Airborne_Again wrote:
So because you are paid more than the average college professor you also understand everything better than the average college professor?
Whether or not its true, and I do believe that capability is loosely correlated to compensation, representing that as my point is argumentative and sophomoric. My point is that individuals have the ability to think usefully, and some of them have a well demonstrated ability to do so. Given funding for independent thought, whether a government funded corps of completely dependent individuals likes thought outside of their world is (happily) unimportant in maintaining the tradition of scientific and technical debate. I’ll let you read again what I said, in context:
Silvaire wrote:
@Airborne_Again, those of us who get paid twice as much as the average college professor to use our brains and think, by people spending their own money, do not particularly respect the concept of abandoning logic or desperately defending the indefensible. You can like that or not, as you choose, and your choice in that is what doesn’t actually make any difference.
Which is a very good thing.
Silvaire wrote:
representing that as my point is argumentative and sophomoric
Come now. You wrote that yourself. Who is sophomoric?
I have my very clear answer to that particular question, now enhanced, and I’ll let you have yours. Have a nice day.
Silvaire wrote:
My point is that individuals have the ability to think usefully, and some of them have a well demonstrated ability to do so.
It’s not about the “ability to think” at all.
It’s about knowledge first. Nobody can think “usefully” if they don’t understand what they are thinking about. If one doesn’t know what others mean if they talk about global average temperature, it is not hard but impossible to “think usefully” about that. One could obviously think about something like “my own imagination when I hear the term global annual temperature” but this thinking can impossibly be useful as I am the only one in the whole world who understands this concept and no-one else would even know, what I’m, talking about (even though some might think because I use words that others also use but with a different meaning).
In topics as complex as climate research there are (unfortunately) many things I need to know before I can reasonably talk to someone who does.
And then it’s about the sheer arrogance of people who believe that by looking at some random graphs (of which they do not fully understand what they actually show) they can generate more insight than thousands of scientists in millions of man-years of scientific research!
Or to translate that in terms that you seem to understand:
Even if your market hourly rate is – let’s say – a million dollar, other people collectively have been paid so much more for thinking about climate change than you would have, even if you did do nothing else for the entire 12 months. Therefore it is extremely obvious, that their insights are so much more relevant than yours – right?
So if your logic that payment is an indicator for the quality of outcome of any thought holds true, there is obviously nothing to discuss here – in that metric all you might think about climate change is simply meaningless.
dublinpilot wrote:
The cost of producing power with renewables is now competitive with fossil fuels.
Only with subsidy.
Yes; but there are lots of ways of massaging the numbers 
There are some scandals here right now that wind turbines are needing replacement after just 5 years.
In Greece, you see a lot of turbines which are broken and clearly they don’t find them worth repairing.
But hey there is hope. The news is that the complete nutters calling themselves Extinction Rebellion are backing nuclear power!
This isn’t related to Peter’s comment, but I find it funny that people get so exercised about ER.
Of course they’re going to make outrageous demands and claims, that’s their job. That’s what extremes on both sides of the debate do.
If you’re looking for a 5% pay rise from your boss, you ask for 15%, hoping that you’ll end-up at 5%. If you’re hoping for the UK government to do more to combat the illegal levels of air pollution in Central London than try and fudge the figures you campaign for the end of capitalism. Everyone including ER knows it will never happen, but they’re hardly going to make a headlines by politely asking for a 3.71% reduction in short haul passenger numbers over a 9 year period.
By the same token, it’s quite possible to be a something of a libertarian with our necessarily reading the nutters on Breitbart news.
What I find funny is how some people post virtually nothing related to flying but find a lot of time over a couple of years for posting off topic stuff 
With my extinction rebellion commitments I barely have time left for GA :)
Malibuflyer wrote:
It’s about knowledge first. Nobody can think “usefully” if they don’t understand what they are thinking about
Look, I simply can’t have a useful discussion while the opposing argument rambles incoherently, changing its basic thesis when confronted with reality, contradicting itself without explanation and ignoring obvious facts. The argument reflects a few spots of knowledge with no discipline and therefore no logic or consistent thesis. This appears to reflect a religious view, with little understanding. I’m done, have a nice day.
