[ExI] us

Fri Nov 11 15:57:56 UTC 2022

…> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] us

>…Off on a tangent:  if you think the climate debate is a lot of exaggeration and is a bad strategy, how can we go about selling nuclear energy?  Here in the good old USA we don't have the rabid critics like Japan and Europe bashing nuclear energy.  So why aren't we building more of those plants?  All the accidents came from human error, not from the source of the energy itself…

Billw, note the difference between saying the climate debate is a lot of exaggeration to saying the climate change brings about the end of the world.  That whole end of the world business is a huge exaggeration.  I accept that climate change is real.  I don’t believe it causes the end of the world, or that it will happen in 8 years, 2 months, 9 days or any absurd variation on that.  This old planet has been here a long time, and we have really good evidence that things do not change quickly.  

We have good evidence that nearly all the carbon on this planet was once in the form of carbon dioxide, in a period when the sun was more intense than it is now, and yet life found a way to evolve to the point where it drew most of that carbon out of the atmosphere and used it for living tissue.  All existing coal, oil and natural gas was once in the form of carbon dioxide and methane.  Now it isn’t.  

Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause increased greenhouse effect according to all the models I can understand.  That should increase the number and intensity of hurricanes and melt ice everywhere.  I contend that these will happen slowly enough that we can deal with it.  I do not think either of these will cause the end of the world.  

But what if it does?  If the world does end, what happens after the world has ended?  What about all those who fail to notice the world is over?  What if they go on about their business as usual, pretending the world just went on as before?  How do we notify the fools that the world ended, they are dead, so they should stop what they are doing, fall down and be still?  Should there be some penalty for those who fail to die?

Reminds me of a favorite old song about why do the birds keep on singing, the sun keep on shining, don’t they know it’s the end of the world, it ended when global warming melted the ice…

Here’s a treat:

https://youtu.be/ThK5M8Ttzpw

>…old post - Dan accused you of leaning to the right.  More or less defending Trump, as you did to me.  I just don't understand how one can be neutral about a person who was described by his aides as a 'baby'.  Or one who suggested that people inject bleach into themselves.  Neutral  bill w

Billw this is an example of how exaggeration causes cynicism.  Trump never suggested injecting or ingesting bleach.  He suggested a injecting a disinfectant, which most of us here did inject when they became available.  A disinfectant fights infections: it helps prevent covid infection but also fights existing covid in the body.  The mRNA vaccine is a disinfectant.  That part about bleach was an extrapolation, injected for political advantage.  It worked, for a while.

Solution: don’t go to political leaders for medical advice.  Go to medics for that.  Go to political leaders for political leadership.  Ignore their medical suggestions.  Ignore your doctor’s political advice.

spike

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