AMAZON (The Rainforest, not Retailer) IS BURNING

  On 8/29/2019 at 2:22 PM, bendish said:

This ones for you Caze.

https://open.spotify.com/track/63BnoVNVwCuQraDEKGH8EQ?si=Fz9UXMxLR6uGN4EX02bOYQ

Enya? 

Nearly 

  On 8/30/2019 at 4:29 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

my comment is pretty irrefutable and not at all a suggestion that i know exactly every single detail of this story unlike your arrogant ass.

it's not irrefutable you dumb fuck. Brazilians wanting to improve their lives and economy doesn't equate to opportunistic greed, these are people living hard lives in inhospitable conditions trying to make a life for themselves. there's nothing 'low' about people wanting a decent standard of living, the kind of thing you and I take for granted. it's fucking rich of you calling me the arrogant one. The Amazon rain forest is very big, humans have been living there, and burning parts of it down, for thousands of years, even if there weren't people living there now it would still be burning every year naturally. So the question becomes, are people doing irreparable damage to the amazonian ecosystem? The current evidence suggests not, but that we need to be careful not to let it get out of hand.

  On 8/30/2019 at 4:29 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

the fucking cheek of you to call others out for believing in fake news when your own arguments are built upon cherry picking the news sources that suit your own agenda and ignoring the fact that the slightest oversight in this supposed evidence makes your entire point fall apart

my only agenda is looking at the evidence, I'm not cherry picking anything. if you knew what you were talking about you might be able to attempt to make an actual argument against any of my posts, but you can't, so you just fall back on some content-free abusive waffle.

  On 8/30/2019 at 4:29 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

imo it makes more sense to listen to the people who live in brazil and who might actually have a clue about what's happening in their own bloody country. apparently i'm not allowed to point out the convenience of these fires coupled with the rhetoric coming from bolsonaro without being a liberal fake news npc. you fucking arrogant ass.

if you'd actually read any of the stuff I posted you'd see that's exactly what I have been doing, Shellenberger spent a lot of time in Brazil in the 90s with small scale farmers involved in much of the current deforestation and fires (and back then they were burning shit at a far greater rate), his article quotes respected Brazilian scientists, I linked to two other reports written with and by other Brazilian scientists. there's a wide range of views in Brazil about the current situation, and they're far more aware of the nuance involved than the dumbed down black & white coverage we've been seeing over here in the last few weeks. even liberal outlets like Vox have pointed out the fake news aspect to much of the mainstream reporting and political rhetoric (that critical response to Shellenberger's article accepted that too), this has nothing to do with the status-quo or right wingers drying to destroy the planet while twiddling their moustaches. Bolsanaro being a cunt is neither here nor there, the situation was far worse under the socialists remember, these issues are bigger than partisan politics. 

Shellenberger has written another good article, this time focusing on the hypocrisy of western commentators and NGOs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/28/how-the-eu-greenpeace-and-celebrities-dehumanize-the-amazon-and-worsen-fires-and-deforestation/#4a026ade2a16

some choice bits:

  Quote

Germans produce four times more carbon emissions per capita, including by burning biomass, than do Brazilians, and yet they don’t hesitate to lecture Brazilians about the need to stop deforesting and stop the fires

...

Now that Europe has developed through deforestation and fossil fuel use it is telling Brazil not to develop through deforestation and fossil fuel use. 

Bolsonaro is the backlash against such hypocrisy. The increase in deforestation in 2019 is to some extent Bolsonaro fulfilling a campaign promise to farmers who were “fatigued with violence, the recession, and this environmental agenda,” Nepstad said. 

“They were all saying, ‘You know, it’s this forest agenda that will get this guy [Bolsonaro] elected. We're all going to vote for him.’ And farmers voted for him in droves.”

“I see what’s happening now, and the election of Bolsonaro, as a reflection of major mistakes in [environmentalist] strategy,” Nepstad said. 

...

Greenpeace, a $350 million per year non-governmental organization heavily financed by Europeans, demanded that Brazilian farmers comply with a far stricter regulation than had been imposed by the Brazilian government.

“What the farmers needed was basically amnesty on all of the illegal deforestation up through 2008,” said Nepstad. “And winning that, they felt like, ‘Okay, we could comply with this law.’ I side with the farmers on this.

Greenpeace sought stricter restrictions for the savannah forest, known as the Cerrado, where much of the soy is grown.

“Farmers got nervous that was going to be another moratorium. The Cerrado is 60% of the nation’s soy crop. The Amazon is 10%. And so this was a much more serious matter.”

“The mastermind of the soy moratorium,” Nepstad added, “was Paulo Adario of Greenpeace Brazil” — the man who made Bündchen cry. 

What happened was a tragedy, in Nepstad’s view, because the soy farmers were increasingly willing to cooperate with environmental restrictions before Greenpeace started making more extreme demands.

...

Much of the motivation to stop farming and ranching is ideological, Nepstad said. “It’s really anti-development, you know, anti-capitalism. There’s a lot of hatred of agribusiness.” 

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Greenpeace really are a shower of cunts.

  On 8/28/2019 at 3:33 AM, Zephyr_Nova said:

Amazon should buy the Amazon and then sell tiny bits of the Amazon on Amazon for really cheap.

It is Prime real estate...

Amirite?

  On 8/30/2019 at 7:57 AM, caze said:

Shellenberger has written another good article, this time focusing on the hypocrisy of western commentators and NGOs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/28/how-the-eu-greenpeace-and-celebrities-dehumanize-the-amazon-and-worsen-fires-and-deforestation/#4a026ade2a16

some choice bits:

 

Greenpeace really are a shower of cunts.

Expand  

I’m sure this guy makes a lot of money from industry to knock out this kind of drivel, blaming celebrities, renewables and greenpeace for the destruction of biodiversity etc, as if he cares. 

Theres always nutters who’ll believe it though. Your abusive page-long ravings speak volumes. 

  On 8/30/2019 at 7:57 AM, caze said:

Shellenberger has written another good article, this time focusing on the hypocrisy of western commentators and NGOs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/28/how-the-eu-greenpeace-and-celebrities-dehumanize-the-amazon-and-worsen-fires-and-deforestation/#4a026ade2a16

some choice bits:

 

Greenpeace really are a shower of cunts.

Expand  

Yeah, er, Forbes can piss off.

I agree with you on a lot of things, re the recent fires being hyped up a bit, and yes the hypocrisy of armchair environmentalists is a bit lol - especially Germany and it's hair-tearing-out-ly asinine, post-Fukushima energy policies - and might I add Canada that sometimes gets lauded as an eco-paradise while it's still gunning for vast hydrocarbon exploitation (or, at least, some parts of the country are).

That's no reason to not pressure Brazil to protect the existing forest better though. Other avenues of economic development are possible if they're willing to put a bit more thought in. Lots of other states with a similar economic standing to Brazil (and lower) have tacked a different course. Madagascar springs to mind. And yes richer states should be providing funds to poorer ones, or investing in better industries, to help them do that.

Forbes are just shit-stirring hate against anyone remotely environmentally inclined. Next time there's a totally legitimate environmental campaign, Forbes'll be lambasting them by proxy, smearing the whole issue as just a bunch of nimby luddites all because a few rich people posted a few slightly incognizant tweets last time round. It's not like it isn't in line with their editorial stance...

  On 8/30/2019 at 4:10 PM, Tricone RC said:

That's no reason to not pressure Brazil to protect the existing forest better though. Other avenues of economic development are possible if they're willing to put a bit more thought in.

Yeah, I agree totally. But the attempts to encourage sustainable development prior to Bolsonaro weren't really up to the task, and given the current rhetoric from everyone trying to 'help' it doesn't sound like anyone will be suggesting better plans this time around. The EU has a lot of leverage with the trade deal to force something through, I think it's more likely that something will just end up throwing the farmers under the bus, which will just lead to further political turmoil down the line.

  On 8/30/2019 at 4:10 PM, Tricone RC said:

Forbes are just shit-stirring hate against anyone remotely environmentally inclined. Next time there's a totally legitimate environmental campaign, Forbes'll be lambasting them by proxy, smearing the whole issue as just a bunch of nimby luddites all because a few rich people posted a few slightly incognizant tweets last time round. It's not like it isn't in line with their editorial stance...

That could very well be true, but we don't have many legitimate environmental campaigners at the moment though, so it doesn't really say much about the current situation.

What would a legitimate environmentalist group look like?

probably not one that was basically adhering to 4th ind rev logic

  On 8/30/2019 at 7:31 PM, bendish said:

What would a legitimate environmentalist group look like?

probably not one that was basically adhering to 4th ind rev logic

One that listened to the science on the issues and aims for pragmatic not ideological solutions to problems, and which doesn't take a quasi religious neo-luddite or malthusian stance on the issues. This rules out the likes of Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion, The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, etc. I wouldn't disagree with everything these guys stand for, and they've done some good, but overall I'd say they're having a negative impact on the world's ability to deal with the most serious environmental issues.

the fake news was covered on More or Less today, interviewed the same guy Shellenberger did:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0007ymn

All of you are wrong, and I am the right one

muhuahahah

The companies behind the burning of the Amazon:

https://stories.mightyearth.org/amazonfires/index.html

>Will interviews Steven Donziger, a human rights attorney who has been under house arrest since August as a result of his work to prosecute oil giant Chevron for their reckless polluting of the Ecuadorian Amazon. It's a wild case that offers a lot of grave visions of the future of the U.S. legal system

"It was not an accident, I mean it's instructive to look at what they did in Ecuador and you know the deliberate dumping at the height of the operation of 4 million gallons a day of toxic benzene laden waste water into the streams and rivers where indigenous people lived, and that went on day after day for years.  And they never warned the people, they never you know put up fences around the waste pits, they never hired doctors, they never did environmental assessments, they literally just dumped toxic waste with impunity"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lago_Agrio_oil_field

All I know is, when I get home I’m gonna burn a little Amazon because work’s a bummer, dawg.