Comments 1 to 7:

1. Aeyles at 21:40 PM on 6 June, 2022

   Several of these articles are clearly "political". As a newby, I'm confused how these fit in to the SKS "rules". What am I missing?

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   Moderator Response:

   [BL] More moderation complaints snipped. I don't think you are new to this.

   Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right.  This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.

   Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it.  Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.

    

2. Aeyles at 09:50 AM on 7 June, 2022

   I'm not complaining about "moderator judgement". I'm not complaining about featured topics. I'm asking how it is that SKS, billed by some of my colleagues, as a Science discussion portal also posts articles that take a position that terms, such as eco-fascist, are used to describe a particular point of view. Fascism is a political ideology resting on five central tenets: Control of the means of production and distribution by the State (but not ownership), One party rule, A Monopolistic Propaganda Machine that depends upon the Demonizing of a particular group (an enemy of the state) and an all powerful Leader (dictator) exercising a monopoly on the use of force (a disarmed citizenry).  I came to SKS on a referral from a colleague who maintained that SKS was the place to go to discuss peer reviewed scientific evidence of a crisis in our environment, so I am asking how that is connected to some of the expressions such as "right wing eco-fascism" and similar labels that appear to categorize a line of thinking that "demonizes" a perceived "enemy of the State". ???

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   Moderator Response:

   [BL]

   Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right.  This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.

   Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators repeatedly submit offensive or off-topic posts. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.
    
   Finally, please understand that moderation policies are not open for discussion.  If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing.

   Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it.  Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.

3. Aeyles at 12:10 PM on 7 June, 2022

   Maybe I have not figured out what off topic means. I was citing the essay above by Zach Budrik. Is that a topic, or do I look in a particular place for the topic? I don't wish to be offensive, but I would like to know if the term eco-fascist has a definition. I am aware of the meaning of Hadley Cell, eutrophication of the oceans, Milankovich Cycles,  AMOC, carbon capture, CFCs, IPCC, and many other terms SKS and similar organization use in discussing climate, but eco-fascism is a stumper for me. Labelling is not considered academic discourse, but is certainly a common characteristic of political commentary. Your rules discourage politics, yet it seems to me that Zach's essay reeks of it. How does this fit into SKS' rules for discourse? What am I missing that leads you to erase my comments?

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   Moderator Response:

   [BL] More moderation complaints deleted.

   If you cannot keep on topic, we will not spend time trying to edit your comments so that small parts remain and violations of the Comments Policy are edited out. You are the one that needs to sit back, think about what you post, and do your own editing. If you cannot do this, entire comments will be deleted.

    

4. Aeyles at 12:44 PM on 7 June, 2022

   I'm concluding that since your choices of topics/essays are not open for discussion, would that mean that if you chose a "political" post, you would not expect anyone to make it a topic of discussion, and those of us who do, are risking a warning or deletion? Or do you expect us to sense out the "politics" and be wise enough to leave it alone?

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   Moderator Response:

   [BL] I will leave this moderation complaint intact for now. Clearly you are incapable of reading and understanding a Comments Policy. To quote:

   • No politics. Rants about politics, religion, faith, ideology or one world governments will be deleted. Occasional blogposts on Skeptical Science touch on issues intimately related to politics.  For those posts this rule may be relaxed, but only if explicitly stated at the end of the blogpost.

   While I am at it:

   Moderation complaints are always off topic and will be deleted

   ...and for good measure:

   • No multiple identities.  Posting comments at Skeptical Science should use only one registered screen name. Use of more than one account will result in all accounts being banned.

   You seem to be more intent on arguing with the moderators than with the blog posts or other commenters. This has to stop.

    

    

5. One Planet Only Forever at 12:45 PM on 7 June, 2022

   Recent posts at SkS, including this week’s News Roundup, provide great information and examples of the need for a broad integrated (systemic) perspective when learning about climate science and the challenges of getting the collective of humanity to collaborative converge to learn to achieve the required rapid changes to limit harm done by developed and developing human activity and help those who need assistance now and in the future.

   I will start with the SkS re-post of the Yale Climate Connections article Driving with electricity is much cheaper than with gasoline. The article provides a detailed presentation of the cost advantage of electric personal vehicles. But, because of its focus on only a small part of the bigger picture, it does not mention the more important consideration that even electric vehicle use needs to be limited to limit the power demand. Because all power demand causes harm (as the deniers of the need to stop burning fossil fuels constantly point out regarding renewable energy production and use). People should be “dramatically reducing non-essential personal vehicle use”. By all means switch to electric vehicles. But limit personal vehicle use, including taxi or other ‘personal ride services, to essential travel. And make changes to limit “essential travel”. Note that even using public transit consumes energy. And consuming energy, even renewable electricity, is not harm free.

   Another example of the narrow perspective problem (a problem highlighted in the ‘convergent’ set of articles opening this week’s Recent Research), is the recent BBC News story Drought-stricken US warned of looming 'dead pool'. This article is narrowly focused on the water shortage and electricity generation limits due to the water shortage in the SW US. The article mentions the ‘temporary’ water use restriction measures. And the recommended actions include building new dams and building household roof-top solar powered machines that will extract water from the air. What is missed is the need to fundamentally change how people live to reduce power and water demand. People should not grow things in yards that need ‘extra water - more than naturally would occur’. They should stop non-essential water use. That would maximize water to be used efficiently to grow food (far more essential than water used to have pretty yard plants). Another consideration is that reservoirs behind dams result in loss of water through evaporation. In warm dry climates, water stored for later use or power generation should be kept in ways that minimize evaporation losses (not is sprawling lakes).

   A different example of the difficult of narrow focused articles or, more correctly, the problem of people reading items in isolation with a narrow focus is the Guardian article We cannot adapt our way out of climate crisis, warns leading scientist (Katharine Hayhoe). This article mentions that harmfully misleading narrow-minded claim by pseudo-economists like HSBC’s Stewart Kirk that future problems caused by people benefiting from unsustainable harmful pursuits can and should be discounted (marginalized, ignored) because future generations can deal with it (and more importantly the harmed people of the future can’t vote today and would have a hard time suing those who harmed them). The morally rational understanding is that the people who benefit from a harmful action should be the only ones to suffer the harm of the harmful action (the classic medical harm done to patients, or risk of harm, to best help patients). So if there is required future adaptation due to climate changes the current generation needs to build sustainable adaptations that will protect future generations from the future potential harm (it is unjust to leave it to future generations to adapt, if they can).

   In We cannot adapt our way out of climate crisis, warns leading scientist (Katharine Hayhoe) it is also correctly declared that unless dramatic, but technically feasible, changes happen it is likely that the future of humanity will be irreparably seriously harmed. That relates to the recent BBC News article Why is climate 'doomism' going viral – and who's fighting it?. Katharine Hayhoe correctly declares the massive harm likely to be done unless dramatic changes are made starting today. That can be considered to be a statement that triggers doomism. But the bigger story is to know that ‘doomism’ is a step in learning about important required changes like the need to stop climate change impact harm. This is well presented by Kimberly Nicholas PhD in her 2021 book “Under the Sky We Make”. She lists the stages of learning about climate change What she calls radical climate acceptance) as: Ignorance, Avoidance, Doom, All the feel(ing)s, and Purpose. The feelings that follow the Doom stage include righteous anger at all those who have been harmfully misleading through the past 30 years.

   And that brings things to the wider understanding of the harmful misleading group of characters that is well presented in the SkS re-post of the Yale Climate Connections article Preserving democracy is part of preserving the planet. That systemic socioeconomic-political problem is described by Eve Darian-Smith in the following quote:

   • Political and industrial leaders collude to extract wealth from the land and its people, without regard for sustainability.
   • Industries effectively capture and control state agencies assigned to regulate them.
   • Politicians, their parties, and affiliated media use campaign contributions and advertising from these industries to build and maintain messaging operations that dis-inform the public and otherwise obstruct democratic oversight, including free and fair elections.
   • They do this by playing on nationalistic fears and animosities to gain and retain power.
   • This nationalism at home is combined with isolationist foreign policies.
   • Nationalism and isolationism lead to anti-environmentalism out of resistance to global environmental concerns.
   • This combination of ultranationalism, isolationism and anti-environmentalism intensifies systemic environmental racism in these countries.

   That can be understood to be a version of the harmful misleading actions described by the Propaganda Model that Edward S. Herman developed and presented, along with Noam Chomsky, in Manufacturing Consent (Book and documentary from decades ago).

   There is lots for people to learn to be angry about and be motivated to act helpfully contrary to the interests of people who choose to try to evade learning to be less harmful and try to benefit more from being more harmful. And children who learn that leaders among their ancestors tried to keep people from learning to be less harmful and more helpful should be expected to express the most righteous anger.

   Go Greta! Same Go(es) for all the other younger people (and the young at heart with an open curiosity to learn new things like all children are born with) who are justifiably angry (the ones who have learned to move beyond the awareness of their potential Doom due to the lack of concern by elders and a lack of helpfully well-directed narrow laser-like focused anger among elders who should know better - elders who should be focused on limiting the influence and impacts of people who do not care to learn to be less harmful and more helpful).

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6. BaerbelW at 14:41 PM on 7 June, 2022

   @Aeyles

   As clearly stated at the top of each of these weekly News roundups, these are simply collections of articles we shared on our Facebook page during the week. They cover a somewhat wider range of topics than what we usually post on our website.

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7. Aeyles at 19:58 PM on 7 June, 2022

   BaerbelW at 9

   So am I to take it that these collections of NEWS roundups are not to be considered "topics" and therefore not to be discussed here? If so, I do need to be directed to the portion of your site that tell me what "stuff" is "on topic". For example, One Planet's comments (above) are being allowed, but I'm not making the connection of his essay on harm to a particular topic in the many cites above. 

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   Moderator Response:

   [BL] More complaints deleted.

    

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