Cross-posted this in the ‘NATO’s war in Ukraine’ community and a mod deleted it logging this (Removed Post Debunking of Ukraine biolab claims reason: western bullshit) someone needs to check these mods and see if they have everyone’s best interest in mind ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Your whole essays repo is very nice. Did someone add the biolab nonsense to that list in your repo or something? Sorry not really following the relevance of this to my comment
The claims for weapons being developed in these biolabs were proven false by a lot of news outlets and scientists. It seems like this has become a vapid talking point.
The claims for weapons being developed in these biolabs have not in fact been proven, and no independent verification ever happened. By proven you must mean US officials saying trust me. Two big questions for you:
If the US wants to prove its innocence, why doesn’t it open up these bio-labs for independent investigations by international experts?
Why does the US insist on being the only country in the world to oppose the establishment of a multilateral verification mechanism though it claims to abide by the BWC?
No, we do not agree at all. We don’t know what’s in those labs, and US won’t let independent investigators into these labs. If you don’t understand why that’s a problem what else is there to tell you really.
We agree completely, I agree with you, that we do not know. However, if you do research on this subject, you can read what independent journalists and scientists have to say and the likelihood of it being any kind of weapons is very low. We agree. You’re just more skeptical and crossing into borderline conspiracy territory by not providing evidence to back up your skepticism. I will happily go into my search history and provide you links of well known scientists discussing this topic if you’d like.
Skepticism doesn’t require evidence. The only party that needs to provide evidence is the US who operate these labs. All the following questions need clear answers:
If the international community’s concerns are “disinformation”, why doesn’t the US release detailed materials to prove its innocence?
What did they spend the $200 million on?
What kind of research was conducted on which pathogens?
What kind of sensitive information about public health cannot be shared?
Does the Ukrainian side know what the US has been working on in Ukraine?
What is it trying to hide when the US Embassy in Ukraine deleted all relevant documents on its website?
Why does the US insist on being the only country in the world to oppose the establishment of a multilateral verification mechanism though it claims to abide by the BWC?
If the US wants to prove its innocence, why doesn’t it open up these bio-labs for independent investigations by international experts?
That, or blackmail. See also Matt Taibbi. You can actually pinpoint the approximate time when Taibbi suddenly went off the deep end; “Insane Clown President” and earlier is extremely insightful and makes sense, “Hate, Inc” and after is bonkers. There was no gradual transition or erosion of his good sense and logic.
Taibbi switching over to Team Trump actually gave me this sort of whiplash of self-doubt that maybe I am the wrong one, and I took a little bit of time to really read in detail what he was writing about “Russiagate” and etc, to see if his sudden switchover was based in some kind of reality and I needed to learn what he was saying. Nope. It’s all just nonsense. He’s definitely not a stupid person though. Also, just like other people who went through this transition, he now has different weird opinions on all kinds of things, but on Russia / Ukraine his viewpoint is exactly the same as everyone else who went through the transition.
He started going downhill in 2016, accepting material he knew was from Russian intelligence. It appears that the final straw was when he wanted to publish articles in support of some of the conspiracy theories around Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, and China. The Intercept didn’t feel like they passed journalistic muster and refused to publish them. He parted ways for Substack.
His heart’s in the right place, but he’s very credulous. So sometimes he’s right accidentally like with Snowden. But often he’s just peddling bullshit.
Very well said. I hope you get to feeling better soon. I’m sorry you’re support system has crapped out on you. The idea of “us against them” and the underlying “dog eat dog” drivers of our society seems to have led a lot of people to struggle to survive in some strange ways. I think 2020 will go down in history as the year the human race collectively started losing their marbles.
I wonder if there is a solution that involves a less dangerous gas instead of sea water. Spraying large volumes of water into the stratosphere is not really possible yet, so if it just rose as a gas it would be more doable.
My fear with geoengineering is that is allows us to become complacent about solving the primary problems, and then also creates its own set of unexpected secondary problems.
You think we can solve primary problems? Cause all I see is us driving off a cliff. If we aren’t willing to hit the breaks I’ll settle for turning the car into a bush
At least to your second point, in the video he explains that there are ways to seed clouds for cooling purposes without any major side effects, and the experiment hes talking about is that this shows it can be done on a large scale. Whether it would make us complacent on getting CO2 out of the air, though, it might but at least it would be the start of a solution.
Right, but their point was kind of about side-effects we’re not aware of at the time. So that’s kind of the entire point, that we think there are no negative side effects only to later find out we were wrong.
So that doesn’t really address what they said at all.
Exactly this. We think we know everything when we start doing stuff. But after a while we found out we where wrong and fucked up.
We don't fully understand/comprehend nature and how it all interacts. We shouldn't be so ignorant to think we do understand it.
A while back there was a round of interest in the possibility of countering global warming by using specialized high-altitude planes to spray calcium carbonate particulates into the upper atmosphere, and it was calculated that global warming could be countered with an ongoing expenditure of $2 billion per year. That's peanuts for a country like China, so if climate change starts causing them significant identifiable losses I wouldn't be at all surprised if they gave it a go.
Hank also says that we’re at point where we need to cut emissions AND carbon capture AND geoengineer in order to mitigate climate disaster. It can’t be a one and done solution anymore, we’re beyond that
And considering we are at risk for loosing tons of biodiversity in the oceans from this heating (see mass coral bleaching event in florida) I think we have to start seeding clouds and whatever mitigating factors we can
become complacent about solving the primary problems
We have been complacent about solving the primary problems for decades. At this point we should be doing all we can, and if a way to combat the symptoms gives us more time to finally get our shit together and do something useful before everyone turns into doomers giving up because it’s too late anyway then I think that’s a good thing.
Interesting vox video about geoengineering. I find the coalition of scientists demanding we don’t even look at geo eng tech, like zero research into it frustrating. youtu.be/EKPFZPyQurA
Indeed. There are people who wail and lament about how we've passed a "tipping point" and the climate is doomed to catastrophic warming no matter how much our emissions are reduced at this point, and then when you bring up the possibility of studying geoengineering they snap back at you with a "but not like that" reflex.
Frankly, I think there are environmentalists who like the notion of inescapable doom. It gives them an "I told you so" feeling of victory, perhaps, or absolves them of any further effort. Or they've decided humanity is evil and deserves to be "punished." I don't know, it's just so wearying trying to deal with that reaction.
At the end of the day, when major governments are faced with the choice of collapsing under a wave of migrants and famine and taking a stab at spraying some aerosols into the upper atmosphere as a hail Mary, they're going to try the thing that isn't guaranteed disaster. Would be nice if we could do some studying of it first.
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