Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1d ago
A lot of people will have some stuff occupying their mind and causing their work productivitity to suffer anyhow. If it's not politics then it's personal life stuff, hobbyist drama, sports, celebrity shit, UFOs or whatever.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
6d ago
I occasionally read groups for Ukrainian refugees in Finland, and they also keep saying that healthcare was better in Ukraine. When looking to it a bit more, they often seem to mean that it's easier to go there with an intention of getting some specific treatment or meds and get those than in Finland, where the system is consciously built on gatekeeping and the avoidance of unnecessary treatments, so as to save in costs (to the taxpayer).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
12d ago
I've heard the same joke, but during the first visit the South Korean official points at a nearby busy highway and says "for every 1000 $ spent on that highway, I took 10%", and during the second visit the African official points at a nearby untrammeled stretch of jungle and says "for every 1000 $ spent on that highway, I took 100%".
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14d ago
Still, as far as I can see The Simpsons continues to have a formidable chokehold in the American meme culture, probably the single most memetic show ever insofar as Twitter/Facebook, at least, seem to be concerned (of course these would not capture the current youth trends).
A majority of Americans support nuclear power, and the support has been rising while The Simpsons has been on air.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
18d ago
As indicated, the crucial question is how important for forming a friend group or getting "what is necessary" out of your university experience it is to participate in a ritualistic, pseudo-cultic initiation practice like this. Some said that it's not that necessary and you can form friendships and network outside of frats/sororities too, which of course makes it less horrible and more of a voluntary activity.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
19d ago
Sounds horrible.
I've recently restarted university back here, and the standard way of socialization for first-year students is that your subject association (ie. the student organization of whatever you're majoring in) organizes a month of events (usually involving heavy drinking, of course) where you participate in friendly competitions with other students and so on. Men and women participate as equals and, presumably, after you've done it all you've formed a network with the other students and gained friends. If that doesn't happen there's still a plenty of student associations (ie. gaming club, heavy metal club, various sports teams, political associations and so on) you can join. This year I wasn't able to participate (my mother got sick and died so I had to spend a lot of time in my original hometown for obvious reasons) but, then again, I'm 20 years older than the other students, have a family and already have a plenty of friends and networks otherwise, so there's less need for it for me.
What's the process like for American students who don't join the frats/sororities, either because they can't get in or because they just don't want to?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
20d ago
That's pretty uncertain, many Muslims don't vote at all and the rest aren't, as a group, that focused on Israel/Palestine (despite the efforts and a drop in share a majority of them still voted for Labour in 2024 UK elections AFAIK).
However, my point was really just mentioning that the Pew projections for Muslim percentages in 2050 have been updated, something that many probably don't know about.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
20d ago
What numbers are you comparing, exactly? If you compare them country-to-country then numbers in at least the major countries (France, UK, Italy, Germany) are below the medium estimate of 2017 for 2050 in the 2022 version.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
20d ago
Europe is Islamicizing with shocking rapidity
PEW Research's current estimates are rather lower, though. (ie. 10,9 % for France in 2050, 11,3 % for UK in 2050 etc. - higher than now but not in line of the 2017 study).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
25d ago
It was a fair assumption that you were referring to the case in question where, again, the actual achieved outcome was that they executed the guy.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
26d ago
We're now in a situation where both the public defenders and prosecutors are bought by the same leftist billionaire, and the entire justice system is a circus of sociopathic procedural manipulation to achieve political outcomes.
...the actual achieved outcome was that they executed the guy, no?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
27d ago
That's how citizenship works. Presumably the Montana voter living in UK is still an American citizen, and one of the main perks of such citizenship is being able to vote in American elections.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
27d ago
I googled 'Peter Eisenman socialist", and it brought up a 2004 interview where he specifically says that "most of my clients are Republicans, most of them are right-leaning. In fact, my client in Spain for the cultural center at Santiago de Campostela is the last Francoist minister", and that his biggest critics are leftists.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29d ago
Same as in I've seen nothing of the sort among young women.
Sigh.
"WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas soothes people's climate pain: "Only small changes to our everyday life" Fighting the climate crisis looks promising and hopeful from the eyes of an aeronautical scientist.
Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization Petteri Taalas
The actions required to combat climate change are significantly easier than what has been done to combat the corona pandemic. And they don't have to be done immediately, but over time.
This is the message of the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, WMO, Petteri Taalas, in his book , Climate change in the eyes of a meteorologist, published today .
- That's how it is. The change that is needed can be made with fairly small changes in terms of our everyday life, says Taalas.
WMO is an international organization in the field of meteorology under the UN. Taalas works in the organization's highest office. The core of the world's climate science, the intergovernmental panel on climate change IPCC, is also under his supervision .
So Taalas' words have weight. That's why he is listened to.
Taalas makes the fight against climate change sound easy and nice. And like you don't have to give up or suffer from anything.
That's what he wants it to sound like.
- We have hope in this matter. At the moment, the situation looks quite promising, says Taalas in an interview with Yle.
However, in Taalas' opinion, the image of combating climate change is in danger of slipping off the wrong track. According to him, the necessary actions, at least from the individual's point of view, will not revolutionize anyone's life in one way or the other.
- My mission is to tell the facts, and also to think about which are important and which are less important in combating climate change. Sometimes it's a bit lost, which are the most important things. As a mathematical scientist, I want to tell you what the magnitude classes of things are, he says.
So Taalas wants to restore dimensions to the climate debate. In his book, he repeatedly reminds us that understanding the proportions of things is important when choosing ways to solve a problem.
- It is important to be aware of the magnitudes of things. Sometimes big and small things get mixed up, for example in the media. For example, we may create unreasonable burdens for mothers of small children when they feel that they have to make certain choices to solve climate change, says Taalas.
We sacrifice 75 percent of the Earth's arable land for growing livestock feed. It's a fool's errand and globally the biggest drawback of land use.
According to him, the means to combat climate change should be chosen carefully and thoughtfully.
- Not everyone has to start living a life like Pentti Linkola's , but this can be solved with fairly small changes in our everyday life. We need both large-scale political decision-making guidance and our own activities, such as movement choices, housing choices and diet choices, says Taalas.
According to Taalas, people should focus on big things if they want to play their part in climate action. Big things mean moving, living and spending.
Recently, the airspace has been dominated by diet changes, reducing the economic exploitation of forests and stopping air travel as the best ways to solve the climate problem. Someone is already talking about climate fanatics as standard-bearers of the true doctrine and guides in the lives of fellow human beings , he writes in his book.
Climate fanatics are taking climate talk on the wrong track Petteri Taalas has seen how climate change has turned from a phenomenon that worries a small group of researchers into mainstream news that shakes the whole world.
He has also seen how climate skeptics, who once strongly attacked science, have withdrawn from the debate. Now Taalas thinks it has gone to the other extreme.
This time, in Taalas' opinion, the desire to combat climate science has partly arisen as a result of "sharp and incriminating climate communication".
The desire to limit people's movement, diet, living or leisure time habits or the number of children under the guise of combating climate change has certainly put many people on the back foot , Taalas writes in his book.
On the other hand, Taalas does put the number of children on the agenda in an interview when talking about climate change. He would like population growth to be discussed in connection with climate change.
- I'd be happy to put curbing population growth alongside combating climate change. Very little has been said about it. If our population was at the same level as 100 years ago, there would be no climate change, says Taalas.
In Taalas opinion, diet is also an issue that needs to be considered.
- The most important challenge is that we sacrifice 75 percent of the Earth's arable land to grow livestock feed. It's a fool's errand and globally the biggest drawback of land use. It should be abandoned. By eating less meat, we could use arable land to produce, for example, biodiversity or biofuels, he says.
Taalas also blames the sharpness of communication as the reason why the support of some parties has increased and others have decreased. In Finland, according to him, the Greens and the left-wing coalition have been at one extreme, and the basic Finns at the other.
So, according to Taalas, has a certain kind of politics done a disservice to climate protection?
The topic involves political sensitivities, because a significant part of the world's economic growth, jobs, transport and industry has been achieved by coal, oil and natural gas. Humanity's dependence on these was and is considerable , he writes.
- It is important how climate measures are sold to citizens. Taxes are not popular, tax reductions are, even if heavy emissions are taxed more, he formulates.
For example, Taalas raises the yellow vest movement in France. The people took over the streets in protest of France's intentions to slightly increase diesel taxation .
- We have to think about what is acceptable to the people. You have to choose the means so that the general public also accepts them.
According to Taalas, the majority of the world's population is of the opinion that climate change should be combated.
- But there must also be a certain calmness and reasonableness in the measures. I believe that reasonable measures will be accepted by the public.
Things have to be considered from many points of view; in terms of climate, biodiversity, economy and employment.
- This is the question for the political decision-maker. But we have the technical and financial means to solve this problem, and it doesn't have to change our everyday life very much.
According to Taalas, people are worried about how they will be able to move around at a reasonable price in the future, eat the reasonably priced food of their choice and vacation as they wish.
Presenting the fight against climate change as a penitential exercise requiring asceticism and self-flagellation falls into the lair of populists , Taalas writes in his book.
According to Taalas, sharp and blaming talk about climate change leads to polarization.
- Something similar has been seen in religious circles. When extremist Christians say things in public, the general public feels anxious and finds it negative. There is a somewhat similar risk in combating climate change. If it requires a Pentti Linkola-type life, the general public will easily reject it, says Taalas.
Just like the church, the fight against climate change also needs objective and moderate messengers, so that its image remains positive , writes Taalas.
According to Taalas, extremeness when talking about climate change can lead to the popularity of populists.
- As has been seen in the USA, populists are not the best outcome in terms of combating climate change.
"The domestic climate debate has tones different from many other countries" In his book, Taalas accuses Finland's climate debate several times of being too fanatical and of moving at the level of imagination.
According to Taalas, it is important to value the importance of diet, the number of children, forests and air traffic with the numbers that describe them, and take into account the entire spectrum of reducing emissions.
Well, what are those numbers? You can look at it from many angles.
If you look at it from an atmospheric scientist's point of view, i.e. from the perspective of the amount of greenhouse gases ending up in the air worldwide, the numbers look like this.
Global greenhouse gas emissions. The biggest cause is energy 73.2%.
- The biggest producer of emissions is energy production, second is transport, third in countries like Finland are real estate and housing. Then come land use issues and dietary issues, which are clearly smaller issues. They are also worth doing, but we cannot solve this problem with them. There are ways to improve energy, transport and housing systems. As individuals, we can support this activity, says Taalas.
Taala is annoyed by the fact that, for example, the coverage of the IPCC's land and sea reports has given rise to the image that, in his opinion, the most central issue of climate change is agriculture and forestry or the seas.
According to him, the general public may have had a deficient picture of the fight against climate change as a whole, because the role of fossil fuel emissions has not been discussed in these contexts.
- We solve this by changing our energy production from fossil energy to hydropower, to renewable energy, and to some extent also to nuclear power. Our transport system needs to be changed to electric and to use biofuels and hydrogen. There are also new opportunities for synthetic fuels, which can even absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Living in Finland is central to how we heat or cool our apartments, he says.
If you look at emissions from the perspective of a single person, they look like this.
The carbon footprint of the average Finn is 10,300 kg C02/person/year
- I believe that electric cars will become cheaper. Geothermal heat is an attractive solution. A vegetarian diet is also healthy. Light traffic is also good for health, he lists.
According to Taalas' view, small climate measures are pointless tinkering. In his opinion, it doesn't matter from the point of view of the climate whether he chooses a paper or plastic bag in the store.
If climate change is not curbed, the earth will not be able to support the current number of people According to the most recent measurements, the global average temperature has broken the limit of 1.2 degrees of warming. According to the British Meteorological Institute, the magical 1.5 degrees may be reached at least momentarily already by 2024.
A return to the climate gap of pre-industrial times is no longer in sight.
Finland's Arctic region will warm by at least three to five degrees, even if the Paris Agreement is kept within the limits. In winter, the readings are even higher.
Sea level rise is happening slowly and will inevitably continue into the 21st century, even if we stay within the limits of the Paris Agreement.
- So far, we have not gone in the right direction. We have broken records for these concentrations year after year. The same goes for temperatures. So far it has gone in a bad direction.
The IPCC showed in 2018 that one and a half degrees would be the most ideal goal for the entire planet. Even two degrees would be happy in terms of the well-being of humanity. In conditions above three degrees, feeding the world's population would become very difficult.
Both policy makers and various companies and financial actors have heard this message and want to be part of solving this problem.
If emission restrictions are completely failed and all fossil resources are burned, the average temperature may rise by 3-5 degrees by the end of the century. Life on Earth continues even under those conditions, but the biosphere, i.e. the environment, experiences dramatic changes and is unable to support the current number of people.
Taalas wants to remind you that climate change is not leading to the destruction of humanity or the destruction of our planet.
- This is not the case. The scenarios that have been calculated do not support such an idea. We have certain risks that need to be monitored. There are certain shades of gray to choose from for the future, if the 2050-2060 carbon neutral goal becomes the prevailing goal throughout the world.
Taalas even sees the situation as promising at the moment. By promise, Taalas means that so many countries in the world have made promises about climate action. China, the EU, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, with President Biden, the USA will also join the same front.
- It means that two thirds of the world's emissions are behind these commitments. We also have a growing number of technical ways to solve this problem, and new innovations are emerging all the time. I am quite optimistic that we will reach the 1.5-2 degrees range of the Paris [climate agreement].
This is despite the fact that the Earth has already warmed 1.2 degrees on average and 1.5 degrees is knocking on the door.
- We have quite a good chance of reaching two degrees. Of course, 1.5 degrees would be better for the well-being of humanity, or in fact the best situation would be that we could museumize the situation to its current state. That is no longer possible. The change will continue until 2060. That's a fact.
According to Taalas, the message that climate scientists have been preaching for 40 years has now been heard.
- In that respect, the situation is promising. Both policy makers and various companies and financial actors have heard this message and want to be part of solving this problem. That there is hope, but we haven't seen that positive change in the atmosphere yet, he says."
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Petteri Taalas, the chair of World Meterological Organization in 2016-2023 and highly influential globally through IPCC and UN, was dunked on constantly by Finnish climate activists for statements like this.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Seems very unlikely that all the young men are still just in the farms and the mines, considering that the universities are still running and so on.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
They've drafted basically every man they could find
While they lowered their top draft age recently to 25, the fact that 18-25-year-olds are still not getting drafted should by itself prove that Ukraine is, in fact, not drafting (even "basically") every man they can find.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
The point of operation seems to be extremely clear. As a first-order effect, they just took out at least hundreds of enemy combatants at no personnel costs of their own, which is what any military would consider a good result. As a second-order effect, Hezbollah and other Israeli enemies will now have to exert a certain amount of care and nervousness over a lot of other foreign-imported gear, which will presumably have compounding hampering effects down the line.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Why did Russia not attempt to absorb (at least some part of) Georgia when it was lying flat and defeated in 2008, and could have been easily cut off any prospective allied supplies?
Because Russia continues to believe that maintaining Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "independent" (without actually recognizing them) offers it influence on Georgian internal politics. If it stopped believing that it is very likely that it would first recognize them and then graciously allow their entry to Russian Federation, at least for South Ossetia, the same way as with DPR and LPR.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Two high profile senators talking, on camera, about "taking the fight to the Russians" and that US will give them all they need is pretty unequivocal in my book.
What does this refer to? Googling "taking the fight to the Russians" just brings up statements that have been made after February 2022.
When it comes to statements made before the invasion, Biden - a figure of considerably more importance regarding US Ukraine policy than "two senators" - was quite clear in December 2021 that US is not going to send in the troops. When it comes to other aid, US and West have offered Ukraine more of it and taken bigger risks than just about anyone would have predicted before Feb 2022.
This was also my impression of the country when I've visited it (both Dublin and Belfast. I was too polite to mention it to my Irish (often very republican) hosts, mostly. However, it's very hard to encounter, say, the two faucets and not immediately think "Oh, so English".
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