A post smearing MAGA supporters and accusing them of being in an anti Tesla conspiracy isn’t political? Pro and anti Tesla people come from everywhere, as do supporters.
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A post smearing MAGA supporters and accusing them of being in an anti Tesla conspiracy isn’t political? Pro and anti Tesla people come from everywhere, as do supporters.
They happen to be highly active maga movement leaders. I follow the short discussions, and this is where my investigation brought me. I’m not going to name names publicly out of respect for those other political believers in that movement.
But if I were a trump supporter and a Tesla supporter, I’d like to know who’s using the maga movement platform for personal gain and give my opinion to them.
I don’t care what political party someone identifies with, if they use their political platform to promote a personal stock position for person gain or to help financial backers with their personal gain, then it should bother me as a fellow supporter. That’s not a movement platform that I’m aware of. It’s an actual highjacking of a platform.
This is a dirty game going on right now in the public markets.
Exactly the reason to have Tesla remove itself from it and go private.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
That's like saying I took an elevator down from the 10th floor once so I'll be fine if I jump out a window 10 stories up. Same distance but the time spent covering it might provide entirely different results. Studies are already showing that when today's plants are exposed to excess CO2 they may grow faster but are less nutrient dense and less resistant to stress.
I don't have the citation right now, but there were several articles about how a large number of Republican campaigns in 2012-2016, specifically, had been turned into fundraising shell games which were designed to benefit the candidate or the funder or the person organizing the PAC, and not *really* intended to win elections. There was an article explaining how a bunch of right-wing political organizations were basically just direct mail scams. So this may be another variant of the same thing.
It's a little sad to see how common this has gotten. (And no, it's not happening with any significant number of Democratic campaigns; I won't speculate as to why.)
Major volcanic eruptions (bigger than anything we've seen in recorded history) can dump more CO2 in the atmosphere in a year or two as all human activity. The Toba eruption 40-55K years ago was the most recent super volcano eruption. I can't find the page I was looking at now, but the CO2 produced was on the order of 100s Gt in a very short time. Most of it in the first few days. Many have seen what would happen if Yellowstone erupted, Toba was just as big.
Toba did kill most of the humans on Earth and narrowed the gene pool. It was in the aftermath of that eruption when humans began to get the regional variations we have as the survivors inbred with one another. However, the ecosystem took a hit and recovered as it has before. The volcanic winter caused by the initial eruption was probably what did the most damage to humanity. The high levels of SO2 put into the atmosphere (staggeringly higher than anything humans have done) also hit the environment.
We can't really get our minds around super volcanoes because they are very rare compared to the arc of human history and the last one happened in human pre-history. In the short term they have an impact on the world on par with a nuclear war. Life manages to get through them. Some species probably went extinct because of their impact on the climate, but it's relatively rare.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
So you agree that rapid climate change is a potentially devastating event, whatever the cause.
Ulmo
Active Member
That's interesting, and almost certainly what happened (for decades, GOP couldn't win an election if it was handed to them on a silver platter). Both parties are corrupt as hell; we call them the Uniparty. You've intrigued me to the other topic you're replying to.
I agree with everything Foghat said except that they are MAGA leaders; they just pretend to be associated, or those are personal affairs not related to MAGA. I've also seen, how shall I put this, immoral people doing immoral things. The fact they jumped on the nearest bandwaggon doesn't surprise me at all. Nearly everybody and their grandparents is #MAGA right now, and while it does say a lot about their support of Country, Future, and Improvement, it doesn't say anything else about them, because it is as wide a variety of people as there are in the country and on the planet. Immoral people probably are lying when they say they're #MAGA, but just jump on and pretend, but as I sit here and think about it, why not? If we make things better, in their mind, they would have a larger better pot to steal from, or even go legit; in my mind, I hope their illegit ways are somehow expunged forever.
Looked at from the perspective of immoral people attacking Tesla, of course that means that removing Tesla from NASDAQ will benefit Tesla; Tesla will be able to move more quietly and without the easy attacks. All you'll hear is a bunch of jealous people talking about how electric isn't loud enough, doesn't put out enough smell, and "isn't powerful enough", even as they are overpowered by every EV in their midst, and they go pouting home and drink grain.
On the immoral front when Tesla is private, everyone will bicker about whose tax money they want to steal and don't want to pay, as usual. I'm in the camp there should be no more incentive, since both solar and EV's have taken hold and become economical, but I want that across the board: no incentive to pollute (so, charge them for pollution); no incentive for anything. But it doesn't work that way: we have strategic needs to transition from the old style to the new style, and right now, we're stopping terrorism by pumping out as much oil and coal as we can. The faster we can get the old oil companies on board with transitioning to solar, the better, which is exactly what KSA is trying to do.
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Most moderate to major changes in environment are disruptive to the organisms affected. Most are local, like an oil spill will kill a lot of birds and marine life, or an unusually cold winter will reduce the mosquito and flea population (at least around here).
During much of the Roman Empire, world temperatures were fairly warm and Northern Europe and Siberia were more livable. With warm weather, they were able to grow enough food to support themselves.
As the weather cooled about the same time the Roman Empire began to rot at the core a number of things happened. It caused some people to start migrating. Scandinavia had more people than the land could support so they started coming south and fighting their way into the Roman Empire. Siberia also became a difficult place to live and tribes set out for someplace more hospitable. That also caused waves of "illegal immigration" into the Roman Empire. These tribes were known as the Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, etc. A couple made it all the way to Rome, though most settled in Eastern Europe. The Slavic people today are a mix of these nomadic tribes and the natives who were there before them.
Human civilization has become more sophisticated, but in some ways it has become more vulnerable too. When most people lived in hovels with few possessions, it was a problem, but easily solved to pick up stakes and move to a different house if living where you were becomes untenable. Today we have over 1.5 million people living in Manhattan alone. It's a small island essentially at sea level and it's the financial hub of the continent. If Manhattan becomes unlivable, for any reason, relocating those people and all the systems that tie in there would be a major task. Far more effort than 100 villagers having to build new hovels.
People go on about how climate change could kill the planet. The odds of that are lower than the odds of winning Power Ball. Twice in a row. The degree of change we are talking about from human introduced CO2 could put human civilization at risk and a collapse of civilization could kill a significant number of humans. It could also mean a pretty good hit, short term, for some animal species, but the Geologic record shows many, many climate changes far greater than what we're talking about and most species survive just fine. Their numbers might take a hit for a short period, but they come back when the change normalizes.
The last 2 million years have been among the coldest in Earth's history. There was a period about 650 million years ago when there was an ice age so severe the ice caps reached the equator, but for most of Earth's history, temps have been much higher. About 1/2 of the last 600 million years world temps have been about 10C warmer than today.
Human civilization and possibly the human species might not survive a major warming, but the world will.
The current time is not the warmest it's been in the last couple million years either
This is a chart of the ice core data over the last 450,000 years. You can see relatively short spikes of warm with longer spans of cold. The present is on the far right (the Holocene). The last warm period was warmer than the current warm period (the Eemian).. Evidence has been found in the middle of the Everglades of a coral reef that had been off the coast of Florida during that period. It's now in the middle of Florida because the peninsula was that thin due to high seas then.
Any major change over a relatively short time would be disruptive and possibly calamitous. Changing climate wasn't the only reason the Roman Empire fell apart, but it probably contributed. Too big a change too quickly would be very rough on human civilization, but about the only thing humans could do that would really harm Earth beyond a relatively short hiccup would be a full blown nuclear war.
Earth is going to have a tougher time dealing with plastic, and human depletion of the oceans. There are feedback loops in the world's climate that deal with changes in CO2 and both warming and cooling, but Earth has never had to deal with plastic before. I'm surprised no bacteria has evolved to eat the stuff. It's a banquet waiting to happen to the right organism. But for some reason that hasn't happened.
Most humans tend to think in years and decades because that's the limit of a human lifespan, but we're just a fly speck in the whole arc of world history. What we're doing to the planet is more than humans, or any one species has ever done, but human capabilities pale in the face of what the planet and the cosmos can deliver.
For Tesla the $7500 incentive worked perfectly. They hit the 200K mark right as their first mass produced, affordable long range EV hit production stride. For the rest of the industry, not so much, but that's on them. They could have done it, they just didn't.
lolachampcar
Well-Known Member
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Exactly. My concern for the "planet" mostly ends with the loss of humanity. Something else will survive but it may never become a higher life form.
As for plastic eating microbes: Scientists stumbled upon a plastic-eating bacterium—then accidentally made it stronger
I've often thought if we do ourselves in next up will be raccoons.
Some people in respectable science (NASA) are considering the possibility that humans are not the first intelligent species on Earth:
Was There a Civilization On Earth Before Humans? - The Atlantic
Interesting, maybe there is a way out. Though the bacteria will probably also eat plastic we don't want eaten.
I'm going to stop you right there. It's not the world which is the problem, it's human civilization. We evolved in a cold "icehouse" climate, as did our entire food web, and we are not equipped to switch to "hothouse climate".
(If you had bothered to actually learn some geology, you would know that there are two quasi-stable climate states, in the very long run since the development of photosynthesis in the pre-Cambrian. "Hothouse" and "Icehouse". For a long time, we didn't know why. We have slowly figured out what feedback loops prevent us from getting colder than "Icehouse". Global warming finally explains how we switch from Icehouse to Hothouse. It's less clear how we switch from Hothouse to Icehouse, although the Azolla event is one example, others are thought to be much slower, on the millions-of-years scale. Nobody knows for sure what feedback loop prevents us from exceeding Hothouse, especially since we actually exceeded Hothouse climate temperatures once.)
This is not true. The icecaps were still frozen. You're spouting denialist rhetoric. Don't fall for it; it's false. This is just a minor local fluctuation within the larger "icehouse world".
Again, this is just local phenomena. The icecaps existed. You couldn't sail across the Arctic. You're spreading denialist propaganda. It's not actually correct, as anyone who's actually studied climate history will be happy to tell you.
That is, to put it politely, COMPLETE BULLSHIT. 99% of all geologists, and even a majority of the ones employed by oil companies (who have an incentive to believe lies) will tell you that human burning of CO2 is causing climate change right now.
They know about the Great Dying, the P-Tr extinction, which *was caused by CO2 emissions.*.
You're spreading denialist bullshit again. I actually know a bunch of geology professors. The geology *museum* near my *house* which is run by a geology *institute* will warn you of the dangers of global warming.
Again, denialist bullshit.
This is ALSO denialist bullshit. What propaganda garbage *have* you been listening to? It's simply not true.
I study biology as well, and it's simply not true. Look up the Great Dying if you want the geology record.
Plants do pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, but it's not "within a few years". If you put in way too much CO2, what happens is you change which plants can handle the environment (YES, this is happening now and it's documented), and it takes a long time for the plant ecosystem to switch over. Even after that, the majority of plant material decays and gets re-emitted as CO2; only the portion which is sequestered by sinking deep in the soil or in the ocean bottom is actually removed, and that's a *slow process*.
Something like the Azolla event is our best bet for fast global cooling. But it took a million years.
False. That one volcano in 1815 produced far less. You've been reading a LOT of bullshit, haven't you.
We are now producing CO2 on the order of the megavolcanoes which are currently believed to have caused the Great Dying. Yes, they did produce similar quantities.
Please stop mainlining the BS and start reading reputable scientific sources. I agree with you that we have a lot of other environmental-damage problems going on, and I'm all for birth control (it's my primary charity), so I'm shocked to see that you've bought into the massive disinformation campaign designed to pretend that fossil fuel burning isn't causing global warming.
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I'll also add that sinking indigestible plastic into landfills, or even to the bottom of the ocean, is probably a pretty good way of sequestering carbon. But the bacteria are learning to digest the plastic (turning much of it into CO2) already anyway... so...
Anyway, the bottom line, according to *essentially all scientists in every field*, is that we have to stop creating artificial megavolcanoes with our coal and oil burning. If we don't stop, we will kick Earth into hothouse world, and humans can't handle hothouse world.
Anyway, the bottom line, according to *essentially all scientists in every field*, is that we have to stop creating artificial megavolcanoes with our coal and oil burning. If we don't stop, we will kick Earth into hothouse world, and humans can't handle hothouse world.
You are now disagreeing with all scientists in the world. You're just flat out wrong.
It's not really collapsing yet, it's just sick.
If the ocean gets acidic enough that plankton can't form their shells, THEN it actually COLLAPSES. As it did in the P-Tr extinction (this is pretty new science, last couple of decades, but it's established now).
Sure it does, after it switches from icehouse world to hothouse world and the ocean food web collapses. And then it takes several million years.
We have geologic history here: the P-Tr extinction. We're repeating it. That time it was megavolcanoes. Now, our cars and powerplants ARE the megavolcanoes.
We are a fragile species with a fragile civilization. Any major changes to our environment could be catastrophic.
There is some interesting data that has surfaced in the last few years. As the Voyager spacecraft have left the solar system they found our entire solar has been in the particle cloud from a supernova. Radioactive material was found on the sea floor that dates back to Earth getting hit with the blast wave from the supernova about 1.5-2 million years ago, which is just about the time the current icehouse climate started.
Correlation does not mean causation, but it is interesting these two things happened around the same time.
I never said the icecaps melted, I said that southern Greenland was ice free during the Medieval Warming and there were valleys in the Alps that were passable by Hannibal during the Roman Warm Period that have glaciers now. Neither of those things require the ice caps melt. Cape Farewell, the southern tip of Greenland is at 59 46 N. It's not at the North Pole.
I know quite a few Geologists as well as have some in my family. What I stated is the opinion of most of the Geologists I know. The original poll that said 90 some percent of "Climate Scientists" believed in human caused global warming also only had 56% of Geologsts who thought humans caused most or all of it.
Not completely. The Permian extinction was probably caused by the Siberian Traps hot spot starting. This was the biggest volcanic event in the Geological record. It did dump massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere which did acidify the oceans a little, but the volcano also dumped massive amounts of methane and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. The SO2 came back to earth as sulfuric acid rain which really, massively acidified the oceans.
We are putting some methane into the atmosphere, but we aren't putting anywhere near the SO2 into the atmosphere, so the comparison to human produced CO2 being the equivalent of a mega volcano is only part right.
Bad memory, not what I'm reading. I found the reference, the Tambora eruption produced a lot less CO2, but it did put 70 Mt of SO2 into the atmosphere.
Toba produced less CO2 than we produce now, but it also put 1.1 Gt of h2So4 into the environment, which is probably what did the most damage.
Section 2.0 here sums up some of the biggest volcanoes:
Volcanic Carbon Dioxide
I still want to stress, I don't think burning hydrocarbons is a great idea and we should be doing everything we can to reasonably transition away from them, but the entire global economy is tightly woven with hydrocarbon burning and shutting that down is going to take time. We've discussed many times on this forum the logistics of just changing over cars to electricity. We have the tech to do it now, but the industrial capacity is not there yet and it's going to take a while to build it out. That's just one part of the hydrocarbon economy. They are used to generate electricity, run ships, run trains, and fly planes. We don't even have a workable alternative for aircraft and ships could be made hybrid, but full electric is still a ways off.
Pulling out of the Paris climate accords, like everything Trump does, was stupid. Even if skeptical about the reason given, the goals will serve a lot of other goods. It will spawn new technology which could give the US an edge in the world economy. It would also reduce pollution in cities and many health effects from petroleum in the environment. Basing a transportation infrastructure on electricity as much as possible and using renewables as much as possible frees a country from dependence on imported oil, which has positive ripple effects through an economy.
We do need to quit using oil. Even if human produced CO2 is not dramatically affecting the climate and the warming we're seeing is some natural process we have yet to understand, burning fossil fuels when there are alternatives is stupid for many reasons and doing anything that tilts the balance in any system is not a good thing to do.
Even if eating donuts and processed foods isn't dramatically affecting my health and the weight gain and diabetes we're seeing is some natural process we have yet to understand...
Climate science is far more than just correlation and causation. To try to pretend that their might be some natural processes we don't understand yet is just putting your head in the sand to ignore the actual scientific data.
Also, to the volcano nonsense, I read as much of that guy's website as I could stomach. It's really interesting when someone pretends they're purpose is to expose the twisting of facts, when all they do is twist facts. But if conspiracy theories is what you like, find a better one.
Volcanoes and human caused climate change have nothing to do with each other. Volcanoes have a net cooling effect, due to raising the Earth's albedo.
Anyway here's a link to an actual peer reviewed article about volcanoes and human caused ghg's https://earthscience.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Gerlach2011_EOS.pdf
And here's an excerpt:
" the clear need to communicate the dwarfing of volcanic CO2 by anthropogenic CO2 to educators, climate change policy makers, the media, and the general public is also important. Discussions about climate policy can only benefit from this recognition."
In short, there is no scientific basis for using volcanic CO2 emissions as an excuse for failing to manage humanity’s carbon footprint.
Ulmo
Active Member
I want to take this opportunity to point out that in my experience, the current POTUS is and always has been the nicest, most loving, and most polite POTUS I've ever known in my life. The problem, I believe, is that he is also one of if not the world's best persuaders, and he intentionally rattles the cages of his opponents in order to fluff them all up and extract value (out of the difference of potential gap between the truth and what his opponents start clamoring about), causing his opponents to think quite the opposite of what I think about him. Also, I think the other POTUS's were all lying to my face, and I never could stand it one bit, so to me the ratio of niceness between the current POTUS to all the previous POTUS's combined in my mind is out of this world more than 1 if all niceness number measurements are above 0 ("above 0" is quite a stipulation, because I think most of the POTUSs except Reagan were negative niceness, and anyway I have to say above 0 because otherwise I might get a divide by 0 error). Since this is a wonderful technique, I want to say it only once here this year, since I don't want to hinder the whole thing, but it would be nice to have a little bit of sanity around places too, so I don't mind mentioning it once.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I have to question your sanity after this post.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Agreed. Not just POTUS - just the best human ever. Well, at least going all the way back to Klansman Frank.
That rare super eruptions have, in the year they occurred put more CO2 in the atmosphere than a year of current human activity is irrelevant in assessing the environmental impact of human driven climate change. They did not raise global CO2 ppm anywhere near as much as human emissions over just the past 50 years.
Graphic: The relentless rise of carbon dioxide – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet
"Ancient air bubbles trapped in ice enable us to step back in time and see what Earth's atmosphere, and climate, were like in the distant past. They tell us that levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere are higher than they have been at any time in the past 400,000 years. During ice ages, CO2 levels were around 200 parts per million (ppm), and during the warmer interglacial periods, they hovered around 280 ppm (see fluctuations in the graph). In 2013, CO2 levels surpassed 400 ppm for the first time in recorded history."
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