If there is a link it's going to be to Brietbart or the gateway pundit, or some guys blog. Then it becomes an argument about how that's real news and everything else is fake news.... there just is no good way for it to end. He's either making it up, or he's using garbage sources that he'll say are the only real sources and everything else is fake.

is there a way to PM you without friending you? we keep derailing threads together and in fairness to the rest of the forum, we really shouldn't.

That's true, it isn't fair to the other people in the thread, especially since there are several people who are actually keeping to the topic and discussing something interesting. We aren't the only ones, but that's not an excuse for ruining everyone else's fun.

It should be possible I think, but not with the privacy settings I currently have. I may have to change that for situations such as this.

don't worry about it

I think they did. If there will be enough demand, devs can make the whole DLC about ecology and climate. After all when Civ 5 was released there was no religion there and spy mechanics was oversimplified. Gods&Kings DLC rectified that. And Brave New World added more nuances about culture.

As a side note, slightly off topic since it is not strictly related to PC games:

Some posters in this thread have expressed curiosity about the effects of climate change.

Why keep guessing? Just two weeks ago, the international panel on climate change (IPCC) released a special report on global warming at 1.5 Celsius degrees, comparing its probable effects with those of a global warming at 2º C. Keep in mind that right now we are already at 1º C. The Paris Agreement of 2014 binds the subscriber to a maximum of 2º C, and the report indicates that it is just too little of an effort.

To provide just a sample, with 2º C we lose all the coral. All of it. Now, the good news: with 1.5º C, we might just lose between the 70% and the 90%. The report indicates that we have a margin of 12 years to take strong action.

It is a nice reading, for those interested. Specially recommended are the Press Release, the Headline Statements and then, if you really want to know more on the details, the Summary for Policymakers. Last but not least, the FAQs can be helpful as well.

If you wan to look into the source material and the science that backs all the claims, then you hae the Technical Summary and of course the whole report.

Peter Watts, the Canadian SF writer and former scientist, has written some hilarious comments on the report: The Adorable Optimism of the IPCC that might be more easily accessible (or just funnier) than reading the IPCC material all by itself.

On the other hand, regional impact varies. In the European Union there is an ongoing joint project coordinated by the European Environment Agency. You can check the findings for the regions and have fun. This is the most updated version of the whole report so far.

Regarding action on climate change, since all the causes go to a common global pool, the mitigation, which is the curbing of the phenomenon, has to be dealt with globally. Then, since the effect depends on the region, the adaptation methods require a regional treatment.

Right now the recommendation of the UNO is to enforce mitigation so as to accomplish two things: One, to slow down the warming so that we get a couple or more decades (hopefully more) in order to adapt to the inescapable changes already in motion (yes, it is already triggered, boys and girls). Second, try to limit its final reach (the Paris Agreement mentions 2º C, the new special report of the IPCC explains why we really might want to keep it no highter than 1.5º C). At the same time, each country really ought to do their best with the adaptation. The Paris Agreement included financial aid for countries in development so as to help them with the ecological transition that these changes require.

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11362

I'll let the obvious double standard in the article speak for itself, but it does happen to be from NASA. There's 2 obvious implications in addition to the usual story:

1. There's a time before the industrial revolution in which CO2 and global temperatures fluctuated.

2. CO2 lags temperature rise, implying that CO2 is released deep in the planet in response to temperature rise.

OSS foundation on the topic of natural climate change cycle.

The real debate on global warming really does come down to 2 points:

1. Is the natural cycle changing?
2. If yes, who's fault is it? Sun, Volcanic Activity, Mankind?

But did you ever notice that alot of this information about cycles and stuff never get talked about? I'll let you decide who's fault that is and if that's accident or intentional, 'cause that's ultimately what all this comes down to when we regular people are talking about it, paying for it, and being kept out of it.

Cool, thanks for the link it was interesting. It doesn't live up to the claim of disproving all the math behind climate change models, but it is an interesting in it's implications.

I don't think anyone disputes that there are natural cycles in atmospheric gases and temperature. That would be impossible to argue based on the historical record that we have (how many ice ages have there been after all.) The argument there really has to come down to whether or not the changes now would be considered normal within the trends of the cycles based on the data that we have.

I agree that the two key points are as you say, is the cycle changing and what is causing it. I don't think the cycles get talked about at this point because it's just generally accepted that the cycle has changed in the sense that it is accelerating. I don't think it's disingenuous to stop talking about it, if you've agreed that the cycle has changed and agreed on the way it has changed.

Whether or not they're all right is besides the point, it's not lying by omission, it's omission due to a form of confirmation bias. The confirmation bias just has strong merit so far as they are concerned because it is confirmed by a bunch of other scientists.

Yes, it is a very USA thing.

In the EU, every government is collaborating in the joint effort, no matter their political color (as it should be). See Merkel's right wing government at the head of the fight against climate change?

If Firaxis was based in Germany, France... you name it... probably they would not have dared removing climate change from Civ6 :-)

It's NOT a USA thing.

It's a DJT thing.

He pulled us out of the Paris Agreement. There was no discussion, there was no vote, just him.

My thing is, we have a heavily politicized issue, where the people who support the man-made global warming hypothesis have been actively involving themselves in publishing science based on narratives (i'll give some samples below), and at the same time have shown the need to keep people reminded on facts that agree with their point (we're educated about global warming in public school [at least in the US], for example, but this natural warming cycle is curiously left out of the educational material in favor of suggesting that climate change is entirely mankind).

https://www.edf.org/media/edf-calls-epa-withdraw-censored-science-proposal

https://ncac.org/the-knowledge-project

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/what-massive-database-retracted-papers-reveals-about-science-publishing-s-death-penalty

https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2008/08/if-first-you-dont-succeed-cool-revise-and-submit-again

https://www.sciencealert.com/these-8-papers-were-rejected-before-going-on-to-win-the-nobel-prize

And that's just the stuff that you can read. The video i brought in earlier on the topic was a guy who had his article approved, then was later rejected, and that seems to be a common thing on his channel when he talks about science. I don't think this is a problem with science or the scientific method, but the idea that science is heavily controlled by publishers who aren't scientists, but have motives, it often becomes a tit for tat political game, and it's terribly obvious in the subjects involving foods (I remember reading an AHA study talking about the "significant effects of salt on your bloodpressure," but as you read the study you realized that, overall, you tend to piss it out if you drink enough water, 'cause it's water soluble). And if you're not well published, you're not "well respected in the community." Then, on top of that, "scientific consensus" emerges, as if truth and reality are a political process and can be voted on. If science wants to continue to be taken seriously, this needs fixed, and just making another publisher won't work 'cause, "Sorry, we don't respect anything that's from that site/newspaper/magazine/whatever."

I'll also give scientific models it's own little rant here with some examples i've heard over the 29 years of being alive:
-White people will be a minority by 2020.
-The earth will be flooded by 2020, due to global warming.
-The earth will be irreversably changed by 2050 due to global warming.
-Within 100 years white people will be extinct.
-Millenials will have, on average, 10 different jobs before retiring.

How about some articles (yes, they're low quality, but the claims can be independently investigated, and comment sections area always a mixed bag of bad to total shit sprinkled with gold here and there [secureteam10 on youtube is fun to watch for this reason: sometimes he talks about something that gets horribly debunked in the comments section, like one of his more recent videos mentions a floating building that turns out to be an advertisement balloon])?

http://www.aei.org/publication/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year-2/

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dizzying-science-of-climate-change-gets-a-bit-clearer/

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/30/some-failed-climate-predictions/

Well, i would continue, but they generally always seem to be about the same topics: white people becomming minority, jobs, global warming, fat people, whatever gets news articles and funding (i'm sure there are good models out there, but we only ever hear about this outlandish ones). Climate change models tend to be a dime a dozen, so i just can't be bothered to go through them until they've been around long enough to show some reliably predictive value.

EDIT: To be clear, i don't think too many regular people doubt empiricism, nor is science automatically flawed 'cause it gets things wrong alot (everyone gets things wrong). The real issue is that everything comes with such certainty, anymore, despite how many times it's wrong. Policy changes in these realms have a huge impact on the ground, and it gets rather old being jerked around without even so much of a vote from the ground that gets hit.

Still, the current POTUS did not really cheat anyone on the policy he intended to implement... Despite the large fracture in the country about said policy.

Do you think that the new Congress might do something about it?

It is nice that already several cities in the States (even with mayors from the GOP) are all about energy sustainability or even especifically declaring that they will do their best to keep to the Paris Agreement on their own.

No, because the two branches are controlled by opposing parties, so anything that the two parties disagree with is unlikely to pass both branches. We'll need to wait until after the 2020 elections at the earliest for something to happen.

They can't.

It's kind of helpless as long as he is in power. Right now we are depending on States taking action themselves, which is really the only thing keeping our heads above water.

One thing I like to point out is that most of our environmental regulations are being removed in order to save certain industries and stop their decline. Well, what the right doesn't mention is that most of these industries, like coal, have been in a steady decline since the early 80's, long before the talk of climate change became an every day topic of discussion. The fossil fuel industry isn't being done in by "tree huggers" it's being done in by technology. High tech is faster, it's cleaner, and most important, it's more attractive. People whom 40 years ago had little choice outside of traditional industry now have an entire new universe of tech opportunities to explore. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but the amount of tech jobs available to your average blue collar worker is astronomically more than it was just a few years ago. Where would you rather work?

In this regard I like to think that fossil fuels are being phased out by progress, which can't be legislated and can't be stamped out by lower emissions standards, or some orange blow hard who thinks breathing in smog is somehow healthy.