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Post by alancalverd on Apr 19, 2019 21:06:59 GMT 1
Eh? Sorry, you've lost me. It's been a long hard day. What are you referring to? Why should we even think of bombing anywhere? That's what nuclear weapons do. The threat of nuclear obliteration really impressed the Argentinians, didn't it? And that is where a study of the aftermath showed the flaw in the argument. A thinly populated police state like Russia, or a thinly populated and largely decentralised democracy like the USA, would survive and re-form. A densely populated and highly centralised island state wold either capitulate or disappear. Not that Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be taken as models, of course. Modern nuclear weapons are much more numerous and efficient. Ideologically primitive, yes. Technologically so, no. First man in space, largest ever nuclear explosion, very competent long-range naval and air forces. Hundreds of long and medium range nuclear missiles. But back to the terrorist scenario. A small dirty bomb can be "contained" because not many people would be involved in a ground explosion and the effects of dispersal of radionuclides are not immediately apparent. An air burst resulting in, say, 100,000 immediate casualties would result in the disorganised mass evacuation of a city against the flow of emergency services (if we had any) and almost certainly 10 times more secondary casualties. A&E can't cope with a light dusting of snow these days, and you can cause political panic for days with a tiny unarmed drone that may not even exist. The threat of a repeat performance with a small nuke would bring any government to its knees (literally). That's blackmail, and we have no organised defence. Interesting that the US dropped thousands of tons of HE on Hanoi but never resorted to nukes. Why not? Same effect at much less risk. Because that is how wars are won and territories conquered: boots on the ground. Try H G Wells "The War in the Air" for a basic analysis, or look at every subsequent conflict to see what defined the endgame. Are you suggesting that, in closing the coal mines and importing Polish coal and Russian gas to run our electricity supply, successive Tory governments were actually in league with the Commies? Trump would be proud to have such allies!
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Post by fascinating on Apr 21, 2019 19:13:38 GMT 1
.... according to the scientific method the AGW theory has been falsified, many times. The "climate sceptics" were proven, by science, to have been right all along two or three years ago. My bet is that you are not going to tell us how and when this was proven and AGW falsified.
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 23, 2019 5:16:08 GMT 1
Maybe not, but AGW hasn't been proven either. Correlation is not causation, and both historically and scientifically we see that CO2 follows temperature, not the other way around. To prove AGW you first have to rapidly and positively reduce CO2 and see if the temperature drops, but no politician or economist is going to allow that whilst there is oil in the ground and profit in meat farming.
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Post by fascinating on Apr 23, 2019 9:16:44 GMT 1
Maybe not, but AGW hasn't been proven either. Correlation is not causation, and both historically and scientifically we see that CO2 follows temperature, not the other way around. To prove AGW you first have to rapidly and positively reduce CO2 and see if the temperature drops, but no politician or economist is going to allow that whilst there is oil in the ground and profit in meat farming. mrsonde informed us that scientists had proved the AGW hypothesis wrong. I would still like to see where and when that was done. The observed increases in CO2 after warming doesn't prove that CO2 does not increase warming, because warming continued apace as CO2 rose. Nobody is saying that CO2 can be the only cause of warming, the initial warming might have been from natural changes of solar input (eg Milankovitch cycles). In the end, I think we should cut our emissions, even if you don't believe in AGW. We know that fossil fuel burning is polluting in other ways, producing chemicals which nature, including ourselves, cannot properly deal with, hence increases in things like asthma and cancer. We want to live in a cleaner environment, solar and wind energy is now basically as cheap as conventional, so let's get on with it.
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 23, 2019 12:20:19 GMT 1
There are plenty of reasons for reducing CO2 emissions, the most significant of which is that they are unsustainable at the present level so will eventually lead to global conflict and mass starvation when the oil runs out.
The fundamental problem is that everyone aspires to a western lifestyle, using at least 5 kilowatts of non-food power. This cannot be provided for everyone with any technology other than fossil fuels. We must either reduce our aspirations or reduce the population. The latter is clearly more desirable for everyone except priests, politicans and economists. So perhaps the first step is to rid the world of these parasites?
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 23, 2019 15:10:12 GMT 1
Eh? Sorry, you've lost me. It's been a long hard day. What are you referring to? Why should we even think of bombing anywhere? Guns don't kill people, people do. Why, if we gave aid to an ailing Soviet sub in the Orkneys, would we ever need to bomb Moscow? No such threat was made. On the contrary, it has been long-standing NATO policy not to first strike. We did have a nuclear sub there, and had had since S.Georgia, but not for its nuclear attack capability. We also had the capability to conventionally bomb Buenos Aires with Vulcans, if things turned really sour; and I think to our shame we took consignments of white phosphorous down there - heaven knows why, what contingency was thought up to possibly justify such a need, but it's just conceivable our Marines and Paras might have been met by superior infantry that might have necessitated such a warcrime. So much for Civil Service scientific advisers! A nuclear exchange between the US and USSR would have been followed by a Nuclear Winter. No one was going to survive or reform but the cockroaches. This was fully understood by both sides - I have no idea why you hadn't heard of it. (We now also know, incidentally, that Brezhnev had put in place a Dr.Srangelove style "Doomsday Weapon" - a supertanker "dirty bomb", designed to automatically ensure such a total global death should they ever be attacked.) Afraid so. In 1983 the Kremlin ordered a full First Strike against NATO because their radar had detected the Moon rising over the Arctic on a partuclarly dust-laden morning, and their computers interpreted it as a US First Strike. The response was supposed to be automatic, requiring no political order, but fortunately still required one person to turn a key to actually release the launch. This humble lieutenant decided a mistake must have been made, and declined to follow his training, which is why we're still around to talk about it or anything else. For his impertinent indiscipline he served 20 years hard labour in the Gulag. Possibly, possibly not. It certainly wasn't Gargarin, if so - that's now known to have been a hoax. And before and after they managed that much, probably dozens of cosmonauts died in the attempt. The Americans could have been so profligate with human lives, but in an open society people tend to complain. Thanks to Fuchs and the Rosenbergs and very probably Oppenheimer and others passing on what the US and British scientists had managed to work out. They were always at least ten years behind. Their fighters, not so much; but their subs were always as easy to track as an orchestra of cement mixers, and their Bears could never outrun even fighters we developed in WWII. Ostensibly - which was all that was needed, granted. When inspections started after Reykjavik, the Americans were astonished to discover that most of them couldn't have even launched, let alone hit anywhere. The silos were half-full of muddy water. It would appear this was always the case - at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, it turns out that the Soviets actually only had six ICBMs, and they probably wouldn't have worked in any case. The Soviet capablitiy was always largely a smoke and mirrors myth. Of course, this suited the American military-industrial establishment just fine - as it does now to exaggerate Putin's putative rearmament. You're still talking about 12 million or so long-term casualties, say, if a cobalt suitcase bomb were set off in Trafalgar Square. I don't think so - you underestimate the ruthless resilience of...well, I was going to say the political and military Establishment, but in this scenario I'd say the People. In the Blitz, London could have been destroyed, most of our industrial or even our "Baedeker" towns too - we would still have fought on. We have Trident, and, barring Mr.Corbyn's ascension, the certainty that we would retaliate. In the scenario of a non-State actor - as I say, it's a long-standing nightmare. It hasn't happened yet - it's not a scenario where the notion of blackmail really applies, I think: it would be purely vicious terrorism. For the past decade or so I gather this ultimate nightmare has been superceded in probability by the very real prospect of germ warfare - a GM smallpox strain being released in a dozen US cities at once, for example. Very cheap, very technogically simple to do - the DNA sequence is freely available on the internet, it costs twenty grand or so to buy the equipment needed - and as you say, there's no feasible defence: it would completely devastate the whole country, the entire West. Because it would have been WWIII. Not even a knuckle-dragging shit-kicking klutz like Johnson or a ruthless sonofabitch like Nixon ever considered it seriously. Nixon proposed threatening it, but McNamara easily dissuaded him. It used to be. We're talking about the Nuclear Age. The only American boots on Japan came after their complete surrender. I think the point is there haven't been any major subsequent conflicts, because the game has thus changed. This is why there's been peace in Europe for 70 years - nothing to do with the EU. The wars since have been little local affairs, kept so because the major powers can't allow it to become anything larger. The nearest we came to it was Cuba - and Khrushchev backed down, when it came to it. Which then resulted down the line in the Six-Day War, engineered by the KGB warmongers determined to avenge their humiliation - luckily Israel proved too formidable an adversary, and the Arabs too shambolic. Nope. You've got your historical facts wrong, for a start. Polish coal was inconsequential, and Russian gas non-existent, in keeping our electricity supply running. Colombian coal, more so - but it was N.Sea oil and gas, and Nuclear, and a lot of prescient planning, that made that victory over Scargill and his commie allies possible.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 23, 2019 15:27:08 GMT 1
.... according to the scientific method the AGW theory has been falsified, many times. The "climate sceptics" were proven, by science, to have been right all along two or three years ago. My bet is that you are not going to tell us how and when this was proven and AGW falsified. I see your long period of purdah for relection on your past boorishness hasn't improved your conversational skills much, Fing. If you want to discuss this subject in a civil manner, just let us know: I'd be glad to help you out. Try to remember to be polite, if you would - we've been managing to keep thigs nicely ticking along in that manner since you've been gone, and I think I can say for all of us that it's been much more pleasant as a result.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 23, 2019 16:02:58 GMT 1
Maybe not, but AGW hasn't been proven either. Correlation is not causation, and both historically and scientifically we see that CO2 follows temperature, not the other way around. To prove AGW you first have to rapidly and positively reduce CO2 and see if the temperature drops, but no politician or economist is going to allow that whilst there is oil in the ground and profit in meat farming. mrsonde informed us that scientists had proved the AGW hypothesis wrong. I would still like to see where and when that was done. Enquire in a civil manner without your usual insults and your wish just might be granted - if there was someone kind and helpful and tolerant enough to do so. Nope. If that was the case, the world would have boiled away many millenia ago, and our atmosphere would be something like that of Venus. Milankovitch cycles are nothing to do with solar input. The IPCC thesis is that CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) are the principal causes of warming. This is known to be false. No one has ever argued otherwise! No evidence for such a wild hypothetical link, of course. No, it's not: it's much more expensive. If it wasn't, there'd be no need for a campaign for such profligate and irrational expense, would there? With what? Your logic inexorably suggests, at our present stage of technological development, that we build ten or so nuclear power stations. Problem solved. It still won't get any cooler. The air would be cleaner though, and electricity cheaper, and we wouldn't despoil the whole country with heavily polluting, goddawful ugly and absurdly expensive wind turbines and solar panels.
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Post by fascinating on Apr 23, 2019 16:15:22 GMT 1
I win the bet.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 23, 2019 16:19:11 GMT 1
No, I do. You merely prove yet again that you have no real interest in learning anything. Not enough to be ordinarily civil to do so, anyway. You believe you know it all already, and think you're in some sort of contest to prove it. Like most teachers, Jean used to have the same problem, so missed out on learning things she desperately wanted to know.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 23, 2019 16:25:45 GMT 1
There are plenty of reasons for reducing CO2 emissions, the most significant of which is that they are unsustainable at the present level so will eventually lead to global conflict and mass starvation when the oil runs out. Fortunately, fossil fuels will stop being used simply because there are cheaper, better alternatives around the corner - as simple as that. But before they're finally phased out, wind turbines and solar power will be seen as quaint and irrational as steam-powered motor cars. It can. It will. It won't require any governmental or inter-governmental fascist organisation, either. I think world population is predicted by the UN to peak at about 12 billion, isn't it? We can probably cope with that, given GMOs and already improving transport. Let's start with the communists first, before their opportunism gets too rewarded. (Very interesting - and worrying - that Putin is pushing the communist revival very hard on RT at the moment.)
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 24, 2019 13:43:58 GMT 1
[quote timestamp="1556018419" author=" alancalverd" I think world population is predicted by the UN to peak at about 12 billion, isn't it? We can probably cope with that, given GMOs and already improving transport. Why peak? As long as there is any food, never mind enough, economics demands that the population must increase in order for demand to grow. Starving rats continue to breed in the hope that things will get better. They don't.
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Post by fascinating on Apr 25, 2019 7:28:10 GMT 1
So I bet that he is not going to tell us how AGW was proven to false, he does not provide the information, yet still says he won the bet!
Riiiiight.
Then there is the usual time-wasting bleating about some imagined insult I am supposed to have made, laced of course with insults toward me.
The only relevant point to this discussion is that AGW has NOT been scientifically proven to be false. Mrsonde is just fantasising, again,
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 25, 2019 8:03:34 GMT 1
We have Trident, and, barring Mr.Corbyn's ascension, the certainty that we would retaliate. Against whom? By bombing what?
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Post by fascinating on Apr 25, 2019 9:20:42 GMT 1
[quote timestamp="1556018419" author=" alancalverd" I think world population is predicted by the UN to peak at about 12 billion, isn't it? We can probably cope with that, given GMOs and already improving transport. Why peak? As long as there is any food, never mind enough, economics demands that the population must increase in order for demand to grow. Starving rats continue to breed in the hope that things will get better. They don't. I think people in poverty tend to have more children, prosperity leads to a decline in fertility. Almost all countries, even relatively poor ones, have shown big falls in fertility, although not so much in Africa. Now rich countries such as Germany and Japan are showing marked reductions in their indigenous populations. The world population is expected to peak in 2100 at about 12 billion, but of course nobody knows for sure, that is just the middle of a range of projections, one which says that it will reach 17 billion then and continue growing, another says it will peak at around 9 billion and then drop.
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