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Comment Re:Send in the drones! (Score 1) 848

Would Russia invade if Ukraine still had their nukes?

They might, actually. It's a decent bet that Ukraine wouldn't respond, even to invasion, with a city-destroying bomb. They would instantly become the bad guys in the situation. And if Russia responds to the escalation, the next bomb goes off in Kiev.

MAD never really had to cope with a ground invasion of the US by Russia, or vice versa. It's a very good thing that we didn't share a border, or somebody might have tested it. But even under MAD, there were all kinds of proxy wars, where our allies were invaded, and we never decided to reply with nuclear weapons, even while throwing thousands of lives and billions of dollars at it.

So yeah, Russia might well have taken a gamble on a ground invasion even with a nuclear-armed Ukraine. Nukes are a tricky weapon to use. The main thing they do is deter other nukes, and nobody's threatening Ukraine with nukes. Putin would have to ask himself if he thought the Ukrainian government was crazy enough to respond to its existential, but conventional, crisis with unconventional weapons. And given how aggressive he's been so far in flouting international judgment, he might well believe it.

Comment Re:Simple English Wikipedia will come in handy (Score 0) 708

It's not even really the donors, per se, but their voters. Climate change denialism is very popular. The businesses ensure that candidates who favor them connect with those voters, but it's not like the candidate would suddenly change their mind if those donations dried up. They'd continue to be denialists. And if that politician leaves, the denialist voters will be sure to pick up another denialist candidate.

The business help ensure denialism not with the politicians, but by funding denialist news networks and web sites. They also run attack ads (on any subject, not just climate) to defeat candidates who would oppose denialism.

They don't need to buy politicians. They buy voters instead, by scaring them. You won't fix the candidates, who are just doing what their constituents (at least, 50%+1 of them) want. The direct donations are a pittance. It's the overall miasma of denialism that give us anti-intellectual politicians, not the other way around.

I've got no idea how to fix it. It's famously said that you can't fix stupid, and there's a LOT of stupid.

Comment Re:Impacts (Score 1) 708

Well, we could still work to try to lessen/minimize the damage and instability.

Like, if you had gangrene on your arm, and the doctor announces, "I'm sorry, but we can't save the arm, the damage is irreversible," you wouldn't go, "Ah, well. It's impossible to save the arm. Time to wait it out and adapt."

At least, I'd hope you wouldn't. That's when you have an operation, try to save as much of your arm as you can. And then you think about what caused the gangrene in the first place, and try to not do that ever again.

Comment Re:Well, There You Go. (Score 0) 708

In some case, it will be top down. This will be in things like, building codes, emission guidlines etc.

If it gets too bad, then I will be all for a top down solution involving guns and the removal of corporate charters.
This is like 97% of all astronomers saying , there is a dark asteroid coming in a couple a hundred years the size of australia, we need to take action. And then large corporation and anti tax groups say 'no it isn't'. And 'your model isn't 100% perfect, therefor it's wrong and invalid!" and people saying. I'll believe it when I see it!" even though it will be too late to do anything about it.

In that case, I would also support taking action, even if it had to be a forced action.
This isn't about a different of opinion on a sports team, or tax code, or privacy. Its about something that will make all the irrelevant if we don't take action now.

Comment Thats been answered. (Score 0) 708

". To all you science people, correlation does not equal causation. "
no shit, Sherlock.

" How else do you explain the many periods of warming and cooling in the past long before humans even existed?"
There are different way the earth can warm. The effect of shoving more green house gasses into the atmosphere causes warming on top of other trends. There is no doubt about this at all.

https://www.ipcc.unibe.ch/publ...

" I rest my case"
You did not, in any way, 'make a case'. You might want to learn what the means.
If you want to make a case, you need to start by showing which one of these is false:

1) The Earth gets lots of light from the sun
2) Visible light emits IR when it strike something
3) CO2 absorbs energy from IR
4) Humans but more green house gasses into the air then can be absorbed.

The basic science on warming is trivial. Literally any of these can, nad have, been test by any decent College lab. Hell, even A good high school lab could do it. This is why deniers never talk about the actual science and only talk about cherry picked data points, or make ad homs.

So, the climate is warming due to more energy being trapped.
Climate Change is the impact AGW has on the climate. They are related but separate issues.
So, why would adding energy to a system not change it?
At this point, some knuckle head is about to slam his meat hooks onto his keyboard in what he thinks is a clever retort,. I will take this time to remind him the new equilibrium is only reach when the change in energy stops, and there is no rule saying the planet need to be livable when equilibrium is achieved.

More to the point:
Why do you think there is a 97% consensus? Why do you think countries whose best interest would be that there is no AGW agree there is AGW?
Some people think there is a weird conspiracy. That would mean the China is in on it for no reason. Why?

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