Civilization set for 'irreversible collapse'

[Doug1029]

On 7/29/2020 at 2:03 PM, Liquid Gardens said:

There are supposedly 500,000+ slaves in Mauritania alone, where is the outrage from the lefty/BLM community?

Trump Derangement Syndrome. You are under attack from left-wing activists.

You are just another remoaner trying to undermine Brexit, guess what, too late, we left.

Etcetera....  So given your noting that everyone in history would give their arm to live in today's society, why is this 'whining' okay?

 

If you're concerned about slavery:  the Polaris Project (polarisproject.org) fights slavery.  Look them up.

Prostitution is the major slavery problem in the US, but there are other cases, too.  Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, are frequently stripped of their documents and forced to work for little to nothing (https://discuss.ilw.com/blogs/bbuchanan/391821-stillwater-mexican-restaurants-raided-by-ice).  In this case, ICE closed down the slave ring, but they also deported its victims.

Doug

[Doug1029]

On 7/29/2020 at 8:59 AM, Doug1029 said:

It may happen, but don't hold your breath until it does.

 

Since mid-March I have been working on a climate history of Oklahoma going back over 500 years.  I thought earlier that I was seeing an increase in humidity as measured by the Palmer Drought Severity Index.  Indeed, this seems to be the case going back to 1895 using instrumental data.  But before then, during the first half of the 19th century, Oklahoma was wetter than it is now.  So all I am doing, so far, is proving that climate changes.  Oklahoma climate will be the warmest it has ever been this year or next, but precip has been both lesser and greater during the last 250 years.

I still have a long way to go on this and we are about to enter another covid shutdown, so it will be awhile before I get back.  I'll let you know what I've found out before signing off for the shutdown.

Doug

They called me back in for two more days.  Shutting down the lab and moving samples to storage.

Finished another chronology yesterday.  Results so far are just confusing, not enlightening.  Have to do some more and see if I can find a pattern.

We are already seeing the beginnings of a covid spike on campus.  Sororities held their pledge week parties last week and had to send a bunch of students home when they tested positive.  I think reopening the university is a big mistake, but the Board of Regents are Trump supporters - not concerned with who lives and dies, just that things look superficially "normal."  One way or the other, we'll know in a month to six weeks - after we have students dead or crippled for life.

Doug

[+DieChecker]

On 8/7/2020 at 8:19 AM, Doug1029 said:

We are already seeing the beginnings of a covid spike on campus. 

....

not concerned with who lives and dies,

Not that i entirely disagree with you. But, the data tends to suggest people under the age of 45 account for just 5% of deaths.

We are having "spikes" here in Oregon that come from daily cases going up a dozen or two.

It is idiotic, IMHO, to say the sky is falling for 100 cases in a day, when other places are relaxing restrictions when there is ONLY thousands per day. We've had a total of 388 deaths, and the governor is acting like its 10,000. 

I do think better safe then sorry, but to over exaggerate is disingenuous. 

Arizona is a at a higher stage, almost back to normal, but they've had almost 4000 dead.

Quote

In Phase Three, all businesses, houses of worship, religious gatherings, libraries museums, recreational activities and sport activities may open. Certain restrictions on travel, visitation to congregate living settings and K-12 schools remain in effect.

AFAIK, we dont allow any of those in Oregon yet.

Having a "spike" is relative.

[Doug1029]

On 8/16/2020 at 3:32 PM, DieChecker said:

Not that i entirely disagree with you. But, the data tends to suggest people under the age of 45 account for just 5% of deaths.

We are having "spikes" here in Oregon that come from daily cases going up a dozen or two.

It is idiotic, IMHO, to say the sky is falling for 100 cases in a day, when other places are relaxing restrictions when there is ONLY thousands per day. We've had a total of 388 deaths, and the governor is acting like its 10,000. 

I do think better safe then sorry, but to over exaggerate is disingenuous. 

Arizona is a at a higher stage, almost back to normal, but they've had almost 4000 dead.

AFAIK, we dont allow any of those in Oregon yet.

Having a "spike" is relative.

As of 8/23/20 our "spike" on campus is 23 cases.  So it's not as bad as some of us feared, nor as good as the administration hoped.  I'm still officially working from home.

Doug

[Doug1029]

A week later:  I'm still working from home, but came into the office to catch up on some emails.  Locally, we're up to 42 covid cases, an increase of 19 cases in one week in a university town of 40,000.

We will likely still be fighting covid next spring, no matter who gets elected in November.  Trump doesn't plan to do anything (or he'd already have done it) and Biden can't start until January 20.

My equipment for the climate study is all on campus, so not much is happening with that until they shut down the university and I can go back on campus.  The at-home project is a continuation of the slopover project I worked on last fall.  Now I'm writing a calculator program to determine the correction coefficients for various-shaped slopovers.  That should take another couple of weeks.

Doug

[+and-then]

On 7/30/2020 at 7:29 AM, lightly said:

Just need to think positive like that.

It isn't an evil to simply state what the reality of a situation will lead to, is it?  Does stating reality make a person evil?  It might be the only thing left to help avoid the worst.

[lightly]

11 hours ago, and then said:

It isn't an evil to simply state what the reality of a situation will lead to, is it?  Does stating reality make a person evil?  It might be the only thing left to help avoid the worst.

No...   I didn't say anyone was evil.   I was responding to pbaroso's claims that wars ..will take care of everything...because periods of war bring about the most innovations ! ..With the added 'benefit' of population control !! thereby lessening the demands on earth's resources.     I facetioisly added Disease as another advantageous disaster if a lessened population will solve the world's problems.   

[aearluin]

On 7/29/2020 at 4:52 PM, Cookie Monster said:

I`m against limiters.

We must limit the number of people being born, we must limit our carbon output, we must limit our industry to green only, etc.

How about finding some enablers.

We will increase the population and develop this technology to support them, we will remove restrictions or taxations on carbon output and use this technology to remove CO2, we will let our industry make all the things we need and develop these technological solutions to enable it.

That's all very cute, but last time I checked we were limited to a single planet with limited resources, so the belief in eternal growth is nothing short of insanity.

Edited September 1, 2020 by aearluin
Typo

[Emma_Acid]

On 7/29/2020 at 2:29 PM, seanjo said:

If this civilization ends it will be because of whiny millennial's protesting against a society every person in history would give an arm to live in.

Sure, and everyone before the millennials did such a good job didn't they

[Emma_Acid]

I think "40 years" is a bit extreme, but all the evidence from history shows that civilisations crash. They don't just slowly decline or plateau, they collapse.

So, it will happen at some point. I'm quietly confident it won't be for 100 or so years, but who knows.

[Emma_Acid]

4 minutes ago, seanjo said:

Yes, they did, they got us this far...

And everything was perfect until then wasn't it. Please. Talk about not being able to see past your own front yard.

[Emma_Acid]

20 hours ago, seanjo said:

Nobody said it was perfect, but Western civilisation freed large parts of the world.

Wow, you really need to go and learn some history.

Quote

We stopped most overt slavery and if people stopped bleating on about the past and concentrated on now, we might be able to eradicate slavery all together. Then of course the greatest movement to improve our lives, industrialisation and the modernisation of medicine, all started in the past.

"Bleating on about slavery" is not going to bring about the collapse of civilisation, and industrialisation, modernisation and medicine is not going to prevent it.

[RAyMO]

We are but an itch on the planet if it decides to scratch we are in trouble. 

what would happen if that Yellowstone volcano decide to blow. 

40 years may be too pessimistic or too optimistic but either way we are not likely to outlast the planet. 

[Emma_Acid]

7 minutes ago, seanjo said:

I know history, maybe you should bone up a bit...when the industrial age arrived countries like the UK abolished slavery and actively set out to stop the transport of slaves from Africa...

...which they helped start. Meanwhile, the western colonisation of Africa pretty much lead to the continent's current unstable socio-political climate.

Don't act like the western colonisers rode in on a white horse and "saved" the rest of the world, it ain't true.

Quote

Bleating on about the past is a tactic of division used by the left, they use all kinds of arguments from class to gender to divide people which is contributing to the failure of our societies.

Again, this is not what causes the collapse of civilisations. You might not like it, but that's got nothing to do with it. I don't like parmesan, but I'm not blaming it for the downfall of mankind.

Aside from the fact that the default mode of the right is conservatism, and therefore it is inherently concerned with the past, you obviously have an political axe to grind that is wildly missing the point of my original statement. 

[Emma_Acid]

6 hours ago, seanjo said:

Who helped to start what?

 

The west and slavery.

[Cosmic Horror]

Hi new here, gotta start somewhere I guess and this topic fascinates me.
 

I think we are teetering on the cusp of something.... Big.  I don’t think it will take the form that most people think it will.  I disagree that we are somehow fragile and insignificant, we have changed this planet on a massive scale in so many ways, including low earth orbit, and are on the brink of being able to mess up the rest of the solar system as well, if we are able to sustain this rate of technological advancement we’ll be messing up our neighbouring star systems as well.  Humanity has survived massive catastrophe, survived ice ages, as a species we are supreme.

I believe the biggest threat to civilisation as we know it will be one of two things.  One will be economic collapse, and I think it will happen soon when some bright spark decides to redirect a metal rich asteroid and flood the global markets with metals.  The other thing that is getting uncomfortably close is the AI singularity.  Both of these are tantalisingly close.

Whatever happens, I believe humanity will survive, but things will be very different.

 

[Duke Wellington]

3 minutes ago, Cosmic Horror said:

Hi new here, gotta start somewhere I guess and this topic fascinates me.

I think we are teetering on the cusp of something.... Big.  I don’t think it will take the form that most people think it will.  I disagree that we are somehow fragile and insignificant, we have changed this planet on a massive scale in so many ways, including low earth orbit, and are on the brink of being able to mess up the rest of the solar system as well, if we are able to sustain this rate of technological advancement we’ll be messing up our neighbouring star systems as well.  Humanity has survived massive catastrophe, survived ice ages, as a species we are supreme.

I believe the biggest threat to civilisation as we know it will be one of two things.  One will be economic collapse, and I think it will happen soon when some bright spark decides to redirect a metal rich asteroid and flood the global markets with metals.  The other thing that is getting uncomfortably close is the AI singularity. Both of these are tantalisingly close.

Whatever happens, I believe humanity will survive, but things will be very different.

I rather suspect human civilization will still be around in a million years.

In my personal opinion we will see the rise of human beings 2.0 in a few decades. When every cell type can be grown from stem cells, and when they figure out how to 3D print them into tissue structures, I dont think we will simply be replacing worn out organs or missing limbs. I think we will be designing improved ones leading to our emergence as a super species. It will also be the first way immortality arises. Although obviously not from fatal accidents, fatal crimes, war, disease, etc.

I think you underestimate the human race and where it is going. I dont know where the fascination with failure comes from, I guess some people like to devalue our species.

[Cosmic Horror]

8 hours ago, Cookie Monster said:

I rather suspect human civilization will still be around in a million years.

You may well be right, but by today’s standards it would look so completely different it would appear totally alien.

 

8 hours ago, Cookie Monster said:

In my personal opinion we will see the rise of human beings 2.0 in a few decades. When every cell type can be grown from stem cells, and when they figure out how to 3D print them into tissue structures, I dont think we will simply be replacing worn out organs or missing limbs. I think we will be designing improved ones leading to our emergence as a super species. It will also be the first way immortality arises. Although obviously not from fatal accidents, fatal crimes, war, disease, etc.

Again, this is possible, although I think this will be a subtle change easier to digest, and of course such body modification would be choice, and without significant change to current society, totally inaccessible to the vast majority of the human race who would simply not have the financial means to access it.  

 

8 hours ago, Cookie Monster said:

I think you underestimate the human race and where it is going. I dont know where the fascination with failure comes from, I guess some people like to devalue our species.

I don’t know why you think I underestimate the human race?  We are discussing the collapse of civilisation not the destruction of the human race.

I would suggest that current civilisation will need to collapse in order for us to progress much further as a species.  Our views will need to shift and we need to overcome this propensity to label ourselves and others politically.

[Emma_Acid]

15 hours ago, seanjo said:

Like I said, go read some history: When the Portuguese and Spanish went to Africa looking for slaves to replace the American natives that had been devastated by disease and murder in the 1600's they found a ready market in Africa, because African tribes fought each other and sold their captives to Islamic traders. There was a huge market just waiting thanks to Islam and inter-tribal wars. Europe didn't start the slave trade, Europe bought into a waiting market, then 300 years later, thanks to Christians, ENDED it...

This is what is known as historical revisionism, and like almost all historical revisionism, it is racist.

Blaming the fact that 12 million Africans were taken and sold by Christian Europeans - who then built a transatlantic trading and colonising empire on the back of slave lives and labour - on the Africans themselves, before claiming the Christian Europeans fixed everything is racist historical revisionism on the most callous kind.

[Essan]

37 minutes ago, Emma_Acid said:

This is what is known as historical revisionism, and like almost all historical revisionism, it is racist.

Blaming the fact that 12 million Africans were taken and sold by Christian Europeans - who then built a transatlantic trading and colonising empire on the back of slave lives and labour - on the Africans themselves, before claiming the Christian Europeans fixed everything is racist historical revisionism on the most callous kind.

No, I'm with seanjo on this. 

https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-08-20/willful-amnesia-how-africans-forgot-and-remembered-their-role-slave-trade

Blaming everything on the British* is racist historical revisionism (except, of course, racism excludes the British cos we is very very naughty and to blame for everything so it's okay to blame us for everything )

I am just surprised no-one has yet found a way to blame us for the East African slave trade as well.  I am sure they will.  At the very least we are guilty of not putting an end to it!  (Or maybe we just made it all up ..... )

https://www.dw.com/en/east-africas-forgotten-slave-trade/a-50126759

And of course, it was Africans who were enslaving western Euiropeans  too ....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml

(it actually took the US navy to finally end that)

It's easy to blame one group for something.  Harder to accept that, actually, everyone else was doing the same and we are all guilty - and indeed all victims - to some degree..

Meanwhile, if we were really concerned about slavery in the past, perhaps we should concentrate more on trying to end slavery  today?  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36416751


 

[Emma_Acid]

13 hours ago, seanjo said:

https://www.thoughtco.com/african-slave-traders-44538

Got any thoughts on the (at least 17 million) Africans taken as slaves by the Arabs/Islam, or the figure believed by many of 100 million African Men murdered because Arabs didn't want African Men to sully their lines?

What about the estimated 2 million Europeans taken as slaves by Islam, including raids on the coast of Ireland and England?

Thanks, let me have a read and get back to you

[Essan]

The whole issue of slavery and European involvement in it is, unfortunately, much more complicated than the modern agenda-driven story would have.   That is not to excuse those from Europe who were involved in it, and especially not the way slaves were treated.   And IMO the later attitude towards those of African origin in the USA this century is a separate issue (interesting that Britons had no such prejudice until much more recently - as we saw, for example, in WW2 when we treated black Americans as equals and were abhorred by the attitude of white Americans).  

As a complete aside, did you know that many cowboys were black?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/

[Doug1029]

On 8/30/2020 at 2:57 PM, Doug1029 said:

A week later:  I'm still working from home, but came into the office to catch up on some emails.  Locally, we're up to 42 covid cases, an increase of 19 cases in one week in a university town of 40,000.

We will likely still be fighting covid next spring, no matter who gets elected in November.  Trump doesn't plan to do anything (or he'd already have done it) and Biden can't start until January 20.

My equipment for the climate study is all on campus, so not much is happening with that until they shut down the university and I can go back on campus.  The at-home project is a continuation of the slopover project I worked on last fall.  Now I'm writing a calculator program to determine the correction coefficients for various-shaped slopovers.  That should take another couple of weeks.

Doug

Week later:  We now have 62 covid cases in town.  University still open, but staff is working from home.  They're having it both ways.

Only got a few chronologies detrended last week, so nothing new to report there.  The University of Missouri has created a chronology for Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains.  Hoping to get a copy of it; it's unpublished, but maybe we can fix that.  I'm told it shows that same bump in soil moisture in the early nineteenth century that my other chronologies show.  Waiting to hear if we are going to make a chronology of our own for that area.

Still working on the slopover problem.  Got the part done for a plot overlapping a stand boundary with a single turning point.  Now for complex stand boundaries.  There's a variation using arcs instead of straight lines to simulate the stand boundary, but I don't know if the HP35s has enough memory for it.  Maybe do a computerized version of it.  So, I still need at least a couple weeks to finish - maybe a lot more.

Doug

 

[Doug1029]

On 7/29/2020 at 7:12 PM, DieChecker said:

Except population is expected to tapper off and actually start decreasing in about 70 years.

And, AFAIK, in the US we have more trees now then 150 years ago. The same should apply to those newly "enlightened" third world nations due to education and economic pressures.

I am calling BS on this one.

I knew a guy back in college (1990), who was very liberal, and well educated, who would regularly tell everyone that all trees were already logged in Oregon, and pot was the future crop of choice, and that the ozone hole had already doomed is all, and that hunting should be banned as there was only a few wild animals left. And that hurricanes were going to get worse and worse every year...

Not everyone who is smart, and educated, is correct in their opinions.

The US may reach ZPG in as little as forty years.  The reversal of population growth will produce a slow implosion.  Instead of having too many people, we will have too few.  Not enough workers, so labor will control the market - not business.  Too few workers means not enough money going into Social Security.  We'll be loving immigrants, especially Mexicans.  Things will be different.

 

The US is indeed growing more timber than it did 100 years ago.  That is due largely to younger trees' faster growth rates.  But forests are still in trouble due to ecological collapse.  We lost 400,000 acres of pinyons in the Four Corners area since I worked there (1987).  Limber pines in Colorado are under attack by bark beetles and in British Columbia, mountain pine beetles are epidemic in ponderosa pines.  Same with ashes in the east.  The threat has changed; it hasn't gone away.

 

The USFS tried to apply sustained yield to the country as a whole, rather than to individual working circles and ranger districts as it is supposed to be.  The idea is that you can cut a little each year, drawing out the process until the first-cut areas have regrown.  If you do that in a localized area, you protect your local resources and keep local folks working.  But they tried to do it nationally, cutting out one large area (like the State of Oregon), then moving to the south, etc.  But once the timber is cut out of an area, the mills close and people are thrown out of work.  That destroys the very purpose of sustained yield.  That happened in Cascade, Idaho.

Another factor that affected volumes being cut in Oregon was that allowable cuts were determined from aerial photos without any ground truthing.  The estimates for allowable cut were a lot higher than the actually figures.  As a result, the USFS over-cut the Pacific Northwest.  They have an entire agency within the Forest Service (Forest Inventory and Analysis) dedicated to getting accurate estimates of allowable cut, but they never used that agency's data.

Back during the Clinton Administration there was an uproar about over-cutting, which by then was becoming obvious.  Clinton attended a public hearing in which a teacher stood up and made a brilliant speech condemning logging.  Clinton shut down the logging and fired over 700 foresters.  When it came time for the USFS to send PILT money to the local school districts, there wasn't any to send (no timber sales,  no money).  The teacher in question lost her job.  That's what happens when you don't understand the economics of your own school district.

About those 700 foresters - a few months later, the Administration discovered that in firing the foresters, they had also fired their fire control people.  The knowledge of how to fight fire is retained by the foresters who teach new crews how to fight fire each year.  The USFS desperately looked up its former foresters, but by then, many had taken other jobs.

This is the sort of thing that happens when the Forest Service is run by a lawyer.  You get the same sort of results as you would get if a forester ran the Department of Justice.

 

Pot is the largest cash crop in many parts of the country, whether it's grown legally or illegally.  For those who grow it, it is the crop of choice.

 

It did indeed look like the ozone hole was going to be a major problem.  But the world's governments banned CFCs that were creating the hole.  As atmospheric CFCs have fallen off, the ozone hole has recovered.  Your friend as right, but there was a fix.

 

Deer are managed specifically for the benefit of hunters.  In a very real sense, states farm the deer crops - the sale of hunting licenses pays for this.  This also applies to many other species such as antelope, small game and birds.  Your friend was not a wildlife major.

 

Hurricanes are gradually getting worse.  But, if the average only increases by 0.06 hurricanes per year (How many is 0.06 hurricanes?), the increase may be a little hard to see, especially when the standard deviation is around three hurricanes.  But that's the problem with averages.  Hurricanes seem to occur in groups.  For a period of decades, there will be a hurricane epidemic that then dies away for several decades.  It could take 30 of these cycles to make the increase obvious.  That's 300 years.  In order to see what is happening, you have to keep careful records and most people's memories aren't up to the job.

 

Doug

 

 

[+DieChecker]

9 hours ago, Doug1029 said:

The US may reach ZPG in as little as forty years.  The reversal of population growth will produce a slow implosion.  Instead of having too many people, we will have too few.  Not enough workers, so labor will control the market - not business.  Too few workers means not enough money going into Social Security.  We'll be loving immigrants, especially Mexicans.  Things will be different.

The difference, i think, will be that when that happens, we'll be going and recruiting them, so few will be able to complain.

SS/FICA will need to be adjusted a lot sooner, or the system will run out of reserves.

Quote

The US is indeed growing more timber than it did 100 years ago.  That is due largely to younger trees' faster growth rates.  But forests are still in trouble due to ecological collapse.  We lost 400,000 acres of pinyons in the Four Corners area since I worked there (1987).  Limber pines in Colorado are under attack by bark beetles and in British Columbia, mountain pine beetles are epidemic in ponderosa pines.  Same with ashes in the east.  The threat has changed; it hasn't gone away.

The USFS tried to apply sustained yield to the country as a whole, rather than to individual working circles and ranger districts as it is supposed to be.  The idea is that you can cut a little each year, drawing out the process until the first-cut areas have regrown.  If you do that in a localized area, you protect your local resources and keep local folks working.  But they tried to do it nationally, cutting out one large area (like the State of Oregon), then moving to the south, etc.  But once the timber is cut out of an area, the mills close and people are thrown out of work.  That destroys the very purpose of sustained yield.  That happened in Cascade, Idaho.

Another factor that affected volumes being cut in Oregon was that allowable cuts were determined from aerial photos without any ground truthing.  The estimates for allowable cut were a lot higher than the actually figures.  As a result, the USFS over-cut the Pacific Northwest.  They have an entire agency within the Forest Service (Forest Inventory and Analysis) dedicated to getting accurate estimates of allowable cut, but they never used that agency's data.

Back during the Clinton Administration there was an uproar about over-cutting, which by then was becoming obvious.  Clinton attended a public hearing in which a teacher stood up and made a brilliant speech condemning logging.  Clinton shut down the logging and fired over 700 foresters.  When it came time for the USFS to send PILT money to the local school districts, there wasn't any to send (no timber sales,  no money).  The teacher in question lost her job.  That's what happens when you don't understand the economics of your own school district.

About those 700 foresters - a few months later, the Administration discovered that in firing the foresters, they had also fired their fire control people.  The knowledge of how to fight fire is retained by the foresters who teach new crews how to fight fire each year.  The USFS desperately looked up its former foresters, but by then, many had taken other jobs.

This is the sort of thing that happens when the Forest Service is run by a lawyer.  You get the same sort of results as you would get if a forester ran the Department of Justice.

And yet almost all politicians are lawyers. 

I remember well the boom in timber in the 80s. I didnt know it was due to allowed overharvesting. 

I wish there was a easy way to deal with the beetles. I remember seeing the ponderosa in Eastern side of the Cascades, and the trees on the west sjde of Yelliwstone all dead, or dying. I think that was 1987, or 88.

Regardless, my friend was still wrong.

Quote

Pot is the largest cash crop in many parts of the country, whether it's grown legally or illegally.  For those who grow it, it is the crop of choice.

Taxes on pot in Oregon last year was 102 million dollars. Its completely legal here now, and taxed at a fairly high rate, i believe. It does come in as a top revenue crop. So, in a way he was right. However back 30 years ago it was still illegal.

Also note that the bumper crop last year resulted in like half the crop rotting without buyer, because it cant be exported to other states.

Quote

It did indeed look like the ozone hole was going to be a major problem.  But the world's governments banned CFCs that were creating the hole.  As atmospheric CFCs have fallen off, the ozone hole has recovered.  Your friend as right, but there was a fix.

Yet my friend, much like many today, said it was Too Late, we were all going to die. I wonder now if that may be in part why he did so badly in college, and why he drank so heavily.

Even not having hinesight, it seems to me clearly he was wrong. But was just repeating a credo he had heard.

Quote

Deer are managed specifically for the benefit of hunters.  In a very real sense, states farm the deer crops - the sale of hunting licenses pays for this.  This also applies to many other species such as antelope, small game and birds.  Your friend was not a wildlife major.

You are right, he was completely wrong. And completely ignorant. And yet convinced, and willing to get in a scream fight about it.

Quote

Hurricanes are gradually getting worse.  But, if the average only increases by 0.06 hurricanes per year (How many is 0.06 hurricanes?), the increase may be a little hard to see, especially when the standard deviation is around three hurricanes.  But that's the problem with averages.  Hurricanes seem to occur in groups.  For a period of decades, there will be a hurricane epidemic that then dies away for several decades.  It could take 30 of these cycles to make the increase obvious.  That's 300 years.  In order to see what is happening, you have to keep careful records and most people's memories aren't up to the job.

Doug

Yes, but the liberal thing to say at the time (1988) was that we would be ten times the number of hurricanes within 20 years, which didnt happen. He was wrong again. But was convinced he was right.

That was my entire point, just because someone is convinced they are right, and it sounds like they are spreading science and logic... doesnt make it so.