catastrophization

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by sculptor, Aug 13, 2019.

  1. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Respond to such negativity and biased inferences, with your so called questions? That also brings your honesty into question.
     
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  3. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    So doctors who warn you about diet and exercise are "catastrophizers?" As are architects, traffic engineers, self defense experts, gun safety instructors, aerospace engineers and flight instructors? Fair enough. Awful lot of them out there, though.
     
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  5. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    no
    however, geese that give up their peaceful feeding and flee loudly when I walk down to the inlet of the lake, certainly are-------and, I think to myself---silly geese....
     
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  7. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    and, now
    we get the "sour grapes"
    and the personal attack
    ...............
    not altogether unexpected
     
  8. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Really? Maybe they just don't want to get shot.
     
  9. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    yeh, that would be my guess
     
  10. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    But, something drives the denying of climate change as a pervasive threat, is it the idea of tax dollars going towards research and climate change initiatives?
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Sure - as a species.

    There was at least one bottleneck in civilization - a point where a large fraction of extant humanoids died, leaving a small gene pool from which we all descended. So, sure the species lived on, but the people did not.

    While your and my life will end long before we experience mass death form starvation, would you not agree that - as a civilization - this counts as a catastrophe to be avoided at virtually any cost?
     
  12. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    The bottleneck of which you posted was most likely caused by a volcanic eruption(Toba) which may have lowered the global temperature by 6 degrees C during a period of glaciation during which the climate was already 5 degrees colder than current. After which: It is believed that the neanderthals never regained enough of their population to remain viable.
    There was also a mass die-off during the extreme cold weather of the year without a summer(1816), which was also a result of volcanism, during a time when the climate was already 1 or 2 degrees colder than present. Estonia was claimed to have lost about 70% of her population..............
    The cold is the killer!

    Assuming that anthropogenic atmospheric forcing will have the same result seems to be catastrophizing.
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  13. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    OK, so you acknowledge climate change on a global scale resulting in mass die off.
    If not 'catastophe', how would you categorize that - from the point of view of the ... catastrophe-ees?

    Does the cause matter to the dead?

    Ah. The other shoe drops.


    So, your issue is less about whether the fall of our planetary ecology and civilization is a catastrophe, and more about whether you think this particular climate change is really going to be catastrophic.

    Also, you weren't originally talking about human-induced climate change. You opened with merely 'climate change'. That's a bit of a bait-n-switch.


    This is why I waited until your motives came out. You've moved the goalposts since your OP. You haven't been transparent with us.
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  14. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    You put it far gentler then I did
    Sour grapes? All I have done is highlighted your expressing that same old attitude, "stuff you, I'm alright Jack"
    Personal attack? You mean about questioning your honesty? Well I do see moving the goal posts as questionable at best...dishonest at worst....Is that satisfactory?
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Why are you seeing "jumping to conclusions" where other people see more or less straightforward description of physical circumstances?
    Mostly by staying out or range of the rapid stuff. Not like this.
    The closest they came to AGW, as far as anyone knows, was the Toba volcano - and that apparently came near wiping them out. Surviving that was luck. AGW is likely to be more severe in its effects.

    But even with that, species survival is seldom the issue or catastrophe du latestfinding among most AGW folks - the likely catastrophes of various kinds with various probabilities are on the table, instead.
    But you are seeing "catastrophizing" in even the sober and underplayed research reports, IPCC forecasts, etc. So all the AGW researchers - all the people with the most information and experience and knowledge of paleoclimate circumstances - are being "silly" together?

    And you continue to hint at compare AGW even up with the much slower and less hazardous global climate changes of the past, as if they were equivalent. You go out of your way to do that, even extrapolating from the unique events around Greenland in the last melt to the globe.

    Schmelzer posts crap like that - a sort of willful refusal to acknowledge content and issues.
    They aren't dealing in assumptions - they're forecasting from analysis of research.
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  16. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. I don't see Sculptor as a foe.
     
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  17. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    What makes people tick?
    There is a whole branch of science attempting to answer that very question.
    Kinda like the joke: "God created whiskey to make the Irish humble... and, She almost succeeded."

    I suspect that most people are in the grey area, and some do not care. It may also be that some "deniers" are not acting so much as reacting to the hyperbolic catastrophizing claims of some of the more strident "alarmist".
    Some are anti added taxes which many see as just another way to move money from the working poor and middle class into the pockets of the wealthy, with the likelihood that no good will come of it. We already pay almost 60 cents tax on a gallon of diesel fuel, plus sales tax.
    Some think it likely that added taxes will negatively effect their investments.

    catastrophic thinking which is a tendency to expect the worst to happen without considering other possibilities is listed as a mental disorder

    But, something drives the alarmist catastrophizing of climate change as a pervasive threat

    Why?
     
  18. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    That is only unanswered if you dismiss the obvious answer: that climate change is going to be a catastrophe.

    It is pointless to discuss what's driving it until after you've dismantled that. Why pointless? Because a valid answer to every subsequent question will be 'because it's going to be a catastrophe'.

    So, what is your case for global climate change not being a catastrophe?
     
  19. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    For the most part, this seems to be a reasonable stance--when dealing with genuine stupidity and/or genuine ignorance; however, what we're seeing here is different--as you note above, re: motivations and moving the goalposts and suchlike--in that it's willful ignorance and deception. Sure, address the content and not the poster--but what is one supposed to do when dealing with a poster who repeatedly and consistently employs dishonest tactics?
     
  20. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I have a policy to maintain a very low setting on my radar and and have it refresh frequently*. If the OP has employed dishonest tactics in the past it hasn't left an after image on my radar.

    * of course, some have burned a spot into my screen
     
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  21. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,857
    For many, I don't think they deny climate change. They either think it's just "normal" variations in the climate or they thinl whatever we do won't be the right thing but it will make costs go up.

    For many they had problems when catalytic converters were first required in cars. They felt that cars didn't run as well with them and when they needed replacing they were expensive.

    I don't think it's a viewpoint really based on data as much as a gut feeling that the government doesn't know what it's doing. There's always the news story of a city taking all the recycled waste and sending it all to the same place negating all the work of recycling.

    One or two stories like that works wonders when you already distrust the government and "scientists". That's my guess anyway.
     
  22. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    What you, and climate change deniers, tend to skip over (in the latter case deliberately) is the rate of change.

    The changes forecast, in sea level, distribution of rainfall, intensity of storms, and so forth, are predicted to take place over the next 50-100 years. Past climate changes of equivalent magnitude occurred over tens of thousands of years. It should be fairly obvious that, over long timescales, populations can move and change their habits, ecosystems can adapt, and even evolution can get to work, to adapt organisms to the gradually changing conditions.

    But if it happens in less than a century, clearly it will be far more disruptive and hard to compensate for, both for humanity and for the planet.
     
  23. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. All those people are on record predicting negative outcomes, then jumping to the conclusion that if the negative outcome did in fact happen, it would be a catastrophe.

    I have worked with quite a number of catastrophizers. I worked with one guy who spent five years of very long work weeks getting ready for the Y2K switchover. One of the reasons he worked so hard is he could see the sort of catastrophe that would arrive if no one made any effort to deal with the problems caused by the two digit year in the date. Thanks to him (and the work of thousands of others) that was avoided.

    I note that some people prefer to bury their heads in the sands, and ignore evidence which indicates that problems are coming. These people would be wise to choose less important professions. Perhaps professor of old English literature, or hotel desk clerk.
     

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