Maggie's Farm

Seriously. When will well-to-do white men ever catch a break? When will a white guy born to a rich family with an emerald mine ever get a leg up in life? Huh?
 

Mike Anderson: Ad hominem much?

That's not ad hominem.

Seriously, though, who will come to the aid of powerless, well-to-do white people!? Maybe more tax cuts?

mudbug: Does the fact that Musk is successful/wealthy preclude him from calling out injustice?

Not at all. Nor does it mean he didn't create additional value built on the advantages of his privileged upbringing. But the claim that whites are at a significant disadvantage in society is contradicted by the plain fact that whites control nearly all the levers of power.

While struggling, South Africa has not collapsed. South Africa has significant problems with their electrical power system, but real GDP grew about 2% in 2022. Growth is expected to be positive in 2023, but electrical disruptions will continue until 2024, when new plants come on line.

The corruption trial of the former president, Jacob Zuma, could be a flashpoint for further instability, though.

Don: What kind of new plants?

Primarily, supercritical steam generator from coal. They've offered solar tax incentives, as well. South Africa's current system is highly dependent on coal. The new supercritical system is much more efficient, but still emits significant greenhouse gases.

eeyore: So they are killing all of humanity.

Suddenly abandoning fossil fuels would do no one any good. There has to be a transition period. South Africa is still striving to develop, and coal is plentiful and cheap there. Like with most things in life, there is a tradeoff. Due to their economic constraints, coal is the easier choice.

eeyore: So if a country has economic restraints then it's ok for them to kill the rest of the world according to you (plural)?

Everyone has economic constraints. As already pointed out, suddenly abandoning the use of fossil fuels would do no one any good. There will be tradeoffs in the move towards a green energy infrastructure.

That's because, while the evidence demonstrates that the Earth is warming, the distribution in the climate system is chaotic. For instance, we can predict with high probability that it will be warmer in Paris in July than in January; however, can't predict months in advance whether the temperature on Bastille Day will be warmer or cooler than the average for that day.


That is incorrect. If the mean increases, but there is a wide distribution around the mean, then we would expect there to still be record cold temperatures, but that there will tend to be more records warm temperatues. And that is what is observed.

With global warming, the mean temperature will increase, but it is expected that the variance in temperatures will increase also. The former is strongly supported, the latter only tentatively so.


GISTEMPv4.0 shows cooling of -0.023 ±0.048°C/decade (2σ), meaning there is an 83% chance that the Earth's surface cooled slightly. However, the claim is wrong. Greenhouse gases are only one of many factors that affect global temperatures. In particular, sulfur aerosols tend to cool the climate through solar dimming. Huge quantities of sulfur aerosols were emitted by humans during that period. Sulfur aerosols tend to have a short lifespan in the atmosphere, so once humans slowed their emissions, the cooling effect waned.


As addressed on a previous thread, the reporter claims not to have met any scientists who assert that carbon dioxide is a primary cause of the current warming trend. He is clearly uninformed.

ns: Link to Cochrane report:

From the study’s conclusion: “The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions," and there is "uncertainty about the effects of face masks."

The largest randomized trial on masks and COVID found that wearing masks "showed a reduction in reporting COVID-like illness, particularly in high-risk individuals." See Abaluck et al., Impact of community masking on COVID-19: A cluster-randomized trial in Bangladesh, Science 2021.

eeyore: Masking reduced the percentage infected from 8.6% to 7.63% That's not convincing.

That's right. With 42% masking, the reduction in illness was about 11%. The reduction in those ≥60 years old, the reduction was 35%. When people are dying by the hundreds of thousands, well, you do the math. By the way, in the study, N = 342,183.

eeyore: People die especially old people. It's not worth forcing 42% of the people (or more if 'you' have your way) to submit to save less than 1% of the population.

Notably, you forgot the math. (If hundreds of thousands are dying, and you can save 11%, then you are saving tens of thousands of lives.) The claim was that masks don't work. Not only did the Cochrane meta-analysis not support the claim, but the randomized trails show that masks do provide a benefit.

Nor were people forced in the random trial. The researchers used in-person intervention, including mask distribution, role-modeling, and mask promotion. They showed that in-person intervention increased mask wearing, and they also showed that mask wearing reduced illness, especially in high-risk persons.

But sure, your hardheadedness is much more important than your neighbor.

eeyore: 11% is the reduction in rate not the reduction in actual infection numbers.

The number of illnesses was reduced by 11%. If an 8.6% rate of illness leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths, then a reduction of the rate of 11% would lead to a reduction in deaths of tens of thousands, ceteris paribus. Even given your own 'math,' that would still represent thousands of lives saved.

eeyore: 11% was the reduction in RATE not infections themselves.

If there are one million people in a population, the control group would see illnesses of 8.6% or 86,000; while the intervention group would see illnesses of 7.6% or 76,000. The decrease in illnesses would be from 86,000 to 76,000 or about 11%.

But that's not what the paper says, which is that the problems with the underlying studies "hampers drawing firm conclusions."

RJP: This reanalysis demonstrated that there was significant bias in the study and concluded that "...the data is consistent with mask wearing having modest or no direct effect on COVID-related outcomes in this experimental setting."

We appreciate an actual response. The problem is that you can't have truly blind testing with masks. Abaluck responds:

indyjonesouthere: The premier fake science journal.

Scientific American is not a science journal, but a magazine about science.

Fakt 48 : fakts still exist even if they are ignored. — Harvie Krumpet