dutchroll

It just dawned on me a few minutes ago that President Trump is now the world's most powerful anti-vaxxer. Even as recently as the Presidential debates he sprouted the comprehensively debunked and discredited theory that vaccines cause autism. He has a long history of this. Given the propensity of his supporters to believe quite literally anything he says without any questions whatsoever, the USA is in for interesting times ahead - in more ways than one! Whooping cough for your new baby, anyone?

Not in a chronically angry "I'm gonna go get my gun if this doesn't go the way I want" sort of way, no. In fact not even acutely. In nearly 20 years I think my wife has seen me very angry probably twice. I do get readily frustrated by poorly constructed arguments and superficially conceived points of view however, even though everyone is fully entitled to have them. I'm also certainly not impressed by politicians who are loudmouth braggarts, nor by politicians making generic "feel-good motherhood statements" about how they're going to "take the country back" or "reclaim the country" or "make the country great again" without ever explaining exactly how they'll do it and what specifically has made it a terrible country in the first place. However others are apparently more easily impressed than myself.

Don't be so harsh on yourself. Even in my most irritated state I wouldn't compare you to horse poop...

High clouds trap more heat. Low clouds reflect more sunlight. Depends where the increased cloud cover is. There's quite a bit of scientific debate over which is more likely and to what degree but most of the research so far supports cloud feedback being positive (warming) overall. There is a degree of uncertainty over this (it's fully admitted by the scientists).

I doubt we're doomed in the long run. At least I hope not. Trump, the bombastic, arrogant, and selfish businessman, will likely get a quick reality check in dealing with the rest of the world and the deep internal conflicts in his own country. He can't just stand in front of a fist-pumping crowd of supporters chanting "lock her up lock her up" anymore. He'll be constrained by the rule of law unless he turfs it out entirely, and the practicalities of having to negotiate things both domestically and internationally or he really will find himself without many friends - including Putin.

I'm not sure I'd put too much weight on what the election result says about the rest of the world or even much of the USA. Remember, the USA is a country where 22 million people still believe the moon landing was faked. 63 million of them believe vaccines cause autism (comprehensively debunked). 67 million of them believe aliens landed at Roswell and the US government covered it up. 96 million can't find the Pacific Ocean on a map of the world (National Geographic survey). They're just really angry and want to punish the political class, and Trump said all the right things to appeal where it matters in their electoral system (at the moment it looks like Clinton is winning the popular vote, but this doesn't always count for much in the electoral college system). Clinton only needed to win Florida to win the election and we'd be having an entirely different conversation on this thread. She didn't. Just got word a few minutes ago from a pilot friend of mine landing his B747 in San Francisco: Just landed in San Francisco and passengers (from various nations, including America) were asking if they could stay on board and just head back to Australia. The African American man working at immigration was visibly upset and told me "he (Trump) doesn't represent everyone". The Mexican bus driver said he couldn't believe it. There is an air of disbelief and an edge of anger.

Those who come from those parts of the world he wants to isolate America from, as well as those within the country at the bottom of the socio-economic scale, etc. Unless of course he backtracks on his promises and does not become an isolationist, protectionist president who goes back to the traditional "if you can afford it, that's great - if you can't, stiff" ways. The vote does not support what he has actually said and done on the public record over the years?? Ok, perhaps you mean "the vote suggests people didn't care that he has been sexist and racist". That might be true to an extent. Or it might not. It actually seems to me that many people cared about it, but simply saw Hillary, as a representative of the despised "political class", as an unfathomable choice and they'd have to wear Trump's ugliness and crassness regardless.

A sizeable increase among women, Latinos, blacks etc over Romney? That's like saying "well I'll have you know that since taking the medication, my stools have been decidedly less smelly!" Trump and Hansen (in answer to your question).

You're right. It's not funny that Hanson and Trump champion the poor yet totally could not give a toss about the poorest, most abused, poverty stricken and destitute people on the planet. True. And not a solitary person involved in a Trump project or investment has ever been shafted by Trump, right?

Yeah 45% tariff hikes never made a difference to anyone, really.

The details don't matter Bikky, when you tell the angry people what they want to hear. We see that repeated in world history time and time again, yet we never get any wiser.

Oh Andrew Bolt......Lol! You know, there are actually some conservative columnists I can take seriously. Bolt is not one of them. Championing the poor in his diatribe there. Now that is hilarious! One day someone will tell me what causes Andrew Bolt has taken up for the poor and I will be stunned. It's like Trump saying he's going to work for the down and out. That's great if he does. It will the first time, ever, in his entire life. Bolt and Trump must've both recently had an epiphany.

How is that? Not changed significantly since I was first there in 1988. Not changed significantly since I was there in 1988. Steadily reducing since the 1990s and still doing so. (Source:FBI data 2015) Cocaine, hallucinogens and prescription drug use has dropped slightly or been static over a decade. Marijuana use has risen by 1% in a decade. (Source: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Drug Abuse) Almost entirely driven by conservative US Governments. For education and health services, most Republicans I've met (which is many) actually honestly believe their healthcare and education are quite obviously the best in the world, even though most of them don't even have passports. And now they have a Republican President.

Ok I think we need to agree on the definition of "angry". I think you're right that 50% weren't irrational and it certainly wasn't my intent to imply that simply one side is irrational and the other is not. But there's no doubt a sizeable proportion were. If they paid the slightest attention to Trump's actual stated policies (the very few which existed) they would think "oh geez how the heck can that work?" However that wasn't the case. Also you got so much hypocrisy it was just mind-numbing. Clinton's husband is an absolute sleazebag and the women accusing him are tragic victims. Trump is just uttering "locker room talk" and the women accusing him are jilted and.....even ugly. Jeezus. But this was, quite literally, totally ignored by the angry supporters. I've never seen anything like it.

So.....you feel sorry for Trump because he won't be given a fair go? How exactly is that? His pre-election policies were atrocious by your own admission. He publicly stated he'll slap 45% trade tariffs on Chinese goods (one example of many). Option 1) He breaks his promise first up. "Oh yeah I said it but I didn't really mean it". And this guy is President of the USA. If that was an Australian politician we'd crucify them, then burn their body in public. Hang on....except maybe if they were in the Liberal Party we'd just kinda pretend it didn't happen. Option 2) He actually does it. 45% tariffs on Chinese goods. Yes that will make America great again! Give me a break..... People expect policies to actually be delivered. Politicians often don't do this, which is why we get ticked off with them. But how is Trump going to be any different? It's almost a foregone conclusion that he cannot be, simply by virtue of what he has already said. That's not even touching much of the stuff he'll need to backtrack severely on. I understand it. Angry people are irrational people. The cause of their anger need not have anything whatsoever to do with the consequences of their irrationality. This is why an angry person in a workplace can go and shoot someone (or many people) dead who had absolutely nothing to do with what caused their anger in the first place. Angry people do strange things all the time which have nothing to do with the original source of their anger.

......net energy gain within the Earth's atmosphere, not the entire universe! Which is why it warms up (globally). If there were a net energy loss within the Earth's atmosphere, it would cool down. If there was no change, aside from seasonal fluctuations, the temperature would be relatively stable. There's nothing about this which violates the law of conservation of energy. The Earth is not an "isolated" system. Energy comes in from space, energy escapes to space, and some energy is transferred into other types. Incoming and outgoing energy from the Earth are not exactly equal (at least that is what the scientific research shows at the moment).

Right..... So the physics of ultraviolet radiation being absorbed by the Earth's surface then emitted as infra-red radiation which then, due to the vibrational and rotational modes of CO2 molecules is absorbed and re-radiated back down through the atmosphere thus causing a net energy gain is....... ......pseudoscience? That's correct. That's not correct. The experiment doesn't "prove" the theory. The experiment just provides results that happen to concur with the theory. That might be a total coincidence. However as more experiments are done and more data is gathered, and all that concurs with the theory too, then scientists gain more and more confidence that the theory is accurate or at least mostly accurate. If something doesn't gel, then they may need to revise the theory to better explain it. That's just garden-variety science and applies to everything from the theories which gave us computing, to the theories which gave us electricity. Even the most widely accepted theories still have problems though. Newtonian gravity (which is only a theory) suggests that if I leap off a cliff, I will fall at an ever increasing velocity (accelerating by 9.8 metres/sec/sec neglecting air resistance) until my fall is interrupted by a relatively immovable object. We know this theory works most of the time, but if you plug numbers into this theory at a sub-atomic scale, it just produces garbage. So is gravity true or not? Does it really happen? Yes it happens and we have to deal with it, which is why we don't usually leap off tall cliffs with rocks at the bottom just for the thrill. However it is far from a perfect theory. So global warming isn't a perfect theory either and there are aspects scientists don't understand or can't explain and which they are working pretty hard to research and come up with better answers. Just like gravity. Does that mean it is false though? Do you have the confidence that it's so wrong that you can leap off that cliff without causing any grief?

That's how science still is. If you had ever done any, you would realise it.

The Daily Beast article about the "positives" of global warming in greening up land in cold climates is all well and good. It's a bit like saying "the great thing about smoking is that it lowers the risk of Parkinson's Disease, lowers the risk of obesity, and helps certain blood clot-inhibiting drugs work better in patients with coronary artery disease." This is all true. It also causes heart disease, respiratory diseases, cancer, high blood pressure, reduced resistance to infections, premature wrinkling of the skin, higher risk of blindness, gum disease, gut inflammation, ulcers, poor blood circulation, slower wound healing, loss of bone density, and impotence. But hey........it has some benefits!

Well.......it's a fairly gross over-simplification. It's a sort of "not completely true, but not completely false" statement. Also, Gnarly links to an article stating that Europe is greener now than it was 100 years ago. I might take the opportunity to point out that "Europe" is not "the whole planet Earth". Some areas are greening, some are becoming desertified. Some areas are more vulnerable to it than others - Europe is not vulnerable. The issue is whether it is happening in areas that matter, and in a number of cases (especially where its root cause is human activity like deforestation or agriculture) it is. The US Department of Agriculture publishes an excellent map on desertification vulnerability which is based on soil climate data: Global Desertification Vulnerability Map

Good quality evidence. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" as the saying goes.

You might agree they're just stories TP, but there are many who don't. Not so much here in Oz, but they're quite dominant in the USA. It is a relatively popular view among evangelicals that the Bible is actually the only scientific textbook you need to get an understanding of it all. Those people obviously don't apply for jobs which require any scientific education! Although we did manage to elect a young earth creationist to federal parliament some years ago (Steve Fielding). Well yeah that's basically true, however a scientist will also tell you that just because you don't understand something or haven't found evidence for a cause of something, it doesn't mean you need to immediately look for supernatural explanations.

This is true. However desertification is complicated and is an interaction between land degradation through socioeconomic factors, and changing climate and rainfall patterns (note I didn't say reduced rainfall globally - just changing patterns). A study of desertification over nearly 30 years in China found livestock population, farmland area, and increasing temperatures all significantly responsible. Oddly enough in Mongolia, they found that afforestation was by far the biggest factor. As opposed to "reforestation", "afforestation" is the planting of trees where normally there would only be grasses or ground vegetation. The reason it increased desertification is because putting trees in where there were previously none due to the semi-arid nature of the land caused huge additional demands and stresses on the already limited groundwater supply. It also killed grasses that previously held the soil together causing rapid soil erosion. So it's not such an easy thing to explain! Yeah basically we're knitting ourselves an ever thickening wool blanket (of greenhouse gas) when it's actually kinda warm enough already. If we could just control our knitting needles, that would be a good start!

.....which of course creates a bit of a problem given that advances in scientific knowledge of genetics shows that DNA sequence divergence in numerous flora and fauna (rice, canines, etc) goes back way beyond 6000 years (100,000 years in the case of canines). The YECs would argue that obviously our understanding of genetics, DNA sequencing, and so on is grossly mistaken. Again, strangely, there is a paucity of genetic research breakthroughs coming from their side showing exactly how it is wrong. The human brain sometimes fascinates me. The extraordinary effort it takes to cling to something like that and not only resolutely ignore enormous volumes of evidence to the contrary, but to actually spend a lot of time coming up with fanciful, poorly conceived and badly justified explanations of why you are right and the rest of the world is wrong. The deeply ingrained fear that, if you change your views and accept that it isn't right and maybe the Earth, other planets, and stars are actually very, very old, your entire existence will suddenly become worthless. Just fascinating.

Watching an old earther and a young earther go at it is rather amusing, in a sad sort of way. Basically comes down to the young earther arguing they are the "better" or "truer" Christian. Interestingly, young earth creationism is overwhelmingly Christian in nature. Very few other religions subscribe to it (including Islam - Muslim scholars quite bluntly reject it). The official church bodies which subscribe to it are 100% Christian too. Young earthers cling so much to it that they created their own "creation research institutes" to scientifically show that the Earth is only 6000 years old and was made in 6 days. Oddly, these institutions have produced no Nobel Prize recipients among their alumni and made a sum total of zero revolutionary scientific discoveries.