Ken Fabian

One of the possible uses of AI is likely to be (already is?) the identification, tracking and targeting of political opponents and dissent. Successful revolutions may be becoming impossible. Civil wars, maybe with enough organized opposition. Palace coups, yes. The trough of despair between turning against tyranny and achieving a resurgent and strong democracy and rule of law is likely to be deep and costly and hard to climb out of. Expecting palace coups to bring a return to the rule of law seems a forlorn hope - they advance the most ruthless and lawless. I don't have any optimism that media, trad or social, will side with democracy and the rule of law over extreme partisanship; they will support the politics that advantages them as businesses and align with that of their paying customers - the businesses that advertise. The public is getting bombarded with so much that is false and misleading that what is true becomes indistinguishable.

I didn't expect good understanding of tariffs (a lot of don't know) but I didn't know there was such widespread misunderstanding (what people "know" being wrong) - not knowing what tariffs are for or who pays them. It was always about raising the prices of imported goods so people have no choice but to pay more for higher priced local goods - and in theory give protection and opportunity for local businesses. Ideally gaining time to invest in improvements that will make their goods competitive. Short term - some businesses and jobs are saved but prices go up. But if the necessary productivity improvements don't happen they stay high. In some ways it is the very inverse of free market capitalism - probably why, historically, free market ideologues opposed tariffs (but usually only in theory). I suspect in reality the businesses that most support tariff-free markets like that are in positions more like the Chinese are now - already low cost and very competitive and wanting other nations to take tariffs away. ie that is to their short term advantage, without much commitment to ideology. Like with carbon pricing... if it is well designed and works like it should then it can't be an ongoing source of government revenues that can replace other taxation; if it works the revenues should decline to zero as people turn to local goods instead of buying the (undesirable) imported goods and paying tariffs. Anyone claiming raising tariffs is an alternative to other taxes or even more wrong, that the other nation pays the tariff (seriously?) is trying to scam you. It hurts them economically - reduced exports, reduced profitability - as a consequence, but they aren't paying the tariffs. Of course what politicians say before and what they do after can be very different and US Congress may not agree to do all Trump says - some of that being contradictory. And of course affected nations put retaliatory tariffs on goods they import from the anti-competitive, anti-free market nation. Without the sustained commitment to raising productivity for domestic businesses - as protection for uncompetitive businesses - tariffs are inflationary - raising prices to no good effect.

If we have the technologies to take people to another star humanity will not need planets; artificial habitats should be easy in comparison. Humans that have been living in space for a long time may not feel the same (primitive) attraction for living on planets - may even find it disturbing and unnecessarily dangerous. I think the desire for new lands is less innate than historical with a strong survivorship bias - history written by descendants of people living in successfully "colonised/conquered" lands. I expect that for most humans making the most of their lives in the lands they were born into, without any strong urge to migrate has always been the majority. Earliest human migrations were into mostly familiar or similar environments that the tools and skills they carried with them were more than adequate to survive. Desperation when things were tough probably had more influence than any overarching urge to explore and migrate. There was a great abundance of resource rich environments reachable on foot and with simple boats. How Earth-like? For most of Earth's history Earth would not have been suitable for humans - not enough Oxygen for one thing. Is the biochemistry similar enough for compatibility? Even chirality can be different - mirror imaged compared to terrestrial biochemistry. Even aside from predators and diseases biology can make a great variety of poisons and allergens. I expect the uncontaminated biology and biochemistry for study to be the most valuable things about an Earth-like world to an interstellar capable humanity. Terraforming - deliberately introducing invasive Earth species to displace native life for the purpose of making it more Earthlike for colonists looks unnecessary, shortsighted and selfish to me.

Nothing wrong with the topics Night FM has posted per se, even if most of them are nothing new; lots of posts here are on topics that keep recurring. Just not convinced the member is engaging in discussion in good faith but that isn't unusual. The subjects can be provocative and some posts did press some of my buttons but there wasn't much in the way of reasoned or interesting arguments to follow or you'd see more participation from me. Pass over and move on. How to have more and more interesting topics that engage existing members and attract new ones? Going by more popular formats - keep on hammering those same controversial or partisan or divisive topics that press people's buttons over and over and then all over again even harder. Science forums like this suit me just fine but I'm headed into the old codger demographic.

Night FM is actually doubling down and defending enslavement and mass murdering as social engineering on the basis that the victims are loathsome (they deserve it?) and or will end their unhappiness (out of kindness?) Anyone who would do that to incels would do that to anyone they think is more loathsome than incels... given the anti-atheist themes presented on this site, Atheists perhaps? Incels want vouchers for prostitutes. Night FM wants to kill them - the incels that is. I know which I think is more loathsome. Is there a block user feature here?

?!! You are advocating commit mass murder and you want to call it "being merciful"? As someone who was a bit shy and socially inept in my youth it sounds like you want to kill people like me or send me to "work will set me free" style resorts... so kind and thoughtful and compassionate of you. But it sounds like hate to me. Not sure how the forum rules against hate speech apply but you have crossed a line with me. I know a lot of people do say things like "better dead" and it is just saying stuff - but even if not literally meaning it I find that kind of rhetoric abhorrent. Vile. You want to be part of a society that does things like that, where "good" people can and will work as gas chamber guards and firing squad participants? You imagine the consequences - to everyone else or to anyone else - will be good? I am trying to understand why you would suggest such things and can only hope this is some weird and insincere trolling, perhaps to provoke and incite awful atheists to propose doing that to religionists, ie to get to some version of "See? They deserve it!" as the conclusion. The alternative is that you actually mean it. I don't want you dead - not my thing. I would much prefer you wake up and change your mind. I'll try not to think badly of "True Christianity" because of the bad example you set and will assume these are your personal views. How you reconcile your stated desire to commit mass enslavement and murder with your religious beliefs will be up to you.

The procreation part is less significant - or at least a lot less hard work - than the caring and raising of young. That biological imperative to deal with the results of procreaton imbues a lot of animals - not just humans -with empathy or some equivalent, where a lot of behavior is devoted to the welfare of others; it takes no knowledge of gods or morality or even thinking it through and deciding and I would not call it "purpose", but for want of more nuance, humans trying to make sense of the world by thinking about it found it beneficial to frame it that way. For apes including humans the troupe and group is how their young are kept safe and cared for; even if an individual's own survival may (but doesn't always) take precedence they will care for their children. Their own children may have priority over others but there is overall benefit including to those children to looking out for everyone's children - as well as for other adults, who aid the providing of care for all the group's young. In dire circumstances it is more common amongst humans to require a willingness to sacrifice their lives than to revert to every individual for themselves; the group matters more than the individual. Self sacrifice for the good of others may be easier for some by believing something of themselves, if only in the memories of others, goes on after their death. I expect more applied science has been used to assure the food, health care and education of our young than for aiding successful procreation, although we do that too.

I expect most of the lucky Christians believe they can trace their line all the way back although there are those reliant on more recent 'revelations' or theological thinking. Most people accept what they are taught (if it doesn't overtly contradict their experience), true, but for science based knowledge the path is open to follow the evidence, logic and reasoning that underpins it. But scientific skepticism is a lot of work; to do it well requires becoming an expert. What is taught at school level is not built with or on faith, but relies on trust that was well earned before it became - in order to become - part of school curricula. Debates about various aspects of scientific knowledge when framed as between Religious that implicitly claim a primary role for Gods and magical miracles vs Scientific which rejects magical miracles as hypotheses for lack evidence (atheistic) aren't really adequate for testing the validity of the science based knowledge; I expect scientist rarely consider theological implications at all and are simply doing their jobs - determining what is true wrt the objects of their inquiries. Any explicit intent to disprove religious beliefs would be rare and unusual motivations. And, yes, some - even most - such debates are between people who aren't deeply knowledgeable, leaving endless nits to pick and having no likelihood of resolution of differences. As good a reason as any to limit my participation in them - but the misrepresentations of "atheists" as incapable of moral behavior and misrepresentations of widely accepted science as overtly anti-religious (scientist-atheists as enemies) can come across as passing judgement upon me, slanderously in too many cases, and that can press my buttons sufficiently to chime in. Not necessarily NightFM's thing but the "you'll suffer eternity in Hell" thing is especially abhorrent to me, especially when it comes with "you will deserve it" and worse again with "we will be pleased by that". I've known some very fine religious people, a credit to humanity; they seem unobsessed with proving anything and seem uninterested in making war with atheism and science.

Jesus is lucky to have you...

I am not convinced this kind of extrapolation can tell us a lot, let alone give reliable predictions about something as complicated as the rainfall responses to global warming. There are a whole lot of factors including and especially those affecting sea surface temperatures and their geographic distributions - which are affected by ocean currents and oscillations. These influence wind directions and their humidity. Regional geography matters. Throw in the possibility of the slowing and cessation of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and other ocean effects any simple extrapolations will break down even more. Overall rainfall is predicted to increase globally because warmer air takes up more water vapor; where conditions for rain occur there is likely to be heavier rainfall. The corollary to that is that in arid climate zones warmer air needs more water vapor to reach saturation, in order for rain to occur, so is likely to be less frequent and lighter. That said, the warmer it is the quicker that water deficits (droughts) can occur.

The catastrophes are the exceptions; most of the time nature is providing the essentials for life. I expect that without prior instruction most people would not, but, on the other hand, I think most people in the face of a mysterious and dangerous world - and experiencing dreaming and imagination that are unbounded by observable, waking reality - would be susceptible to suggestion of conscious agency and intent in natural phenomena. And susceptible to persuasion by those suggesting it.

Strict usage of technical definitions is the exception and outside of some specific circumstances, institutions and organisations - like legal documents, courts, governments, academia - there aren't any rules. Context is the decryption key.

@Night FM Not sure you picked the best venue to have religious beliefs in rewards and punishments in an afterlife as foundational to ethical behavior affirmed. Atheists are the majority here and I've never noticed criminal or exploitative tendencies; you aren't going to find actual cause to believe atheists lack a moral compass. My own view is that holding to belief in the moral inferiority of those who don't share your religious beliefs is the road to selective abandonment of a moral compass - the ills of the world can be blamed on them, their freedoms restricted and their right to hold positions of trust and responsibility denied. And it is human nature - in my view one of the worst failings of human nature - that when people think someone is innately bad for their religious beliefs or lack of them then doing things that harm them can appear justified and even be a cause for satisfaction and pleasure - I've encountered "good" Christians who think people like me should face legal restrictions, penalties and even vigilante violence for being atheist. Religious beliefs like turning the other cheek, motes in eyes and beams can moderate that innate urge to hurt those we deem bad or just different. Or it can encourage them - guns and bibles, praise God and hand me ammunition. I know that if I do bad things to people they will want to do them back. I want to be safe from people doing bad things to me, not perpetrate them. I support having laws and enforcement and courts that seek to determine the facts, without having my lack of religious beliefs counted against me as if it were a crime.

Lots of kinds of flies. It looks to me that the sorts attracted to people are initially triggered by sight, especially seeing movement, to approach. Scent, which may include sensing CO2 (?) when close enough seems to confirm that the target is worth it. Scent seems crucial to finding suitable places to lay eggs or maggots - those aren't necessarily live and moving to attract attention, although some do lay eggs or maggots on live animals. The biting sorts don't appear to have faces as preferred location on an animal. The OP seems to be about the non-biting sorts that seem to target sweat and bodily secretions, which eyes, nose, mouth provide. Water, salt, oils and other edibles seem to all be attractants. Probably to different degrees for different kinds of flies. Humans often wear clothes, so not everywhere will be accessible - the apparent preference for faces will be skewed by that - not unusual for bare backs to be popular with the non-biting sorts that seem to be after sweat, but some do preference eyes, nose, mouth. Exposed genitalia and anuses can be popular too. I note that faces, especially around eyes, nose, lips have high sensory sensitive, including via the small vellus hairs that enhance fine sensory sensitivity; flies seem especially able to trigger those urges to swipe or scratch or swat. Whilst humans often get overwhelmed by them we are still far better fitted to do things about them than other animals - find or make a tool to swat them with, identify repellent plants and rub skin with them, mix ash and fats into repellents and pass on knowledge of what works. I expect our long ago ancestors also had fewer qualms about eating what they swat - big juicy biting flies are probably nutritious and I recall a doco about some of the best and worst of hippies, that had a 'free range' boy talking about things he did for having fun which included catching big "marchflies" - then eating them.

It looks to me like the modeling shows where the high ejecta would have gone, where the downwelling heat from that would go. I think it is a case of poor wording of that as mapping of wildfires produced rather than more correctly where there would be heat capable of spontaneously starting wildfires. Essentially it is mapping the cause of what @nematode mentioned - - which the modeling shows was not evenly distributed. Whether that temperature is a global average or whether everywhere got at least that hot but other parts were a lot hotter (which seems likely) isn't clear. I don't think anyone is saying it did break up, just asking if it would be "better" if it were broken up deliberately, as a meteor defense option.

I wasn't claiming it arrived broken up, just suggesting it wouldn't have saved the planet from extreme effects if it had. Less material overall without the ejecta but the material would be arriving with equivalent - enormous - energy. Extreme heating enough to start fires around the world first was short lived - a few days at most - but catastrophic by itself. It was followed by extreme global cooling in "nuclear winter" style for a few years, followed by a millennia or more of global warming from the raised CO2 from carbonate rich rock being vaporized plus all that combustion. From the link - their attempt at modeling the wildfires, or at least, of the downwelling heat extreme enough to start wildfires - not fires in oceans of course but presumably any islands. I would expect that even outside those areas there would be extreme heat -

My understanding is that for a very large object it won't help to break it into smaller ones - it sound like nothing is going to make it better. A lot of the more distant damage from Chicxulub came from atmospheric heating - hot enough to spontaneously start forest fires on the other side of the world. That was from hot ejecta thrown out to space and falling back as well as radiating downwards; I think if broken apart to small enough to not throw ejecta it would cover the world in impacts and the heat would still transfer to atmosphere. https://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kring/Chicxulub/

Despite - because of - your profound absence of actual knowledge about climate change you want to argue that the world's leading science agencies are wrong? Not off to a good start. You seriously think plants and other life, that depends on atmospheric CO2 and the carbon cycle didn't exist 2,000 years ago? The reality is there was never a time when Earth's atmosphere did not have CO2 (and methane). For what it is worth Antarctic ice cores provide a record of CO2 going back more than 2 million years, Here is 800,000 years worth of CO2 concentrations - --------------------------------- PS - Studiot beat me to it and more comprehensively...

@Trurl Some kind of clutching at straws type conversion from of fear of death by a very famous scientist would be an affirmation of your religious beliefs? As my father on his deathbed said to a nun offering to pray for him - "... If that makes YOU feel better...". I think the belief in magical miracles like life after death has to be already deeply embedded for anyone to turn to it in adversity. I've had some really could die level bad times and it never occurred to me. And going by what a lot of Christians believe my afterlife will be like, not believing it is a great comfort. And when someone offers something as profound as eternal life just for saying I believe and saying I am sorry for all my "sins" my scam alert goes off. Although to be fair there is usually a strong expectation of generous donation involved.

Solar especially looks capable of continuing rapid growth purely on market forces - mostly out of demand for electricity at least cost, but knowing that sticking with fossil fuels is unlikely to continue to enjoy amnesties on climate accountability. I seem to remember amongst the disparagement of solar claims that it would have to be under US$1 per watt to be viable and that was unrealistic, bordering on impossible. Under 20c per watt for large scale solar already and perovskite is edging close to viability (most likely as an additional layer on silicon PV that pushes conversion rates to 30% and higher at small additional cost). I think RE doesn't pivot on the costs of PV anymore but on the costs of energy storage and long distance transmission lines and on the integration of millions of batteries on wheels into grids; those are what I see as most significant. And when the world's largest battery maker has a new line that can potentially halve battery costs in one hit (they said within 6 months) "batteries won't work" is looking a lot like "solar PV won't work". As well as those new Lithium Iron Phosphate developments we are seeing sodium batteries achieve actual commercial production with potential for significant further storage cost reductions, especially but not only for stationary storage; not going to give the range for EV's that other batteries do but not too shabby at that either. Who could've predicted that R&D in this area could deliver useful results? Not sure we can electrify heavy road transport without levels of foresight and planning few nations appear willing to commit to yet - like big builds of fast charging stations and/or in-road or overhead electrification to give charging whilst on the move. Or possibly swappable batteries. Real world impacts of global warming will provide ongoing and increasingly shrill reminders of why it is important.

@TheVat extra points for making a clean limerick out of that.

Thanks. I think that first paragraph of mine fell a bit short of the ABC I was after - accuracy, brevity and clarity - but I hope the meaning came through. Missed the time limit to edit or I'd have tried for more of the B and C. I do struggle with the B. I think stability is the optimum for the species including humans, that are around and doing well at the time. Not changing too much too quickly is much more "optimum" than any specific global average temperature especially if major and rapid climate changes are involved in getting there - but I note that (confirmed by the graphs provided) we were not in some cold part of natural cycles when we started burning fossil fuels in a big way, but were already at and just past peak of a natural warm period - so added warming doesn't take us back to a warmer "optimum" it takes us into territory not seen before, not unless looking at very long times ago, when conditions were too different to make any "better" or "worse" global climate comparisons. I'd call the argument a not actually relevant kind of wrong. The Holocence, the last 10,000 years or so, since the last Glacial Maximum had been unusually stable and there are good grounds to think that stability made it possible to get reliable food supplies from agriculture, enough for civilisations to arise and persist. Even the relatively small changes during that time saw rises and falls of civilisations. The warming isn't happening during a cold period, it is happening just after one of those peaks, one already different to what was happening before - warmer than prior peaks and persisting long after - (the red circling came with this graph, not mine, but finding one with the period before the Holocene wasn't so easy - not without log scaling that compresses the earlier times) - Whilst climate change will alter weather patterns many regions are that way because of geography that isn't going to change - changed intensities of what they already get appears more likely in most places rather than the wetter places turning dry or dry climates turning wet. eg Deserts with mountain ranges between them and oceans will mostly stay deserts, but the coastal sides can get wetter. Big atmospheric and ocean circulations get affected but not entirely overturned; lots of prevailing winds will still go the same directions, cross oceans and gather moisture - more water vapor than before. Where conditions suit that means more rain. For arid climates warmer air needs to have more water vapor content to reach saturation, in order to rain; they can get more rain from occasional extreme rain events that do reach further inland but outside those times get less. The impacts on people is kinda critical in this; for all that Environmentalists are concerned for natural ecosytems it is concern for the impacts on people, agriculture and infrastructure that drives most climate policy. All well and good if there is less desert and vegetation on average but the local impacts can still be overwhelming. I've heard it said that civilisation is just one famine away from collapse; some of the worst potential consequences aren't from the weather and climate and sea level, but from human mismanagement and responses to crisis, including corruption, blame shifting and conflict. If you live in a part of the world least affected by climate and weather impacts it could become the favored destination for a hundred million refugees; I don't see how any nation in a world that has become so interconnected and interdependent can isolate themselves from the impacts elsewhere.

@Airbrush Careful they don't wear you out working out why their arguments are wrong only to just shift to different wrong arguments whilst conceding nothing; those debates rarely change minds. If you want to know why those arguments are wrong (or not even wrong ie irrelevant) it will only be for your benefit; anyone who can't see the logical problem with evidence of instances where warming preceded CO2 and the CO2 amplified it implying CO2 cannot be the cause of warming now (but when we get enough warming, cause CO2 stores to be released and amplify it?) isn't going to be much open to logical arguments. And if someone thinks not being convinced means the science is wrong they are not being properly skeptical - if they don't know they cannot know that it is wrong. It may be better to shift the argument to one of whether and why to trust the institutions, practices and practitioners of climate related science - to trust in the studies and reports by science agencies and science teams tasked with working out what is really going on, versus "do your own research" on a point by point basis. Why for example is every Intelligence Agency, who's job is sorting truth from lies and uncovering nation damaging conspiracies, unable to find evidence of falsification in climate science? Or are they in on it? Some points (for your benefit) - graphs of CO2 vs temperature with 1,000 year increments can't really demonstrate the connection between temperature and CO2 over very short timescales, such as between 1800's to present, where CO2 has been preceding warming that shows very rapid response to it, measurable within decades - and it is an observation that the CO2 rise is a consequence of fossil fuel burning and not a response to warming from other causes, or what do they think comes out of exhaust pipes and smoke stacks? Just CO2 and temperature seems inadequate for arguing for other causes than CO2; they need to show the other causes, and then show how those causes are working now. Looking at too long to be relevant timescales is a common way people get misled or mislead themselves - just as too short time scales where internal climate variability dominates - where each year is not incrementally warmer than the preceding one, but over time averages to a clear warming trend (remember The Pause?) - is misleading. Effects of raised CO2 on plants in isolation from the full range of environmental changes - temperatures, rainfall, growing season length - is also likely to mislead. More crop growth with raised yields but reduced nutritional value (where all else is equal) needs to be put into the context where all else is not equal. And increasing global biomass (vegetation) isn't so easy to attribute to plant response to elevated CO2 - temperature change and rainfall change seem to be more significant factors, with overall increased global precipitation a major one. But that is not leading to increased rainfall everywhere; warmer air will hold more water vapor and deliver more rain where conditions suit, whereas in arid conditions warmer air needs higher levels of water vapor to rain at all. More tundra spending more time thawed (Arctic greening), some regions getting more rainfall (eg NW Australia) seems more directly significant to change in vegetation in those places. I don't mind people asking questions - feel free - but I am not a fan of being JAQed around by people who aren't interested in the answers.

I think energy technologies and what they can do are still in flux; the last thing we want is an inflexible plan that cannot take advantage of ongoing developments as they emerge. I think we need commitment to the goal of decarbonizing more than we need a detailed plan of how to get there; the planning is for the next few steps, not the final steps and must include support for clean energy R&D, on the basis that we can still do things better. When mainstream politics chose Doubt, Deny and Delay as response - with handing the issue to Environmentalists in "you care so much, you fix it" style - in order to NOT address it (as well as reinforce framing of the issue as driven by extremist fringe politics rather than about climate science and climate policy as about responsibility and accountability), no such plan (which likely would have had nuclear as the headline act) was possible. It is considered intolerable if any climate action or decarbonizing reduces profitability for fossil fuel investors, let alone requires any society wide reduction in spending power or actual sacrifice. Our forebears who faced great dangers and challenges with bravery and willing sacrifice would be ashamed.

@JohnDBarrow - Too broad for one topic, too many topics for one discussion. A lot of discussions of energy happen here, which you can contribute to, but no single discussion can cover it all. Most recently broad focus and narrow focus - The most recent "energy crisis" (as described widely by media, rather than the endless partisan political messaging) was an EU gas supply reliability problem for the supposed element of the energy system deemed most reliable. It sent fossil fuel prices globally into economy damaging territory and gave producers apart from Russian windfall profits, and not for the sake of the health of any economy or any greater good would they reduce those prices. The EU countries mostly redoubled commitment to RE after, no matter the efforts to paint the crisis as a failure of RE and failure to support and expand gas supply. Is that the sort of crisis you want to discus Or about climate and commitments to zero emissions? We would have a huge climate problem - a much huger climate problem - if we use them to depletion. But it is not possible to use them to depletion, just use them to uneconomical - quicker to uneconomical should the externalised costs like health, environment and climate impacts ever be made more explicit through carbon taxes and levies. Quicker too even without those due to energy R&D and entrepreneurship delivering Renewable Energy that is cost competitive, even with fossil fuels enjoying perpetual amnesty on climate accountability. Some uses will persist longer, some will be reduced - and should be given how serious destabilizing the planet's climate is. Some of those resource will still be important for lubricants, chemical feedstocks, apart from fuels. The relative costs of energy and relationship between changes to incomes, taxes, profit levels and inflation is enough to keep battalions of economics occupied. I don't see any new energy crisis that isn't already being given a lot of consideration and debate.