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Senate Global Climate Change

Discussion in 'Community' started by Jabbadabbado, May 7, 2014.

  1. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    trust me, its an illusion

    a sweet, wonderful illusion
     
  2. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    graph of the change in public opinion over the last decade+.

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/168620/one-four-solidly-skeptical-global-warming.aspx

    "concerned believers" now outnumber any group. a quarter of the population are skeptics. 80% of skeptics lean/vote GOP. Men are more likely to be climate change deniers than women.

    2001 was before climate change denial became a conservative litmus test I guess.

    [​IMG]

    It would be nice to think that reports like the National Climate Change Assessment could actually move more people into the concerned believer camp.
     
  3. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    What is the significance of the comment that men are "more likely" to be climate change deniers than women? We're not going to go rolling off into yet another clichéd sexist accusation of men being dumber/more sexist/more conservative than women, are we? Gender has nothing to do with this except in caricatures on a par with "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus."
     
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  4. KnightWriter

    KnightWriter Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 6, 2001
    One significance I can think of is that men are still more likely to be in positions of political power than women.
     
  5. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    Calm down, Saintheart. We don't, in fact, know what gender has to do with it. An association has been observed. It may be spurious. But it also may be substantive.

    No one has said the explanation is an intrinsic sex difference or suggestive of a biological deficiency. There have also been polls that break-out this issue by ethnic group. I promise you they aren't trying to say that opinions about global warming are genetically encoded and connected to one's skin color. They just said a difference exists. You shouldn't be so reactionary against the idea of collecting data, especially in a thread where you simultaneously keep arguing that maybe people are skewing everything and making the threat of global warming overblown.
     
  6. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    And if there was a single skerrick of material suggesting that one person, male or female, in a position of political power was interviewed in this survey, that assertion would have a greater status than irrelevance for this survey.

    Oh, I'm not reactionary to the idea of collecting data. I just roll my eyes that gender's even an issue worthy of mention on something like this, because it truly has nothing to do with it. Even pointing out an "association" -- correlation might be a better term since most people understand that correlation is not causation -- is rocking on up to the trailhead of a very stupid path that leads nowhere. Hell, polls that break out the issue by ethnic group are just as daft for the same reason. If one's only intention is to illustrate the change in beliefs regarding climate change across the board, then only two aspects of the person replying to the survey are relevant: whether s/he has a pulse and whether s/he has an operational quarter pounder of white meat sloshing around in his skull. Gender and ethnicity just has nothing to do with any of it, so why even bring it up in the first place as worthy of note?
     
  7. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    On what basis do you conclude it has "nothing to do with anything?"

    Something around 70% of the US supports waging the minimum wage. It is nonetheless deeply unlikely to pass. Why? Well, might it not be relevant that support for the measure is, for instance, significantly lower among whites than non-whites (64% vs 87%)? The Congress in general, and the Senate in particular, is not very reflective of the demographics of the United States. When older, whiter people tend to have an opinion distinct from everyone else, that's pretty helpful in explaining the behavior of an institution that is older and whiter than everyone else.
     
  8. KnightWriter

    KnightWriter Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 6, 2001
    Saintheart, I feel like statistics isn't really your thing.
     
  9. Vaderize03

    Vaderize03 Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Oct 25, 1999
    In terms of Ebola, the virus only has seven genes and seven proteins; a single mutation produced the Reston strain, which has greatly diminished pathogenicity in humans. It's not beyond the pale that it could undergo a major re-shuffle and become even more deadly.

    The fact that it kills too quickly isn't why it hasn't become a pandemic (although that does play a role); it's that the virus is not that easy to transmit. It's fluid-borne, which means you need to come into direct contact with infected material. It doesn't spread through droplets or other modes of airborne transmission, or else we'd all be dead.

    Given the seemingly accelerated pace of the emergence of zoonoses, I can image a scenario where it trade a gene with say, bird flu to produce a rapidly-spreading infection which causes its' victims to drown in their own blood from pulmonary hemorrhage.

    In terms of the post-antibiotic era, that is a concern, but non-drug resistant bacteria have evolved defenses against their more aggressive cousins, which are beginning to form the basis of potential new therapies. There's going to be a period of time, however, when prevention becomes the new cure. We are entering that phase now, and who knows how long it will last.

    Peace,

    V-03
     
  10. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    First up, why are you trying to force me to prove a negative?

    Secondly, your politically charged rant about minimum wage's state being the fault of Old Mighty Whitey illustrates perfectly why associating gender with climate change is a dumb idea that leads nowhere: because people just can't stop themselves making a Eugenics Lite argument whenever the split is other than fifty fifty between two groups. One post ago you're saying gender or ethnicity is not intrinsically linked to climate change, now you're asking me to demonstrate why gender has no relevance and insinuating that because ethnicity is supposedly helpful as an explanatory factor for minimum wage gender might be helpful as an explanatory factor for climate change denialism. By all means play the Pollyanna on this one and say you suggested no such thing, but I think your pair of posts above speak for themselves.
     
  11. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    Your post is ridiculous and over-blown. In neither case did I say that ethnicity was causal. In fact, I explicitly said that it was not. More than once. There is no definition of "eugenics" which accommodates those statements.

    As difficult as it apparently is for you to conceive, different ethnic groups can have behaviors that are socially rather than genetically determined. Just because someone opens a discussion of correlations between a demographic factor and some viewpoint, that doesn't mean they're about to start peddling race theory.
     
  12. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    Then once again: why bring up or even note the subject of gender at all as to whether a person is a climate change denier or not?
     
  13. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    A) Because, as with the other example, it may explain gaps in what we see from Congress versus the opinion of the general populace

    B) It might clue us in to socially determinative factors. For instance, what if climate change denialism decreases dramatically with old age, because the people can directly observe changes in weather patterns over their whole life? Well, we know there are only about 60 men per 100 women that live over the age of 80, internationally. In that case, couldn't the entire difference actually be explained by this geriatric factor? Sure. But our first clue will have been in the gender difference.

    Alternatively, climate change is, as much as any other policy issue, pitched to population. There is some degree of crossover between general marketing strategies and public policy campaigns. What if the meaning of this finding is that most of the arguments deployed to convince people of climate change are ones that we've socially conditioned men to be less receptive to? Wouldn't that be valuable to know, so that the way we approach people can be adjusted for greater inclusivity?

    There's really a lot of potential value here. You shouldn't throw it all out because of some paranoid fear that someone's going to mount a racist campaign to oppress white men on the basis of one finding.
     
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  14. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    I think you're really grasping at straws over this, Wock, but I congratulate you for your effort.
     
  15. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    I'm not the one berating a common practice in public polling and taking on a persecution complex to justify it.
     
  16. duende

    duende Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 28, 2006
    this is so bizarre
     
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  17. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    Nor am I: do you always machine gun your straw men quite as obviously as this?
     
  18. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    It's undeniably a common practice. So are you saying you didn't mean to sound disapproving of it here? You usually call things you are at worst indifferent to "daft" and "rocking on up the trailhead of a very stupid path?"
     
  19. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    Would you now like to demonstrate where I supposedly took on a persecution complex, or have we decided to skip that piece of pop psychology on your part?
     
  20. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    You accused me of preaching eugenics against white people because I pointed out a statistical correlation that I explicitly said was not due to inherent genetic differences. Twice.
     
  21. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    Read it again, Wock. This time without your own persecution complex factored in.
     
  22. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    You said my post "illustrates perfectly" the tendency towards making "eugenics lite" arguments. Explain to me how a post of mine can be a "perfect illustration" of a eugenics-based argument without that statement necessarily implying that I made a eugenics-based argument?
     
  23. KnightWriter

    KnightWriter Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 6, 2001

    Because it's part of statistical data collection.
     
  24. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    Aaaaaand what makes gender more significant or worthy of note than all the various other details that were raised in that poll, much as voting intention for example?
     
  25. KnightWriter

    KnightWriter Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 6, 2001

    It's just part of data collection. The more information, the better.

    I recommend taking a class on statistics. I think you would benefit a great deal from it.