanity even if humans can adapt [genetically as a species or location-wise in terms of in what part of the globe they live], and c) that long-term human survivability depends on the actions of today's humans with regard to climate [this is unreasonable to assume because i) the extent to which humans can impact the environment in such a manner as to impact the climate in such a way as to negatively impact future survivability of the human race is a figure which needs to be cited in order to understand the futility or importance of such an undertaking (perhaps human actions create the climate to a large extent; perhaps human actions impact the climate so little as to be close to 0%; perhaps human actions variably affect ergo effect the climate to some middle-extent)]. As far as I know, there is no proof that humanity will die out should the current and the coming generations do nothing to actively/consciously change/shape the climate. Without this proof, I cannot be moved -- I fear the implications, the precedent that they would set, and the results of attempting to fix something that may not be broken or that cannot be fixed. I would rather hear as much information as possible, consider it logically, and then consider whether it amounts to enough proof to warrant action OR inaction. (At the moment, I have only found enough proof to warrant an intensive observation of the available climate data without attempting to modify any of the variables; some would call this inaction.) ---------- Regardless that your following paragraph is now useless to me (until proof is given concerning both humanity's ability to impact the climate and the necessity of impacting the climate), I want to make some remarks. --> 1) Your sentence "not be quite as careless with how we treat the earth..." needs to be qualified for it to make sense to me. It begs the questions, "Are we being careless with how we treat the earth?", "How are we being careless?", and "Who and what percentage of humanity consists of 'we'?" Your mention of "messing up the ozone in our industrial society" is anecdotal (and therefore useless) evidence until an explanation is given concerning who has messed up the ozone, how "they" did it, to what extent was it messed up, and how its state of being messed-up to that extent impacts humanity's long-term survivability. [Note: A phrase comes to mind: "Busting one's balls," or otherwise to give someone an unfair, hard time on a detailed and repetitive level. It has a negative connotation, and it came to mind while typing this. As such, I want to state that I am not trying to bust anyone's balls. I am challenging these sentences on a detailed and repetitive level, but I do not think my challenges are unfair. If anyone feels that way, please re-read the prologue. This is how I work. If it annoys or seems pointless, feel free to ignore what I have written in this post.] --> 2) "We have to keep our population under control if we (as a species) want to survive in the long-term..." This requires proof concerning why population control is necessary in order for humans to survive in the long-term. Until then, it is an unverified opinion. Additionally (and aside from the moral and/or ethical implications), who is the 'we' of whom you speak? That needs to be clarified, and I am guessing that it will take a very large amount of time and work to have a full-on debate concerning whether a given entity ("we") should ever have the authority to control the human population. --> 3) Ignoring the sentences following "we have to keep our population under control..." because of their status as unverified opinions until proof is given, I want to skip to the last line: "And yet our technology is allowing them [the ill/obese] to survive longer and longer, despite what Nature normally does to those that are ill, or obese, etc." I have two points to make: Point a) You say that it is "our" technology that is allowing "them." I am of the opinion that you did not mean to say that (that it was instead a simple grammatical mix-up). However, I want to point out that there are many (probably unintended) implications that can be read from that line, and I want to go on a digression: When I write these replies, I spend as much time as necessary to nix anything that I think might be unnecessarily confusing or incorrect. For example, I have already been devising this reply for 1 hour and 20 minutes at this point in time (and I will note that on typing tests, I average between 80 and 120 correctly typed words per minute -- as such, the length of time spent on these replies is not in any notable part dictated by my typing speed). While debate and discussion in-person are arguably simpler and more enjoyable, debate and discussion via text offers at least one benefit: infinite revision before presentation. (If the implications of these remarks seem like the height of arrogance or like something otherwise offensive, then so be it. I cannot say anything more than that this is a statement of my opinion, arguable only in philosophical shades of gray. Any debate on this matter will not likely sway me unless said argument impacts my personal philosophy. If someone wrote a similar reply to me concerning remarks I made that shared a similar nature to the ones you've made, it is easy to foresee myself as feeling as having been attacked, and it is easy to foresee frustration, gritted teeth, etc., for it is highly unlikely in this hypothetical case that I ever meant to suggest the things that prompted the response -- nevertheless, intentions would not absolve my statements from review or multiple interpretations depending on how they were worded. Of course, I am hoping that frustration is not your reaction; rather I hope that your reaction will be to want to take more time to construct what you write.) Point b) You wrote: "... despite what Nature normally does to those that are ill, or obese, etc." I would argue that Nature does not do anything because Nature is merely a term for reality, which is an observation. Cause-and-effect is the mechanism by which events happen, such as: Cause 1 (eating too much of the wrong nutrients while living an incompatible lifestyle over some period of time) yields Effect 1 (obesity); the state of obesity entails the likelihood of certain bodily dysfunctions (Cause 2) which yields a higher probability of death at an age lower than that of an average human living in a similar environment with so-called "proper" nutrients and/or a "compatible" lifestyle over some period of time (Effect 2). ---------- On to the following paragraph, starting with "Or the other answer: expand..." Ignoring the part about this being an answer to an as-of-yet unqualified problem, this paragraph is much more reasonable than the others because although it fails to offer much proof, it is mostly an open-ended suggestion (at least, I take it to be that way because of that last line, "Who knows what could happen"). I would still like to hear 1) why "the moon is not so likely," 2) why "Mars seems very possible" (aside from your remarks that the ice-caps can be melted -- I would be interested in hearing others facts that makes Mars viable in the first place and more viable than the moon as a possible colony). The article on fusion was fascinating, and it offered a type of proof. However, when you wrote, "If we can create a star, then why couldn't we terraform a planet and make it habitable for human life," I took issue. What, if anything, does the technology for fusion have to do with the technology for terraforming, and where is the proof that humans can terraform or can think that terraforming will be a solid possibility (with regard to test results) outside of earth? ---------- Finally, your explanation of Oklahoma's weather is anecdotal and therefore useless IF it is meant to serve as some sort of indication about climate in general. (If it's just a story, then I find it amusing. But in the case that it is meant to offer proof, I'm going to continue.) I chose Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a start because the state is large and has the ability to have a varying temperature and air pressure in different locations at the same time. I went here: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/tsa/climate/tulrecbook.html. And then I went here: http://ggweather.com/climate/extremes_us.htm. The first table on the second website offers a look at the record statewide variance (in degrees Fahrenheit) between high temperature and low temperature in the history of what I presume to be the accepted meteorological records of the United States. Unfortunately, I could not find the record variance for a given day (though I could if I sifted through all of the past records of Oklahoman cities' daily weather). Still, I find it worthwhile to note that differences of 100 degrees or more have occurred at least once in every state except Hawaii (88 degrees Fahrenheit record variance between two points about 40 years apart -- but the instances were only a month apart in terms of one being in April and the other being in May; this conceivably may have something to do with Hawaii being a series of islands that are subject to different weather patterns than are the continental States). Oklahoma has experienced a 147 degrees Fahrenheit variance. Montana wins at 187 degrees Fahrenheit variance (a low of -70 F on January 20, 1954 at Rogers Pass at 5,470 feet versus a high of 117 F on July 5, 1937 at Medicine Lake at 1,950 feet). (Note: Temperature values in the United States have only been recorded consistently since the middle or late 1800s, and there is of course debate about a somewhat recent retention of heat around the thermometers that have been recording this data in cities due to an increase of neighboring materials like asphalt that retain heat and bleed it off into the surrounding air more slowly than, for example, grass or dirt. This means that the data is not flawless and could and likely does suffer in longitudinal accuracy due to uncontrolled/unrecorded/ignored variables.) The point here is that these extreme variances have been recorded through the past 100+ years. These variances of 100+ degrees Fahrenheit in different states in different years are common. Furthermore, the hotter temperatures are evenly split between occurring before and occurring after the lower temperature in terms of years (24 instances of the record high occurring at least one calendar year or greater prior to the record low; 26 instances of the record low occurring at least one calendar year or greater prior to the record high). Of course, these are only the extremes -- further research into the average variance and the average temperature per year per state would be useful. Perhaps it would be more correct to state that the point here is that there is a lot of data to consider by people who talk about such matters as climate that have not been openly stated or considered in threads like these across the Internet. Anecdotal evidence is nothing more than water-cooler talk or a story and should not be elevated to a factual-evidence status simply because several people have had similar experiences. This must be held true especially when the consequence of considering and interpreting the factual evidence concerns whether humans will undertake a massive reform of their actions as they perceive them to be related to the climate. Imagine that a worldwide effort was undertaken to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as much as possible because people assumed that it was bad for the way things are, based on some anecdotal evidence -- and imagine that this effort was undertaken without fully considering the full spectrum of data as it is known, as it is changed by new data, and as it is to be regarded in terms of probability. Imagine then that certain bug populations started dying off because of an n-degree correlation between decreased carbon dioxide and the bug populations' food source, and imagine that this instability in the bug population then had a n-degree correlation with the long-term survivability of humanity. Whether this correlation ends up being valued as positive or negative for the long-term survival of humanity is irrelevant: the fact of the matter in this hypothetical case is that an unintended consequence resulted from human action that was supposedly done for a specific reason in order to obtain a specific outcome. Sometimes these unintended consequences are good, sometimes bad, and sometimes they are both good and bad depending on which species you are. But that they can be unpredictable and unwanted is reason enough to avoid acting without fully considering the available facts and variables. ---------- Finally, let me explain that I have nothing against people living more cleanly in terms of reducing how much they pollute. What pollution is, however, is up for debate. Let's say I have a large carbon dioxide output in relation to my neighbor (and assume that we have similar houses and families). Is that pollution? Let's say I dump polychlorinated biphenyls into the local river in large quantities. Is that pollution? To the first I would personally say, "No" because I see no issue as of yet with putting carbon dioxide into the air (since I already take it from the air and expel it after I use the oxygen, thereby changing the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide), as long as the world remains in balance. Adding more carbon dioxide to the air in sufficient [read: massive] quantities will likely trigger a change in the equilibrium of the earth's surface-to-atmosphere equation (which has never, to my knowledge, been understood or simulated in a computer model to any worthwhile degree of certainty so that a prediction of the long-term effects of gaseous change in the atmosphere could be obtained). There is so much uncertainty there that to me there is no way to err on the side of caution but to continue my current stance on the matter. To the second, I would personally say, "Yes" because PCBs have been listed as hazardous to the health of lifeforms when ingested, and dumping them into the river is a good way to ensure that aquatic species and land-based predators will ingest them. Furthermore, would I agree that cutting back on the number of trash bags each week is a good idea for some people? Certainly, especially if it means some of the waste is being put into a compost pile that will be of use to gardeners or if it means that people are cutting back on what they perceive to be excesses. But simple phrases like "going green" and "cutting back" are useless because they trigger different mental perceptions depending on who hears them, like a crowd of people listening to a piece of poetry and obtaining different personal meanings from the metaphors. When it comes to scientific reasoning, ideas cannot be stated in terms of vague phrases or metaphors -- the ideas MUST be written out in full so that no one has to make any unwritten assumptions before considering, discussing, or debating them. (Note: It's been 4 hours. I took a half-hour break in the middle of it. That doesn't mean it's flawless. Parts of it are written in reply to what Flooffy wrote, parts of it are written to the general public, and some small part of it probably has something to do with the original post. Everyone is to feel free to view the entirety of this post as open to debate. If you find flaws, or if you want to dispute something, go ahead. Length does not equal veracity. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread if anyone has anything to say in reply.) |
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| Member No. 483 | Jan 20 2009, 12:03 AM Post #32 |
Super Saiyan
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Well sh*t, Oak certainly came out with the guns blazin'. LONGEST POST EVAR |
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| flooffy | Jan 20 2009, 12:42 AM Post #33 |
Super Saiyan
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holy moly. Oh man... I'm actually very glad that you're providing such a challenge to me. Let me apologize because the way that I write jumps a lot--I will skip steps because I'm making too many assumptions based on the proof that *I've* seen, and due to my faulty memory, it takes me a boring amount of time to organize the proof to fit in with what I've written coherently. Basically, it's going to take some time to revise, so give me.. hmm, I dunno, some time  to gather my information and re-examine my own arguments.and yeah, I'm pretty sure I meant "can adapt". will adapt. Something like that. I was using the name of Nature as another name for reality.. a reality which contains the natural laws, and the natural laws probably don't favor the obese when it comes to being healthy. Again, I am personifying Nature as "favoring" the lean over the obese.. it must be something deeply-ingrained in me that I just did it subconsciously, without meaning to. Sorry, it's just natural to me. It's a part of my nature. double now I'm just being a butt. But. I simply meant after the AND AND AND that the little personal experiences I've had with local weather is crazy and unpredictable. And that has absolutely no professional bearing on anything. (Especially since it's Noklahoma, the No Man's Land.) |
GacktForever. Cut the kids in half. | |
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| Oak | Jan 20 2009, 01:02 AM Post #34 |
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Battle Angel
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Coolio*. I'll be off the Internet for a while (relative to how often I'm normally on), but I'll check back in every so often when I can to see if you did re-state anything. In the meantime, I'm taking a nice long break from using a mouse and keyboard and from looking at monitors. ... My right index finger is nigh permanently bent to the angle at which it perpetually sits on the scroll wheel, my left hand's a claw from the AWDS-ing of MMORPGs, and my eyes are bloodshot from days of reading news articles written in black text on glowing white background. *And therefore this post has something to do with the original topic. |
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| Cyoung | Jan 28 2009, 12:23 AM Post #35 |
Super Saiyan
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It actually hit -20 I think here in Iowa (always extreme weather). The best part is it's -5 degrees (without windchill) and me and my friend work on a construction site scraping ice and shoveling snow from a building. |
Shonn Greene - 1,850 rushing yds 20 td's (Doak Walker Award winner, All American, Big Ten MVP) Iowa Hawkeyes to look for in 2009 Pat Angerer - Linebacker - 107 tackles Derrell Johnson Koulianos - Wide Receiver - 639 yds 3 td's Jewel Hampton - Runningback - 450 yds 7 td's (backing up Shonn Greene) | |
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| chaoslord | Jan 29 2009, 02:18 AM Post #36 |
Autobot
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http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/14294.htm Downed power lines on campus too. Combine that with I saw some people barely escape being probably killed by falling branches, and then a truck almost wreck which would have sent it into my dorm's great room, and its been fun here. Oh, and we've had Tues/Wed off, and rumor is Thurs/Fri will be canceled. Also a building caught on fire tonight. Amazing. The storms here have been so bad, Walmart is closed....DEAR GOD WHAT WILL WE DO NOW?!??!?!?! |
 
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| Vegeta | Jan 29 2009, 05:10 PM Post #37 |
Kneel Before Your Prince!
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It got down to 40s/50s or so here and I had to put some jeans on. Being from Kansas I found it funny watching people with heavy jackets and such. |
 •Robert Dodrill on Myspace • Robert Dodrill on Youtube • Robert Dodrill on IMDB• | |
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| Luna | Jan 29 2009, 08:26 PM Post #38 |
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Super Saiyan
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Lawd, I need to take pictures outside. IM BURIED IN THE SNOW!!! I swear there is like 5ft out there. In some spots I'm pretty sure it is. |
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| flooffy | Jan 30 2009, 01:59 AM Post #39 |
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Super Saiyan
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Seems like Mother Nature is having one of her b*tchfits late in the season, like always. I missed school the past couple days (along with the rest of Noklahoma) cos we had another ice storm. Well, a frozen rain thing. Not as bad as the one a few years ago, though, when most of the city was trapped with no power/electricity or anything. My car either couldn't handle the cold, and the starter is just frozen to death... or my car just sucks, and the starter stopped working. XD Either way, that's 160 bucks down the drain to get a new one. Makes me wanna kill myself sometimes to upkeep a car. Edited by flooffy, Jan 30 2009, 02:00 AM.
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GacktForever. Cut the kids in half. | |
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| Otaku_Kawaii86 | Jan 30 2009, 12:15 PM Post #40 |
Heather, what's a rubber?
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it's been pretty cold here too! What I found really funny is how the President said how silly it was to close Washington school and the surrounding areas because of some ice and snow. Apparently, Chicago has tougher citizens. XD |
 
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| Vegeta | Jan 31 2009, 11:51 AM Post #41 |
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Kneel Before Your Prince!
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Obviously. It's in the midwest. |
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•Robert Dodrill on Myspace • Robert Dodrill on Youtube • Robert Dodrill on IMDB• | |
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| teh evilz | Feb 12 2009, 06:06 AM Post #42 |
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Kami
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It was velly icy. I slipped on ice. And those ma-hoos-ive posts are annoying. I might try and read them later when I'm actually capable of thought, but now it's off to school... |
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