SpankyMcFarland

Do you apply those criteria to religious beliefs as well? What sort of evidence would convince you of climate change? I’m not an expert on climate change so any debate between us would devolve into a silly argument. I do know a little more about medical subjects but my knowledge there did not help me convince anybody here who didn’t already agree with me. The same information is available to you as it is to me.

I think everybody should be deeply concerned about China’s recent move to restrict rare earth exports. The stock market tumbled in response and even I noticed my puny mutual funds taking a hit. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/12/china-defends-rare-earth-export-curbs-as-legitimate-hits-back-at-us-tariffs-ahead-of-possible-trump-xi-meeting.html China doesn’t do these things lightly. They must have thoroughly thought this through and decided they could take such a drastic step that affects the whole world. Trump’s retaliatory threat to massively jack up tariffs on Chinese products would affect his career prospects more quickly than Xi’s if carried through. With the benefit of hindsight, as they say, the West should never have let itself become so dependent on China for these products. Rare earths are not that rare, only difficult to extract and refine. We have abundant quantities of them in Canada but it would take a long time to replace the Chinese supply.

If we are talking foreign ties in Canada, then who is more globalist than the likes of Facebook and Google?

So were all the people who broke into the building federal agents too?

Belief may be an ambiguous term here. We’re not talking about religious belief but rather an assessment of enormous amounts of evidence in rigorously peer-reviewed scientific papers that has accumulated relentlessly over decades. That evidence is overwhelmingly in one direction: man-made climate change is real.

Climate change happens and part of that now is man-made climate change. Man-made climate change is a crisis. No reasonable person denies that any more. Anybody who does needs to educate themselves on the scientific evidence.

Florida real estate is best avoided at the moment anyway.

I suppose that’s the debate Alberta has had with the rest of Canada, esp. BC.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Them’s fightin’ words. One could argue that Canada is an invention too.

OK. I constantly ask our political representatives about what they are doing to reduce the risk of wildfire and I’m always on the lookout for ways to make my own home less flammable too. So I am already focused on adaptation but there are unfortunately too many Canadians who seek to either deny climate change completely or dispute its magnitude. In no way am I crying wolf. Many of us on the island were in fear of losing our homes this summer which is a new thing for a lot of us.

Yes, the media are in the business of hyping stories but in this instance they are correct. The climatic changes I’ve seen in Newfoundland in my time here are genuinely frightening and are backed by the data. I have every reason not to want to see this but the evidence is overwhelming.

So far so good with the peace deal. It looks like the exchange will happen.

The president isn’t supposed to do that for obvious reasons. America was founded to do away with arbitrary measures of that sort.

Trump actually ordered this prosecution to happen. You cannot get more blatant than that when it comes to interference. I can assure you that such outrageous misconduct will be brought up by the attorneys for both James and Comey.

The case is absurdly flawed and is clearly a malicious prosecution directed by the president.

If this deal does work then Trump deserves credit for it.

I take no pleasure in the prospect of further Russian casualties - there’s only one of them I’d like to see in a box. For the most part, these are young lads who have been thrown into a foreign war that has nothing to do with them. The pre-Communist Russian Empire brought misery, ignorance and pogroms to Europe. There’s no earthly need for a repeat.

It is a war between the free world and Putin.

Another summer spent watching the fire forecasts in Newfoundland. Newfoundland! That cold, foggy, soggy little isle in the Atlantic. And our soggiest spot was one of the worst for fires this year, the Avalon peninsula itself. We were lucky not to see St. John’s go up. Alarm is appropriate, folks. Fear should be mongered on a mass scale.

I may start another thread on the more general issue of what can be done when organs fail. Broadly speaking there are several approaches: 1. Existing medical therapy. 2. Artificial devices that assist or replace organ function. There’s been a lot of progress here for hearts. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/ventricular-assist-device/about/pac-20384529 3. Organ transplantation. A great option but supply is limited. 4. Xenotransplantation. We’ve a long way to go here with many problems along the way but the potential is enormous. 4. Stem cell repair. Very promising as noted above. As people age their organs fail. Many of us will need repair or replacement to stay going.

As I mentioned above this recent stem cell repair approach in Germany looks promising. One good aspect is that the patient’s own stem cells are used so there is no rejection to deal with and the ‘scaffolding’ is already there. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/29/scientists-develop-patch-repair-damage-heart-failure

Well, there’s hate on both sides of this conflict. That’s true of tribal wars everywhere.

So ethnic cleansing is your answer. What about the West Bank? The same idea too? Why stop in Palestine? Maybe there are other conflicts where you would like to see this efficient method of conflict resolution employed?

Killing negotiators, though, that’s an unusual step no matter who the hostage takers are, isn’t it? To me it suggests the obvious - that there was little interest in negotiation.