US 2024 Presidential Election

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And of course, Elon Musk had to put his own two cents in. Something something should be banned for threats.

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If he got more sleep instead of “working” 20 hour days, he might’ve worded that more carefully. As in, for all the gun toting far righters, there have surprisingly been no attempts at something similar on those two.
 

BrawlMan

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Would you look at that? Trump is shooting himself in the foot again....with a rocket launcher.
 

gorfias

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I don't think anyone thinks that Trump literally means to be a dictator on Day 1. But in any sense, it's a suggestion he is going to make decisions that are authoritarian in flavour. That he is not literally dictator does not mean those decisions will be okay. For instance, I do not think it compatible with good principles of law and order to pardon hundreds of people who sacked the Capitol (in his name!) on Jan 6th, 2021. I do not think a man who complains about the "weaponisation" of the DoJ should scrap the tradition of Attorney General neutrality and direct the DoJ to aggressively indict his enemies.

Trump wants to drill shitloads of a finite, heavily-polluting resource that is only going to get rarer and more expensive, plus is highly vulnerable to global supply shocks (as frequently experienced since the 1970s). So tell me: how robust really is that?

Take control of the Southern border? He ordered his Congressional cronies to squash a bipartisan bill that was designed to ameliorate problems, just so he could pin the blame on Biden/Harris. He might care, but also he's definitely up for maximising pain, chaos and damage to boost himself into office.
I dunno. I have a family member that takes him pretty literally and she's all but disowned me.
You could be right about the diminishing resource that is fossil fuel but we've been hearing the alarms about this since around 1882 when Standard Oil incorporated. What the market will bear. ITMT: I am all over the idea of planting stuff to deal with CO2.
If you're not taking Trump literally then you're not actually supporting Trump, you are supporting a version of Trump that you've made up in your head that's going to do exactly what you want him to. You're supporting a delusion.
I think we all do that to some extetent. Do you really think Cackles has a central governing philosophy in her head? She goes from really enjoying the high life and locking up poor people for minor offenses and using them for slave labor while in the other breath, speaking of the need for communism in the other. (No, I don't think she is a communist. That would actually require having a political center.

But we have ways of predicting future behavior. I think this lady has got it at around 2:22

 

gorfias

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Won't work. There is not enough land or water in the world to plant enough stuff to compensate for CO2 at current rmission levels.

Gossil fuels need to die. Soon.
I highly doubt that. The Sahara dessert alone is nearly the size of the entire CONUS. Imagine if we can turn that into lush forest.
It'll be fine.
 

Avnger

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I highly doubt that. The Sahara dessert alone is nearly the size of the entire CONUS. Imagine if we can turn that into lush forest.
It'll be fine.
"I made up an impossible-with-current-technology-and-political-will solution, so don't worry about this real life issue"

Might as well claim that we shouldn't worry about people starving to death because we can imagine Star Trek replicators.
 

gorfias

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"I made up an impossible-with-current-technology-and-political-will solution, so don't worry about this real life issue"

Might as well claim that we shouldn't worry about people starving to death because we can imagine Star Trek replicators.
I think we could end starvation, today, right now with existing technology. What we don't have is the economic and political architecture with which to do it. Same with making the Sahara a lush jungle. I hear good things from MIT and Israel and more about doing just this sort of thing.
ITMT: It is the climate hysterics, warning we'll be out of oil back in 1880s, that whole nations will be under water by 2007, wanting us to base our energy policies on unicorn farts. I know which side I'd rather be on.
 
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I highly doubt that. The Sahara dessert alone is nearly the size of the entire CONUS. Imagine if we can turn that into lush forest.
It'll be fine.
We can’t rely on “what if” solutions that would involve improbable time, money and energy in itself though. The elephant in the room is our population has increasingly outpaced a healthy, practical way of supporting it for quite some time now thanks to our ever expanding desire for “progress” and “civilization”. The funny thing about human beings is how our self-aggrandizement seems to overshadow everything, even when attempts to show concern for something else. There may be selfless outliers here and there, but deep down all we really care about is our own survival.

Kevin Costner’s character on the show Yellowstone summed it up best:

“There will come a time when earth sheds us like dead skin. And it will be our own fault.”


Another character elaborates upon something similar in a different episode:

Thomas Rainwater: There's two futures for this valley: One with the land stripped of the second homes and hobby farms, and returned to the way it used to be... You drive twenty miles into the park and that's how our whole nation looked at one time. Modern society wants people to go to school and learn a trade to make money to buy food, clothes, a place to live. But on land that hasn't been ravaged by man, you don't need to buy food. You just go find it. You don't buy clothes, you make them. And you don't buy houses, you seek shelter. You live with the land. Not on it.

Doug: You said two futures. What's the other?

Thomas Rainwater: The other's where you live. Concrete world with stick houses and grass that can't survive without fertilizer and sprinklers. You know someday this planet's going to shake your world off its back like dirty water.
 
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Dirty Hipsters

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I highly doubt that. The Sahara dessert alone is nearly the size of the entire CONUS. Imagine if we can turn that into lush forest.
It'll be fine.
So you've made up a scenario where you can make it someone else's problem down the line rather than attempting to do something to address it now.

How boomer of you.
 

Satinavian

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I highly doubt that. The Sahara dessert alone is nearly the size of the entire CONUS. Imagine if we can turn that into lush forest.
It'll be fine.
You don't have the water for that.
And no, you can't just use desalinated sea water. You don't have the energy for that. We could far sooner afford to get rid of fussil fuels globally than providing enough water for the Sahara.

And even if that would work, once a forest is there, it only very slowly absorbs CO2 because any eaten/rotting biomatter gives the CO2 back. You only continually absorb as slowly as some of it is bound in the soil instead of properly being digested/burned/whatever.
 
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gorfias

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We can’t rely on “what if” solutions that would involve improbable time, money and energy in itself though. The elephant in the room is our population has increasingly outpaced a healthy, practical way of supporting it for quite some time now thanks to our ever expanding desire for “progress” and “civilization”. The funny thing about human beings is how our self-aggrandizement seems to overshadow everything, even when attempts to show concern for something else. There may be selfless outliers here and there, but deep down all we really care about is our own survival.

Kevin Costner’s character on the show Yellowstone summed it up best:

“There will come a time when earth sheds us like dead skin. And it will be our own fault.”


Another character elaborates upon something similar in a different episode:

Thomas Rainwater: There's two futures for this valley: One with the land stripped of the second homes and hobby farms, and returned to the way it used to be... You drive twenty miles into the park and that's how our whole nation looked at one time. Modern society wants people to go to school and learn a trade to make money to buy food, clothes, a place to live. But on land that hasn't been ravaged by man, you don't need to buy food. You just go find it. You don't buy clothes, you make them. And you don't buy houses, you seek shelter. You live with the land. Not on it.

Doug: You said two futures. What's the other?

Thomas Rainwater: The other's where you live. Concrete world with stick houses and grass that can't survive without fertilizer and sprinklers. You know someday this planet's going to shake your world off its back like dirty water.
What do you mean, "what if"? Go outside and plant something. That's a start.
We do fear science and technology (and man made development). But it isn't all Pandora's box. I prefer a man made cure to a disease than a nature created disease itself.
So you've made up a scenario where you can make it someone else's problem down the line rather than attempting to do something to address it now.

How boomer of you.
Again: go out and plant a tree. There you go. That's a start.
You don't have the water for that.
And no, you can't just use desalinated sea water. You don't have the energy for that. We could far sooner afford to get rid of fussil fuels globally than providing enough water for the Sahara.

And even if that would work, once a forest is there, it only very slowly absorbs CO2 because any eaten/rotting biomatter gives the CO2 back. You only continually absorb as slowly as some of it is bound in the soil instead of properly being digested/burned/whatever.
I have to wonder how climates will change if you turn the Sahara into a jungle. Won't new fresh water rain fall be a norm?
I trust my jungles to have a more positive impact on a global scale on balance before I trust batteries made by poisoning African villages.

To me? The Green Scam is about impoverishing and controlling people. Destroy farmers and cause food shortages. Shut down nuclear energy and cause shortages to ration out. Etc. I don't want to shut up, obey, get in the pods, eat the bugs.
 

BrawlMan

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What do you mean, "what if"? Go outside and plant something
Clearly your other half is the actual brains of you two. Shows how little you know of nature and science. Explain that's actual professionals in their respective fields on the subject and they'll point out every single flaw or problem with your little "theory".



 

gorfias

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Hmmm. "Kamala Harris the Racist"


Little more Styx


...Explain that's actual professionals in their respective fields on the subject and they'll point out every single flaw or problem with your little "theory".
So flawed I am advised by lefties in my circle that "desert greening" (I didn't make up this term) is one part of the Green New Deal. One I actually can favor.
 
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Dirty Hipsters

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Again: go out and plant a tree. There you go. That's a start.
In 2020 during Trump's election campaign Trump pledged to start planting 1 trillion trees to reduce global warming.


From that article:

It is far from clear that the United States government will actually plant any trees, or that a trillion trees would do much in the near term to stop the worst effects of planetary warming. Tom Crowther, an environmental scientist and an author of the study that sparked the movement, cautioned that the full benefits would not be seen for about 100 years, when most of the new trees would reach full maturity. During that time, he said, the world needs to drive down fossil fuel emissions.

“If tree planting is just used as an excuse to avoid cutting greenhouse gas emissions or to further limit environmental protection, then it could be a real disaster,” said Dr. Crowther, who studies ecosystem ecology at ETH Zurich.
Even if we planted a trillion trees, and even if all 1 trillion trees survived (unlikely) it would take 100 years before we would see the full benefits, which would only be about 5-10% reduction in greenhouse gases. In the meantime the only way to reduce global warming would be reducing fossil fuel emissions, which is something that Donald Trump is not only staunchly against, he actively wants more emissions.

Anyway, according to experts the planting of 1 trillion trees is not a serious solution to the climate crisis.



We found that planting 1 trillion trees, under optimistic conditions, would remove only 6% of the needed CO2 reduction. And that would require a wildly unrealistic amount of land, over 2 billion acres, which is to say over 2 billion football fields—greater than the total land area of the contiguous United States.
And Trump's administration didn't actually end up planting any trees, though they talked about it a lot.


Saying "just plant some trees bro" is the boomer way of deflecting responsibility. "I planted a tree, I did my part, now I should be allowed to drive my 8 mile per gallon truck all I want while I complain about gas prices."

You don't actually want to do anything, you want other people to solve the problem for you, but you also don't want to be inconvenienced in any way, and you don't want to pay for the problem to be solved. You want to do nothing but have a magical silver bullet that solves the problem in the future with technology that doesn't exist.
 
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Agema

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I dunno. I have a family member that takes him pretty literally and she's all but disowned me.
If you take Trump literally, he's insane or incompetent or both. If you need to take Trump figuratively, then he's dishonest and you don't know what he's actually going to do.

Cut through the bullshit, that's the bottom line.