Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?

[JosephM]

I am suggesting that we need to find a way to choose who it is that we all may trust in, and the only hope of that, is to believe in an objective truth which they may relate.
( or at least that those who have the power to direct the ship of humanity can get on board with)

Well, suppose there was this trustworthy source, and the message was that a calamity was coming. The mathematics behind it all isn't very hard to understand after all. The details about the pace and exactly when might not be known exactly, but the price of doing nothing is nevertheless known.

Now what? A purveyor of truth hasn't necessarily the answer (even if the power was granted) as to how to avert said calamity. What I'm asking for is suggestions. We have a climate issue, and no suggestions as to how to fix that. We have a global economy based on a Ponzi scheme (set up around WWII). We have a growing population that depends on nonrenewable resources and depends on their own growth.

That's three calamities (four if you count war, but that one isn't inevitable), and even the most trustworthy benevolent leader has no acceptable solutions it seems, so there seems to be no point in putting one in charge. The current action on all these fronts is attempting to maximize the severity of the problem as much as possible by delaying the facing of the problems.

There is no climate issue , the climate is always in flux and this period is no different than earlier cycles. It is being debunked by the CATO institute , Nobel prizewinners and others, they literally will show you where the fudged data has been cherry-picked from the whole data set, so you have been shown partial graphs , and graphs which have been tuned to skew the trends.
There is more snow and ice forming at the south pole , the whole Greenland ice sheet is not going to melt , previous periods have been up to eight degrees warmer overall and the methane hydrates at the north pole didn't kill everything.
Temperature on earth rises before CO2 ppms go up , increasing temps increase productivity of crop plants and so forth.
Sorry , you , me , and many others , have been deceived by people with agendas. Among which, is to undermine the energy producers and developed nations, to favor third world and developing countries , which excuse themselves from any responsibility.
The flip side , the good side , is its better to have the populace , start taking an interest , and responsibility, for what is happening to the planet , deforestation , pollution and so forth. So even if we have been taken for a ride , at least there is some good that may come out of it.

[Jan Sand]

That the overwhelming number of meteorologists of the world came together to scam the current civilization onto a blatant lie is a conspiracy delusion of an order that is truly monumental.

[Fooloso4]

JosephM:

It is being debunked by the CATO institute …

From the Cato Institute:

Global warming is indeed real, and human activity has been a contributor since 1975. But global warming is also a very complicated and difficult issue that can provoke very unwise policy in response to political pressure. Although there are many different legislative proposals for substantial reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, there is no operational or tested suite of technologies that can accomplish the goals of such legislation.
Fortunately, and contrary to much of the rhetoric surrounding climate change, there is ample time to develop such technologies, which will require substantial capital investment by individuals. (https://www.cato.org/research/global-warming)

JosephM:

Sorry , you , me , and many others , have been deceived by people with agendas.

Regarding agendas, the Cato Institute was founded and is run by the Koch brothers
(https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Cato_Institute). If you are in agreement with their Libertarian agenda you might not think they are the people deceiving you. From the Cato mission statement:

The mission of the Cato Institute is to originate, disseminate, and increase understanding of public policies based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. Our vision is to create free, open, and civil societies founded on libertarian principles. (https://www.cato.org/mission)

It is getting increasingly difficult to deny climate change and resultant problems. They are not denying it. The issue for them are that they are opposed to the administrative state, using all the familiar code words - individual liberty, limited government, free markets. In other words, they are saying: “Yes, there is a problem but we don’t want the government to do anything about it because that means increased regulations and funding”. Note that they say addressing the problem "will require substantial capital investment by individuals". This is certainly correct, but should not exclude government action.

[JosephM]

It is a Stawman argument to require me to find statements by people who can be shown to have no agenda.
You did not provide any example of agenda-less people either.

What you feel the impact of the Koch bros. is moot ,unless you can show show where they had biased impact on the data. That is just insinuation.
And even if the Cato institute can be labeled libertarian , this does not mean that anyone should consider their conclusions to be wrong without considering the data and the conclusions derived from it .
I merely offered that there are agendas that may affect conclusions , and that your conclusions are not necessarily fact ,based on who said them.

Theres a difficulty quoting back at you but this hyperlink says the same thing from the Heartland institute
Nope , cant include the hyperlink. I don't know how you snuck them in
Even your quote
"Global warming is indeed real, and human activity has been a contributor since 1975. But global warming is also a very complicated and difficult issue that can provoke very unwise policy in response to political pressure. Although there are many different legislative proposals for substantial reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, there is no operational or tested suite of technologies that can accomplish the goals of such legislation."
Does NOT indicate that there is a climatic problem ,does indicate that natural processes are at least involved ,and does not indicate what is so special that happened in 1975.
( the industrial revolution started a long time ago - deforestation was already huge at the beginning of the century )
Yeah there can be shown a little rise but this is just the tail end of a much longer record which indicates that we are just in a normal cycle, (and if you trim it even smaller , you can see that there is a tiny drop from last year or so!)

Most significantly , handle this factoid first , if you are willing to debate the science itself , CO2 , historically has been shown to rise after temperature , not before, and so seeing rising CO2 is not indicative of any rise in temperature to come.

[Halc]

There is no climate issue

Fine and dandy. How about the other two?

[Fooloso4]

JosephM:

It is a Stawman argument to require me to find statements by people who can be shown to have no agenda.
You did not provide any example of agenda-less people either.

It was you who claimed that we are being deceived by those with agendas. I pointed out that the Kochs have an agenda. If having an agenda is significant then it is significant for the source you cite.

What you feel the impact of the Koch bros. is moot ,unless you can show show where they had biased impact on the data.

The Kato Institute is in agreement with the overwhelming majority of those qualified to gather and analyse the data, the same people you claim are deceiving us.

Even your quote … Does NOT indicate that there is a climatic problem …

It does. What you left out is:

Fortunately, and contrary to much of the rhetoric surrounding climate change, there is ample time to develop such technologies, which will require substantial capital investment by individuals.

Why would they say there is ample time to develop such technologies requiring substantial capital investment by individuals to reduce carbon dioxide emissions if there is no problem? They are not denying the problem of global warming or that human activity contributes to it, they are arguing against legislation intended to accomplish that goal.

… if you are willing to debate the science itself …

I am not qualified to do so. What are your qualifications? There will always be someone who does not agree with scientific consensus, but almost all scientists who are qualified agree that there is ample evidence that global warming is real, is a problem, and that man-made activities play a significant part.

Since the topic determinism and free will. I am going to refrain from saying more.

[Jan Sand]

Obviously, the global warming area has become a matter of free wont.

[JosephM]

There is no climate issue

Fine and dandy. How about the other two?

"We have a climate issue, and no suggestions as to how to fix that. We have a global economy based on a Ponzi scheme (set up around WWII). We have a growing population that depends on nonrenewable resources and depends on their own growth.

That's three calamities (four if you count war, but that one isn't inevitable)"
Do you mean these ? If so ,I vote that you may have a fair issue as to global economy and population growth. You would need to be very specific before I would challenge either of those things, and in fact , I would agree to the seriousness of those things as they stand.

However, since I do not think there are perfect solutions to these problems , we are going to have to collectively agree on solutions that are somewhat arbitrary , or kill each other until things work out. Each one of these issues can fill a thread of their own so I just picked the one that has been on my plate most recently, the climate thing, which I think could come off the list of most threatening issues in favor of plain ol' demand on the environment.

[Jan Sand]

Take a look at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 112221.htm and think clearly about it.

[JosephM]

@ Fooloso4
Re:
"It was you who claimed that we are being deceived by those with agendas."

Yes , we seem to ,mostly ,agree on this, that there are folks with agendas, and we may be fooled by them ,but this does not suggest that every proposition is bogus, just because we can see the possibility of the agenda driving the conclusions. We do not collect or crunch the data itself and do rely on that to be done by others. I posit that we have to go a step past the names and look at the material, in full awareness that we are not the collectors of the data.
What I found convincing was that the material showing a recent warming trend ,was truncated from a larger body of data so as to present that conclusion as a 'done deal'.
The number of people claiming a thing to be true doesn't really tell you that the thing is true.( For instance, the Catholic Church is big but that doesn't prove the existence of that God. )
In the instance the graph of temperature rose before , that of the graph of the carbon dioxide levels ,it remained unmentioned .
The stance of the Cato institute is a side issue in flux and its not the main point, which is ,I believe, if there is a man-driven creation of a climate issue that we need to rectify. Back in my school days , the predictions made by the science community ,were that we were pushing ourselves into an ice age, not only has that been entirely shown false but now the claims are that we are going to go in the other direction. Todays claims belie the the earlier claims, and the earlier claims were based predominantly on the same data.

I hope you do not refrain from saying more , the point of a forum is to speak-up, not lurk, IMO

[Jan Sand]

To compare the beliefs based on undeniable evidence by the overwhelming majority of meteorologists and scientists that global warming is not only a threat but that the rapid disapearaance of the polar ice and the vast emmissions of methane reported by observers is on the same order of the Catholic belief in God gives me a deeper understanding on your evaluation capabilities and puts me much more at ease with my acceptance that life on the planet is in severe danger in the near future of mostly vanishing. I am grateful to you for clarifying that.

[JosephM]

To compare the beliefs based on undeniable evidence by the overwhelming majority of meteorologists and scientists that global warming is not only a threat but that the rapid disapearaance of the polar ice and the vast emmissions of methane reported by observers is on the same order of the Catholic belief in God gives me a deeper understanding on your evaluation capabilities and puts me much more at ease with my acceptance that life on the planet is in severe danger in the near future of mostly vanishing. I am grateful to you for clarifying that.

Ok Ok We are all going to die ,I guess you'd better start wrapping things up then , get that will written out ,and spend what you got left before those ice sheets slide down.

[Jan Sand]

I don't know about you, but I am 93 years old. I am fairly well settled in my mind about dying and it doesn't bother me at all. If youhave problems about dying you had better work them out as best you can. Good luck..

[JosephM]

Oh , wait , I thought you might not be old enough to understand that reference ,it would appear that you are quite old enough, but back in the 70s we were all alarmed to the fact, that we were bringing on an ice-age. Remember the 70s ? or has it slipped your mind?

By the 1970s, scientists were becoming increasingly aware that estimates of global temperatures showed cooling since 1945, as well as the possibility of large scale warming due to emissions of greenhouse gases. In the scientific papers which considered climate trends of the 21st century, less than 10% inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming.[1] The general public had little awareness of carbon dioxide's effects on climate, but Science News in May 1959 forecast a 25% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the 150 years from 1850 to 2000, with a consequent warming trend.[3] The actual increase in this period was 29%. ( the actual percentage of carbon dioxide was actually .0391 percent in 2011 also according to wikipedia

Paul R. Ehrlich mentioned climate change from greenhouse gases in 1968.[4] By the time the idea of global cooling reached the public press in the mid-1970s temperatures had stopped falling, and there was concern in the climatological community about carbon dioxide's warming effects.[5] In response to such reports, the World Meteorological Organization issued a warning in June 1976 that "a very significant warming of global climate" was probable.[6]

So what happened was, when the community found out that they were looking like a bunch of fools, they decided to change to the term "climate change" which covers both eventualities and the fact that the climate really does change all the time.


Maybe nobody notices that we have an entire planet covered with organisms that act as Carbon dioxide sinks , called plants , and that Carbon dioxide is not at levels which preclude yet more uptake.

[Belindi]

Josephm wrote:

Ok Ok We are all going to die ,I guess you'd better start wrapping things up then , get that will written out ,and spend what you got left before those ice sheets slide down.

Jan ensorses reason ; he's not the cause of your intransigence towards what constitutes proper evidence.