Climate

Climate change is here. And it's happening and it's just going to get worse.

It's appears that most people don't believe it or understand the severity of our situation.

Haileigh mentioned today in class Obama's efforts to combat the climate change that occurs by capping the amount "allowed" to rise at 2 degrees Celsius. 

President Obama attended the climate summit in Paris and was among the Group of Seven (G7) of the world's largest advanced economies. They came to a conclusion and reaffirmed their commitment to keep the globe's average temperature from rising past 2 degrees Celsius. 

To put this in perspective, I'll explain what would happen to the human race and the planet if we got near 2 degrees Celsius. 

Depending on where you're at in the world, will determine how you are affected. Warming over land is twice as intense as over the ocean. It is exacerbated over the Arctic, where retreating sea ice reflects less light and so produces less cooling. 

According to Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist and head of the climate analysis section of the independent National Center for Atmospheric Research, the most severe precipitation patterns associated with a warmer world are already showing up. 

Last year, surface temperatures of the sea in the subtropical Atlantic were as much as 1.1 degrees Celsius above normal and about half of that increase can be attributed to global warming. 

A 2010 report by the National Research Council, breaks down a series of changes. Every one degree increase could lead to 10 percent less rainfall during the North American, southern African, and the Mediterranean dry seasons. This then leads to the loss of crop growth and more wild fires. 

Climate change has led to fire seasons that are now on average 78 days longer than in 1970, according to a Forest Service report published in August. 

This isn't just happening on the West coast either, the "wet drought" has hit the soggy Pacific Northwest where snowfall has now turned into rain in the region's mountains. The little snow that does hit the ground, melts early and leaves the land ready to burn in the heat of summer. 

Each degree could bring up to a 400 percent increase in area burned by wildfire in parts of the western U.S. 

July 2015 was the warmest month ever physically recorded on planet Earth.

Take that in.

And with months left of fire season, the blazes of 2015 have already scorched more than 8 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some of the fires that are occurring in the forested areas could burn until it snows. 

This tragedy of climate-driven mega-inferno is that the fires themselves actually worsen global warming. From these wildfires, megatons of carbon dioxide is pumped into our atmosphere.

According to a new major study by scientists at Columbia and NASA, man-made warming is increasing atmospheric evaporation - drawing water out of Western trees, soil and shrubs. Just in California alone, the epic drought is up to 25 percent more severe than it would have been, absent climate change. 

Humans have never lived on a planet that's 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) warmer than it was before we started burning fossil fuels, which was in the late 1800's. 

Climate experts say we risk fundamentally changing the human race and life on this planet if we do cross that 2-degree mark. 

What would the world look like at 2 degrees?

• Wildfires in the United States would increase 400% to 800% in size.
• Hurricanes are expected to become 2% to 8% more intense.
• 20% to 30% of animal and plant species will be at increasingly high risk of extinction. 
• Certain crops in the U.S, India and Africa will decrease in growth 10% to 30%. 
• The Arctic will keep melting, losing 30% of its annual average sea ice.
• The availability of freshwater is expected to decline by 20%.

And not to mention all of the displaced people that would be left with no home due to rising sea levels. Major cities everywhere will be under water. 

So...

All of those mentioned above are really shitty. 

But it's possible to stay below those 2 degrees. 

Instead of denying the change in climate, let's just agree that it's occurring and all do something together to try and slow down the process.

Let's just stop being lazy and try to make a difference, maybe not for us, but for our children and our children's children. 

We have to stop treating climate change as a political football and acknowledge it as the world crisis it is. It doesn't matter whether humans have accelerated the process but that the process is happening and we must ban together or go the way of the dinosaurs. 

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/06/08/g7-reaffirms-2-degree-global-warming-target

http://www.livescience.com/10325-living-warmer-2-degrees-change-earth.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/what-megablazes-tell-us-about-the-fiery-future-of-climate-change-20150915

Religion 3.0

"Religion is the opium of the people." -Karl Marx, German philosopher and economist. 

The Holocaust, Charlie Hebdo, ISIS, the Crusades, the Inquisition, practically every Middle Eastern conflict, and countless more, all have at least one common thread- religion.

Disenfranchisement, discrimination, racism, sexism, and homophobia all have a common thread- religion.

If you think about it, religion is at the heart of many conflicts and issues that we've dealt with since the dawn of civilized people. 

In all of the great cultures that have come before us, our Christian society has looked back and discounted their religions referring to them as myths. At it's core, myth is simply a way for a man to make sense and find his place in the universe.

All religions are myths. Even our modern day Christian culture is based on mythology. 

They're stories told to make sense of our world and our place in the universe and to give us structure. 

It is an illusion that people use to find comfort and safety in their place and their purpose in life. 

All religions are myths including: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc...etc... 

These are not factual histories though there may be historical facts in them. 

They are works of fiction, or myths, all the same. 

Religions are businesses that are run to make money. They make money by keeping people disempowered and afraid. Instead of unifying, they keep people separate by pronouncing that they hold the real truths. If you do not believe their way, you are wrong, and there begins all matter of chaos. 

Religion is the pill we take to get through the day because we don't want to question or think for ourselves. But there are side effects; we give up analytical thinking, the opportunity to be accountable for our own actions, and the possibility that we are inherently good as opposed to inherently flawed. 

And the reason I say we give up analytical thinking for religion is because why else would a perfectly reasonable human being say that the earth is 6,000 years old? And nonetheless defend that proposition to the death with myth from his bible as though it were fact although hard provable science tells us otherwise.

I would love to think that we can be empathetic human beings that would rather not kill people. And not because we think it's some sort of "ticket" to the heavens but just simply because it's the right thing to do. 

Why are women and gays and people of any sort of color treating so unfairly if religion is all about loving thy neighbor as yourself?

Qur'an (4:11) "The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females."

Qur'an (2:228) "and the men are a degree above them [women]"

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and continue to have - an option to interpret holy teachings to exalt or subjugate women. 

I find it ironic how women are now welcomed into all different levels of professions and positions of authority, but are seen as inferior and are deprived of the equal right to serve god in positions of religious leadership. And this trickles down to minorities. 

Like c'mon, black people weren't allowed to be members of the LDS church until 1978, which isn't that long ago in the scheme of things.

I find it so tremendously difficult figuring out why women, black people or gay people would want to be a part of any church simply because of the unified belief that these organic occurrences are sinful and wrong.

The contradictions and commandments to love and accept everyone unless they believe in a different religion or they were born loving the same sex or are a different color. Churches and religions preach love but their actions are all about separation and hierarchy. Separation being the individual is not capable of communing with god without an intercessor (priest, pastor, bishop, etc..) that the individual needs to have it explained to them because they are not capable on their own of this enlightened understanding. It's a great way to make money and ensure job security. And the person being preached to agrees to this because now they don't have to think for themselves and take responsibility for their actions. We are sheeple just following. 

This is based on fear of someone or something different and not love and accepting someone of their own terms. Because of this fear, we try to change or assimilate the outsider to accept our norms. And if they don't, then they are bad. People's feelings then get hurt and then everybody wants to fight everybody because everybody believe that they have the "right" way and all of the answers for everyone else. We tithe and donate to keep these money making, yet not for profit institutions running. The Catholic church is the richest corporation on the planet. 

Yet again, this is all based on myth and no fact, no data to support any of the stories. And everyone is ready to be insulted and persecuted to the extent that they're living to fight and die for a lie. 

Ask most people if Jesus was an historic figure or a myth, they will tell you an historic figure. And there's not one shred of evidence that Jesus ever walked this earth. 

Also, saying "that's not true, it's in the Bible," does not count as a counterargument because the Bible is not fact. 

It infuriates and saddens me that people turn to these institutions for answers instead of turning to themselves for the answers. Instead of questioning the inconsistencies and teachings and stories, they just trust that if they do what they're told, everything will be okay. 

So this justifies aberrant behavior such as discrimination, sexism, homophobia, and genocide as the Lord's work.

I like to keep my options open.  I don't have answers. I don't purport to know the truth. I believe it's okay to just say, I don't know. 

I believe I know the difference between right or wrong, not based on the fear of god but on an intuitive understanding and empathy for the human race that is born in me. Give me science and data and my own experience of the world, not proselytizing and judgment.





OR

My toilet bowl is my spiritual advisor. It keeps me low to the ground and humble and grounds me everyday. And constantly reminds me that I'm full of shit. 

Darkode

Radio Lab-

I think you [Eric Young] mentioned this last time in class and my reaction hasn't changed since hearing it reiterated on RadioLab.

These are the new internet pirates.  Well, internet ghost pirates.
There's not even a place we can go to and beat them up or threaten them for the acts their carrying out.

I don't like it at all. I feel vulnerable because I don't possess the kind of skills to fight back if need be.

It's a freaky situation all around.
First off, our FBI can't even shut them down..
That's most definitely a problem in itself.
They [internet pirates] do such a successful job at keeping their business running and keeping it out of sight from anyone that tries to threaten it. So there's that. TWO WEEKS and their site was back up.
Our FBI can't do anything and I'm no code expert, so I sure as hell wouldn't be able to do shit about it.
This woman had to pay $500!
I definitely don't have that amount of money laying around and I especially don't have it to pay off some crazies to regain my stolen, locked files.

After class on Tuesday I had an epiphany (I guess that would be the best word.)
We are so insanely stupid and unaware and careless that we're letting this happen to ourselves.
After watching the TedTalk about cameras being able to track our license plates all over the country, I had a mini panic attack.
To think this happens all the time is unsettling. I never know when I'm being watched and that does not sit well with me at all.
I went through so many scenarios and options of what I can do to stop this from happening to me and everyone else and the only thing I really came up with was rioting because we know protest don't do anything.. Which rioting isn't cool and it's dangerous so I would rather not do that to begin with. But somehow that's the only option I came up with. And I wouldn't be just me out there trying to do something, everyone must come together to try and stop this invasion of privacy and the raw slaughter of basic human rights.
The citizens of this country that believe our government can do no wrong are stupid.
And I mean stupid with all of the power that comes along with those six letters.
Our government is spying on us and if we would of looked into it, easily we would've known about this and been able to figure out what was going on even before Mr. Snowden leaked the information he did.

We allow this to happen to us by not caring enough and not standing up for our rights.
(Hope you all sang the Beastie Boy's song)

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about this to even come up with a realistic solution.
It's like the Wild West or pirates and the shitty thing is that we can't arm ourselves with guns for protection. We're fighting ghost. The only way we can fight back is with knowledge. Coming personally from me, I don't posses that so therefore I'm extremely underarmed.
Like the founder of Darkodes, the younger generation is raised in this environment of technology where they are exposed to the answers. Whether they decide to use this and arm themselves is entirely up to them.

I think RadioLab did an excellent job as always.

Privacy 2.0- legal, but is it ethical?

The window of the universe- Facebook's newsfeed. 

It seems like now-a-days I open my laptop to a sob fest. From grandparents dancing with one another on their billionth anniversary, to gay men getting married and a little girl greeting her father that's just returned home from overseas, Facebook has some ballsy emotional appeal going on, but did you know it's intentional?

Very few users would notice because let's face it, we all watch the dog videos so it's normal for others to pop up every so often. 

However, in January of 2012, data scientists skewed what almost 700,000 Facebook users first saw when logging on to their page. 

Some of the Facebook users were shown happy and positive, uplifting posts and the others were shown what was analyzed as sadder than average posts. 

Once this trial run of emotion was over, analysts noticed that the manipulated users were more likely to post either positive or negative words on their own Facebook based on what they viewed. 

This experiment is legal and if you read into the actual terms of service provided by Facebook, they're allowed to use their data for "testing, data analysis and research." 

The question is whether or not it's ethical to intentionally manipulate someone's newsfeed to make them feel a certain way for an experiment.  

The reason for the study was to show whether or not emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, which leads to people experiencing the same emotions without their awareness. 

This shows that we don't need direct human interaction to achieve this emotional contagion. 

However, I'm not sure this study achieved this effectively anyway.

We already know that we don't need human interaction. Take books for an example. Specifically fictional books allow readers to experience feelings and emotions whether they've actually had firsthand experience with them or not. I believe this was proven a while ago by a study that was featured on NPR that I listened to. Unlike non-fiction, which may or may not have that effect on the reader, fiction allows people to experience the same level of emotion whether or not it's actually taking place. Good fiction tricks the brain into experiencing these emotions.

This is the same thing that is going on in the news programming, and that's troubling. 

News media features stories that are more sensational and negative because those garner higher ratings. They all do this. Depending on which news outlet you listen to, it slants more to their viewers  conservative viewpoint (Fox) and more liberal viewpoint (MSNBC) or CNN, who is just the whore of three who just wants ratings.

The end result being, we don't get an accurate view of the world around us, but a manipulated view that erodes our confidence in the world around us needlessly because it's all feared based. News outlets are just interested in numbers these days as opposed to objectivity.

Furthermore, the Facebook study was flawed in many ways. One being the analysis of different words.

Someone saying "I am not happy" is different from someone saying "I am not having a great day."

The software used to conduct this experiment would target the word "not" and define both sentences as a user being unhappy and not pleased. 

Susan Fiske, the Princeton University psychology professor who edited the study for publication said; "Ethically it's okay from a regulations perspective, but ethics are kind of social decisions[....] there's not an absolute answer but the level of outrage that appears to be happening suggests that maybe it shouldn't have been done and as I'm thinking about it, I'm a little creeped out too."

I have mixed feelings about this.

I never under any circumstance want my feed to be manipulated by some random dude for a study. 

I understand why so many are outraged about that aspect.

However, I believe this comes down to a personal choice.

I believe I have the choice to react to something or not. Whether it's put up there to intentionally make me sad or piss me off, I firmly believe it's my decision on how I continue my day. 

What my friend likes or their friend's friend, it somehow ends up on my feed. Whether it's put up for an experiment or ends up there from my grandma's second cousin liking something from four years ago, I have the discipline to chose the fate of my day. 

I would love to live in a world where I don't constantly doubt the information and the intentions behind it. 

For more information on the study, click here.