That's an interesting story you linked to. Quotes like this suggest maybe not a belief:
KH: Who is likely to believe?
JB: Men, and people with lower levels of income, are more likely to believe. We don’t really find strong patterns by education, and if we do, there’s usually a slight positive effect. But one of the strongest predictors you can find for believers is their extreme distrust of the government. That’s part of the reason it got so big in the ’70s, when trust in institutions was low. Trump might actually increase belief in UFOs.
Another one of the strongest predictors is not participating as strongly in forms of organized religion. In some sense, there’s a bit of a clue there about what’s going on with belief — it’s providing an alternative belief system.
In the '60s, before I was a real Christian, I was into the UFO stuff. I think the suggestion that UFO belief is an "alternative belief system" is often accurate. My current opinion is that there may be a real, but demonic, phenomenon behind some of it, particularly the contactee reports.
JimFoxvog wrote:To get seriously back to the subject, here's a summary of the expected effects of global warming. Alarmist? Yes. Probably justifiably so, in my opinion. Let's pray for God's guidance of world decision makers. Let's pray for a miracle. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/ ... 06mkxVDZcA
I am quite curious why you would consider it justifiable for an article to "cause needless worry or panic."
Quite frankly, one of the reasons so many people do not believe the claims about climate change is because of the multitude of alarmist predictions over the past fifty years that have not come to pass.
A lot of us remember the "population bomb" scare of about 40-50 years ago. The alarm then was that exponential growth would put population through the roof so that the world would bit be able to feed itself by as early as the 70's. What the prognosticators failed to account for is 1) increasing wealth and access to health care that dramatically lowered birth rates in the developing world, and 2) dramatic increases in agricultural production and distribution. After that experience lots of skeptics were born - and I appreciate ken's resistance to global alarmism.
That being said, from what I am reading, a significant number of the predictions from decades ago related to climate change have been underperforming - that is to say, the benchmarks for climate change predictions have often been surpassed. This concerns me...and tends to push me toward feeling that the alarmism is likely justified in this case.
I'm a conservationist by nature (worked as an environmental ed teacher for 8 years) with a deep love of the natural world, so I tend to side with Creation care whenever practical. For reasons both short and long term, I'm rooting for the world to do a better job of reigning in greenhouse gasses - and am frankly dismayed that this current US administration seems to be moving in the opposite direction in some ways.
So something is just coming out in our news right now that more or less adds to my extreme questioning on this matter.
Liberal governments here in Canada both Federal and provincial have been big on an idea of implementing a cap and trade carbon tax. In fact the previous Ontario Liberal government had already put one in place. The Liberal government was replaced this year by Ford's Conservatives and he has announced that the tax will be cancelled.
The Liberals have always sold this tax as being cash neutral for the government in that any money brought in will be paid out in various programs to offset the environment. So they appealed to our better selves saying that if you cared about the environment you should not mind this tax.
I was never convinced it was not a lot more about a further tax grab than about the environment and I think I have just been vindicated. A journalist just did a study and claims that the Ontario treasury will be out at least 3 billion dollars. Our deficit will be 3 billion higher. Interesting first that a journalist is all of a sudden caring about our debt but secondly that in fact this does prove that we were being sold a bill of goods and in fact the tax is not cash neutral.
Again I feel this is further proof that governments are simply using this issue to line their own pockets and doing it by putting a guilt trip on us. But when they try and have it both ways I really start to become disgusted.
Catastrophic global warming is a real environmental crisis, but I agree that the ocean pollution and the air pollution over eastern Asia are also significant problems to be dealt with. What solutions do you suggest?
Catastrophic global warming is a real environmental crisis, but I agree that the ocean pollution and the air pollution over eastern Asia are also significant problems to be dealt with. What solutions do you suggest?
"Catastrophic global warming" is surrounded by controversy and the only consensus on how to fix it is to conveniently raise taxes.
The Pacific garbage patch and the Asian brown cloud, however, are concrete, real, and not subject to controversy. And there is precious little energy being given to stopping these catastrophes. Of course, fixing the latter one would involve China actually caring about pollution and being willing to endanger the god of "free trade" and impose sanctions. Fixing the former would mean doing something about how much waste we produce (and import, once again impacting "free trade"), and being willing to stop throwing so much away that ends up in waterways. Much of what's in the garbage patch also flows from the third world, which means talking frankly about the environmental catastrophes being created in the third world - and I would argue being created indirectly by globalism's impact on the third world.
Catastrophic global warming is a real environmental crisis, but I agree that the ocean pollution and the air pollution over eastern Asia are also significant problems to be dealt with. What solutions do you suggest?
Well certainly not the ones that are being suggested like banning plastic bags and straws in NA. The problem is obviously illegal dumping by someone. Find out who is doing the dumping and deal with it. It is this kind of nonsensense that creates even greater sceptics out of some of us.
Josh wrote:
The Pacific garbage patch and the Asian brown cloud, however, are concrete, real, and not subject to controversy. And there is precious little energy being given to stopping these catastrophes. Of course, fixing the latter one would involve China actually caring about pollution and being willing to endanger the god of "free trade" and impose sanctions. Fixing the former would mean doing something about how much waste we produce (and import, once again impacting "free trade"), and being willing to stop throwing so much away that ends up in waterways. Much of what's in the garbage patch also flows from the third world, which means talking frankly about the environmental catastrophes being created in the third world - and I would argue being created indirectly by globalism's impact on the third world.
I agree on increasing global pressure on Chinese pollution and the other suggestions you're making. I wish we could work together as allies addressing harmful pollution.
