If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Einherjar86]

Meltdown, "the fall," etc. are apocalyptic notions closely tied to individualistic views of the world. Structural functionalism, systems theory, and other kinds of complexity theory complicate whether falls are really falls, and reject the idea of meltdown altogether. As far as systems are concerned, what we perceive as meltdown is restructuring. At this point in social development, even if we did experience an economic meltdown, social complexity has ingrained itself so deeply in our cultural consciousness that it would be nigh impossible to regress to some kind of mean, as you say, or base Crusoean state. We don't need all the fancy banking systems and conglomerates in order to be a complex society. Fantasies of the end never quite manage to capture the all the valences of social transformation.

In other news, this was cute:

https://thegeekygaeilgeoir.wordpress.com/2017/09/06/even-racists-got-the-blues/

Setting aside the politics of the post for a moment, the translation content alone is quite funny.

 

[CiG]

I understand you set to set aside the politics but that article is so stupid.

Nothing about it was racist and the Blue Lives Matter stupidity didn't just start as an opposition to Black Lives Matter but specifically started as a reaction to the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter which calls for dead cops, shooting pigs, frying bacon and so on.

That whole article could have just been man accidentally supports Black Lives Matter in an attempt to support Blue Lives Matter by pretending to understand Gaelic.

 

[Dak]

Meltdown, "the fall," etc. are apocalyptic notions closely tied to individualistic views of the world. Structural functionalism, systems theory, and other kinds of complexity theory complicate whether falls are really falls, and reject the idea of meltdown altogether. As far as systems are concerned, what we perceive as meltdown is restructuring. At this point in social development, even if we did experience an economic meltdown, social complexity has ingrained itself so deeply in our cultural consciousness that it would be nigh impossible to regress to some kind of mean, as you say, or base Crusoean state. We don't need all the fancy banking systems and conglomerates in order to be a complex society. Fantasies of the end never quite manage to capture the all the valences of social transformation.

The "Great Recession" unfortunately was not what I would call a meltdown (and little was restructured), so it's still hard to know what meltdown exactly would look like. I do agree that restructurings are a necessity of hubristic overgrowth in any particular area of society, but it is possible to have catastrophes in which real information and/or capital is lost, rather than simply shifted.

In other news, this was cute:

https://thegeekygaeilgeoir.wordpress.com/2017/09/06/even-racists-got-the-blues/

Setting aside the politics of the post for a moment, the translation content alone is quite funny.

One of the main lessons from my German classes was "don't trust online translators." Was always funny when someone got caught doing that.

 

[Einherjar86]

The "Great Recession" unfortunately was not what I would call a meltdown (and little was restructured), so it's still hard to know what meltdown exactly would look like. I do agree that restructurings are a necessity of hubristic overgrowth in any particular area of society, but it is possible to have catastrophes in which real information and/or capital is lost, rather than simply shifted.

I wouldn't deny that, but it's really difficult to imagine what kind of catastrophe that would be. As Jameson said, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

I understand you set to set aside the politics but that article is so stupid.

Nothing about it was racist and the Blue Lives Matter stupidity didn't just start as an opposition to Black Lives Matter but specifically started as a reaction to the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter which calls for dead cops, shooting pigs, frying bacon and so on.

That whole article could have just been man accidentally supports Black Lives Matter in an attempt to support Blue Lives Matter by pretending to understand Gaelic.

I found all the little bits of information as to why the translation was incorrect pretty interesting; but I suppose it could have been reduced to that simple line. It strikes me that that's what clickbait articles do, though. I prefer substance.

 

[Dak]

I wouldn't deny that, but it's really difficult to imagine what kind of catastrophe that would be. As Jameson said, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

If the root of capitalism is private property and interpersonal property exchange, I'd argue capitalism only ends with humanity. I don't make personal/private property distinctions of course.

 

[CiG]

I found all the little bits of information as to why the translation was incorrect pretty interesting; but I suppose it could have been reduced to that simple line. It strikes me that that's what clickbait articles do, though. I prefer substance.

For what it's worth I actually speak Gaelic myself and I lol'd at his stupid fucking shirt slogan faux-pas before I even read anything.

 

[rms]

why the hell do you know gaelic?

 

[Dak]

https://www.theatlantic.com/educati...ind-campus-response-to-sexual-assault/539211/

A moment of sanity from the Atlantic:

As of 2014, Harvard Law’s Title IX training for its disciplinary board included Campbell’s PowerPoint slides. Janet Halley, a professor at Harvard Law School, wrote of the intended effect of the training on recipients: “It is 100% aimed to convince them to believe complainants, precisely when they seem unreliable and incoherent.”
-------
Campbell’s claim that a sexual-assault victim’s memory consists of completely accurate but disorganized fragments contradicts fundamental scientific knowledge of the nature of memory, McNally told me. “The brain is not a videotape machine,” he said. “All of our memories are re-constructed. All of our memories are incomplete in that sense.”
-------

Elizabeth Loftus, a professor of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine, has done pathbreaking work on memory manipulation. When I described to her what’s now being taught to administrators and students, she said it sounded disturbingly like a return of “recovered memory” theory, with some neurobiology thrown in “to give luster” to the argument.

During the recovered-memory scare of the 1980s and ’90s, thousands of people were convinced by their therapist—and by best-selling books on the subject—that their problems were caused by repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, often at the hands of their father. The theory was that the mind buried what had happened because it was so awful, but that the “forgotten” events nonetheless caused a lifetime of pain. Guided by therapists, victims were able to recover the memory and begin healing.


As it turned out, though, many therapists were implanting false memories in vulnerable people, resulting in baseless accusations that tore families apart. The frenzy eventually burned out when researchers, including McNally, discredited the underlying assumptions. “The notion that the mind protects itself by repressing or dissociating memories of trauma,” he writes in Remembering Trauma, “is a piece of psychiatric folklore devoid of convincing empirical support.”
-------
The result is not only a system in which some men are wrongly accused and wrongly punished. It is a system vulnerable to substantial backlash. University professors and administrators should understand this. And they, of all people, should identify and call out junk science.

 

[Dak]

https://theoutline.com/post/2202/climate-change-denial-should-be-a-crime

Now climate alarmists are using the "look out the window" argument. My how things change. That's fine. Just wait for winter.

 

[CiG]

why the hell do you know gaelic?

Because I'm a bonnie gae lad.

 

[Einherjar86]

https://theoutline.com/post/2202/climate-change-denial-should-be-a-crime

Now climate alarmists are using the "look out the window" argument. My how things change. That's fine. Just wait for winter.

Winter is coming...

But yeah, looking out the window isn't a good argument.

While for some it may be enough to know that climate change makes hurricanes more frequent and more intense, the process of attributing individual events to climate change is tough. It will actually be easier to do for Harvey than for Irma. Ben Strauss, vice president for sea level and climate impacts at Climate Central, said that the first scientific estimates assessing climate change’s impact on Harvey will likely be available within the next month—which is fast for science. He attributed this to the fact that Harvey was a massive precipitation event, and scientists have a clearer understanding of how climate change affects that sort of storm. Furthermore, Harvey included coastal flooding, which is more clearly influenced by higher sea levels, a known consequence of climate change. Proving causation for Irma, mostly exceptional in strength as opposed to precipitation, will be trickier, and Strauss estimated that would take at least a year.

Strauss stressed that while drawing the connections between a storm and climate change is a useful scientific endeavor, most laypeople don’t need to see the exact causation to fit the narrative to their own personal beliefs. If you think climate change is a problem, you know that one of the consequences is increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes, and it doesn’t much matter if there was the direct causation here. Harvey and Irma are what climate change looks like, and if we want to minimize that, we had better tackle climate change.

Connecting hurricanes to climate change requires thinking at a certain level of abstraction. (Or as Strauss put it: Thinking about the causation “gets a little bit metaphysical.”) Many people have too many other concerns right in front of them—pressing needs that make global systems and our impact on them feel very far away from their daily lives. And so if you don’t think climate change is a massive pressing issue, you’re likely to see a large hurricane as just a large hurricane.

But that’s where having storms back-to-back might actually help change the general public’s understanding of how climate change plays into hurricane season, says Arthur Lupia, a political science professor at the University of Michigan who studies how people make decisions. Harvey was a visceral event that brought with it an onslaught of stories of the people affected. All the sudden something that felt abstract was tangible—people started to realize “this could happen to my family” or “this could happen to my home.” And now Irma, a second event of catastrophic proportions in a second location, re-emphasizes that conclusion. It makes it much harder to write it off as a fluke, even if it was a fluke, which again, we won’t scientifically know for quite a while.

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...te_change_has_to_do_with_irma_and_harvey.html

 

[CiG]

All the tax-rape climate change policies in the world can't counteract my praying for the end of the world.

 

[Dak]

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...te_change_has_to_do_with_irma_and_harvey.html

Except there hasn't been an "increase in frequency and intensity". Pointing to Harvey and Irma is an example of recency bias.

https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/major-hurricane-us-landfall-drought-study

The U.S. is in new record territory, as the nation passes the nine and a half year mark without the landfall of a major hurricane. But what researchers believe is behind the so-called hurricane drought might surprise you.

We made it 10 and a half. Now, obviously this is about the ones making landfall rather than total activity.

One of the reasons researchers believe that there hasn't been a real change in hurricane seasons is that Atlantic hurricane seasons have been average, as measured by accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) since 2006. ACE is a measure of tropical cyclone activity, taking into account the number, strength and duration of all the tropical cyclones in a season. According to the researchers, "The 2006-2014 annual mean ACE is 97, compared to a 1951-2000 mean of 93."

So a minute uptick in total activity, much of which obviously didn't make US landfall.

Edit: Diff topic

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2017/09/04/guns-germs-and-steel-revisited/

Conclusion
We could use more serious work on macrohistory and the rise of civilization: it’s an interesting and important subject. In particular I’d like to see a really smart and detailed comparison of the two totally independent births of civilization in the Old and New Worlds. But this book isn’t serious. The thesis is a joke, and most of the supporting arguments are forced ( i.e. wrong). Perhaps the most important thing we can learn from Guns, Germs, and Steel is that most people are suckers, eager to sign on to ridiculous theories as long as they have the right political implications.

 

[Einherjar86]

Except there hasn't been an "increase in frequency and intensity". Pointing to Harvey and Irma is an example of recency bias.

Except there has, which you go on to admit but try to downplay. Harvey and Irma are anomalies, and we can't point to them as proof or even convincing evidence by themselves. I know that. But this is the information on general Atlantic activity:

There has been a substantial increase in most measures of Atlantic hurricane activity since the early 1980s, the period during which high-quality satellite data are available. These include measures of intensity, frequency, and duration as well as the number of strongest (Category 4 and 5) storms. The ability to assess longer-term trends in hurricane activity is limited by the quality of available data. The historic record of Atlantic hurricanes dates back to the mid-1800s, and indicates other decades of high activity. However, there is considerable uncertainty in the record prior to the satellite era (early 1970s), and the further back in time one goes, the more uncertain the record becomes.

However, not all of those hurricanes have made landfall or have directly affected the United States, which you also admit. Climate change is a global phenomenon, and their will be disparities across the globe.

Changes in the average length and positions of Atlantic storm tracks are also associated with regional climate variability. The locations and frequency of storms striking land have been argued to vary in opposing ways than basin-wide frequency. For example, fewer storms have been observed to strike land during warmer years even though overall activity is higher than average, which may help to explain the lack of any clear trend in landfall frequency along the U.S. eastern and Gulf coasts. Climate models also project changes in hurricane tracks and where they strike land. The specific characteristics of the changes are being actively studied.

http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-climate/changes-hurricanes

(see the actual article for citations)

It seems to me that you make a point or rejecting the argument outright, then concede minor elements of (in your opinion) minor consequence. I'm not even making a political argument about the approach to climate change, I'm simply citing an article (the one from Slate, I mean) that asks an important question: will Harvey and Irma provide a narrative of explicitly domestic destruction that finally brings the message of climate change close enough to home that Americans might actually start caring about it?

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2017/09/04/guns-germs-and-steel-revisited/

Seems like a misapplication of the notion of "intelligence."

 

[Dak]

If a 3pt increase on the ACE in the last 10 years is "substantial", I guess you can hang your hat on that.

From the first citation (#14) in your link supposedly supporting the statement

"There has been a substantial increase in most measures of Atlantic hurricane activity since the early 1980s, the period during which high-quality satellite data are available. These include measures of intensity, frequency, and duration as well as the number of strongest (Category 4 and 5) storms."

https://data.globalchange.gov/reference/f03b40a2-9d89-4aa9-adb8-dd21d7a95b52

Compiling the activity over all seven TC basins,the 2011 season (2010/11 in the Southern Hemisphere) saw a well-below-average (1981–2010 base period) number of named storms (NS; wind speeds " 34 kts or 17.5 m s-1) and hurricanes/
typhoons/cyclones (HTC; wind speeds " 64 kts or 32.9 m s-1) and an above-average number of major HTCs (wind speeds "
96 kts or 49.4 m s-1). Globally, 74 named storms3 developed during the 2011 season (global average is 89), with 38 becoming
HTCs (global average is 44). Of these, 22 (compared to 26 in 2006, 18 in 2007, 20 in 2008, 16 in 2009, and 22 in
2010) attained major/intense status (global average is 19). Therefore, while the overall NS count was wellbelow
average, the number of major/intense storms was above the IBTrACS global average. On the whole, while global tropical cyclone activity
was again below normal in 2011, it was higher than in 2010, which set the record for the lowest number of global TCs since the start of the satellite era. There were no clear-cut Category 5 systems during the year, an unusual occurrence, with the year’s most intense
systems: (1) Adrian, Dora, Eugene, Hilary, and Kenneth in the Northeast Pacific; (2) Ophelia in the North Atlantic; (3) Nanmadol, Songda, and Muifa in the Northwest Pacific; and (4) Yasi in the Australian region, all peaking at Category 44.

The only basin which had substantially abovenormal activity in 2011 was the North Atlantic, where
elevated TC activity is a typical response to La Niña has been seen in 12 of the last 17 seasons since 1995.
Conversely, the South Indian, North Indian, and Northeast Pacific basins experienced well-belownormal
TC numbers (although the Northeast Pacific had an above-normal average number of hurricanes
and major hurricanes). Part of the explanation for the low global number of tropical cyclones was that
the characteristic La Niña boost to numbers in the Australian region, which would normally offset La
Niña-induced deficits in many other hurricane regions, was absent in 2011, with both the Australian
region and the Southwest Pacific basins experiencing near-normal activity.

When the first citation not only doesn't provide explicit support for the website statement, it undermines the general thesis by A. placing the blame on La Nina, and B. Pointing out total global TC was down for the time period reviewed in the citation. Another one of the citations is about modeling, which doesn't support empirical claims. Such easily determined shoddy citations (easily as in one doesn't need expert understanding of technical language in the field) doesn't lend any credence to climate alarmism.

 

[Einherjar86]

A. The general thesis is a general thesis. There's no specific evidence for that specific comment, otherwise it wouldn't be a general thesis. It's an extrapolation of all the evidence gathered.

B. Modeling is based on empirical measurements, which we are always in the process of taking and adding to the models we create. The computer is the best laboratory we have for assessing climate change.

C. They're not shoddy citations, they're reflecting the indeterminate and volatile nature of climate statistics, which don't always cohere perfectly and which aren't always consistent. Scientists understand this, which is why climate science is ongoing.

None of that changes the general thesis, which is that hurricanes have intensified since about 1980. You approach this argument like it's describing a hermetically sealed experiment in a controlled lab. Climate science not only isn't done that way, it can't be done that way.

 

[Dak]

B. Modeling is based on empirical measurements, which we are always in the process of taking and adding to the models we create. The computer is the best laboratory we have for assessing climate change.

Sure, but it's not a study on hurricanes in the last x number of years, so not a supporting citation for the statement - even if the modeling study cites actual support. Lazy writing.

A. The general thesis is a general thesis. There's no specific evidence for that specific comment, otherwise it wouldn't be a general thesis. It's an extrapolation of all the evidence gathered.

C. They're not shoddy citations, they're reflecting the indeterminate and volatile nature of climate statistics, which don't always cohere perfectly and which aren't always consistent. Scientists understand this, which is why climate science is ongoing.

Sure, climate science like social sciences are volatile, and inconsistent. But it's apparently not an extrapolation of the evidence, because I pull two of the citations and no support for the statement.

None of that changes the general thesis, which is that hurricanes have intensified since about 1980. You approach this argument like it's describing a hermetically sealed experiment in a controlled lab. Climate science not only isn't done that way, it can't be done that way.

https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/accumulated_cyclone_energy.asp

From the Weather Channel

10 Things We Know About Accumulated Cyclone Energy
1. There is no evidence of a systematic increasing or decreasing trend in ACE for the years 1970-2012.

3. The contribution of ACE from the Eastern and Western Pacific is approximately 56% of the total ACE.

4. The contribution of ACE from the Atlantic Ocean is approximately 13% of the total ACE.

The Atlantic is a small player in total ACE, and there's been no systemic changes in ACE since 1970.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL047711/full

Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40-years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low. Here evidence is presented demonstrating that considerable variability in tropical cyclone ACE is associated with the evolution of the character of observed large-scale climate mechanisms including the El Niño Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In contrast to record quiet North Pacific tropical cyclone activity in 2010, the North Atlantic basin remained very active by contributing almost one-third of the overall calendar year global ACE.

So one area gets affected by La Nina while the world is seeing a downward trend and it's the disastrous result of anthropogenic climate change.

 

[Einherjar86]

Sure, but it's not a study on hurricanes in the last x number of years, so not a supporting citation for the statement - even if the modeling study cites actual support. Lazy writing.

Sure, climate science like social sciences are volatile, and inconsistent. But it's apparently not an extrapolation of the evidence, because I pull two of the citations and no support for the statement.

You don't get it. Data can contradict a thesis. It's more honest to include that data than to bury it.

There is a lot of data on climate change that does contradict alarmist arguments. But contradictory data does not a refutation make. What it says is that the relation between things like hurricanes and climate change is tenuous; but all the locally testable phenomena, like ocean temperatures, point to a larger picture.

You're relying on immediate observations for a science that exceeds what we can perceive. Your methodology for talking about this is insufficient for what's actually happening. Computer models are necessary because even if the empirical evidence is sketchy and inconsistent, there are compelling reasons to believe that inter-generational (that's in human terms) increases will be likely, and the complete happenstance of Harvey and Irma could help convey that pattern.

Here's a wording that's more amenable to your skepticism:

we conclude that despite statistical correlations between SST and Atlantic hurricane activity in recent decades, it is premature to conclude that human activity–and particularly greenhouse warming–has already caused a detectable change in Atlantic hurricane activity. (“Detectable” here means the change is large enough to be distinguishable from the variability due to natural causes.) However, human activity may have already caused some some changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observation limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).

We also conclude that it is likely that climate warming will cause hurricanes in the coming century to be more intense globally and to have higher rainfall rates than present-day hurricanes. In our view, there are better than even odds that the numbers of very intense (category 4 and 5) hurricanes will increase by a substantial fraction in some basins, while it is likely that the annual number of tropical storms globally will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged. These assessment statements are intended to apply to climate warming of the type projected for the 21st century by IPCC AR4 scenarios, such as A1B.

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

Now you'll probably say that it isn't observable yet, so that's that. But that's part of the problem...

Also, the Weather Channel has acknowledged a likely link between hurricanes and climate change.

 

[Satanstoenail]

 

[Dak]

You don't get it. Data can contradict a thesis. It's more honest to include that data than to bury it.

There is a lot of data on climate change that does contradict alarmist arguments. But contradictory data does not a refutation make. What it says is that the relation between things like hurricanes and climate change is tenuous; but all the locally testable phenomena, like ocean temperatures, point to a larger picture.

You're relying on immediate observations for a science that exceeds what we can perceive. Your methodology for talking about this is insufficient for what's actually happening. Computer models are necessary because even if the empirical evidence is sketchy and inconsistent, there are compelling reasons to believe that inter-generational (that's in human terms) increases will be likely, and the complete happenstance of Harvey and Irma could help convey that pattern.

I don't see the ACE as being an "immediate observation". That's what appeals to Harvey and Irma are. Computer models, like economic models, are based on inputs, which have various biases, as well as not being able to account for an infinite amount of unknown contingencies. Even if we expect some intergenerational increases in the next however many generations, that in no way means that we can simply infer anthropogenically driven increases, nor can we infer the lack of any sort of countermechanisms, counter black swans, or even black swans which accelerate warming (like increased sun activity), or simple longterm natural variance in complex systems.

I should reiterate I'm a staunch believer in climate change, for the simple fact that the alternative is climate stasis, the idea of which is empirically laughable. What that change will look like, and what drives it, is not even remotely settled, and is most likely measured in terms of variance rather than increase/decrease.

Here's a wording that's more amenable to your skepticism:

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

Now you'll probably say that it isn't observable yet, so that's that. But that's part of the problem...

Also, the Weather Channel has acknowledged a likely link between hurricanes and climate change.

Well, it's not only not observable, but wouldn't we expect such liklihoods based purely on normal variance/volatility?

In our view, there are better than even odds that the numbers of very intense (category 4 and 5) hurricanes will increase by a substantial fraction in some basins, while it is likely that the annual number of tropical storms globally will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged.

"51% chance things will be different in the coming century in some places than they were, but overall no major changes." Man, talk about hedging the hedge. I could give you the same line on the forecast for Massachusetts next week and how much more actionable knowledge would you have? Furthermore, it's probably impossible for me to be wrong. Tons of time + vague prediction + 51% odds. Significance = 0.

Edit:

• It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity. That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).

This is in direct contradiction to your previous link.