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Author Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée  (Read 1570780 times)

Reelya

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18075 on: May 19, 2016, 03:08:21 am »

The real scare is methane ice. Basically if Siberia warms up, all bets are off for climate change. There would be a release of about 400 gigatons of methane, thus leading to chain-reaction global warming, and potentially heating up the oceans enough to release another 500-2500 gigatons of frozen methane from the sea floor. They're already seeing a lot of unexpected methane plumes in Siberia.

Frumple

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18076 on: May 19, 2016, 06:35:36 am »

Weeellll... it's not the real scare. It's one of several, many of them potentially kinda' bundled together :V

Turns out earth's climate is bugnuts well connected, borderline brazilian butterfly level, and when one thing starts going haywire a shitload of other things can, too! Also they have a distinct inclination towards sorta' holding each other back until one thing goes too far, and then everything promptly goes too far. From a scientific perspective it's really rather incredibly interesting. From the practical perspective, well. "When in deadly danger, when beset by doubt..."
« Last Edit: May 19, 2016, 06:37:15 am by Frumple »
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18077 on: May 19, 2016, 06:59:51 am »



Final Score: 10/25
Rating: A-

Well played, sir. Very well played indeed.
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Shadowlord

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18078 on: May 19, 2016, 07:35:57 am »

Hey, you didn't get BINGO yet. Better keep going.

A simplified explanation of how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affects temperature:
1. Light passes through atmosphere. Some is reflected back into space. Carbon dioxide does not prevent this.
2. Light is absorbed by the planet, things on it, etc, warming it.
3. The planet and stuff on it emit infrared radiation whose wavelength corresponds to the temperature where it is being radiated.
4. Carbon dioxide can absorb infrared radiation, and if it does so, it re-radiates it at the wavelength corresponding to its temperature. Half of it will go up, and half will go down.
5. Essentially, the more carbon dioxide there is, the more likely any given infrared photon coming from the planet surface (or anything on it) will be absorbed and re-radiated, meaning that the more CO2 in the atmosphere the more radiation fails to escape at any given time.
6. The temperature of the planet surface depends on how much energy is absorbed, and how much escapes back into space. Essentially, CO2 prevents some of that energy from escaping into space, so more CO2 causes the planet's equilibrium temperature to be higher.

There are other things that absorb radiation at the wavelengths the planet emits it at, of course, such as water vapor and methane, for example.

I've made numerous simplifications, of course, like completely ignoring oceans, for example, but none of it is necessary to the fundamental point: greenhouse gases raise the equilibrium temperature of the planet by catching some infrared radiation and preventing it from escaping like it otherwise would have.

If you want some evidence, look at Venus.

P.S. In Make America Hate Again news: http://time.com/4341266/hat-america-never-great-online-shaming-viral/?xid=msn
« Last Edit: May 19, 2016, 08:01:55 am by Shadowlord »
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18079 on: May 19, 2016, 09:27:22 am »



Final Score: 10/25
Rating: A-

Well played, sir. Very well played indeed.
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Powder Miner

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18080 on: May 19, 2016, 09:49:29 am »

I'm not going to bring up what I actually believe on the matter of global warming, so I can have that nice cozy "what is this guy even thinking" spot, but there's always one thing that confuses me: if people arguing that "there's no global warming because it's cold" get mocked, why do the same people mocking them then use the argument of "it's really hot this year, therefore there is global warming"? Don't they fall on the same scale, at least when those who use the cold arguments point to cold winters on a larger scale?
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Shadowlord

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18081 on: May 19, 2016, 10:06:47 am »

Average temperature for entire year for entire world, vs temperature of local area during only part of year. "weather is not climate"

Also some of world has been cooler (such as new England) than rest of country, because of natural factors affecting distribution of hot and cold air, moisture, etc.
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mainiac

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18082 on: May 19, 2016, 10:34:26 am »

why do the same people mocking them then use the argument of "it's really hot this year, therefore there is global warming"?

The same people?  I dont think that is generally true.  John Stewart did them both I suppose but it's not something I've noticed in conversations.
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18083 on: May 19, 2016, 12:16:44 pm »

It should be pointed out: The state of the weather is not actually an invalid argument about climate change, it's just that it's an argument in favor of climate change and it's almost always used in an irrelevant context.

Here's a revelation: Climate change does cause an increase in cold weather. It also causes an increase in warm weather, and a greater amount of both extremes. This is because in the destabilization of Earth's climate the irregular temperature gradients start to shift in locale. We've seen an example of the cold extremes over the past couple of years with the polar vortexes, where all the air over the arctic decides to just come on down and party closer to the equator (and, of course, warm air then moves to the pole causing even more ice loss).

Our interpretations of what weather is normal and what weather is abnormal is based upon the historical norms of the location, as well as the needs of the biosphere. Greater warming on average means all of the bands of weather move to places that they, in the view that we should be alive and not dead, should not be.
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RedKing

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18084 on: May 19, 2016, 12:34:44 pm »

It should be pointed out: The state of the weather is not actually an invalid argument about climate change, it's just that it's an argument in favor of climate change and it's almost always used in an irrelevant context.

Here's a revelation: Climate change does cause an increase in cold weather. It also causes an increase in warm weather, and a greater amount of both extremes. This is because in the destabilization of Earth's climate the irregular temperature gradients start to shift in locale. We've seen an example of the cold extremes over the past couple of years with the polar vortexes, where all the air over the arctic decides to just come on down and party closer to the equator (and, of course, warm air then moves to the pole causing even more ice loss).

Our interpretations of what weather is normal and what weather is abnormal is based upon the historical norms of the location, as well as the needs of the biosphere. Greater warming on average means all of the bands of weather move to places that they, in the view that we should be alive and not dead, should not be.
Indeed. The polar vortex moves towards the equator because it's weaker.

Think of a top -- when it's spinning rapidly, it maintains balance in a more or less stationary position. As it weakens, its rotations become more erratic and it begins to wobble all over the place. Those recent cold winters are the Northern Polar Vortex wobbling.
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RedKing

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18086 on: May 19, 2016, 01:31:27 pm »

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oklahoma-lawmakers-ok-bill-criminalizing-performing-abortion/ar-BBtfoqO
I love how many Republican state legislators in this country seem to have failed Civics 101 of late.
This will get smacked down with extreme prejudice by the Federal courts, which will lead to more hyperbolic rhetoric of "Federal tyranny", which their uneducated base will lap up like hog at the trough.

And, they're probably hoping this will make its way to the SC after enough time for President Trump to appoint a right-wing Justice and hopefully get a 5-4 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Thing is, they're still at least a Justice or three short on that count. Alito and Thomas would probably be willing to overturn Roe v Wade. Kennedy and Roberts are far more unlikely to, based on their history. The others would never vote to overturn Roe v Wade.

I'd like to see a law penalizing legislators who pass a blatantly unconstitutional laws, to pay for the waste of time and taxpayer money spent arguing in in the court system. After all, Republican legislatures are making a similar argument in several states to penalize environmental lobbies that sue to block or delay commercial projects, if they lose.
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18087 on: May 19, 2016, 01:46:22 pm »

If you really want a crazy scenario, we just need another Justice to die/retire before the election.
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RedKing

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18088 on: May 19, 2016, 01:49:00 pm »

If you really want a crazy scenario, we just need Justice to die before the election.
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Lord Shonus

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Re: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée
« Reply #18089 on: May 19, 2016, 03:21:40 pm »

I'd like to see a law penalizing legislators who pass a blatantly unconstitutional laws, to pay for the waste of time and taxpayer money spent arguing in in the court system.

The only way to determine that a law is unconstitutional is for it to go through the courts, and the decisions the courts make shifts heavily based on the philosophical concepts of the judges. These can range from a passivist strict-constructionist viewpoint in which the Court takes the narrowest possible interpretation of the written law and tries to make the decision cause as little change as possible to an activist loose-constructionist one where the court interprets the law as broadly as the law allows while setting out to push the country in the direction desired. While neither extreme is inherently bad, neither is inherently good either. There's plenty of room to debate in which category notoriously bad decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott v. Sanford fall into, just as it can be hard to determine the viewpoint where unambiguously good decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education Of Topeka or Miranda v. Arizona fall back to, but the fact remains that the courts, up to and including the Supreme Court, make mistakes.

That is why decisions only work backwards in time, affecting the currently extant laws and the people affected by those laws. The only way in which they apply forward in time, affecting laws not yet passed, is in the form of precedent. Precedent is an important concept and guideline in the courts, and is an excellent tool for evaluation of a new law, but it is not binding - while no judge can overrule the Supreme Court on a given case, they can decide to rule differently on the next one that comes down the road. Going back to the unarguable pile, this is exactly what happened in Brown. If precedent was binding on the courts, Brown would have been thrown out immediately, as Plessy had already ruled that segregation was legal. Because precedent is not binding, they were able to evaluate on the merits of that individual case, decide that segregation is not legal under the Constitution, and fix the mistake.

I keep going back to the same limited number of examples for the simple reason that they are non-controversial - nobody here is likely to say that Plessy was the right decision and the Court should have stayed out of it. However, it does have the issue of being a law that was initially upheld, but struck down in a later case rather than a law that was struck down, passed again, and upheld. Unfortunately for the discussion, I can't think of any non-controversial examples of the latter, so I'm going to have to go with what I know of your politics.  Imagine that the courts ruled tomorrow that the Brady Bill was unconstitutional. Would you be as eager to say any legislator trying to reintroduce that "blatantly unconstitutional law"? Or would you decide that, since you would (presumably, based on everything I've seen of you) disapprove of that decision, it's okay to try to repass the law even though you're eager to oppose somebody trying to repass a law struck down by a decision you agree with?

A law like you're talking about shoots democracy right in the heart. Either it leads to situation where the decisions of a very small group of men and women long dead are impossible to reevaluate or reinterprit (essentially carving every single final court decision indelibly into the Constitution that was deliberately left loose to avoid this problem); or else it leads to whichever party that is in power being able to throw the opposition in jail or drive them into bankruptcy on a whim as anything the minority tries to do gets labeled "blatantly unconstitutional" by the majority.
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