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Climate-change die-in at Prudential Center; shoppers just move to the side and keep going

Climate change die in at Prudential Center

Eric Maki and a robot at the Microsoft Store were among the few stopped to watch a climate-change die-in at the Prudential Center mall this afternoon:

Nearby consumers are unfazed.

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Comments

We should take them seriously,, I guess.

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As when social security and Medicare run out of money.

So perfect timing

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and these folks might have to be professional agitators until they're 70.

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Enjoy your snark while you can , cuz when shit hits the fan , it won’t be fun and games and I bet you have real soft palms.

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The broader issue here is that education on climate change has failed in many areas. It is not advanced to a point where it is taken seriously, and is missing at the grass-roots level in schools. Government and conservative-backed lobby efforts challenge this since their god is the Almighty Dollar, and worshiped with religious fervor.

Every time a progressive set of law-makers manage to gain a majority in government to make a change, there is a resounding response from corporate America, bolstered by their uneducated lackeys to counter the effort.

We have just seen that happen in our nation.

Third world nations that are making their own "dollar" these days have no interest to de-industrialize either, and the same thing happens there; money goes to the one percent and the masses remain in poverty.

France is an interesting study right now. Are we seeing a new French Revolution? Could that happen here?

Look carefully at a map of the Red and Blue states. We are divided by philosophy and geography and the boundaries are getting stronger. There is no longer a single "Mason/Dixon Line" but several.

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One extreme worships profit and material prosperity as measured in dollars and hours of labor saved to the absolute exclusion of all else.

The other extreme worships mother nature to the exclusion of all else.

A third pole closer to option 1 than option 2 prioritizes personal freedom above all.

A fourth extreme most closely aligned with option 2 seeks to eradicate personal freedom in the furtherance of societal "progress," and it is this last group that is most prominent in the modern environmental movement and that scares the shit out of people like me who like clean air and clean water but are willing to sacrifice a little bit of it to preserve the individual liberty and economic prosperity that so many of us have worked very hard to secure.

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willing to sacrifice a little bit of it to preserve the individual liberty and economic prosperity that so many of us have worked very hard to secure

But what about when that directly impacts the health/quality of life of others? You're asking to be given the liberty to impact clean air and clean water which kinda stomps on the liberty of others who will get sick and/or die from it.

Like I don't expect an intellectually honest response from you but keeping within the goal posts you've erected, do you mind if I come and dump some used motor oil on your property? I mean I can't be expected to follow job killing regulations that require me to dump it legally, can't you just make a tiny sacrifice for some economic prosperity?

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if you asked me if I minded you dumping your waste in the woods near my house, not on my property.

My counter to both is to ask you if you would be willing to forego the use of any machinery that might require motor oil entirely because it invariably leads to waste being dumped somewhere.

A slightly less extreme counter would be to ask you if you'd be willing to forego the use of machinery within the territory of the United States, but still benefit from the output of that machinery if it were being operated in a place like China or India or Guatemala?

The environmental extremist left likes to paint a caricature of uncontrolled dumping being the only acceptable answer for us Captain Planet Villian righties. The effect of the policies you advocate for with those attacks, however, is self-evidently the outcome in the previous paragraph. If we don't do the dirty stuff here, we will be underbid by people willing to do the dirty stuff over there. That will leave us with

1. Potemkin environmentalism. The dirt has been swept under a rug on the other side of the planet, therefore we don't have to worry about it.

2. Erosion of the industrial base and consequent economic prosperity and long-term military readiness and physical security.

3. Erosion of the intellectual capital that, over the past several centuries, has grown up alongside and mutually influenced our system of laws and social norms, that made us great.

This is something I am particularly worried about. It's already the case that millions of people my age have lived their whole lives seeing factories being shut down and believing that there is no wealth (and no dignity) in manufacturing the things we buy in the stores to sustain our lifestyle. And it's already the case that people my age have acted on this information by plunging head-first into a higher education machine that promises to teach the soft skills necessary to avoid manual labor but on the whole fails to impart those skills while saddling many with debt they did not need and cannot pay back.

That's a problem, and it's a consequence of making it harder to generate wealth here through legislation and regulation. And if allowed to continue, it will generate social unrest of the kind that we have to date only seen in the third world. That's a real problem and the solution to that problem comes partially at the cost of pulling back on environmental regulations.

So which is more important? Long term social stability or long term environmental warm-and-fuzzies? The two are partially in conflict. You cannot have all of both.

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long term environmental any day of the week

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you've never experienced long-term societal instability.

That's OK. You should look up the environmental record of some of those shithole countries sometime.

Sir Patrick Moore put it quite well recently: "Every single tree would be cut down for firewood."

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See Roman, I knew you'd move the goal posts. You qualified this about making small sacrifices in the name of growth, well you of course know that your own actions have environmental impacts on others, so once again do you mind if I dump some motor oil in your yard? Its too much of an economic burden for me to follow regulations.

Still haven't explained why your liberty is more important than the liberty of future generations.

I think we should improve and preserve society for future generations. Yet I participate in society so therefore I must relinquish any and all modern amenities if I'm truly to be an idealistic environmentalist, in your eyes of course.

Can't be anything about to reducing childhood asthma by adding coal plant regulations that close those that can't meet standards or by reducing car emissions. Nope, can't ask for meaningful regulations of industries that have cheated and lied and polluted the environment for generations to come, we have shareholders to think of, oh and you wrote this on and iPhone right?!

Sticking your head in the sand to own the libs right?

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Europe has made strides in this area. They support vocational education, rather than insisting everyone should go to college. Even though their labor costs are just as high as ours, and they have plenty of environmental and safety regulations, you can still get trained and find a good job working with your hands if that's your desire and skill set.

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11 years 10 months.
I like to be accurate with my demise.

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Shoppers just move to the side and keep going

Some of us who were walking through the Pru today have been quite concerned about the environment for the last couple of decades and have consciously chosen to reduce our use of fossil fuels, plastics, and meat, and to vote and agitate accordingly. Kudos to those lying in - they have my strong support - but just because it was convenient for them to do this on a Saturday morning, am I somehow obligated to stop and lie down with them?

Silly statements like "shoppers just keep going" and "shoppers unfazed" are not helpful because they imply that these individuals are the only enlightened ones, and the rest of us are ignoramuses.

If we're playing a holier-than-thou game, then perhaps those of us with an even more enlightened social conscience should have stopped and given these protesters a lecture on the incredibly negative social, political, and environmental impacts of their cheap Bangladeshi sweatshop/deathtrap-made clothes and sneakers? Or the long-term harm that's caused by their blind allegiance toward the monopolistic, amoral social media channels they used to organize their protest?

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The kind of "I'm holier than thou" attitudes that encourage protestors to prevent other people from going about their daily lives and business has backfired, rather badly, even in the not-so-distant past. Glad to read that this time the protestors had to good sense to protest without preventing other people from leading normal lives.

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Boston is easily the worst city its size for vegan food.

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So cook it at home -- plenty of vegan ingredients at grocery stores. Restaurants are wasteful.

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I never have trouble finding vegan food to eat in Boston, so many places have grass-fed beef now! Take a look around.

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I guess these loons missed out on the demolition of the last coal fired power plant in Mass down in Somerset today.

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What makes them loons?

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"Snowfalls are just a thing of the past." -- The Independent, March 20, 2000

I'm glad they rebranded it Global Warming "Climate Change." A catchall name is always better and means never having to say you're sorry. Especially as we approach May and "Winter" Storm Xyler is walloping a good portion of the country. Perhaps when the agitators get off the floor they can grab a shovel and help their fellow Americans.

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refer to two different physical phenomena.

Phenomena?

The Earth changes temperatures all the time for many reasons. The Earth has no set temperature.

Which idiot scientist is confused that much to call it phenomena?

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1 plural phenomena : an observable fact or event

2 plural phenomena
a : an object or aspect known through the senses rather than by thought or intuition
b : a temporal or spatiotemporal object of sensory experience as distinguished from a noumenon
c : a fact or event of scientific interest susceptible to scientific description and explanation

... So that's why.

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Here is what I got from dictionary.com

phe·nom·e·non
/fəˈnäməˌnän,fəˈnäməˌnən/
noun
noun: phenomenon; plural noun: phenomena

1.
a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question.
"glaciers are unique and interesting natural phenomena"
synonyms: occurrence, event, happening, fact, situation, circumstance, experience, case, incident, episode, sight, appearance, thing
"war was not a rare phenomenon in the 18th century"
2.
a remarkable person, thing, or event.
synonyms: marvel, sensation, wonder, prodigy, miracle, rarity, nonpareil, curiosity, spectacle; More
informalsomething else, something to write home about, something to shout about;
informalstandout;
rareoner
"the band was a pop phenomenon"

I get your point but it comes off as a parlor trick like when I shout "Danny is masticating at the table" during Sunday dinner with the folks.

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So, your complaint is that you consider "phenomenon" to be too big and fancy a word?

*facepalm*

Anyway, for whatever it is worth, dictionary is Merriam-Webster — as close to an authority for usage of American English as we've got. And, sure, "phenomenon" can have a sense of something exceptional, but in the context of science, it usually just means "an observed thing".

So, linking this to your earlier point — it happens that the observed thing we have right now is that the global average temperature is increasing to a level that is not ideal for human existence. And, there is extremely solid evidence that this rise is due to human activity. "Temperatures change all the time so what" is a fine point of view if you are a dispassionate observer, but since we're human beings and we and our children actually live here and now, we don't really have that luxury. The only question is what we are going to do about it.

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Please look into the rates of temperature changes over time.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Also please look at the human-induced causes of those changes to happen rapidly, compared with previous other natural and human-induced factors.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/

Scientists have pieced together a record of Earth’s climate, dating back hundreds of thousands of years (and, in some cases, millions or hundreds of millions of years), by analyzing a number of indirect measures of climate such as ice cores, tree rings, glacier lengths, pollen remains, and ocean sediments, and by studying changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun.[2]

This record shows that the climate system varies naturally over a wide range of time scales. In general, climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be explained by natural causes, such as changes in solar energy, volcanic eruptions, and natural changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.[2]

Recent climate changes, however, cannot be explained by natural causes alone. Research indicates that natural causes do not explain most observed warming, especially warming since the mid-20th century. Rather, it is extremely likely that human activities have been the dominant cause of that warming.[2]

https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/climate-change-science/causes-clim...

If you have some counter, peer-reviewed, published research that counters this, please be my guest to show your work.

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Pfft. Who needs science when Fish and cape have Fox News to tell them what to think?

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Always up for watching some of UH's second-stringers trying to dunk on an 8-foot basket

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Some of these comments are awful. These people care enough to spend a chunk of their Saturday doing this to what they feel is a noble goal to raise awareness for or just get people talking... and you mock them and come up with with "those electronics you use to coordinate this and clothes are made in sweatshops" whataboutism? Come on. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

If you think the world will be just fine regardless of what we do it, then just keep doing that, but don't crap on people for staging SOMETHING that they believe in that harmed nobody.

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and you mock them

They are grown adults* lying on the floor of a frigging shopping mall.

It would be abnormal NOT to mock them.

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*Matt Bors comic*

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Why mock anyone in the first place?

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Why mock anyone in the first place?

As a warning shot to anyone else who thinks it is normal to lie on floors of shopping malls.

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...you could always display your intransigent crusty old caveman ignorance on a discussion forum. Oh wait, you just did. Again.

You're really in no position to mock anyone.

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Impressive display here.

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I know that it has nothing to do with hypothermia or heat stroke or other climate related ways to die but if your going to do a Die-In you need fake blood to get anyone's attention.

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