Larssen wrote:
Jay wrote:
Ahh, but it is opinion masquerading as fact that is the real problem.
It is a fact that global temperatures are rising. It is an opinion that we need to adopt global reform in order to bring down temperatures. It is a refutation of that opinion to state that adopting those global reforms will not work because people, especially in emerging economies, will not accept draconian changes.
Trump is president of the United States. This is a fact. Trump is a dangerous imbecile that will cause millions of deaths and bring down the global economy. This is an opinion. Trump is doing an ok job, as well as to be expected from many Presidents. This is also an opinion.
Media sources that present facts have become rare. Media sources that present opinion masquerading as facts have become as common as dirt. This is why there is a "right wing media" and a "left wing media". They aren't arguing about basic facts, most of the time, they are arguing about opinions and protecting their overarching narrative. This is why they choose to report on only some newsworthy stories, and ignore others. Team Red and Team Blue and their fans go at each other as often, and for as many asinine reasons, as any true believer sports fans does when confronted with fans of his arch-rival team. Political party, and political belief, have become entwined with people's identity. This is the problem, and the media drives it as hard as they drive any other addiction.
I'm clearly seeing a conflation of the two and your inability to dive a little deeper.
It is indeed a fact that global temperatures are rising. It's pretty hard science that this is because of human activity: the 7.6 billion of us moving about, consuming and burning fuel for our daily needs is directly related to that rise. It's a very logical conclusion to then state that emissions need to be lowered if we don't want temperatures to rise any further. There's probably a multitude of options to deal with this problem, one of which is global reform on energy production & consumption. If you say to that 'ppl won't accept it' I hope you resign yourself to accept that global temperatures will in fact rise further and that you'll act accordingly in a different way. However, as we know, since at least the 90s the right wing had adopted a stance of 'climate scepticism' effectively grinding to an almost immovable halt ANY action because the very foundations of the science were denied and called into question: either temperatures weren't rising, or people weren't the cause, or now: 'climate accords are pointless'. That has cost us over 20 years of time to formulate a response.
You talk as if this is universal, when it is not. Some are climate change deniers, sure, just as there are people that believe the earth is flat. These people get the attention, but they are not nearly as common as your media sources would have you believe. No, what "the right" objects to is that nearly every remedy proposed expands the size, scope, and reach of government. For some reason, it is absolutely crucial for "the left" to include things like reparation payments, gun control, national health care, carbon exchanges that benefit certain interest groups, and universal basic income. The green movement has been co-opted. On the right, they've gained the nickname "watermelons" because they are green on the outside, and red on the inside.
No, what "the right" wants is for a clean look at the issue without all the hyperbolic End of Days rhetoric. When one actually examines the problem, one finds that the temperature increases are not linear, and they do not occur rapidly. They are spread over many decades and many centuries. This is a long time, and it just might be a long enough timeline for either human adaptation to a warmer climate, or it might be that we generate some engineering response to overcome the warming trend.
See, these are opinions. What is a fact is that most of the ideas that "the left" proposes do not work. It's all very well and good to cover the planet with solar panels and wind farms, but for every kilowatt of potential energy from those sources, you need an equivalent number of kilowatts available from traditional sources like natural gas or nuclear. Why? Because there is no storage that can scale up enough to allow pure solar, and pure wind. And this is to say nothing of the environmental impact from harvesting all the rare earth minerals required.
I don't care what the response is, whether that be bunkering up or pursuing global climate reform, as long as we can all acknowledge that this is happening, that there will be global consequences, and that there must be a plan. We're not even there yet because all points are still under contention. The warming itself is denied, the cause is denied, consequences are denied - let alone formulating a plan.
This applies to many different topics including now the covid-19 crisis. Yes obviously someone stating that Trump will destroy all life on earth is voicing an opinion, but here you now seem to be unable to see the trees for the forest. Trump's statements and actions over time throughout this crisis are undeniable fact. He was informed. He did ignore his experts. He voiced that it would all just disappear. He demonstrably wasn't aware of his constitutional powers vis-a-vis governors. He loudly promoted experimental drugs, contradicting his own medical experts in public. NONE OF THIS is 'liberal bias'. This is verifiable fact.
Sure it is. They're piecing together information after the fact in order to bludgeon him with it. It's an election year, after all. It's very easy to have perfect 20/20 hindsight and pick out all the clues and warnings that should've been heeded. Do you know what was happening in the US in December and January? Trump was being impeached by Congress. They were airing all of his dirty laundry and putting him on trial. Perhaps he was a bit distracted?
On the other hand I saw some fox news hosts dig up 3 month old covid-19 case projections, selectively quote outlined worst case scenario's, overlay that with current trajectories to state that it's all just BS & that the medical community doesn't know anything and shouldn't be trusted. THAT is outright manipulation of fact. Truth be told, if it were up to technocratic me I'd jail these pieces of shit. <- that last sentence is my opinion.
You're entitled to your opinion.
Last edited by Jay (2020-05-07 13:12:45)
