dialamah

Yeah, he didn't break the law but he ought not to have broken an ethical code either.

If the concern among posters on the Islam thread is that Islamic extremism will spread in Canada, why is there not a similar concern about white supremacy extremism spreading? If white supremacist attacks are increasing in Europe and the States, faster than Islamic attacks, why no concern among conservatives? Why do they instead ignore, dismiss or downplay those attacks? If liberals* are wrong for ignoring, dismissing or downplaying Islamic attacks around the world, are conservatives* any less wrong for doing the same when it comes to white supremacy extremism? If Canadians reject extremism, then rejecting White Supremacy extremism is just as important as rejecting Islamic extremism, don't you think? *among those who do

Islamic terrorism is pretty irrelevant in Canada, yet conservative media (and posters here) make a big deal of any misdeed by any Muslim anywhere in the world, and prophesy dire consequences to Canada. While I agree that white supremacist attacks in Canada are rare, they happen more often than Islamic attacks. And while nobody thinks all conservatives are racist, or even most conservatives, racist and white supremacist rhetoric and concepts are entering our media and culture through conservatives. And yet again here in this thread and the opening post, we see conservatives blaming "somebody else" for attitudes and behavior they support and encourage in every anti-immigrant and every anti-Muslim post they make. At the risk of being too reasonable, I would say that finger pointing is a major problem that prevents solutions. Simplistically blaming either conservatives or liberals is stupid. Conservatives are no more supportive of extremist behavior from White Supremacists than Liberals are supportive of extremist behavior from Islamists. We're all on the same page with respect to murdering innocent people to make a political statement.

Muslims save Christians from Al-Shabaab terror attack.

Humans have always been omnivores - it means eating both plant and animal. For most of our history we have eaten far less meat than we do now in Western countries and in many countries people still eat much less meat than we do. But continue in your calls to inaction. You'll likely be dead before the piper needs to be paid; you can leave that to your kids and grandkids.

The report admits that it doesn't take other things into consideration, such as natural disasters and the cost of those, or geopolitical and political impact. It's a nice positive piece, but I don't think it is complete enough to be realistic. Can't blame them, of course, it's not like they really have any previous experience to figure out the real costs. Real people live there; they're the ones who'll get hammered.

Carbon taxes reduce emissions in the most economically effective manner. Shell supports carbon pricing and has even pulled out of lobbying groups whose policies are not in accord with the Paris Accord. Who benefits from arguing against carbon taxes? The oil industry and they spend lots of money to do that.

1. If nobody does anything, then nothing happens. I'd rather start doing something now then just sit back and wait for my neighbor or the guy in the next town to save my life. 2. Sure, I agree there is lots more that we could do, but given that a significant portion of Western people are arguing against doing much, it's not hard to see why more aggressive solutions aren't being suggested.

Who is being taxed to death? Canada's taxes are lower than those in the US, even though we're committing the great sin of addressing climate change in the least disruptive manner possible. The oil industry as it currently exists is not compatible with human life. Our economy is not going to survive the influx of climate refugees from the rest of the world, or at least those that can get here. Read around the web some; Canada is already talked about as being one of the best places to be. You think there's a border crisis now, its gonna get a lot worse and the most likely outcome over time is no-more-Canada because we do not have the military to defend our border even from our next door neighbor. An effort to slow climate change so we have time to implement a slower transition away from fossil fuels is not a demand to go back to the stone age. Unless most scientists are very, very wrong, our species will be decimated so that at least will help. Food shortages are coming and it will impact us. More extreme weather, forest fires and floods will impact our energy delivery services, disproportionately affecting rural areas and the poor. We will not be as affected by these things as other countries, I assume, but doesn't mean we'll be sitting pretty by any stretch. The biggest threat for us, I believe, are climate refugees and military invasion by other countries. Or maybe just one other country. 1. Last time the climate cycled this high humans didn't exist. 2. Climate temperatures did not raise dramatically within decades, as it has done currently. 3. Even if this is part of a normal cycle, human activity has made it significantly worse. I hope me and 95% of scientists have eggs on our faces in the decades ahead as the climate reverses course with minimal intervention from us. If we don't, I hope the people who put forth these arguments are around to see the result of their calls to inaction.

Evidence is that carbon pricing is the least impactful economically, yet the claim is that it's too costly.

It's hard to find any kind of solution acceptable to certain people. Climate change itself is a scam, so any effort on our part to mitigate it is resisted and mocked. There's also the attitude that if it doesn't solve the problem, it's not worth doing at all. Carbon pricing demonstrably reduces emissions, even if it doesn't completely solve the problem. Various green technologies are too expensive to be feasible, even as prices come down and reliability improves, so they should be scrapped. And how dare we even consider reducing the need for employment in the oil industry. Then of course there's the claim that other countries are more responsible and we should do nothing because they aren't doing enough. Never mind that it is our consumer lifestyle that has driven the change so far, and that these other countries are, by capita, emitting much less carbon than we do. In the meantime headlines like this Canadian Children at Higher Risk of Asthma and Lyme Disease Due to Climate Change will be ignored, dismissed, attributed to an agenda. I suppose at some point the effects will be obvious enough that even the most die-hard "do nothing" folk of today will be demanding that government do something, anything to fix the problem. They'll have conveniently forgotten all their objections to what we could be doing today in favor of blaming everybody else. Some of us here may still be alive to see the start of this, but it will be our children and grandchildren who'll bear the brunt of our squabbling. I don't suppose humans will cease to exist really, but I think it'll be catastrophic enough that civilization as we know it will be gone.

For me it is, yup. Keep (letting myself) get sucked back in. The other place I could delete myself.

Right ... you aren't one for supporting your arguments, I momentarily forgot. Basically not worth paying attention to.

An op-ed from LA Times describing what researchers have discovered about mass shooters by examing every mass shooting from 1966. Summary: The majority of mass shooters experienced trauma or exposure to violence in their early life - that's real violence, not video-game violence. This trauma/violence is a precurser to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, thought disorders, suicidal ideation. There was some kind of crisis weeks or months ahead of the shooting. Media provides a script through 24-hour-news cycles, and through dissemination of other shooters' thoughts and behavior, and promises notoriety in death. Many have been radicalized through online validation of their will to murder - (people who bully deserve to die and I would be justified in killing those who bullied me or stood by while I was bullied; I will be saving my culture if I kill some Muslims, Blacks, Jews, Hispanics on my way out of this world). From the article: The op-ed goes on to suggest some ways to intervene before the shooter gets to the point of selecting a site and finding the weapons.

If those stronger correlations are out there, I'm sure you can find them if you look. I did, through one google search - found other correlations, though I wouldn't consider them 'much stronger', more like part of the whole picture. You could present some researched information, instead of simply "assuming" there's an agenda at work when you aren't spoon fed the information you want.

All countries have violent video games, often developed in the States. Among developed nations, only the States has so many mass shootings. If video games were causative or even correlated, other countries would also have high levels of mass shootings.

I think I'm out of the norm here, but I do have two friends outside my immediate family, who I only see a few times a year even though we live less than 30 minutes apart. I find it difficult to maintain friendships because I am, by nature, a loner. Even with my immediate family, we communicate rather sporadically, sometimes not talking for weeks or months. I have been with partners who were very social and it was fine, but I wasn't any happier having a busy social life than a virtually non-existent one. I enjoyed being single, having my life to myself as much as I enjoy having a partner. I fill most of my "social" needs through work, and perhaps if that were missing I'd find more desire for friends outside my partner and family. Perhaps if I were widowed and not working, I'd experience being alone differently. Its not that I've never felt lonely, but it's been very transient and occurred not just when I've been completely bereft of friends and single, but also during the most "connected" times of my life. Sometimes I think media portrayal friendships is misleading and raises unrealistic expectations. I've yet to find an article that addresses what I feel is my natural inclination; instead I'm expected to die younger and be less healthy mentally and physically, even though I find trying to maintain friendships somewhat more stressful and tiring than being alone. I know I'm not the only person who feels this way, but it's like we're invisible to experts who are concerned with human social habits. I recently came across a post by a young guy who planned a trip, but had no friends to travel with so his sister shamed him about traveling alone to the point he looked to the internet for validation of his comfort level with being alone. That's kind of sad, imo. Why can't his preferences be accepted as normal?

There kinda is. This plant in Squamish BC sucks about a tonne out of the air daily, but just releases it back, I guess it's kind of a prototype. There's another similar one in Switzerland, but so far these techniques are not economically viable.

But you can't prove it, apparently. So who is making baseless claims here?

Still he couldn't, for whatever reason, and so my point is that what saved my son's life was lack of access to a gun.

While that's true, it's also true that the easier it is to get a gun, the easier it is to kill multiple people. The deranged* individual who attacked my son used a knife, and while it was close, my son did not die. The attacker talked about how he'd tried to get a gun, but was unsuccessful. If he'd been succesful in getting a gun, my son would be dead. It's all well and good to argue that it's the tool weilder that is the problem but ignoring the difference in tools chosen to get the job done is disingenuous. If the problem isn't the tool, then why not allow citizens to access tanks and warplanes? If the problem is people and not the tool, why shouldn't all countries be permitted free access to nuclear weapons. Ultimately it's easier and more effective to limit access to weapons rather than try to determine which humans might decide to use the most efficient killing tool they can get to kill as many as possible. *Literally deranged, he is still in a facility.

This is an engineer, not a climate scientist. Climate deniers dismiss Susuki because he's a zoologist and not a climate or environment scientist, but an engineer should be taken seriously? FYI I read the article anyway, and can only say I hope he's right and that there is no catastrophe headed our way. But it's pretty hard for me to believe that scientists and governments all over the world are out to deceive us and that they've been working towards this for over 100 years now. "In the late 19th century, scientists first argued that human emissions of greenhouse gases could change the climate. Many other theories of climate change were advanced, involving forces from volcanism to solar variation. In the 1960s, the warming effect of carbon dioxide gas became increasingly convincing. Some scientists also pointed out that human activities that generated atmospheric aerosols (e.g., "pollution") could have cooling effects as well. During the 1970s, scientific opinion increasingly favored the warming viewpoint. By the 1990s, as a result of improving fidelity of computer models and observational work confirming the Milankovitch theory of the ice ages, a consensus position formed: greenhouse gases were deeply involved in most climate changes and human-caused emissions were bringing discernible global warming."

Not so. Scientific American has a long history of presenting quality and groundbreaking science to the public. They wrote articles about radio technology, air travel and space travel well before those things became reality. They've published articles from scientists such as Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling, Jonas Crick among others. 150 Nobel laureates have published in Scientific American, usually before they received awards for their work. From Scientific American: "Generally speaking, Scientific American and Scientific American MIND present ideas that have already been published in the peer-reviewed technical literature." AllSides (Media Bias site) gives SciAm a rating of "Center". (For comparison, AllSides rates CNN as Left Center and Fox News as Right Center, Vox as Left and National Review as Right). Media Bias Fact Check says it is Pro-Science. Pro-Science sources "consist of legitimate science or are evidence based through the use of credible scientific sourcing. Legitimate science follows the scientific method, is unbiased and does not use emotional words." So why is Scientific American on the partisan conservative kill list? According to Wikipedia, SciAm had the audacity to criticize a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist, and in 2016 an editorial criticized Trump.

Evangelical Christians? Even after Lewinski?