Nut Nut's Attempt At A Book About Politics & Society

I will continue to insult those who deflect from a topic which is relevant to the future well being of billions of human beings in favor of an agenda which seeks to obscure that.

You're a piece of **** weeeez. A character apparently devoid of conscience or compassion for the devastation being unleashed in a blind orgy of greed and human consumption.

If there is a hell .... your karma will take you there. From all appearances ... that is where you presently reside.

Ok then

I'm not the karma delivery man. That's God's work. I'm just a messenger.

God is lining up some plagues for us ..... just as those plagues were symbolized for the Eqyptian's in the story of Exodus.

Those plagues are from our making. Our vanity and our greed. Our disrespect for the version of the planet which was gifted to us and nurtured us.

We have treated it just like the Onceler's in The Lorax. A story gifted to us by a saint .... Dr. Seuss.

We are the Egyptian's who put a Pharaoh above God and the Jews who idolized a golden calf.

God's wrath is coming. The dominoes have been lined up and we've tipped them into motion. We've got a painful lesson in humility incoming.

Jupiter and Saturn are the most massive objects in the solar system beside the Sun. Gravitational force is a function of mass.

At the end of the day .... we pay some people to be experts on these phenomena.

So .... you can choose to accept the public statements of agencies like NASA and other reputable agencies or you can try to question them. I am accepting that these published statements have been vetted by lots of people. Unlike some things the government tells us ..... i don't see a reason for the government to engage in a conspiracy and fabricate an explanation like this.

Who are these people ?

To those who would accuse me of redundancy, I confess. It's true.

I am trying to teach people the factors which have caused the routine historical transition between ice ages and warm periods because I am confident that those same factors illuminate our future.

My redundancy is not less impactful than the redundancy of the audience response of deflection.

Yeah, I'm not thinking of this in terms of vectors. As I said I'm picturing a stretched-out rubber sheet with a bowling ball (Sun) making a large depression in the middle and two smaller balls, Earth and Jupiter, making their own little depressions and circling around the Sun.

Now factor out Earth’s momentum: It would take Earth longer to roll down into the Sun when Jupiter is on the same side, and shorter when Jupiter is on the opposite side of the Sun, the latter due to the lack of depression from Jupiter.

Now factor momentum back in:
Shorter time = less eccentricity.
Longer time = more eccentricity.

If that analogy helps you .... I don't have an objection. I've frankly had my fill of the aspect of this topic which distracts from human consequences.

We know Earth goes through cycles. I’m just not convinced this one’s anthropogenic, or that we could really do much about it other than the fact basically every scientist says really seems to think so. So when someone says they’re 100% sure, I tune out. I don’t think we understand nearly enough about how things actually work to claim that kind of certainty.

The reason I believe we are is because I believe the scientific community writ large when they say it’s highly likely we’re causing it and that we can do something about it. So like I said: convince them our predicament is as imminently dire as you claim, and you’ll convince me.

I know what you think about them and that they know it but won't come out. Fine. Get in their face, not mine. Or better, why don't you go for the juggler of the people who are putting pressure on the scientists? You know nothing happens without money and money always leaves a trail. Sniff it out, connect the dots, expose them. A book like that could get some traction too. In other words, solve the problem that's causing the problem.

OK ... that's an honest starting point. You're not convinced that the current changes are anthropogenic.

How I would respond to that is to try and explain the process by which we might evaluate your uncertainty.

The first bit of information I would share with you is the process by which scientists reconstruct pre-historic climate events and information.

One example of a piece of historical information are ice fossils in places like Antarctica. When that ice formed long ago, it originated as snowfall. The snow became compacted and hardened into what is now the most abundant source of fresh (frozen) water on Earth. When that snow fell, it trapped air bubbles of that prehistoric atmosphere which preserve a pretty perfect 800,000 year record of historical air chemistry. They use drilling machines to dig out deep cores and they thaw them out and use instruments to measure that chemistry.

Those ice cores provide the data points which tell us that the Earth's CO2 range for the last 800,000 years have regularly oscillated between 160 and 280 ppm for those last 800,000 years. They offer part of the physical proof that ice ages came and went.

Does this kind of information help you ?

I don't want you to just take my word for it. I want to help you understand and be there when you say .... whoa. It's not necessarily an easy thing to digest. That's why so many people here are so damn eager to change the subject. It can hit you in the gut and they can't handle it.

So with these prehistoric ice cores, scientists are as certain as science can ever be about the chemistry of the environment during the 300,000 years of human evolution.

So ..... CO2 levels were between 160 ppm and 280 ppm for 800,000 years ..... it's a serious spike when they rise from 280 ppm to 425 ppm in about a century and increasing by 2-3 ppm per year.

This has happened right alongside the mass industrialization of human society which has been greatly enabled by fossil fuels for energy, transportation, heating, plastics and a bunch of other things.

We know the chemistry for the combustion of fossil fuels. We can calculate the weight of CO2 produced when a gallon of gasoline is combusted. We know which fraction of emitted CO2 stays in the air and which fraction is absorbed in the ocean.

CxHx (a hydrocarbon) + O2 ==> H20 + CO2.

So ..... we have two ways of validating that the changes are anthropogenic.

One is that the math of our activities corresponds to the observations in the atmosphere.

The second is that there is no alternative explanation for this sudden surge in atmospheric CO2. It would take a once in many millions of years type of volcanic event to produce a CO2 spike like this and something that forceful would give the world a shake and a cloud that could not go unnoticed.

The climate denier folks are very clever about how they indoctrinate their followers. They tell their followers .... this is from natural causes. And their followers don't bother to ask them "which natural causes could possibly explain this ?" A good thing for the indoctrinators .... because they don't have anything that makes sense to back it up.

They serve a market for people who want to believe "x". In a capitalist society, we pay people to tell us what we wish were true. And there are plenty of people willing to supply that for a nice fee. They get rich and famous and it's easier to get laid when you have a lot of money.

I don't do this for money. This is an expression of my primitive nature. You and I belong to the same human tribe. I want us both to survive. I don't want us to find ourselves in a situation where there is unnecessary survival tension between us. I want life to be groovy.

One of the things which is difficult to transcend is ego and interpersonal competitiveness.

I'm here attempting to present something which is relevant to everyone.

But what is happening in a lot of the audience. They are seeing me as an opponent who want they want to get into a pissing contest with to establish some kind of ranking. They begin with a perspective that I am the enemy because I propose policy and governance style which they have been indoctrinated to see as a threat by their tribal chieftans.

They come from a black and white world view which herds us into a capitalist tribe with a communist threat. Communism is like the boogeyman.

But they don't allow an alternative term like cooperation to be substituted for communism. I am proposing global cooperation to give a responsible entity jurisdiction over critical aspects of the environment which are clearly important to the continuity of human civilization. There isn't anyone presenting any credible argument other than professions of ignorance to the threats we face.

If you want to truly understand this problem ..... the answer is not in a climate science peer reviewed report. The answer is inside you. Your paralysis and aversion to discussing this is ubiquitous. What is it about this issue which makes it so difficult for you to engage ?

You are the experts .... not me. I don't know what it's like to live inside the mind and body of someone who is afraid of the truth.

Isn't that a very small sample size?

Perhaps you would like to rephrase your question ??

800,000 years is not a "sample size". That refers to a contiguous and complete population for that period of time. A sample size represents a portion of a statistical population.

If you are referring to whether 800,000 years is a long enough period of time from which to draw relevant conclusions ..... let's take a step back for a second and look at things from a broader perspective.

The Earth has changed radically throughout its 4.5B year history. Most historical versions were not compatible with human life and bear no resemblance to the current version.

Earth has been in its present physical configuration for 2.6M years since the Panama Isthmus slid into place and blocked the Atlantic / Pacific teleconnection between the Americas. This is the version of planet Earth that humans have evolved in. My intention is to help the audience understand the contrast we are creating between the environments humans evolved in and the one we are creating. Modern humans have only been around for 300k years. So 800,000 years is not a sample of human experience. It covers all of human experience and then some.

There are other techniques that scientists use to go back further than 800,000 years in reconstructing temperature and GHG levels. But one has to try and draw a line at how much information to try and deliver and for what purpose. To overload for no reason is not a good idea.

Why would you want to know information from more than 800,000 years ago weeeez ? I'm happy to go there with you if you are genuinely interested. But as your history suggests that you are only looking to nitpick and find fault ..... I'd rather not waste time on you.

I'm not afraid of the truth. I'm afraid of the 5-10 years of full-time study required to be able to independently assess the data to get to the truth.

You have no clue how much you're asking of non-scientists.

When ai was coming out I thought it would be a good idea to upgrade my knowledge of CS, especially math. So I bought the aptly titled, A Cool Brisk Walk Through Discrete Mathematics. It would take me a year to update my prereqs.

I'm not willing to put the effort in. You want me to listen to you, go get a PhD in this disipline.

Statistically speaking 800,000 years is a massive sample size in comparison to the most recent century.

That's 8,000 consecutive centuries with a CO2 level between 160 and 280 ppm.

The odds of the 8001st century falling out of that range by 50% due to natural causes would represent an obvious and unexpected statistical anomaly. It's not just that it expanded outside the bounded range of the previous 8000 centuries ..... it's the magnitude of the departure. We are experiencing a transformation FAR outside of human experience.

The departure in atmospheric methane concentrations from historic norms is even more dramatic.

Imagine you were the President.

You wouldn't have to learn every fact yourself. You would lean on experts and people that have earned your trust through credibility.

FDR didn't know how to independently assess the feasibility of an A-Bomb. He delegated that to experts. Scientist, engineers, military types and security personnel.

There is nothing to stop a citizen like yourself from figuring out which scientists you trust. That's how I learn .... it's not like I'm doing original research here.

I already told you which scientists I trust.

The scientists I gravitate toward are those that other scientists tend to recommend.

I don't tend to have as much trust for the people who get selected to appear on corporate media or are recent government appointees.

Carl Sagan was a generalist who I had a great deal of respect for. Dude had balls. His 1985 congressional testimony on the topic is a great introduction.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=car...

Carl Sagan was a saint. A gift to us all.

His 16 minutes of testimony on the above issue 40 years ago was a tour de force in the annals of public speaking. He articulated so much, so calmly, in such a short period of time.

Some people have an emotional reaction to beautiful music. Or a painting or a piece of writing or the beauty of a woman which inspires them. All of these things touch me from time to time.

Carl Sagan was a synthesis of brilliance, humanity, ethics with the gift of being able to communicate with such clarity. I don't have anything more to add to what he told Congress 40 years ago other than 40 years of data to prove he was spot on.

That's not something, I can teach .... who to trust and who not to trust. Having a bullshit detector which can discern the difference between bs and authenticity.

Some of it is cultural. I come from a secular Jewish culture which embraced science. I was raised in large part by a successful physicist uncle who was constantly elevating science and circulated with Nobel Prize winners. Scientists were the heroes.

I don't remember. Please refresh me.

The same sort of ones you relied on to support your orbit statement.

I was talking about your beloved 100k cycle that you've been hammering us on.
800k years is a sample size of 8 of these cycles.

Isn't a big part of the scientific process to question every bit of a theory?

Here's a chart of CO2 and temperature over the last 800,000 years. As you indicate that's 8 cycles. The results are consistent.

As discussed, the uninterrupted fossil record of Antarctic goes back 800,000 years and we also wander further back into other planetary changes such as the Mid Pleistocene Transition which offer more complexity to the discussion which I don't think are helpful.

If we have 8 consecutive 100k year cycles which demonstrate the same recurring oscillation between ice and warm period, then that's the best I can do to demonstrate the planet humans have existed in. The further back you go .... the more the planet diverges from the version we have occupied.

Now .... if you want to be a good sport and demonstrate some good faith ..... I'll ask you to explain your understanding of why the planet has oscillated between ice ages and warm periods for the last 800,000 years.