Breaking: David Koch, CEO of Koch Industries has passed

#51
#51
evillawyer said:
There's science and then there's expert witness shopping where you're trying to find a credentialed person who will say what you want them to say, using scientific terms. I think the Koch brothers were doing more of the latter.
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Of course you do
 
#52
#52
n_huffhines said:
Nobody has said this, ITT, as far as I know.

One problem is climate change is much more complex than a question of pathology, like ulcers. It's nearly impossible to prove/disprove. Also, the debate about ulcers is not politically charged. Thwarting the consensus on ulcers vs climate change is a world of difference.
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Fake ulcer treatments were literally a billion dollar industry. Marshall couldn't get funding, was called a kook, and had to resort to a stunt of drinking a bacteria milkshake under medical supervision to make anyone listen. Sound pretty political to me.

The things about climate change that are difficult are future environmental modeling, but the base science of greenhouse gases creating warming is something my daughter's class was able to reproduce in 5th grade with sealed aquariums and halogen lamps. Really not that complicated.
 
#53
#53
n_huffhines said:
Of course you do
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With all the money they threw at climate change research, did it shift the scientific paradigm? Is the scientific community now more in line with the studies they funded? Has it caused the studies finding humans to be the primary source of climate change to be revised?
 
#54
#54
Rifleman said:
Fake ulcer treatments were literally a billion dollar industry. Marshall couldn't get funding, was called a kook, and had to resort to a stunt of drinking a bacteria milkshake under medical supervision to make anyone listen. Sound pretty political to me.

The things about climate change that are difficult are future environmental modeling, but the base science of greenhouse gases creating warming is something my daughter's class was able to reproduce in 5th grade with sealed aquariums and halogen lamps. Really not that complicated.
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No laymen on earth cared when he made his discovery.

The 2nd paragraph is ridiculous. All it proves is greenhouse gases can have a warming effect. Our climate is a lot more complicated than that
 
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#55
#55
n_huffhines said:
No laymen on earth cared when he made his discovery.

The 2nd paragraph is ridiculous. All it proves is greenhouse gases can have a warming effect. Our climate is a lot more complicated than that
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It is because the causes of climate change are so easy to understand and tie directly to emissions that are byproducts of generating wealth for companies like Koch Ind., that those industries have spent millions of dollars to get smart people like you to throw up their hands in hopeless obeissance.

As you would admit, the Kochs aren't idiots. I certainly understand where they are coming from, the political mess they exist in is not one of their creation, and I believe they have done a ton of great things and earned their money fairly. I don't believe the thoughtless diatribes against them any more than I do those against George Soros.

Of course I admit the effects of climate change are quite complicated. I have spent fruitless hours here arguing the same thing.

Let's say I get mesothelioma and die of lung cancer, in that case the particular strain of cancer, the epigenetic changes in my body, the immunological dynamics of lymph, blood and bone marrow would all be endlessly complicated. However, the germination of this complex disease "climate" would most likely be a simple thing, breathing in asbestos particles.

If I knew that when I was breathing asbestos particles in that it would kill me, and I continued to do so because it would help me financially in the very short term, then that would be analogous to what we are doing globally right now. Like a lot of dumb things we are doing, we are valuing the short term over the long term. Not a great recipe for avoiding the fate of the dinosaurs.
 
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#56
#56
W.TN.Orange Blood said:
Blah Blah Blah. I don't have time to deal with your mental illness today. Go fly a kite or blow yourself up or something.
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giphy.gif
 
#57
#57
Rifleman said:
It is because the causes of climate change are so easy to understand and tie directly to emissions that are byproducts of generating wealth for companies like Koch Ind., that those industries have spent millions of dollars to get smart people like you to throw up their hands in hopeless obeissance.

As you would admit, the Kochs aren't idiots. I certainly understand where they are coming from, the political mess they exist in is not one of their creation, and I believe they have done a ton of great things and earned their money fairly. I don't believe the thoughtless diatribes against them any more than I do those against George Soros.

Of course I admit the effects of climate change are quite complicated. I have spent fruitless hours here arguing the same thing.

Let's say I get mesothelioma and die of lung cancer, in that case the particular strain of cancer, the epigenetic changes in my body, the immunological dynamics of lymph, blood and bone marrow would all be endlessly complicated. However, the germination of this complex disease "climate" would most likely be a simple thing, breathing in asbestos particles.

If I knew that when I was breathing asbestos particles in that it would kill me, and I continued to do so because it would help me financially in the very short term, then that would be analogous to what we are doing globally right now. Like a lot of dumb things we are doing, we are valuing the short term over the long term. Not a great recipe for avoiding the fate of the dinosaurs.
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You've got me all wrong. I'm not climate change denier. It's clear the earth is warming. What was not clear for a long time is that man had any significant effect.

Everybody has bias. Evil is trying to assassinate his character because he followed his bias. The thesis here is that, despite all the good he did, he cannot be forgiven because he was behind the times on climate change. I'm arguing that it is forgivable, not that he was right. I'm arguing that we cannot determine his intentions were anymore nefarious than the opposition. Everybody is biased by their incentives and his bias helped lead us to more truth. He literally funded research that supports climate change consensus. Y'all wanna be mad because he funded the opposing side who was doing the exact same thing, following their incentives. There were scientists on both sides of the question, but evil acts like only the scientists on his side were pure and unadulterated. It's fkn hogwash.

We can't forgive Koch for being behind the times on one topic, when he was way ahead of his time on so many important topics, like civil liberties, the war on drugs, gay rights....stuff that didn't benefit him at all. We want to paint this man as bad or unworthy of praise. Hillary Clinton was behind the times on civil liberties, the war on drugs, gay rights, etc. but she gets a pass because she has a D next to her name. Gay rights is exactly what she was supposed to stand for and she punted on it. She's a hero and Koch is a villain. That's the D party in a nutshell.
 
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#63
#63
n_huffhines said:
You've got me all wrong. I'm not climate change denier. It's clear the earth is warming. What was not clear for a long time is that man had any significant effect.

Everybody has bias. Evil is trying to assassinate his character because he followed his bias. The thesis here is that, despite all the good he did, he cannot be forgiven because he was behind the times on climate change. I'm arguing that it is forgivable, not that he was right. I'm arguing that we cannot determine his intentions were anymore nefarious than the opposition. Everybody is biased by their incentives and his bias helped lead us to more truth. He literally funded research that supports climate change consensus. Y'all wanna be mad because he funded the opposing side who was doing the exact same thing, following their incentives. There were scientists on both sides of the question, but evil acts like only the scientists on his side were pure and unadulterated. It's fkn hogwash.

We can't forgive Koch for being behind the times on one topic, when he was way ahead of his time on so many important topics, like civil liberties, the war on drugs, gay rights....stuff that didn't benefit him at all. We want to paint this man as bad or unworthy of praise. Hillary Clinton was behind the times on civil liberties, the war on drugs, gay rights, etc. but she gets a pass because she has a D next to her name. Gay rights is exactly what she was supposed to stand for and she punted on it. She's a hero and Koch is a villain. That's the D party in a nutshell.
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The Kochs' place in funding climate denial is covered well in the recent book Kochland by Christopher Leonard. They were big funders of a key 1991 Cato Institute conference, which mobilized furiously after President George H.W. Bush announced he would support a climate change treaty. They went on to spend gargantuan sums boosting up the handful of credentialed scientists who deny climate change, funding climate-denying "think tanks" and publications, donating to climate-denying politicians (and refusing money to those who don't), and so on. Greenpeace estimates that between 1997 and 2017 the Koch family spent more than ExxonMobilfunding climate denial, and thus established climate-change denial as conservative dogma. While conservative parties in almost every other country have endorsed at least some kind of climate policy; the reason Republicans still do not is to a great degree the responsibility of just two men.

But you know, both sides and all.
 
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#65
#65
"David Koch, one of the titans of American industry and a shaper of American politics, passed away today.

There are doubtlessly thousands of stories about Mr. Koch in the world, and I have a few of my own. But my favorite factoid related to him is this: The FAA has a rule that is informally known as the David Koch Rule. If you've flown in the last 30 years, you're familiar with it. During the pre-flight safety briefing about masks and seat belts and life vests, the flight attendants instruct you to look around and find the nearest exit.

They specify that you should keep in mind that the closest exit may be behind you. This particular reminder is thanks to David Koch, who was a passenger on US Air Flight 1493 in 1991 when it collided with another plane on the runaway at LAX while it was landing. Koch was sitting in first class, at the front of the plane, and he quickly realized that going out the front emergency exit as the plane was ablaze from the front was foolish. He retreated to the over-wing exit and escaped.

23 people from his plane (out of 89) died in the crash. Virtually everyone in the front half of the plane died or was seriously injured; virtually everyone in the back half of the plane survived relatively unharmed. Everyone seated in row 6 or forward was either killed or sustained major injuries, while everyone aft of row 17 escaped, some with minor injuries. Koch is the outlier from the front of the plane. While he sustained significant injury, he was relatively unharmed because he went to the exit behind him. Some other surviving passengers credit him with persuading them to do the same."
 
#67
#67
BowlBrother85 said:
I have never seen a conservative debate the science of climate change. They will always turn it into an argument revolving around political partisanship and invariably, use insults and call names.
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Liberals obviously don’t believe in actual science. Only fantasy land science where everything fits in their little box.
 
#70
#70
BigOrangeTrain said:
Liberals obviously don’t believe in actual science. Only fantasy land science where everything fits in their little box.
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For the record, it was a Republican President, George W. Bush, who banned federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in 2001... and whenever you hear some idiot telling parents not to vaccinate their kids because it will cause them to develop autism? You can rest assured that idiot is a conservative.

Also, it was a Democratic President, John F. Kennedy, who set the goal of reaching the moon by the end of that current decade and although he didn't live to see it... it was achieved. That too, was once believed to be the stuff of fantasy.
 
#71
#71
n_huffhines said:
"David Koch, one of the titans of American industry and a shaper of American politics, passed away today.

There are doubtlessly thousands of stories about Mr. Koch in the world, and I have a few of my own. But my favorite factoid related to him is this: The FAA has a rule that is informally known as the David Koch Rule. If you've flown in the last 30 years, you're familiar with it. During the pre-flight safety briefing about masks and seat belts and life vests, the flight attendants instruct you to look around and find the nearest exit.

They specify that you should keep in mind that the closest exit may be behind you. This particular reminder is thanks to David Koch, who was a passenger on US Air Flight 1493 in 1991 when it collided with another plane on the runaway at LAX while it was landing. Koch was sitting in first class, at the front of the plane, and he quickly realized that going out the front emergency exit as the plane was ablaze from the front was foolish. He retreated to the over-wing exit and escaped.

23 people from his plane (out of 89) died in the crash. Virtually everyone in the front half of the plane died or was seriously injured; virtually everyone in the back half of the plane survived relatively unharmed. Everyone seated in row 6 or forward was either killed or sustained major injuries, while everyone aft of row 17 escaped, some with minor injuries. Koch is the outlier from the front of the plane. While he sustained significant injury, he was relatively unharmed because he went to the exit behind him. Some other surviving passengers credit him with persuading them to do the same."
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I saw the episode of "Air Disasters" where that accident was profiled. A female air traffic controller cleared flight 1493 to land right on top of a commuter plane. There were only 12 people on the other, much smaller aircraft and those poor folks never had a chance.
 
#72
#72
BowlBrother85 said:
I saw the episode of "Air Disasters" where that accident was profiled. A female air traffic controller cleared flight 1493 to land right on top of a commuter plane. There were only 12 people on the other, much smaller aircraft and those poor folks never had a chance.
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:rolleyes:
 
#74
#74
BowlBrother85 said:
For the record, it was a Republican President, George W. Bush, who banned federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in 2001... and whenever you hear some idiot telling parents not to vaccinate their kids because it will cause them to develop autism? You can rest assured that idiot is a conservative.

Also, it was a Democratic President, John F. Kennedy, who set the goal of reaching the moon by the end of that current decade and although he didn't live to see it... it was achieved. That too, was once believed to be the stuff of fantasy.
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The autism comment is pure conjecture BS on your part. Also, that is not completely settled science either. While I dont believe vaccinations absolutely lead to autism, nobody can say with 100% fact that they dont. Just like with "climate change." We barely understand it. Scientists cannot really agree on it and liberals want everyone to believe that its a huge threat to national security that we can actually do something about. Your side only accepts science when it suits them.
 
#75
#75
BowlBrother85 said:
... and whenever you hear some idiot telling parents not to vaccinate their kids because it will cause them to develop autism? You can rest assured that idiot is a conservative.
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Lol... You can't be serious? Half of Hollywood is out front in the anti-vaxx movement.
 
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