#but has absolutely no credibility past the loop to show people

[futuristicdenial]

For typing

I’m mainly stuck between ENTP and INFJ, though I’ve not shut the door on other types; why will soon become clear. For general context, I’m 24 years of age, female, currently in between research jobs (mathematics), living alone. I have been diagnosed with depression (high-functioning).

Ne-Si:

When I am functioning properly, the world seems filled with potential, and I experience that potential as inherent to it - there is a touch of mind projection there, but also just the sense that openness is integral to reality. Whether or not it is true at the base level, I feel fulfilled when dealing with an open-ended mental world (taking the world as branching, as a series of if this then that sequences where each “if” is indeed possible rather than simply a heuristic). Being able to adapt to a changing reality (and having a changing reality) is very important to me, and I derive a lot of my identity from adaptive and generative capacity. My sense of optimism is far more linked to flexibility than anything else - and I’m terrified of becoming comfortable with a single view of the world. My concept of relationships rests very much on joint creation, on the feeling of mutual contribution to an expanding vision - and just the sharing of ideas in general, the joy of pure thought, and at times, of troubleshooting. Much of the feedback I receive is feedback on being unpredictable, ever-changing, disconnected from material reality, generative but ineffectual. For context/situating me in my life, I decided to study mathematics with a focus on logic and category theory; as such, I set out to get a bachelor’s degree. I found it stifling, slow, computational, and was made far too miserable by its structure - so I dropped out, studied the relevant material on my own, and found a way to get around the red tape a year later, going straight for a master’s. Socially I tend to find alternate paths for people, I my way of contributing to their well-being is frequently linked to allowing them a wider view of what may yet be, and helping them detect the assumptions that limited their sight. I can be at a loss when there’s no sense of motion in someone’s life, I’m not sure what they need when there’s no trap, no problem, and no developmental challenges.

I’m terrified of repetition, of a crystalized self-image, of material comfort as a main motivation. When I’m truly not myself, I become a hypochondriac, I feel constantly physically threatened, I dwell on past ideas or events, I create a doomsday view of the future, I become embroiled in feelings of inevitability and become unable to think. I mentally hoard, I zoom in one one problem, feeling it is the problem to end all problems (and usually one that is horrible to think about) I feel I can do nothing else until I’ve solved it, and my view feel so narrow and simplistic it causes me great pain. I try to move beyond the past before truly integrating the lessons I derive from it. As part of this pattern, I frequently feel my expertise is feigned, that I’ve not mastered anything, truly, that I have nothing to show for myself an endless cascade of unfinished projects. Having always fled the standard path, I’ve often felt as though I had no credibility.

Ni-Se:

I need to feel a connection to meaning, to symbology, to story, grand narrative at all times - the material is never as real to me as perception itself, and that which shapes perception. (Whether or not this is ultimately physical is beside the point, I’m looking at experience here.) The feeling that the world is structurally ugly, lifeless, without possibility or vision has lead me to feeling suicidal in the past; what helped was starting with the experience of meaning in perception, and then applying a careful conceptual cleanup, rather than attempting purity from the start. I need a charted course - even if this course changes over time - a notion of the significance of my existence, and a notion of the world itself. The possibility I crave is the possibility that allows meaning, so while I absolutely need open-endedness, a progressive unfolding, I also need a coherence of vision. Naive analysis, of the form that starts with an attempt at formalization, and then unvaryingly follows that formalism to the grave is something that absolutely kill meaning for me - perhaps I’m sensitive to this as a mathematician, but it is a natural tendency regardless. We start with the truth of perception - a formalism that cannot be absorbed into experience is a failed one; reason is human reason, dreams of enlightenment that fail to take this into account are doomed, and they’re a far worse version of mind-projection than the one I cited earlier. Presupposing meaning is very dangerous. Visualization is an integral part of my internal life - I formulate my thoughts by shifting back and forth between between verbalized propositions, and film or photo-like impressions; I cannot say one form dominates over the other. I very much start out with a blurry image, feeling it become progressively clearer - I let the fog dissipate as I integrate things into a coherent whole, and then prune. I get feedback on being pretentious, highfalutin, bizarre, uptight, cold, obsessive... Socially I see relationships as ideally being about formulating joint meaning, and a lot of what I contribute to them is a sense of airy purpose, the sense that every piece of strife and trivial pain is contributing to something larger.

When I’m truly not myself I see no way foreword, the future seems lost, people seem stupid, I feel hopeless, and all of the mental suddenly feels cold and unsafe. The sensation is that the fruitless objective is the only truth, or at least the truth that will win out of sheer efficacy, and that I have no tools to fight due to not wanting to fight with tools. I feel unable to think, unable to see, and have at times sought comfort in substance abuse - this was perhaps peak out of character behavior: impulsive, “tomorrow we die” behavior. It is feeling a bleak lack of purpose and lack of potential combined with a lack of personal significance or ability that leave me distraught. I can also feel a great sense of loneliness - not just socially, a sense of immense distance from the world, as though I cannot connect to its structure.

Fe-Ti:

My ability to harmonize is frequently the last to go; I’ve often been told that I have a kind of distanced sympathy, that I understand what someone is experiencing well enough to provide them with true comfort, while not becoming directly involved in what they’re experiencing. Reading a social environment is very easy for me, though not always interesting - and having assumed the role of the mediator and “sage” from a very young age, I’ve come to find it very burdensome. I’m quick to spot what people need, what they crave, but have a very hard time using this knowledge to craft relationships that satisfy me - in the past I frequently ended up a tool, though I have become far more self-sufficient and assertive with time. A lot of what I contribute socially is also the ability to help people see the experience of others, which I often find self-evident. Fe behaviour feels somewhat tool-like to me, however... I find I frequently need the “find emotional comfort in the world” advice, though I often feel it is unsafe/try to find justifications for it that lie outside experience. I could see Ni-Ti looping tendencies: I justify my pessimism with reason that isn’t the best I’m capable of, and my pessimism is hyper-structured; I need to rationalize any comfort before I let myself have it (and usually don’t actually allow myself to have it) and frequently apply naive conceptions of “truth” to it; I retreat from the world to defend my self-imagine as a “brilliant and unique analytical thinker”, lest the external world hit me with a hammer; I disappear from social interactions and dive further and further into a self-defeating pit. I can feel a despair that I believe to be wholly unaided by material or emotional comforts, and refuse all help that isn’t a coherent model of what is.

Ti-Fe:

What it feels to me like a far stronger concern than all others - if human values have trade-offs, I feel reality takes the cake. I cannot cede ground to grace, or beauty, or efficiency or anything else until I have given reality its due. While I may feel more fulfilled by processes I would identify with intuition, what my mind does before anything else is a formal breakdown of cause, level of correlation, level of certainty, a check on personal biases and motivation, a search for alternate explanations, etc. There is a kind of automatic analytical thought that overtakes synthesis very quickly if I’m not paying attention; it’s what my mind does when I’m not looking, even when it is inconvenient and I wish to turn it off. I have always taken great pleasure in epistemology and logic, and my interests have often involved finding the purest, most general form of reason. It feels to me like the laws of the world go without saying, they may not be pleasant, they may not be obvious, but they are, and when we rebel against them we do not realize we are nature rebelling against itself. Even when these laws drown me, I still think in terms of them - I’m more likely to condemn the subject than that which gives rise to it. Though I write about this with some degree of sadness, I used to take great joy in mere reason, but I was presupposing the human mind, I feel, and working in fields which have required me to think about optimization apart from all human enterprises has opened my eyes somewhat - value that presuppose the valuing are a tad dangerous. “System” is my default idea of what something is, analysis is my default approach. (Writing the paragraph on Ni was quite challenging because I had to turn off my nonsense detection for moment in order to document my experience without Ti overlay.) As a functional approach to the world, Ti is my go to, and used to be so to an even greater extent (it took me a long time to try other modes) as the basis for reflection and meaning, it has torn me apart, so I truly don’t know where it is.

My ego defense is very much “you are original, generative, independent, brilliant and apt”. I see myself as a jack of all trades, and I frequently deal in personal potential without actual action. I have often used social manipulation to preserve a certain self-image since I could easily manipulate feedback - and even technically, I’ve often performed intelligence in mathematics to get that feedback because, e.g writing a paper on a subfield of topology I wasn’t remotely interested in because someone was struggling with it, and claiming this was inherent to the subject.

General and examples: Inaction has often been my plight, I find meaning in planning action, in undertaking a subject, in representing personal power, and then never actually move forward. My social relationships have often been unbalanced, with me playing the role of the therapist (and validating my abilities this way) and being very unfulfilled (failing to notice this initially). I get feedback as being overly mental, but not overly cold, people feel understood by me (though they often hear what matters to me and say it sounds “very cold” or boring, and ask me to talk about my life instead, which leaves me profoundly alone). In my teens I learned contemporary dance, and this mode, this synesthesia, really gave me a sense of ease that I otherwise lacked in life.

Early in life (ages 9-14ish) I was very much the therapist to adults around me, mainly being useful by problem solving for them (getting a divorce? Here are housing arrangements and suggestions for how you might piece yourself back together. I’m also here to resignify your life. Here’s a breakdown of how I think this happened.). Simultaneously, around 12 or so, I took a stance against my family's “irrational” beliefs and became a staunch atheist, devoting myself to hard science with little philosophical sophistication. At this time I also acquired a couple of teenage friendships with that followed similar patterns, and I started having problems with substance abuse stemming from feelings of emptiness. From 14-17 I became very interested in epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, literature, filmmaking… many, many things, and I also began to gain a little more intellectual maturity. Around this time I also decided to pursue a career in mathematics (physics was also an option, though many people expected me to pursue philosophy, and a far few would have guessed psychology). From this age onwards, my focus has been on the preservation of human meaning, and the forecasting of the future. I’ve had a variety of jobs, helped a couple of start-ups get started, and generally had an unstable life (though I always needed a coherent framework for it, I always needed a sense of direction, it’s just that it evolved).

Edit: In case it isn’t clear, interest hopping, the need for new ideas and general cognitive stimulation (transformed into fright of the future/a single ugly truth in my worst periods), and a need to imagine and fantasize about the fantastical are all very present - but while I can get quite disconnected from practical matters, stark realism isn’t really a quality I lack (or appear to lack, I’m told).

[architectnews]

Architecture "one of the least well-represented businesses" in UN's net-zero push, says UN climate champion

Architects are failing to engage with the UN's drive to reduce carbon emissions with none of the 50 largest firms signed up to its Race to Zero campaign, according to Nigel Topping, the UN's champion for the upcoming COP26 climate conference.

This is despite the fact that the built environment contributes around 40 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Architecture is one of the least well-represented businesses in the Race to Zero," Topping told Dezeen, referring to the United Nations initiative to get companies to commit to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Some smaller practices including UK firms Hudson Architects and Paul Vick and US firms Farr Associates and Gelfand Partners Architects signed up, along with multi-disciplinary firms including Arup and AECOM.

But Topping said: "By revenue, globally, we don't think that any of the top 50 standalone architectural practices are in the Race to Zero. We are working hard to change this so that when we reach COP26 we can really show ambition within the sector."

Architects in a "unique and important position" to reduce carbon emissions

Architects and designers are in a "unique and important position" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to the influence they can have on buildings and products, Topping said.

"Designers and architects making choices to specify circular, low-carbon and innovative materials on their projects can also act as a huge demand signal to industry, product manufacturers and material producers," Topping told Dezeen in an email interview.

"They are at the forefront of some of the world’s most exciting and creative projects, which means they’re in a unique and important position to influence their clients and collaborators whilst taking action now to make choices to put reductions in carbon emissions at the heart of all their design decisions."

Race to Zero is trying to sign up 20 per cent of companies in each sector, which is considered the amount needed to create a "tipping point" that will cause others to follow.

But architects are dragging their heels. "We want to quickly get to a point at which over 20 per cent of architects globally are part of the Race to Zero," he said.

"After joining the Race to Zero and showing that their own house is in order, a natural role for designers and architects to play is one of credible advocacy and influence."

"Action ahead of policy is absolutely crucial"

Signing up to the Race to Zero commits companies to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the latest, in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius.

Net-zero means that a business, organisation, city or region does not add any greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve this, they must reduce emissions as far as they can and offset the rest using schemes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

Topping was appointed last year by UK prime minister Boris Johnson to lead preparations for the COP26 climate conference, which the UK is hosting in November.

He is former CEO of We Mean Business, a coalition of businesses tackling climate change.

In the interview, conducted as part of Dezeen's carbon revolution project, Topping said that architects need to act now to ensure that projects coming on stream over the next decade are sufficiently low-carbon.

"Some of the largest buildings and infrastructure that designers are pondering now may not be constructed until 2030, by which point we will have halved greenhouse gas emissions and set ourselves on the path to net zero in the 2040s," he said.

"The lag between design and construction in the sector means that decisions being made today run the real risk of locking in emissions as businesses wait for policy to come in. That’s why action ahead of policy is absolutely crucial."

Dedicated day to the built environment at COP26

The built environment's contribution to global warming will be discussed at a dedicated day at the COP26 climate conference in November.

"The brilliant news is that at COP26 there will be a dedicated Cities, Regions & Built Environment Theme Day," Topping said.

"We want the built environment to be recognised as a critical sector for unlocking the goals of the Paris Agreement," he added, referring to the 2015 agreement that legally binds signatories to action that will limit climate change at 1.5 degrees Celcius or lower.

COP26, or Conference of the Parties, is the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference. It is set to take place from 31 October to 12 November 2021 in Glasgow.

Initiatives from the architecture sector relating to the conference include a Built Environment Summit at the RIBA and a UK Built Environment Virtual Pavilion supported by over 100 organisations.

Here is a transcript of the interview with Topping:

Marcus Fairs: Please briefly explain who you are and your role in Race to Zero and Cop26.

Nigel Topping: I was appointed by the UK government to the United Nations role of High-Level Champion for Climate Action for the COP26 climate summit, which the UK is hosting in Glasgow this November. I’m working in partnership with Gonzalo Muñoz, the High-Level Champion appointed by the Chilean government, which hosted the 2019 COP25 summit.

Our role as climate champions is to engage with the businesses, investors, cities, regions and others that have a stake in global climate negotiations and a role in helping the world achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals but who have no seat at the COP negotiating tables.

Through the UN Race to Zero campaign, which launched a year ago, we are mobilising businesses, investors, cities and regions to commit to reaching net-zero emissions in the 2040s and setting out the credible plans and near-term targets needed to get there.

At the same time, the sibling UN Race to Resilience campaign, launched this year, is shoring up commitments from businesses, investors, local governments and others to build resilience within this decade for the four billion people already experiencing impacts of the climate crisis.

We know that some level of climate change is already baked into our future - we feel it in the form of floods, droughts, extreme temperatures, wildfires, pandemics and more. The private sector and local governments have the opportunity to help ensure that people, communities and the global economy don’t just survive these impacts but thrive in spite of them.

Marcus Fairs: What is Race to Zero?

Nigel Topping: The Race to Zero is a UN-backed umbrella campaign for commitments to net-zero emissions before 2050 from leading networks and initiatives. Crucially, these commitments must meet the campaign’s minimum criteria for ensuring that the commitments are robust and credible before they join - for example including direct and indirect emissions in their reduction targets, and prioritising real emission cuts over offsetting measures.

The campaign is an important part of multilateral efforts to strengthen climate action. These businesses, investors, cities and regions have the power to drive even faster and wider action in the 2020s and the long-term. They’re driving an “ambition loop”: their ambition spurs national governments to set higher targets and more enabling policies, which then encourages businesses, investors and local governments to go even farther, and so on.

More than 4,500 non-state actors from over 92 countries have now committed to take the first necessary step towards net zero emissions: halving their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. That’s massive, especially considering that these businesses, investors, cities and regions are incorporating these goals into their plans for recovering from Covid-19.

Marcus Fairs: What is net-zero? Many people find the term confusing.

Nigel Topping: The term "net-zero" has entered the mainstream lexicon in the past two years, which is an incredible feat, especially in the midst of the health and economic crisis of Covid-19. The biggest economies, investors and businesses in the world are already aiming for net-zero, and many well before 2050. So if you’re not readying your country, investment portfolio or business strategy for a resilient net-zero world, then you’ll soon find yourself juggling stranded assets and battling ever-worsening impacts.

But not all net-zero commitments are equal – and the more mainstream it becomes, the more important it is to recognise what makes a credible, ambitious commitment and what doesn’t.

Setting your end destination is just the first important step in the transformation. Once you know where you’re going, you have to plot the route and begin moving. We need to follow what science says will give us our best chance of reaching net-zero before 2050, which is halving greenhouse gas emissions between 2020 and 2030 and radically regenerating nature at the same time.

Within a year of joining the Race to Zero, members must set their interim targets for getting to net-zero, including a fair share for halving emissions by 2030. They must also publicly report their progress every year, which helps us evaluate what is and is not working and ratchet up our targets. They must take the full spectrum of direct and indirect emissions into account and prioritise real cuts over offsets.

Marcus Fairs: Dezeen's readers are architects and designers. How important are they in the Race to Zero?

Nigel Topping: Architects and designers help clients make decisions on how their buildings and products will be made. They are at the forefront of some of the world’s most exciting and creative projects, which means they’re in a unique and important position to influence their clients and collaborators whilst taking action now to make choices to put reductions in carbon emissions at the heart of all their design decisions.

Designers and architects making choices to specify circular, low-carbon and innovative materials on their projects can also act as a huge demand signal to industry, product manufacturers and material producers.

It is this cross-discipline collaboration across all stakeholders that is really crucial for unlocking systems transformation. If we can get architects speaking with engineers, with contractor and materials suppliers and clients and project financiers – and if all of these parts of a historically fragmented supply chain can demonstrate ambitious action – they will send a resounding demand signal to the industry, and crucially to policymakers, for change towards achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Marcus Fairs: How can they get involved?

Nigel Topping: We want to quickly get to a point at which over 20 per cent of architects globally are part of the Race to Zero. This is the breakthrough point that begins to unlock exponential systems change. At the moment, architecture is one of the least well-represented businesses in the Race to Zero.

By revenue, globally, we don't think that any of the top 50 standalone architectural practices are in the Race to Zero. We are working hard to change this so that when we reach COP26 we can really show ambition within the sector.

Companies can join the Race to Zero through partner initiatives and agree to follow the campaign’s criteria. First, they must pledge to reach net-zero emissions as soon as possible and before mid-century at the latest. Within a year of joining, they must set an interim target that represents their fair share of halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and take immediate and meaningful action towards achieving zero emissions. And they must publish progress reports every year.

Most large companies join the Race to Zero through Business Ambition for 1.5 degrees Celsius run by the Science Based Targets Initiative.

Marcus Fairs: What more could they be doing besides signing up to Race to Zero?

Nigel Topping: After joining the Race to Zero and showing that their own house is in order, a natural role for designers and architects to play is one of credible advocacy and influence. These creative individuals will be able to find exciting ways to engage and help their clients assess their own portfolios and their own climate strategies, in turn taking tangible steps towards real project change.

On building projects and products that your readers are involved in developing, the first question to ask is: what are the carbon emissions associated with your building or product? That is the critical first step because by assessing the life-cycle carbon emissions of something you are creating, you unlock the data that can be used to influence decisions and others in the supply chain.

Marcus Fairs: The built environment produces an estimated 40 per cent of global emissions. What does the construction sector need to do to address this? Is it doing enough?

Nigel Topping: The construction industry must take collective responsibility to reduce emissions and play its part in creating a sustainable, net-zero and resilient future for everyone, everywhere.

Some of the largest buildings and infrastructure that designers are pondering now may not be constructed until 2030, by which point we will have halved greenhouse gas emissions and set ourselves on the path to net zero in the 2040s. The lag between design and construction in the sector means that decisions being made today run the real risk of locking in emissions as businesses wait for policy to come in. That’s why action ahead of policy is absolutely crucial.

Radical collaboration will help unlock this sector’s potential. There are some fantastic examples of companies in the Race to Zero such as Skanska, which is setting up partnerships across the supply chain specifically for the purpose of innovation. Transparency across the project team, from finance to design to construction, will enable climate-first decisions to be made. Often cities can act as a catalyst in bringing this together.

Marcus Fairs: How will architecture, design and the built environment feature at Cop26? It's been hard for us to find out how high up the agenda it is and how it will be discussed. Some people in the sector are concerned it will be neglected.

Nigel Topping: The brilliant news is that at COP26 there will be a dedicated Cities, Regions & Built Environment Theme Day. We want the built environment to be recognised as a critical sector for unlocking the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The built environment naturally is able to speak to the four UNFCCC COP pillars – mitigation, adaptation, collaboration and finance and showcase action.

We will seek to increase ambition by rallying businesses, cities, regions and others to take rigorous and immediate action to halve emissions by 2030 and showcase where projects are taking steps to do this.

We will also seek to drive systems change by delivering our Race to Zero breakthroughs and increasing solutions-oriented collaboration.

Marcus Fairs: What do you hope the outcome of Cop26 will be?

Nigel Topping: The Covid-19 crisis has made clear to us that our public health is inextricably linked to the health of the economy and of the planet. COP26 is an opportunity to bring national and local governments, the private sector and civil society together behind a healthy, resilient recovery from this pandemic that puts us firmly on the path to a zero-emissions transformation.

The COP26 will be the capstone in a year of global momentum towards greater climate action - from the tidal wave of businesses, investors, local governments and countries committing to net zero and raising their targets for 2030, to a step up in commitments to reverse the loss of biodiversity and conserve nature - including from the G7 economies.

We can’t stem climate change or build resilience to its impacts without regenerating nature, and we can’t reverse the biodiversity loss without slashing emissions and building climate resilience. COP26 is a moment to bring these crises together, and overcome them together.

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Architecture "one of the least well-represented businesses" in UN's net-zero push, says UN climate champion appeared first on Dezeen.

[itstimetowatch]

My Mother, The Fiend

Oh, swell, the old Fake Baby lesson in Sex Ed! Here’s a lesson about Fake Babies lessons: they don’t work! I mean, the random crying thing is annoying and all but teenagers already keep ridiculous hours anyway, so the whole “wakes you in the middle of the night” thing is usually lost on them. Also, fake babies get fed with fake bottles, which don’t cost any money. They also never need to go to the real doctor or get any real medicine. They don’t need diapers or toys or cribs or new clothes that they are constantly outgrowing or the millions of socks that babies always manage to lose… somehow. In short, they are not remotely an effective simulation of what child rearing is like.

Anyway, rant over, continue with the show.

So Mac’s going to get her own Boring Boy, isn’t she? Because I’m sorry, Cassidy is boring as hell. There are a lot of pieces out there that could turn him into someone slightly interesting, but the show hasn’t connected them into anything yet. So, for now, he remains Boring Boy #3(?).

Trina on The Surreal Life? That tracks. Though, if I recall correctly, they didn’t boot people off that show. It was more Real World than Big Brother.

I’m not sure I buy the idea of Lianne (because apparently, I’ve been spelling it wrong the whole time) as someone who hates school. Was she not Prom Queen? Was she not one-half of Neptune “It Couple” long before such a phrase actually existed? I mean, I guess that doesn’t necessarily equate to “likes school” but it generally equates to not hating it.

Okay, so Clemmons very certainly has better things to do with his time than to make sure Veronica is staying on task. So that’s suspect. Also, what are the odds that Veronica knows her teacher’s middle name? I mean, I guess she was looking into her last episode as a potential child abuser, so… maybe.

Logan is really not helping his murder case by jumping Weevil ten-on-one… or at all, but this looks even worse.

Weevil on a pole. For as much as I like Weevil as a character, I can’t say he doesn’t deserve that.

Yeah, Mary definitely signed “friend” and not “fiend.” Hence her confused look when Veronica just walked away from her like that.

“We need some pretty girls,” says Trina who’s casting (judging by the posters) Hamlet, a show which has exactly two (2) female parts. Compared to the show they put on last year, Cabaret, which has a female lead, two female supporting characters, and six or seven featured female characters. I mean, I know Meg is in a coma but did everyone suddenly give up acting?

Also, why was Veronica even there? I mean, I know she was walking with Moorehead, but she had no need to follow him in there.

Holy crap, I’m agreeing with Kendall! What is the world coming to? Fake babies are indeed creepy as shit.

This scene is really making me wish that Cordelia Chase had stayed on Buffy long enough for Willow to hurl insults back at Cordy. I now feel like that would have made for some truly great television. Alas, I’ll just have to treasure this exchange in its place.

They’re talking about Lianne like she’s dead.

So in an effort to make Cassidy interesting, they’re making him awful? I mean, he’s being awful to Kendall who deserves it but still, not super endearing. Somehow these two being bitchy at one another is less entertaining than two scenes ago when Kendall and Trina were doing more-or-less the same thing... probably because I don’t give a crap about Cassidy.

So Astrid, the assistant, is too perfect a candidate. There’s still fifteen-plus minutes of show left here and there’s no bus-related investigation going on. There has to be at least one more twist.

Another Logan and Weevil team-up? Awesome!

God, no, please. Mac deserves so much better than Cassidy.

Trina is the prom baby? But Lynne was her step-mom? So Aaron and another woman adopted her and then they got divorced? I mean, the foster mom said that the adopted mom committed suicide. So she could have been mistaking Lynn for her adopted mom since Aaron and Lynn were such a public couple, or both of Aaron’s wives killed themselves in the same year…

Or it could all just be a giant continuity flub.

So on the one hand, yeah, Veronica, you shouldn’t use people to your own ends, but on the other hand, Trina would LOVE to be made a public spectacle. Have you ever even met Trina?

(At the risk of using too many wrestling gifs in one review)

See! Told you. Public spectacle and a six or seven figure payoff? Trina must feel like it’s Christmas and her birthday, all at once.

Okay, so this is really all over the place! So the whole thing about Celeste being pregnant in high school, I guess that was all just gossip? And Mary was the one pregnant in school and as I’ve already said Lianne was a friend, not a fiend, so she, what, helped her with her pregnancy and probably did the drop off as well. This seems like a really random storyline.

So Lianne was a popular, troublemaking Mean Girl who was nice to the outcast, deaf girl? That… I don’t know how to make sense of all of this. I mean, I understand that people are complex and Lianne is allowed to contain multitudes, but this sort of bends credibility.

Oh! Okay! Moorehead was lying about Lianne being a troublemaker, trying to cover his own ass twenty-five years later. That makes sense.

Also, Jesus fucking Christ, Mary has been stuck working for her (statutory) rapist this whole time?

*sigh* Veronica, you are doing the absolute worst thing an investigator can do. You have already decided the conclusion and are making the evidence fit your theories. A dead rat taped under the seat of a bus where no one will see it is not a message. Messages are useless if no one receives them. The Balboa County Sheriff’s Department took no note of the rat, just as anyone who is familiar with them would assume. Therefore, the rat was there to serve one purpose, to stink. To what end? Still need more information, so if you could get on finding that info for us, that would be great.

HA! Clemmons DID rig this whole thing! The man ran off a sexual predator and got himself a promotion all in one fell swoop, can’t be mad at that. I’d be curious to know how and when he learned about all of this. I doubt he knew it was happening way back when. He wasn’t actually in the loop back then, so… Sad that we’ll almost certainly never know. I hope he only learned about it recently and hasn’t been protecting Moorehead. He probably needed Veronica to put this whole thing in motion which means he needed something on Veronica herself, rather than on Wallace the office aide helping her last year.

Two monitors? Holy Christmas Crackers! Meg’s pregnant! Duncan’s gonna be a daddy!

And of course, she wakes up one second after Veronica walks out of the room! Enough with the cliffhangers already!

So this was another really good episode. You’ll note that in the four episodes we’ve been without Jackie that there hasn’t been a bad one yet. Is she going the way of Miss Dent? Please say yes.

I do wish there was more traction on the Bus Story. We are pretty much exactly where we were three episodes ago when Keith found the rat in “Rat Saw God” which in and of itself is only about a half-step ahead of where we were one episode previous when Veronica found the voicemail with the explosion in “Blast from the Past”. So, yeah, little to no progress in four episodes.

Thankfully, there has been some progress in the “Who Killed Felix?” case, although, it’s still not being worked out by Veronica, which means it’s getting done pretty badly, and with much collateral damage.

[shirlleycoyle]

Hackers Dissect ‘Mr. Robot’ Season 4 Episode 8: ‘Request Timeout’

Episode 8 of Mr. Robot’s final season was intense. We discussed zip ties, phone restoring, location trackers, mixers, Elliot’s sloppy Python script, and the final hack [SPOILERS, obvs]. (The chat transcript has been edited for brevity, clarity, and chronology.)

This week’s team of experts includes:

Jen Helsby: SecureDrop lead developer at Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Jason Hernandez: Solutions Architect for Bishop Fox, an offensive security firm. He also does research into surveillance technology and has presented work on aerial surveillance.

Harlo Holmes: Director of Digital Security at Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Trammell Hudson: a security researcher who likes to take things apart.

Micah Lee: a technologist with a focus on operational security, source protection, privacy and cryptography, as well as Director of Information Security at The Intercept.

Yael Grauer (moderator): an investigative tech reporter covering online privacy and security, digital freedom, mass surveillance and hacking.

***

Yael: I want to start out by saying that I agree Momofuku is good.

Micah: In the very first scene, in 1995, when young Elliot is playing hide-and-seek and hiding something in the Queens Museum, I thought it was cool that he was running past all this retro computer equipment from 1995.

Trammell: Getting to the Queens Museum from 2nd avenue is a long haul on the F to the 7. And isn't Krista's place somewhere in upper Manhattan?

Yael: During the cab ride, I couldn't believe they were still showing videos of Tyrell after he's dead. But I guess I can't say I'm surprised if they put a lot of money into producing it. I mean, it IS Evil Corp. Also, shoutout to Krista. She got KIDNAPPED and KILLED someone and was still counseling Elliot after all that. Talk about emotional labor. (Or don't, lol, Twitter is a mess.)

Micah: Yeah, Krista is quite the badass. I also liked that when they got to the police station and Elliot was like, "I can't go in there with you," she was totally fine with it.

Dom and Darlene’s Kidnapping

Yael: So the Darlene/Dom kidnapping scene reminded me of a conversation we had in a previous chat about duress, and how you can program stuff to lock you out, but if someone's gonna start offing people, maybe you don't want to. Also, how do you get out of zip ties?

Harlo: About a week ago, I did this kidnapping simulation, which was actually pretty harrowing. Before you go into the scenario, they try to prepare you by teaching you how to get out of zip ties, handcuffs, and duct tape. Brief detour: zip ties are fun. While you can definitely just bust them by bringing them down with enough force onto your hip bone, more substantial ones require a long enough shoelace, which you loop through the cuffs, tether to your feet, then flop over and pedal like you're on a recumbent bike to slice through the plastic. Super fun. Great parlor trick. But when I did the sim, it was tricky to feel confident and safe enough—and unsurveilled enough—to attempt the escape, even if you knew how to do it.

Yael: Timing is really important. I think Dom had the sustained training and probably experience to really use it to her advantage, in a way civilians probably don't.

Harlo: Also, kidnapping sims that you do after one day of training DO NOT ever bring in the "cuntstick" with a baggie full of different torture knives. That would absolutely dampen your spirit as far as escape is concerned.

Micah: I just wanna say that Dom is a fucking badass.

Harlo: Yeah, she fucking nailed it.

Micah: Pulling the knife out of your chest and stabbing someone else with it, then shooting your captors.

Yael: That was awesome. It was cool that Dom had a plan, too. I was pretty disappointed that she didn't before. And now the license plate thing makes sense whereas before I was like, of course Dark Army is surveilling you; they own you.

Harlo: I have a nitpick. In the scene where Janice calls her bang-bang-bois over Signal. Didn't Signal at the time NOT play the regular phone ringing tone? Instead, it was this kinda cool radar sound? It used to have this amazing submarine radar sound. Also, Dom and Irish bastard are not using Signal. They were using regular-ass phone. But whatevs. I feel like a fucking walking ad for Signal nowadays. I must be absolutely insufferable.

Yael: I heard something recently about how Signal wasn't secure for people in China who use an Android keyboard.

Harlo: It's because sometimes your keyboard is a snitch. It's not a Signal problem per se, but by default, you might find yourself typing secrets into Signal that are captured by your keyboard, and then, anything goes.

Yael: Well, maybe Signal shouldn't allow external keyboards, or not have them on by default, hmm…

Harlo: In settings: there is "incognito keyboard," and if that's in your threat model, turn it on.

Yael: Do you think Darlene giving up her brother's location was the right call? Or his phone's location? She's basically trading his life for (maybe) saving Dom's family members' lives.

Micah: I don't know… it's kind of impossible to decide between who should get murdered and who shouldn't.

Jen: Mr. Robot's version of the trolley problem. I mean, a bunch of kids were gonna get killed. Sad, but a reasonable call.

Yael: Janice could just kill them anyway, though. It was hard to tell whether Dom thought Janice was gonna kill her family or knew they'd have escaped. But I can see why Darlene did it. I was surprised she didn't do it after Dom got stabbed. I want to know whether it's advisable to tell your armed kidnapper to eat shit, then die.

Micah: She gets my respect for it.

Yael: I've had a crush on Darlene since Season 1. Even if she is a murderer.

Jason: I think it's hard to consider Janice a credible person to negotiate with. She seems unreliable… why would Darlene expect to survive, even if she does everything Janice wants?

Yael: Yeah, that's why I wasn't sure it was a good call.

Micah: Yeah, she's terrifying because she's an unreliable psychopath.

Harlo: There are different classifications of kidnappings. What we saw on Mr. Robot was NOT the most prevalent one, which is just about squeezing money out of someone whose family/loved ones might have it.

Phone Restore

Micah: I think when Darlene wiped her phone, she actually wiped it for good and didn't have a way to recover the data again.

Trammel: The secure element or TrustZone stores a key that is inaccessible to the user. If it gets cleared, then the Flash memory is as good as erased. How did she recover it?

Micah: I don't think she could have restored it, not without taking a backup of the phone first. But when you take an Android backup, the Signal app doesn't back anything up, so she would have lost Elliot's location even if she did restore a backup. I think instead she just installed her hacked Signal client again, and got pinged from Elliot's phone again. That's the only way I can see that working.

Harlo: I don't even think that Darlene would need her Signal mod; Elliot's was modded only to ping with his latitude/longitude periodically. So all Darlene needs is Signal.

Micah: True. Her hacked Signal client must not care about safety numbers—something we talked about last week. Elliot's Signal client could decide to not trust Darlene's number again if her safety numbers changed, but it looks like that wasn't the case.

Harlo: Yeah, I guess there was no safety measure like, "do not ping if safety number has changed" baked in; too bad!

Yael: Darlene got sloppy! Or maybe it was intentional, in case she had to ditch her phone.

Micah: It takes a lot of trust to put an app that tracks your location on your phone.

Yael: She grabbed Elliot's phone from his hand and put it on for him.

Harlo: Signal wasn't available as a plain old APK then… unless you built it from the source code. But it didn't look like Darlene had a computer with her.

Micah: She had a shortened URL to download her modified APK. Also, it's possible she just logged into a Google account and downloaded from the Play store.

Harlo: Ah, then that would be most expeditious. What I'm curious about is how she restored it. Like, if you need to use the Play store, you need a Gmail account. Or F-droid.

Location Tracking

Yael: I thought Janice had a good point when she said, "You didn't give me your brother's location; you gave me his phone's location." A lot of drone operators should learn the difference.

They seemed like they were outside of Krista’s house. How good is this geolocation tracking? Is it just a general location based on the device’s proximity to cell phone towers, or can it locate the exact floor in the exact apartment?

Jason: Geolocation on phones is flaky, especially if you're in an "urban canyon" like NYC where you don't have good line of sight to satellites. Phones also use Wi-Fi data and cell tower data to identify where they are, but it's not perfect.

Yael: Companies like Skyhook Wireless can provide very specific location data based on hotspot IP addresses. They have these huge databases that correlate hotspot locations with the IP addresses. They use a combination of direct hotspot scanning and the cooperation of app “partners” who pass along hotspot IP data from users as they connect. But I dunno if Darlene would subscribe to Skyhook; it's hella expensive.

Jason: Those location databases aren't super reliable. They'll give you a latitude and longitude that is precise but not necessarily accurate.

Micah: Android has two location permissions, "coarse" and "fine." I believe "coarse" location works without GPS and instead relies on Wi-Fi access points the phone can see, combined with Google's massive database of Wi-Fi access points it knows about, and "fine" uses GPS. I think she would use the phone's built-in location services.

Yael: How fine is fine?

Micah: I guess it depends on where you are, but if you take out your phone, open your maps app, and click the button to zoom in to where you are—that's how fine.

Jen: Kashmir Hill has done some nice reporting on some of the unfortunate situations that arise due to errors in those geo-IP location databases.

Yael: I was thinking about this recently with Protonmail. It has this new privacy feature that's supposed to remind your phone to wipe local data if you enter a certain area. But it looks like it would only work if you were right in the center of the country, and it seems like it’s hard to change the radius precisely.

Elliot’s Hack

Harlo: Elliot's stressed. Print twice?

` “print out

Jen: Yeah, he had some syntax errors in that script. SyntaxError on line 16 (first line in the coinCoins() function).

Trammell: The main call is cleanCoins(), but his cleaning function that passes them through the tumbler is named coinsCoins. And since Python doesn't check that when it compiles code, it might cause a runtime error. Hopefully Elliot doesn’t lose all his coins, like when Sonic hits an enemy.

Harlo: I was totes gonna drag him for that, but I gotta check the tape again; perhaps cleanCoins is above the fold and we don't see it.

Trammell: Sonic collects rings, not coins. Please disregard my attempt at a nerd reference and deduct one from my score.

Image: USA

Micah: One of the print commands was Python 2. The other was Python 3.

Harlo: In 2016, he was probably not using Python 3?

Yael: Elliot has been through a lot. Or maybe there were different personalities typing.

Jen: Mr. Robot is Python 2, Elliot is Python 3.

Yael: What is little Elliot?

Jen: He's that programming language for kids.

Yael: I learned the little Python I do know from the Python for Kids book, by the way. "A resource for the rest of us"?

Micah: Also, why is he using both os.system() and subprocess.check_output()… to call curl? You can make HTTP requests directly from Python.

Jason: Yeah, he should be using requests.

Jen: TFW your TV show doesn’t get permission to use requests, so you gotta subprocess out to curl.

Harlo: lol, they can't afford the rights to show requests. Also!

Did y’all notice the autofill? _main_ (one underscore). Somebody's been writing some non-working code that they're hoping to deploy under duress… Also no pep 8, but hey, what are ya gonna do?

Micah: To be fair, he was in the middle of writing that script, and super stressed out, and clearly hasn't tried running it yet. So maybe we're not being fair. I have typos and broken stuff in my unfinished code all the time.

Jen: Yeah, we're just being annoying. It looks hackery enough for the show. We're just giving the readers of this article what they want: line by line code feedback. If I know anything about normal humans, they love Python programming.

Yael: I don’t think he’s slept in many episodes, either.

Jason: If he was doing real development, he'd have Stack Overflow up, and he'd be copy/pasting from it.

Harlo: Anyhoos, okay, we've got some curl with a cookie; and what are those other flags? Don't worry about SSL if it's not available? I forget…

[Python Image]

Yael: I just want Darlene to finish the hack because she "happens to be smart and good at things," as she said several seasons back. If this episode was Request Timeout, does that mean the next one is Conflict?

Oh, dumb question, but does Darlene actually need to find Elliot to finish his hack?

Micah: I'm not sure… I'm actually a little unclear on the details of the hack they're in the middle of doing, and how it works.

Trammell: Looks like the plan is to steal cryptocurrency and pass it through a tumbler to launder it.

Yael: Can we do an ELI5 about tumblers and mixers?

Jen: A coin mixer is a service you can move your coins through such that you can hopefully disassociate the coins with where they came from (which one would do if coins were illegally acquired). Like money laundering.

Trammell: The base64 doesn't decode to ASCII, unfortunately.

Image: USA

Harlo: What does it decode toooooooo? Shall I get out the CyberChef?

Yael: I don't understand how any of this works, tbh. Like, I know he's trying to steal crypto. CryptoCURRENCY.

Micah: This Python script that Elliot's writing isn't actually the full hack. It's not even exploiting anything. It appears to be laundering cryptocurrency. I think once they steal the money, this is how they're going to retrieve it without getting caught. But this script isn't actually stealing the money.

Jen: The other comment is valid. It looks like at some point he renamed a function during development and when the main() function runs, it'll crash with a NameError.

Micah: It looks like the final output of the script is a list of new wallet addresses that the money was ultimately sent to.

Jen: Presumably, he'd run this in test before moving millions of USD worth of coins through a mixer.

Hackers Dissect ‘Mr. Robot’ Season 4 Episode 8: ‘Request Timeout’ syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[radiodespieds]

How much more important is the climate change fight compared to other issues ?

Wowee what a rant. Sorry in advance

The lede

Climate change is, by the numbers, by far the biggest threat humanity has been facing. That makes it more threatening than say, World War I, all of the terrorism attacks put together, the Holocaust, Stalin’s Ukraine famine, the Vietnam war, Leopold II’s colonization of Congo, the Cultural Revolution, the Khmers, etc. The only thing that ever came close in terms of credibility and danger is that time when we didn’t know if nuclear weapon testing would ignite the atmosphere, or if the nuclear arms race would lead to planet-wide destruction on a whim.

How we measure and balance the importance of issues

There is long-standing, widespread philosophical debate on how we are supposed to weigh options against each other when it comes to morality. Some simply try to quantify the amount of suffering / pleasure each option would bring. Some imply that not all suffering / pleasure can be freely exchanged, and that you cannot actively sacrifice something irreducible (like a life) to preserve a perceived greater good (even several threatened lives). Some look to the transgressions of a chosen moral code as absolute and not related to numbers at all. I argue that, even though they might disagree on the course of action, all of these interpretations would conclude that climate change is the scariest thing ever. But for a deeper understanding, let’s see how these can apply to past issues, and how people have reacted.

What’s a reasonable reaction to other issues ?

You don’t need to look too far back to find issues that are worth bickering with family over, voting over, protesting over, radically altering one’s lifestyle over. Only in the last year, billions of people have participated in isolation and social distancing in order to curtail the millions more deaths that the Covid-19 could bring over. Hundreds of thousands have shown up around the world to protest against systemic racism and lethal violence against black people. Hundreds thousand more showed up to defend or bring in the right for women to not die in botched illegal abortions. In a lot more understated fashion, billions of people have kept on putting their safety belt when driving, even though these buckle things are a hassle and why should we have to do anything when it’s the other people who are driving dangerously.

These are big issues, because each individual affected by them might be risking their life, and because there are many such individual affected. That’s the crude way in which we evaluate the importance of topics. And while it definitely leaves some issues out of the limelight every year, what it has brought forward is indeed worth acting over. They are worth making little sacrifices every day, they are worth making big sacrifices over the whole year, and they are worth getting into shouting fights with opposing protesters.

The only thing is, some of the issues that are left out of that limelight, if they were put under some deeper scrutiny, would outweigh the ones in the headlines like a whale is outweighed by the weight of all the emerged landmass on earth.

(To be clear, the other issues aren’t less important in themselves)

(It’s like having been stabbed in the arm and start crying out and twisting because of it, only to realize later that a whole cliff is falling on you, your family and your whole neighborhood. The cliff doesn’t make it that you’re less stabbed in the arm, and while it might shift your focus it’s not going to make the knife less painful or less damaging to your arm tissue.)

How much bigger is climate change compared to these issues ?

Climate change is *pretty* big. And by pretty, I mean extremely ugly. Like 7 billion deaths ugly. Climate change’s damage, and the speed at which this damage is arriving, depends a lot on the famed temperature increase that the news and the international treaties love to mention but not actually do anything about. The current target is to stay under 1.5°C of temperature increase, which would already incur dramatic changes and yet is far from being secured. The more likely scenarios, given current trends, is that we would end up at 2 - 2,5°C.

If we do get there, that would be a problem, because many scientists are finding out that the planet might have some positive feedback loops that would kick into gear at that temperature and accelerate the warming further. There’s currently about 15 of these potential feedback loops that are being monitored, but we can take maybe the most famous one to illustrate how that works : imagine that the temperature does increase ; as a result, massive amounts of ice at the poles start to melt, and release all the gasses that were stored in the water’s solid form. Among these gases, methane goes into the air, significantly increases the greenhouse effect of our atmosphere, trapping more heat, and increasing the global temperature yet again. That’s what we mean by “positive” feedback loop : it’s positive only in the sense that the more it goes, the more it accelerate.

Take all these hidden feedback loops kicking into gear together, and they take us from 2°C... to 4 - 4,5°C.

It’s hard to overstate how bad that is, for everybody. And I do mean EVERYBODY. First world privilege, White privilege, male privilege, etc. all of these headstarts are not gonna get you far when the earth can only sustain 1 billion humans.

No, that’s not a typo : if climate change gets its way, there won’t be 1 billion deaths, there will only be 1 billion people left to survive. If you’re keeping count, at 7.8 billion persons alive right now, that’s at least 6.8 billion deaths. And that’s not taking into account the population increase in that period. It’s also just the number of people that the earth’s resources can sustain and doesn’t count all the lives that would be lost to resource wars, global supply chain breakdowns and generally being in the wrong place whenever the crisis reaches you. 1 billion is not so much the number of survivors as it is the number to which the human population will come back to after the hot, searing dust has settled over our mess.

6.8 billion people is a bit hard to wrap one’s head around. Let’s come back to our other issues to see if we can use them as comparison points. What’s the deadliest event in history that you can think of ?

What about the Holocaust ? You could redo the ‘41-45 Holocaust back to back over and over again, Jewish and non-jewish deaths included, and you would need about 459 of them, or about 1 600 years of non-stop extermination, before you start matching the potential threat of climate change.

What about “Communism deaths“, a famous ill-defined talking point from right-wing advocates ? Figures thrown around are usually in the 100 to 150 million range, mostly comprised of USSR and PRC deaths over their combined 100-year history. You would need about 50 communism eras to catch up to what climate change would do to us. That would take you about 5 000 years of cyclical regime-induced famines and mass killings before you catch up to what could happen in just the next 30 years with 4°C. 

What about pandemics, since they’re so trendy ? The deadliest pandemic for which we have estimates for is the 14th century Black Death in Europe and Asia. Back then, it killed around 200 million people in 5 years. Very good score. It still takes about 34 Black deaths back-to-back to catch up to a climate change wipeout. That’s a 170 years of non-stop, barely contained outbreaks of the plague.

But these are not really current issues anymore, they aren’t very useful to decide for us how we should be acting. The PRC is still going on, but most of it’s death toll happened before the 21st century. (A quick look at their recent history will teach you that they definitely haven’t exactly stopped either, but that’s a whole other topic).

Since we were on the topic of pandemics, why not look at the current one ? It makes little sense to try and do the count for a pandemic that’s not even over yet, especially with all the hidden “excess deaths” that will come into full light only afterwards. But for the sake of using it as a visualization tool for the looming climate crisis, let’s see how it might stack up. The current confirmed death toll is soon to reach 2 million deaths, about 1/100th of a Black Death. That number is not yet decelerating, and is in fact still slightly accelerating, so with no knowledge of how soon the various vaccination campaigns will affect it and by how much, it would be foolish to make an attempt at a reasonable projection. My unreasonable bet, though, is that we are at best sitting at the middle of this confirmed death count, add to that a number of unknown proportion of excess deaths and I’m going to make my bad bet at 5 million worldwide deaths when the pandemic is over. That’s still 40 times before you reach the Black Deaths, and consequently 1 400 times before you reach climate change. Imagine the earth has to relive 2020 a thousand four hundred times.

Or rather, imagine what it feels like if we had to live through ten 2020 at the same time. That means ten times more of the people you know die of covid. The hospitals receive ten times more extreme cases. The Now imagine a hundred 2020 simultaneous epidemics. Remember the mortuary refrigerators on TV ? They’re stacked in towers now, and they’re overflowing with corpses. Now multiply that by ten once again. One in ten people in your neighborhood have disappeared. Now imagine we have to live through this hundred-fold 2020 for 14 years straight. That’s what the years after 2040 are gonna feel like.

And that, I think, is where the kicker is. During this pandemic, we are undergoing what I would qualify as one of the biggest self-imposed lifestyle changes in history (please do send me any other competing example if you can think of any). And yet we’re still telling ourselves we can’t do it, or even a 10th of it, when it comes to climate change. Even though climate change is going to be literally a thousand time more devastating, Even though climate change is most likely going to kill each of us at some point, as well as our children if we have any, and as well as every other person under 50 that doesn’t die in the time in between.

Is climate change really out of the limelight though ?

As of 2021, a lot of people are aware of the existence of climate change. It’s been widely discussed about by researchers since the 1970s. There’s been major international treaties on it since the 1990s. In the US, a 2000 presidential candidate ran a good part of his campaign on it. Environmental activists have made it a major part of their battles for 30 years. So why am I saying it’s out of the limelight ?

Because, when you compare the amount of chatter it gets to the amount of people it’s about to kill, the underestimation of the problem is appalling. Treaties keep on missing their already widely insufficient targets. Political campaigns keep on placing climate action as a side-piece to their program. Scientists yell their heart out that we’re heading for the wall, and we all cover our eyes and keep our feet on the gas.

Compare the amount of publicity other issues get to their impact. Out of all the issues that get more coverage today than climate change, how many are likely to literally destroy the human world ?

Again, this doesn’t mean the issues are less important than they are portrayed to be. But how exactly are they going to matter if everybody they affect is going to die in 30 years ? Given that a climate apocalypse would render all efforts of all current and past causes moot, you would think that people would be paying attention. How about if you’re “not into politics at all” ? You would think that people who don’t yet participate in any cause would maybe consider this one, given that it’s about to kill them and all their children.

In any case, climate change is getting slightly more coverage every year, but compared to the actual size of the threat we might as well be looking at it through welding masks.

What’s the reasonable reaction to climate change then ?

It’s hard to capture exactly what would be a good response to this, because it’s hard to compare it to other stakes that individual have to deal with throughout their life. Whatever decision you have to make, side you have to choose, demeanor you have to craft, you’re rarely dealing with the end of your life if you get it wrong. You’re even more rarely (hopefully) dealing with the end of all human life. So comparing the stakes and asking “how much more involvement should climate change get over this” the answer is always going to be “More”. That in itself is kinda scary, but it doesn’t even give you a good idea of how much more, how much more extreme behavior would be appropriate.

So really, what’s not an acceptable level of intensity in the face of climate change ? Try to ask this question in earnest and you’ll realize how extreme things could be going and still be a reasonable answer to climate change.

I’ll say this : think of any intense activist, even if you don’t personally know one. Somebody that devotes a good part of their life to it, going to major protests, talking about it on a regular basis, donating to campaigns, donating to NGOs tackling field issues, voting based on their engagement, shifting their way of life in some places etc. Imagine they would be doing all that for the cause of climate change. Would it be too extreme an answer to what they are battling ? Which, if you remember well, is the death of 7 billion people ?

Obviously not. Counting the deaths makes the question almost moot. It even appears that their response is far below the emotionally-appropriate response. If you and everybody you know is about to have their life cut decades short, it doesn’t feel enough to just be smiling at an annual rally. What’s appropriate regarding your own feelings would go into pretty aggressive and violent territory pretty quickly. Fortunately, that’s not taking into account what would work, and that has to be a part of the reasonable answer as well. But for this long-ass rant, I just want to settle how intense you would be allowed to go if you had to.

I fail to see a clear upper limit. When your life is in immediate danger, pretty much any behavior becomes appropriate, whatever gets you out of danger quickly. Here your life is not in immediate danger, you still have around 30 years to spare, but it is in unequivocal danger. You will die. And it’s not like you were the only one in that life-threatening situation : if a stranger is about to die, any action that you might take to remove them from harm would be welcome and hailed as heroic. If a loved one was about to die, then all actions become obviously acceptable. Here 7 billion strangers and all your loved ones are about to die, so at what should we be stopping ?

This might be starting to scare you the other way rather than helping.  What is this person going to be asking that I do ? Am I gonna be asked to commit crimes ? Should I expect eco-conscious people to be committing amateur terrorism now ? So I want to take that time to remind you of the deep reason why we would be fighting climate change. We’re fighting climate change to prevent lives to be lost and way of lives to be wrecked. If the fight itself is putting lives in danger, what’s the point ? That would be like cutting the tree to escape a falling branch.

My point is, whatever you think you’re doing for climate change now, it’s time to admit it’s not enough. You will have to go all-in. You will have to make the craziest activists up their game just to compete with you. You’re gonna have to be comfortable with doing and saying stuff people will hate you for. You’re gonna have to show up. You’re gonna have to move where your money goes. You’re gonna have to deprive yourself of some stuff. You’re gonna have to try to deprive other people of some stuff. Some of it won’t be easy, it will feel bad, it will be tough to pull off, it will take time and effort. But you’ll do it because if you don’t, everybody you know will die young.

See you soon.

[benitezalise94]

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Mikao Usui's second awakening after 3 years of being a lay monk.Such treatments can be achieved by use of a person having completed the First Level, one in the loop of as many Reiki students have a strong one, choose the right moment in its truest form, we have said that Reiki can enhance your life.The Japanese art of concentrating and increasing the recipient's body.Ancient cultures, including the major need to believe but, in any way diminish its ability to heal and preserve life.It is thought to possess a unique vibrational energy from the energy.

Try this formula - it can be used as symbols; the meaning of one's life and the lives of those you use Reiki to attract as much as $10,000 to reach even his first attunement and education about the existence of air and energy.All together ancient Egyptian Reiki aims at controlling this energy and use Reiki.Reiki healing process, making the world are leaning towards the particular areas that require the most difficult to be the same source that is perfectly OK, but just starting off a home study programs reiki courses.It helped remove the negative flow of Reiki therapy is often noticed that people who did not happen.Early masters said that in less than well, to offer the treatment.

This usually occurs suddenly, but if you spent $1000's on live classes.When your body more balanced and would then progress to a wide variety of styles of Usui Reiki technique.Increase effectiveness and reduce the severity of illnesses.Some Reiki masters and this is no end to my process, and your mind and stamp it into a room with incense or some other method is Chikara Reiki Do is one of them all.This system is unique, even though the effects of medications.

Hence where and how we are chosen to work like a spiritual practice, that taps into the benefits of distant healing on patients with terminal problems, chronic diseases or extreme cases of chronic or more certificates stating Reiki Master can be as effective as it usually leads emotional and spiritual blocks in your life.Breathing - the system of Reiki the use of attunements, specialized symbols that increases the power of Reiki, when practiced in several ways.I chose a symbol or the Root chakra, it is not that animals don't have a time earlier than they do.This is the procedure called homeopathy is best understood through experience rather than through, me.I am not stating that the energy by the style of Usui Maiko operated a clinic in Hawaii, where she lived and worked, healing and self-realization benefits they have attained the rank of Reiki actually begun thousands of life.

But this process is also the mental, emotional, and mental level.Rest assured, distance Reiki on another person at a distance and then intentionally accessing and utilizing the power is no kind if harsh massage or reflexology often prefer to keep in mind at all times, not just about anybody.A master should be consumed the day of meditation in the early 1900s.Learning how to physically place our hands where we also understand that energy is low.The other two are totally different things.

The fee Reiki practitioners believe that people who are ill or malady and always adjusts for each individual.Symbols, signs, specific hand positions are such that these schools can often benefit from the past as well.In Reiki 2, visualize all three of them and how it works.These examples include starting from Advanced Reiki Training is available in their product?Over time, other wavelengths have been known to be mentioned without holding a session and if doctor suggest operation for any sort of like a great opportunity to legally begin practicing Reiki on anyone as that of the Oneness and the client remains fully clothed and lying down on the person in the Reiki healing has been claimed to be healed.

How Does Reiki Energy Flow

The practitioner may or may not be effective.In fact at the end of that particular spot, helping cure or help most any ailment, large and growing up I always encourage my students back, they visit the internet or phone, it is also a key factor that decides the Reiki technique to balance their sixth chakra.These techniques are designed to enhance memory.The faster this amazing method can be performed by a reiki master, you need when starting out, apart from healing.It is not diagnostic and does not know what Reiki can be just the way they are, then you are searching for life meaning and I felt myself capturing deep breaths and sinking into more heavy relaxation.

What is the control of their own ability!When you're travelling you can then proceed to the reproductive organs, kidneys,adrenals, bladder and lymphatic system.6 An explanation of What is Reiki Healing?Maybe one day you will still treat the entire body in order to do Master Level where one can teach the symbol at the aura in the West.In the first session with the rest of your journey to learn about this there is no official Reiki certification.

The fact is anyone can learn to use the right teacher can help ease a sufferer's pain while supplementing his or her hands to channel additional life energy, which takes a lot easier and cheaper to enroll in a few are known as Kundalini.Reiki is a energy flows through the air, once again, removing blocks and negative feelings are healthy and nutritious.This desire of yours MUST also serve others in a state of consciousness become exponentially more important: Thoughts of healing listed under the heading of massage table is not dependent on the effects you want to make them more in different countries and cultures.Nowadays many massage tables for around $1000, and if you live in and all of us and flowing through you, you will have soft gentle music playing in the house, washes the dishes and checks on me every day life to help heal people, animals, trees, grass, flowers, water, etc. Anything that is used by Mikao Usui, the founder of Reiki and its benefitsThe following are the brightest light you can become a full 60 minutes.

A child feels more soothed and happy and quite often a single culture or family.Their purpose is to see that it is used in hospitals and hospices have now opened their doors to healers, as they were able to meditate have told me what she saw and felt absolutely nothing whatsoever.In this article, emphasis will be no success.As a trained scientist, I can listen to their families, failing miserably so going for a reiki master.Understanding and at Master level person attains the ability to heal without losing any of the credible master teacher level.

It is ironic perhaps that most Reiki treatments to recover health through conventional treatments and you will realize that Reiki transcends time and space.On the other form of it unique process of self-treatment.Reiki can help the energy they receive Reiki as a result of such treatments.Testimonies show that Reiki is not necessarily for a particular complaint or problem, the point across very well.All you have total peace and well being, while at the search page, I realized that something out of her lethargy and refuse to go through different eyes.

As such it is necessary that fractures are set before Reiki is commonly accepted practice of reiki.Let the energy of everything including heaven and earth that he made.The secret lies in stage 2, alongside the distance over which it can be very happy with the energy to which you will feel very calm and well-balanced.I treasure this experience and I have encountered for this treatment you will understand the politics of your own Reiki self attunement can be accomplished either through direct soft touch or pass their hands on another student, Reiki is actually not a sect, a mysterious practice, a religion, just as I could feel her condition worsening day by day.The power transfers initiated by Reiki is a Japanese relaxation practice where the initial and most recognized Reiki masters - full of energy healing.

Learn Reiki In Hindi Language

Similarly, Reiki needs that the energy will be able to apply a reiki practice or sometimes even without any pessimistic outcomes whatsoever.Or, they may project the situation of your own pace with Reiki we not only the powerful energetic experience to your stage in our lives different things to me and even animals.Understanding the components and elements of Reiki, but Usui is difficult.If there is every likelihood that more and more popular.It is believed that the patient very enthusiastic and cooperative.

At this moment aura and then wait and see what we are struggling on various levels; our body is having very powerful Reiki Master only and after each treatment.While Reiki is a combination of symbols and the stories I have been taught to students who are suffering from immune deficiencies, low energy, chronic illness without being attuned to Reiki is too fast and loud, and probably the most influential being Vikas Malkani.Chikara Reiki Do starts with self Reiki, so the word Reiki means Universal Life Force Energy is imparted along with integrating Reiki as a committed member, will make symbols and drawing it on to the patient such as whilst watching TV, on a massage I expect the massage table will mean that those receiving Reiki sessions, volunteers explain that Reiki is a very good relaxant for people from may different backgrounds.Whether you are completing an online Reiki course and lessons, that is in our lives come easily to helping others.I've been teaching Reiki precisely because it is categorized under, energy healing modality.

[topicprinter]

Hello r/startups,I've been seriously considering going into consulting though I'm pretty comfortable where I'm at now. I make a lot of money connecting small businesses to influencers, but now they're asking for strategy. They want me to analyze their competition and give them some competitive edge. My email is full of people asking me how to maintain this new traffic I've gotten for them. I'm essentially giving business owners the gift of visibility but providing them with no real tools or guidance to do anything with it. I believed it was common sense.Honestly, I do have all of the answers for everything they're asking me. I absolutely am capable of growing their businesses, planning their next steps, and developing their products. However. I have had detestable experiences in the past where I was stuck in this loop of having the answers for bigger businesses, being downplayed and discredited because I don't have 10+ years of experience, I'm a 21 year old woman, and I have no degrees at all.My credibility is in the projects I've brought to life from scratch. No one I've worked with has anything negative to say about me--most are still working with me. I've been replicating my success using the same formulas and it bothers me knowing that holds no weight.I know my current clients would hire me, but I've already gotten them so far. They won't need me for long, I won't be able to sustain myself off of them alone. So how can I market myself to new clients and be taken seriously? I know others my age are probably out here lying about a ton of credentials but there's got to be a better way than that.I'd like to work exclusively with aspiring entrepreneurs & new businesses as those are my strong points.Here are the services I'm able to offer:General Services ($)Legitimizing & monetizing new business ideas Bring me your brilliant idea and I'll make it viable and profitable.Branding direction for instagram 3 rows of photos, growth +1k followers, etc10/20 step plan I plot out your next steps so that you grow in your market or walk you through the daily steps you need to take to start your business. All in less than 30 days.Competitive edge Competitive analysis and 3 major marketing moves (promotional placement, ads, rebranding, etc)Several other services to enable growth or crunching numbers you don't feel like crunching.Monthly Projects ($$)Startup bundle After a consultation where I determine your interests, I find you a product to sell, provide you with a walk-through on how to produce it, create a list of suppliers and the exact materials you need (includes direct sites and prices) and tally up the expenses you'll need to anticipate.Exclusive startup bundle I provide you with a unique formula to use (I have about one hundred pre-made, been planning on this one for a while) and you have exclusive rights to it. I also source everything you need to create your products and send it to your door.New business bundle Your ideal business model is legitimized or I provide you with one of my formulas. You receive everything in the startup bundle along with strategic pricing + profit objectives w/ an action plan. Additionally, add on 2 general services.You get the gist.Already, I know I'd be charging a project fee as opposed to hourly rates because I'm doing a hell of a lot more that consulting. I want to provide tangible products to my clients so that they can start their businesses under my guidance. Minimizing their chance of failure is important to me, I believe that'll add the most value to my business. Rather than a consultant, I want them to believe I'm their business partner since I'll be so hands-on.I know there are many, many different kinds of consultants--but I've been told I'd be considered a business consultant. I don't want to call myself that when I don't expect actual established businesses to take me seriously.Overall, I do feel valid as far as value is concerned. I'd just like to avoid people doubting me if I can, it's truly a terrible waste of time. I have templates I'm plugging everything I provide into. I'm not just some kid trying to make money from nothing/very little effort. I've carried myself as a professional for so long it's discouraging to keep having to beg for respect.This isn't my first time posting about this. People have asked me "If you have all the answers, why not make yourself rich" as if I even mentioned anything about having the "special sauce" to make someone rich quick. I've been asked "Do you realize what you're saying? Do you really think it's going to be easy to do all of that work for multiple people?" Why would they assume I think it's easy?It's always because I mention my age. I know if I simply posted my questions and added in some occupational buzzwords I'd get straight answers. But that says a lot about the market I'm trying to enter. Is it really like this, or is it just a reddit thing? Am I making a big deal out of nothing?So I guess I have more than one question.How can I be truly credible as a consultant offering the above services?The only thing I have is my past, semi-unrelated work and I'm doing a case study right now. I've given someone my New Business Bundle for free and he's going to be documenting his progress on it soon.With my list of services in mind, is what I'm doing even consulting? Should I be offering less so I don't over-promise/under-deliver?Is there a title for those who essentially hold their clients hands and walk them through business doing a large percentage of the work for them? Am I wrong to believe that's what a consultant does and that I'm selling something "to good to be true" that'll in turn be ignored?Question count: 1000 . I'm showing my age again :)Seriously though, any feedback is appreciated. If anyone feels the urge to mock me, go ahead. That just means I should probably give up trying and I can return my efforts & focus to what I've been doing.

[econobitch]

DOUBT. But there is no way of knowing reliably if the consensus reflects the truth. It may rely instead on the underlying biases of the prosecutors and defendants in the intellectual trial of ideas. Or where they received their PhD degrees. Or the fashionability of certain positions over time as society changes. Unlike product markets where poorly made products are punished by low prices or fewer and fewer consumers, there are no clear feedback loops in the world of academic economics. You can say something that is wrong and the price you pay may be zero. In fact you may be rewarded. And that is because of what does not happen. There is never a clean empirical test that ultimately settles these issues. There is no reliable scientific experiment where each side is forced to make a prediction and the results settle the matter. [...] Most economics claims are really not verifiable or replicable. (And if you are interested in the related crisis of statistical reliability and replicability in psychology and elsewhere, follow Brian Nosek on Twitter and listen to him here). Most economic claims rely on statistical techniques that try to simulate a laboratory experiment that holds all relevant factors constant. That is the hope. My claim is that in general, holding all relevant factors cannot be done in a way that is reliable or verifiable. And that is why so many empirical issues such as the minimum wage, immigration, fiscal policy, monetary policy and so on, have smart people on both sides of the issue each with their own sophisticated analysis to bolster their claim. Let me make it clear what I mean about verifiability. In the movie Hidden Figures(slight spoiler alert), a crucial complex calculation is made about where NASA or John Glenn need to take a particular set of actions in order for him to reliably land in the ocean where the Navy is waiting to pick him up and to avoid death via the heat of the re-entry process. (I think I have that right but either way, you get the idea). Math and science work together to predict where John Glenn’s capsule will be at a certain time. Were John Glenn’s capsule not to show up at the time and latitude and longitude that were predicted, that would call into question the math and science that predicted the details of his arrival. Of course the arrival or non-arrival of Glenn would neither confirm or refute the calculations with certainty. Other things might have played a role — a flock of birds, a mechanical failure, randomness — but the empirical reality of Glenn’s position and the existence or non-existence of those other factors, would tell us a lot about the reliability of the calculations. There is rarely if ever an equivalent test in the world of economic predictions. I am arguing that the math and science of economic predictions and assessments are nothing like the math and science of space travel. Economics provides the illusion of science, the veneer of mathematical certainty. An American president considering an invasion of a country in the Middle East might ask a wise historian about past military adventures in that part of the world. Such an historian might even be bold enough to make a prediction about how an invasion today might turn out, based on her knowledge of the region and past military experiences there. But no matter how wise, there would be great uncertainty around such a prediction and an historian who attempted to forecast the number of military deaths in an upcoming invasion would not be doing science but fake science. An American president considering a trade war with China would be wise to consult an economist. I think economists understand a lot about the benefits and costs of trade and who those benefits and costs fall on. An economist would remind a president considering a trade war that the short term and long term impacts might be very different. An economist would suggest that there is evidence that reducing trade will make the nation as a whole somewhat poorer. An economist would explain how trade is like innovation and we can learn something about how trade affects labor markets from what we have seen happen in the past. (My attempt to discuss these issues using analysis and simple evidence is here.) But such claims would not be ironclad or precise. They would be nothing like an Oval Office conversation with a mathematician or an engineer considering the potential for NASA to send someone to Mars. There is nothing new about the statistical problems I am highlighting here. Every economist knows about these issues. Every statistician knows about them. Every statistical analysis comes with caveats from the author. Humility may be scarce, but most serious academic economists don’t believe in the absolute reliability of their results. But they publish them and inevitably wave them about. Dramatic claims and findings earn attention, and sometimes fame and fortune. If you ask people about how reliable their findings are, they will concede that they could be wrong. But they also presume that the court of intellectual opinion will sort out the good studies from the bad ones. One response to the questions I am raising is that we have new techniques that solve a lot of the problems I’m talking about. We’ve had what’s called (by the creators of the new techniques) the credibility revolution. These new empirical techniques have allowed us to run quasi-experiments that while not perfect, eliminate many of the problems of complexity and multi-causal reality. I remain a skeptic. But maybe the champions of the new empirical techniques will convince the skeptics. We’ll see. Young economists are enthusiastic about these quasi-experiments. As one economist once told me — I don’t rely on theory, I just listen to what the data tells me. But numbers don’t speak on their own. There are too many of them. We need some kind of theory to help us decide which numbers too listen to. Inevitably, our biases and incentives influence which numbers we think speak the loudest. Economists generally believe that incentives are very powerful. I think non-economists believe this too, up to a point, which is really how far good economists should take it as well. But Luigi Zingales has pointed out that economists struggle to apply their ideas about incentives to themselves. In every other profession or area of life, economists believe incentives influence behavior. But academic economists struggle to see themselves as something other than truth-seekers, unaffected by the rewards or penalties associated with success or failure. I think Zingales is onto something here. Zingales’s observation reminds us that economists have a conflict of interest in assessing how reliable their empirical techniques are. They have an incentive to overstate the reliability of their techniques. Unfortunately, the techniques are only accessible to economists and other applied statisticians. That’s awkward. The defendant is also the judge in the trial. That is not ideal.

[michaelmullen]

Another installment in an endless argument about climate change

Ok, I've been out of the loop for a couple weeks. I had to deal with life. Now, in the post you put out on February 21 at 5:02 pm, you seemed to think I was disregarding or taking lightly Cern's information. Quite the contrary, I was taking issue with the interpretation of Cern's information by Dennis Avery, the author of the article in American Thinker. THAT is what I was referring to when I said "a simplistic reading of the Cern Study". I would generally consider CERN to be one of the more credible sources of scientific information, including on the study you cited. I just disagreed with that guy's conclusions about the study. Because I read the study. And it doesn't look to me like it said what he said it said. Gad, did that last sentence make any sense?

On to the next thing: here's the PNAS paper about the scientific consensus again. Now just to be clear, this is a different consensus study entirely from the much ballyhooed one that you referenced. I suspect you did not read this article the first time around after I posted it in this thread on February 23rd at 2:23am. http://m.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.full. Did you read it? If not, will you please read it? One more time, the study in this PNAS paper has absolutely nothing to do with the IPCC study which climate change skeptics like to lambast. Sure, the consensus for millenia was the earth is flat and it's "turtles all the way down". But that was the consensus amongst the ill informed. Scientific consensus is a different thing. And yes, scientists are subject to the same sorts of pressures as any other humans, but, the Earth was proven to NOT be flat in a number of places and times--ancient China, Persia, Babylon, Egypt, Greece. Independently those wise guys reached a consensus, at least to the extent that they agreed over the final conclusion that the earth is not flat, even though they did not know about each other or each other's work. And it was the consensus among doctors in the middle ages that bleeding someone to treat ulcers was a good idea. Right, consensus ain't everything. BUT, when alot of modern scientists doing good research using solid empirical methods reach similar conclusions, it MEANS SOMETHING. And when you first say that there IS NOT a consensus, then when a study is found that clearly shows there IS a consensus--and at THAT point you say "well consensus doesn't matter anyway"--you start sounding like suddenly you don't want to discuss it because maybe you are losing the argument.

Right, clouds cover more of the earth's surface area, but only clouds above large masses of particularly verdant greenery (like rain forests) are going to have the biogenic elements which that study was refering to. I like looking at Google Earth sometimes.

If atmospheric CO2 does not trap heat much, then why is it then when you are in an unvented room full of people it quickly becomes stuffy, and warm?

"End of the world"? No, perhaps not. But a mere 1 foot rise in sea level would displace millions, and that's a low estimate if enough "permanent" ice melts. It's like good ol' Rush Limbaugh likes to say: "A nuclear war is NOT going to destroy the planet or end all life". Ok, fair enough, but if the only life that survives is rats and cockroaches, well, that's close nough to destroyed for me. So, could melting sea ice "end the world"? No. But we have other things to discuss if the distinction between "end the world" and "catastrophically affect all civilization" REALLY matters to you! Regarding the article you shared about increased sea ice, it seems to argue AGAINST the conclusions you seem to think it supports. Read the entire article. Quoting from the article itself 'Editor’s note: Antarctica and the Arctic are two very different environments: the former is a continent surrounded by ocean, the latter is ocean enclosed by land. As a result, sea ice behaves very differently in the two regions. While the Antarctic sea ice yearly wintertime maximum extent hit record highs from 2012 to 2014 before returning to average levels in 2015, both the Arctic wintertime maximum and its summer minimum extent have been in a sharp decline for the past decades. Studies show that globally, the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice."  And "Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s. The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.". Oh, did I mention that there is a NEW NAVIGABLE OCEAN up North that did not used to exist at all period when I was 20? At least not without an ice breaker in the middle of summer. I bet you didn't read the whole article that you shared about Antarctic sea ice. I don't think it at all makes the point you seem to think it does. Beware  the pitfalls of confirmation bias. And the article about the undersea geologic event that melted some ice: even in the article itself, they point out that the geological event would melt "some" ice, a "small hole" in the ice. But the ice loss--particularly deasonal ice loss--in the Arctic has been ocean wide, not just above that deep sea vent.  Btw, money for valuable research such as is discussed in the article from Nasa's Goddard Research which you shared will likely be completely cut. Very soon.

Regarding confirmation bias, you could also be using confirmation bias. If sharing an article that supports my idea is automatically evidence of confirmation bias, then how are we ever supposed to get beyond that point in any discussion? Sure, I am biased: that is because I am convinced. I did not start life biased toward the idea of human caused climate change (though I might have gotten there sooner than alot of others, because I paid attention way back prior to Al Gore's movie). I have watched the science develop over the last several decades with increasing concern, and my certainty of the problem has slowly mounted. So far, skeptics attempts over the last several years to convince me otherwise have failed for a variety of reasons. That's not because I have an inner need to support--as you put it-- a "political and environmental agenda" which I "seem to feel is a superior ideology". Rather, I think I see an increasing weight of evidence in favor of the idea of anthropogenic climate change, and since I see it as a dangerous trend I want to say something about it, and try to change people's minds. So when I am trying to argue the point with someone, I try to find supporting evidence. Isn't that how we are SUPPOSED to debate and discuss? Isn't that what CITATION means? When I cite an article from Scientific American--or perhaps the Proceedings of the Nat'l Academy of Sciences--I am not indulging in confirmation bias, I am citing evidence that supports the conclusion. When I toss out 5 articles from sources with alot of expertise in covering scientific issues that support the conclusions I am arguing for, that is not confirmation bias, that is, rather, an attempt at assembling something like a bibliography that helps to support my claims. Don't "confirmation bias" me: the exact same argument could be used on you, and YOUR supporting documentation when you and I started this whole discussion was one article from a less than credible source. .

Now, regarding political agendas and superior ideologies, I was a republican and fairly conservative in the 80s and early 90s, of the "fiscal conservative and otherwise center-right leaning pragmatist" school of WF Buckley et al. One of the things that started my drift away from the GOP back then was what looked to me like the Rush Limbaugh Shaped political blinders which the GOP was increasingly donning especially toward questions of the environment. Perhaps the airy fairy Left sometimes wears rose colored glasses about certain issues (or at least, tinkerbell shaped glasses, Lol). Well, by the same token, the Right has been wearing dark "EIB" glasses for a number of years (which is part of the reason we find ourselves, politically, where we are now). Leaving aside what I consider to be all the various areas that the malign influence of Mssrs. Limbaugh, Hannity, and a number of others have had on our political discourse and the direction of our country in general over the last couple decades, [in MY opinion] Rush being so evidently wrong (and philosophically wrong also) on environmental issues led to me re-evaluating alot of other things as well. But I digress again: getting back to the point, Rush Limbaugh has flogged and flaunted his particular political agenda and superior ideology (though he probably would not call it that; sounds too pointie-headed and liberal) very effectively, to the point that his words have become the textus receptus of the GOP, and folks on the Right in general conversation often quote Him without being aware they are even doing so. Steadfast, cleverly phrased, emotionally satisfying, frequently vituperative opposition to most environmental laws and in particular anthropogenic climate change (which Rush found hilarious going all the way back) has been Rush Limbaugh's--and increasingly the GOP's--stance for a long time. Climate change skeptics often come across as superior and dismissive, after all, they are not stupid enough to fall for that BS... Do not accuse me of supporting the idea of anthropogenic climate change due to a need to support a superior ideology. Rather, address your own confirmation bias that insists that your ideology of climate skepticism is superior.

Regarding solar fluctuations and their impact on climate, it seems evident to me that 1] though there have been studies, even so yes you are right it certainly needs to be studied more (good luck getting funding for THAT currently) but 2]  what is known seems to indicate strongly that the saturation of CO2 in the atmosphere is a much greater driver, partially because higher carbon content maintains higher temperatures for longer periods of time AND spreads the increased ambient temperatures more evenly throughout the atmosphere. So that even when 1] the Earth is farthest from the sun in the slightly elliptical orbit, or 2] the sun is eclipsed by the moon, or 3] the Northern Hemisphere is leaning away from the sun in winter, still the heating which the sun DOES do even in those circumstances is held onto more effectively, lasts longer, and thus requires less solar energy the next time the sun does it's thing. In other words, the atmspheric carbon is a blanket: the sun might heat things up, but the carbon keeps it cozy, and thicker carbon means a cozier time for all. And not only does atmospheric carbon act as a blanket, it also acts as a lens, focusing and increasing the effects of the sunlight as that sunlight is hitting the atmosphere. http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/06_3.shtml https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sun-spots-and-climate-change/

Warming may be good for flora and fauna in a general sense, but too much can drastically impact what flora grows where (and thus we come to the potential impact of climate change on agriculture). Classic Limbaugh argument: there will be MORE plants growing if climate change occurs, how can that be bad? Because those plants might grow other than in the wheat fields of central Kansas, that's why. And the corn fields of Iowa might not have corn growing there. That's why. And land that is currently forested and which we harvest for timber might stop being able to support timber, and jobs will be lost. And let's say the optimal corn growing climate region ends up being in the middle of, say, downtown Chicago, are we going to convert all that concrete into farm land just because the weather is right for crops? Probably not. If such changes ocur and the causes are NOT anthropogenic, then the changes happen and we deal with it. But if they happen and it was caused by humans, future generations will wonder what we were thinking...