First Turning "purge"

[Eric the Green]

(10-25-2018, 10:16 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(10-25-2018, 09:26 AM)Teejay Wrote:

(10-25-2018, 06:25 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: All patriotism, nationalism, tribalism should be sent to the dustbin of history.

It might very well be, given it might be hinderance to the global solutions needed for income inequality and climate change.

Income inequality is moral. Competence and self-discipline have to be rewarded.

Climate change? I don't know a lot about that, but the idea that average global temperatures rising by 2° will cause a global apocalypse is suspect. But many profound scientific discoveries are counter-intuitive, so I don't rule this dystopian scenario out. It is however suspiciously similar to old-fashioned religious fearmongering about divine wrath.

We need complex ecosystems to prevent soil from being depleted. We need interaction with wild nature for our emotional well-being. But some environmentalist causes are perverted. Is saving an obscure species of lizard more important than making our global economy more productive? Reallyy?

The morality of income inequality: To the extent that it is the result of competence and self-discipline, and everyone is given a basic guarantee of health and survival, it is moral. To the extent that it is the result of the use of economic and political power to favor those already wealthy, it is not. In the USA today, the latter is strongly the case. CEOs are, despite claims, no more competent today than average workers, and no more deserving, but they earn 300 times as much money in corporations and large businesses. Their speculations and abuses have immoral consequences for all of us.

We have no right to kill off any species, and all are important to global ecology. No conflict exists beween ecology and economy. Saving a species does not hurt the global economy. It may require slowing development in certain places.

Without changing the course we are on, global warming will certainly go at least to 4 C more by the end of this century. Religious people are generally unwilling to accept the science, so that's where the old-fashioned religion comes in. Unhindered, sea level rise will reach 4 feet by century's end and global warming will cause a lot of damage through more severe storms, droughts, fires and killing of life in the oceans and endangered species. Exactly how damaging is not real clear, but the risk is great, and requiring companies to change their products, though inconvenient to libertarian dogma, is the prudent course.

Here is one view of sea level rise:

..... Several studies in the last year or so have suggested that sea levels are not only rising, but the rate of increase is actually accelerating.

Just this month, a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that sea levels have been rising by an average of about 3 millimeters (around one-tenth of an inch) per year since the 1990s, and that the rate is gradually speeding up. If the process continues at its current rate, sea levels could rise by more than 2 feet by the end of this century alone.


Other recent studies have also suggested that previous estimates of sea-level rise, under a variety of future climate scenarios, may be too modest. Several papers in the last year, for instance—including an October paper in Environmental Research Letters and a December paper in Earth's Future—suggest that better accounting for some of the physical processes affecting ice loss in Antarctica could significantly increase estimates of future sea-level rise. Under severe climate change scenarios, these new studies suggest that sea levels could rise by more than 4 feet by the end of the century.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/seas-will-rise-for-300-years/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...300-years/

summary of impacts:
https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/global-w...9NMRdQrLyM

greenhouse gases emitted today will cause sea levels to rise for several centuries. For every degree of warming, sea levels will rise by more than 2 meters in the next few centuries.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-lev...ctions.htm

Global average sea-level could rise by nearly 8 feet (2.5 meters) by 2100 and 50 feet (15 meters) by 2300 if greenhouse gas emissions remain high and humanity proves unlucky, according to a review of sea-level change and projections by Rutgers and other scientists.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-10-global-sea...s.html#jCp