Until the Aftermath of This Election I Had Never Realized....

....just how much the whole Climate Change mantra had become virtually a secular religion among Democrats and those on the left.

I knew it was "a concern" with them. Kind of like things like clean water and recycling. But the fanatical vehemence I see (in people like the poster that calls him or her "Nono" who apparently believes three quarters of the human race needs to be killed off) is unbelievable.

Get a clue.

Climate change might be a crisis.

But it isn't an emergency.

It isn't an emergency if its been happening for 50 years and it isn't an emergency if its worst effects are at most 20-50 years down the road.

But the fanaticism of climate change believers is beyond belief. With people actually suggesting that Trump as president means the end of the human race.

Unbelievable.

It's an emergency because the effects are 20-50 years down the road and it will take 20-50 years to halt/reverse the damage.

Kind of like passing the minimum braking distance before you will definitely hit the old lady's car, which would be considered an emergency to anyone except the "man" I'm talking to.

If you don't see the substantial destruction of the biosphere within a few decades as an emergency, then you're a fool. (Yes, I know, it's Dayton. Quelle Surprise.)

Donald Trump heads an administration which both denies that this is the case and wishes to take measures to aggressively accelerate it. Vehement opposition is somewhat warranted.

What "substantial destruction of the biosphere"?

Sea levels rise a few feet? No offense but I've never liked the coasts anyway. Move inland. Everyone in the U.S. talks about how property is cheaper the further you move from the coasts.

Is this another subject upon which you are woefully ill-informed? Say it aint so!

You reckon anything short of an emergency would necessitate the relocation of half the population of the US (if not the world)?

If I were a gambling man, I would wager that I'm more well read on the subject that most of the wordforge members here.

Including you.

When it takes place over the course of DECADES!!!??

How long do you think it would take to either mitigate the damage or RELOCATE HALF THE PLANET'S POPULATIION!!!??

I find it endlessly fascinating how religious numbskulls can (with a straight face!) compare global warming to a religion as a negative comparison, and have no self-awareness whatsoever.

Yeah, we already have a lot of warming baked in but it is a delayed effect. The right wing is bad with its denialism but the left also keeps block nuclear power which we are going to need if we are serious about cutting carbon.

I didn't think nuclear power was a left/right thing. I thought it was more of a NIMBY thing.

The nuclear dumping scandals in the 80's didn't help.

Nuclear is fine with me, as long as we keep it safe. Main issue is all the nations the US doesn't want having reactors in case they weaponize.

Tidal power is another area that needs looking at.

You're both deeply stupid and a liar, so you can make pretend-wagers all you like and nobody will care.

It's an emergency because the effects are already being felt. To people like Dayton, the effects will ALWAYS be 20-50 years down the road, because they are ignorant of actual climate science.

Well, the ongoing Holocene extinction is interrelated with climate change, but isn't really being caused by it - the scientific consensus on what is likely to happen due to climate change is not the stuff of mass extinctions, though the concern is that it may well be the kind of stuff that leads to a drastic reduction in the complexity of human societies.
No, sadly, even if carbon emissions were reduced to zero but everything else remained unchanged (impossible, I know) the Holocene extinction would continue because the basic reason for it is that there are too damn many of us, and we haven't yet worked out ways to live sustainably. @Nono is definitely on the pessimistic side of this question - personally I think it's possible, probable, that we can figure out how to live with a few billion more people than we've got now, sustainably. The problem is, we have to do it, and when the political party in charge in the US doesn't believe there's even a problem doing it becomes impossible, making it more likely that we're going to have serious problems not too far in the future.

DECADES is a shockingly short timescale for the kind of changes we're talking about. Like, literally unprecedented in the Earth's history. Anthropogenic climate change is preceding much faster than changes that, at previous times in Earth's history, caused mass extinctions. The K-T event for example unfolded over perhaps a few tens of thousands of years, perhaps as little as ten thousand - and that is one of the most abrupt extinction events we know of.

Plus, he'll be long dead by then.
Fuck does he care what happens to this Earth, when he and people like him think they're going to a gumdrop kingdom in the sky to suck a bronze age invented sky tyrant's dick for a trillion years?

Believe what you want Rick.

It won't make it true.

And unlike you I do have a science background

Oh, good, devise some reproducible experiments to prove creationism so it can be published and peer reviewed, and you can win your Nobel Prize.

Please elaborate on your "science background".

Not that it actually matters much here, but personally I do have a Bachelor of Science degree.

So a BS degree?

So do I.

I guess you didn't know that followers of the one true religion naturally have disdain for something masquerading as a religious faith

Whatever disagreements about this we may have, you have pointed out the Problem of Problems, for which all other problems are mere sock-puppets.

Yes, I'm pessimistic, not because I think it's technically impossible to (1) reduce human population [and I'd say down to a billion tops] or (2) learn how to live without buggering the environment on which we depend for our very lives. I'm pessimistic because I think it politically hugely improbable that people will act rationally before it's too late. Sure, when LA and Miami are under water, people might start to wake up and get scared. But by then it will be too late.

Take nine minutes to watch this. If we manage to get rational, we'll be rational enough to get by without nuclear power. As Collins says, "this is not a choice between two bad things --- this is the choice not to do bad things".

I'm not a biologist.

Nor do I have any problem believing the world and universe to be billions of years old.

You lose.

Does anyone think that if there were a God that he'd be pissed off to see things like the smog in Shanghai, holes in the ozone layer or the garbage island in the Pacific?

Probably would be. Christians never think about this though, and really side with the "haha let's fuck up the environment more" crowd. While it's definitely related to that weak minded partisan American thing, it's also funny how they are never champions of God's earth.

Too busy worrying about gays humping each other in the butt.

I mean the priorities on these guys. What a joke.

When LA and Miami are underwater, Democrat (liberals) will never win another election in the United States.

What is the downside?

I frequently have similar thoughts about their attitude to science. You'd think these guys would be fascinated to learn as much as they can about how Gods creation works. Instead they are disinterested at best and wilfully obstrucive at worst.
I think it shows that the cosmological implications of their beliefs are of secondary concern and that their motivations are more personal, even solipsistic. It's all about maintaining themselves as the centre of creation, and ensuring that they get a nice cuddly afterlife.

So?
God created everything, right?
There should be scientifically provable traces of creation everywhere, so it should touch on every field.

What, are you scared you can't do it?
Not a lot of faith you have there.....

I didn't say young Earth creationism, did I?

Boy, for a guy with one foot, you can somehow tapdance like a muthafucka!