VincentRJ

At least they are not blaming CO2 emissions for such disasters.

Hi Rocky, Your questions require complex answers, so it's not surprising you have had few replies. However, I'll delve into them because I have been thinking about these issues for some time. 1. That which was never born can never die. Basic logic would imply 'that which is never born' doesn't exist. However, the process of being 'born' has many stages. The first stage is the fertilized egg know as the embryo, which travels through the fallopian tube to the uterus. The next stage is the development of the fetus which is the unborn child in the mother's womb. The final stage is the actual birth of the child. As we should all know, the unborn, developing child can die at any time, therefore the statement 'That which was never born can never die' is clearly not true. 2. As our ego is an accumulation of conditioning over our life/lives, it is impermanent. This would appear to be logically true since nothing, in the environment we normally observe, is permanent. Everything is changing or degrading at different rates. However, there might be microscopic things that most people don't normally observe, which are permanent, such as fundamental particles that are subatomic particles which are not composed of other particles. Science is not certain about the permanence of such particles. 3. Death is followed by endless cycles of re birth into future lives, driven by attachment to craving. Rebirth in Buddhism is a rather confusing issue. On the one hand, the Buddha claims that there is no permanent soul and no permanent Creator God, and that what is reborn are just the 'characteristics' of one's behaviour in this life. On the other hand, there is a detailed description in the Pali Canon of the night under the Bodhi tree when the Buddha reached enlightenment, recalling dozens of his previous lives in great detail, including his name and activities. This is more than just characteristics. The questions we should ask ourselves is, 'How can rebirth of behaviour and characteristics be reborn?' 'Is there some magical spirit, outside the realms of science, that floats around, waiting to inject itself into a female's womb at the time of conception?' In Buddhism, karma is the idea that our actions, especially those driven by intention, have consequences that affect us in the present and future. How does this happen? Well, I think it's not too difficult to understand how it happens in the present. If you steal or murder, there will be dire consequences if you are caught. If you over-eat unwholesome food and don't bother exercising, you will likely become obese and suffer from many ailments. However, how our intentional actions affect the future with regard to rebirth, is more complicated. Physical rebirth can only take place through the process of copulation, with regard to animals and humans, and usually through the process of seed germination with regard to plants, although some plants can grow without seeds through a process called 'asexual propagation' which involves a part of the plant, such as a stem or root regenerating into a new plant, with nutrition from the soil. During the times of the Buddha, there was no knowledge of genes. Why apparently good people could somtimes suffer and die unexpectedly, was a puzzle. An explanation was Karma. The apparently good person died prematurely as a result of bad actions in a previous life. This is merely a speculative hypothesis. Modern science reveals not only that genetic defects can be transmitted from the parents to the children, but there is also a process called 'epigentics' which can transmit the 'behaviour' of the parents to their children. Epigenetics is the study of the heritable changes in the genome that are independent of variations in DNA sequences. Another example of how our actions in the present, 'Karma', can affect future generations, are the consequences of War. Even when the war has ended, future generations often feel, and pass on, the hatred towards the enemy. The most obvious examples are the current wars in Ukraine, Palestine, Jordan and Syria. These never-ending conflicts are the effects of Karma, passed down through generations. 4.The cycle of re birth continues, until one is awakened as a result of practice resulting in the quenching of craving. When a living organism dies, the rotting carcass, animal or vegetable, provides nutrients for future growth. Anyone who does not have children achieves Nirvana on their death. There is no rebirth of any characteristics, without successful copulation.

Excellent strategy! This may not be the most efficient method of producing energy, but the value of the energy produced at least offsets the cost of managing waste disposal in an environmentally safe manner. Such 'waste-to-energy power plants' should be used world-wide. It's far more sensible to spend money on such projects instead of spending the money trying to reduce CO2 emissions, which are not a pollutant and which benefit the environment by increasing plant growth.

It's rather sad that the most people on our planet do not seem to understand the most basics processes of the 'methodology of science'. This process begins with some questioning and research on a particular topic, followed by the creation of a 'hypothesis' which might appear to explain the observed phenomena, but which is not certain. In order to reach a high degree of certainty, many experiments need to be done, and repeated by other scientists. If the results of numerous experiments are consistent and align with eath other, and the ypothesis is not falsified, then the original hypothesis becomes a confirmed theory. However, this is not an 'either/or' situation. There are many degrees of certainty or uncertainty, and there are many examples in the history of science where confirmed theories have later been demonstrated to be incorrect. The existence of a 'Creator God' is very much an uncertain hypothesis. However, the concepts of the 'Big Bang' origin of the universe, and the existence of 'Dark Matter and Dark Energy', are also hypotheses, despite ongoing research. In fact, recent research on Dark Matter and Dark Energy suggests it doesn't really exist, or doesn't need to exist to explain the observations of an expanding universe. Here's a link to the research for those interested. "The fabric of the cosmos, as we currently understand it, comprises three primary components: ‘normal matter,’ ‘dark energy,’ and ‘dark matter.’ However, new research is turning this established model on its head. A recent study conducted by the University of Ottawa presents compelling evidence that challenges the traditional model of the universe, suggesting that there may not be a place for dark matter within it." https://www.earth.com/news/dark-matter-does-not-exist-universe-27-billion-years-old-study/

Maybe this is due to 'climate change'. Oh no! Wait! Maybe it's due to: "Rapid urbanisation without a suitable development plan has left Phuket vulnerable to natural disasters. Moreover, roads that block waterways as well as clogged canals have aggravated the level of inundation. Phuket city's flood-draining infrastructure -- which has been used for decades without any substantial improvements -- has not kept pace with the rate of urbanisation." https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2822743/dont-let-phuket-drown

"So while it may not yet or maybe ever be possible to predict how many thunderstorms will occur in a given locale over a period of time, it is entirely possible to predict the rise in global temperature. In fact, most of the models created in the 1960s and 1970 created very accurate algorithms to predict the rise in global temperatures for example." Sorry I haven't responded to your comment until now. I've been rather busy, and it's taken me some time to dig up some reliable scientific studies on this issue. However, I've found a few that may 'tickle your fancy'. Here's a recent article in Nature magazine, written by Gavin Schmidt who is a climatologist and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, so I guess you would consider him reliable. WORLD VIEW 19 March 2024 "Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory." "For the past nine months, mean land and sea surface temperatures have overshot previous records each month by up to 0.2 °C — a huge margin at the planetary scale. A general warming trend is expected because of rising greenhouse-gas emissions, but this sudden heat spike greatly exceeds predictions made by statistical climate models that rely on past observations. Many reasons for this discrepancy have been proposed but, as yet, no combination of them has been able to reconcile our theories with what has happened." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00816-z Here's another article from an independant Climate Research publisher. "Given the host of uncertainties and unknowns in the difficult but important task of climate modeling, the unique attribution of observed current climate change to increased atmospheric CO2 concentration, including the relatively well-observed latest 20 yr, is not possible." https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/cr/v18/n3/p259-275/ And here's another from a Hydrological Sciences Journal. "Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1623/hysj.53.4.671 And here's another study which claims the evidence suggests that increases in CO2 levels are an effect of temperature rises rather than the cause. "All evidence resulting from the analyses suggests a unidirectional, potentially causal link with T as the cause and [CO2] as the effect. That link is not represented in climate models, whose outputs are also examined using the same framework, resulting in a link opposite the one found when the real measurements are used." https://www.mdpi.com/2413-4155/5/3/35 And yet other one. "The reliability of general circulation climate model (GCM) global air temperature projections is evaluated for the first time, by way of propagation of model calibration error. An extensive series of demonstrations show that GCM air temperature projections are just linear extrapolations of fractional greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing. Linear projections are subject to linear propagation of error. A directly relevant GCM calibration metric is the annual average ±12.1% error in global annual average cloud fraction produced within CMIP5 climate models. This error is strongly pair-wise correlated across models, implying a source in deficient theory." https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/earth-science/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full And here's another study addressing Sea Surface Temperatures (SST). "We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985–1999) and CERES (2000–2008) satellite instruments. Distinct periods of warming and cooling in the SSTs were used to evaluate feedbacks. The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity." https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13143-011-0023-x

"That’s all I need to know. “Doing your own research” means reading articles on the internet that you like reading, that reinforce what you think you already believe. " That's a good point which merits addressing. It might mean that for some people, but not for me. I do research on any topic that interests me, in order to learn more about the subject. When the scare about anthropogenic global warming became prominent in the media in the late 1990's and eary 2000's, and after listening to interviews of climate experts on the media, such as James Hansen and James Lovelock, I assumed it was a serious threat. Why should I not? I'm sufficiently educated in Physics and Chemistry to understand that CO2 is a 'greenhouse gas' because it absorbs infrared radiation, and I understand that CO2 can dissolve in water to produce carbonic acid. I also understood that an ocean which is too acidic might not be good for sea life in general. However, at the time, I knew very little about past climate changes and the many processes that cause climate to change, and the information I gained from the media, mostly through interviews of scientists on the media, raised some perplexing questions in my mind. In order to find the answer to these questions, I began searching the internet, including Google Scholar, Wikipedia, NASA, NOAA, BOM, and The Working Group 1 part of the IPCC reports (which addresses the science rather than the politics), and what I discovered, surprised me. In order for this post not to be too long, I'll just give one example, but I have many. After hearing many reports of the alarming effects of ocean acidification, I began to wonder what is the normal pH of the oceans. Are the oceans slightly acidic, or slightly alkaline, or possibly neutral. I understood that 'acidification' meant 'becoming more acidic', which would suggest the oceans are normally either acidic or neutral. I also understood the pH system, which is important if you do gardening, because most plants thrive in slightly acidic to neutral soils, but some also thrive in slightly alkaline soils. If one adds too much lime to increase the calcium content of the soil, the soil can become too alkaline and the growth of certain plants will slow down. A pH of 7 is neutral. Less than 7 is acidic, and greater than 7 is alkaline. I was puzzled why the media never mentioned what the pH of the oceans are, and how much they have changed since industrialization. So I began to search for the answer on the internet. What my research revealed is that the average pH of the oceans' surface (up to a depth of 500 metres) is 8.1, which is significantly alkaline, and that most estimates claim that during the past 150 years or so, since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the average pH has fallen from 8.2 to 8.1. Wow! It's no wonder that the media never mentioned that. That's definitely not alarming. 🤣 Digging deeper into the issue, I also discovered research that shows the pH of the ocean's surface, at any particular location, can vary by more than 0.1 pH on a daily basis, and on a seasonal and regional basis it can vary between pH 7.9 and pH 8.3. Furthermore, coastal waters can routinely vary even more, between a pH of 7.5 and 8.5. Why should anyone be alarmed about a rather uncertain estimate of a 0.1 change in average pH over a 150 year period, in the top 500m of the sea, and a rather uncertain rise in average global temperatures of 1 degree C during a similar period? The best answer I could find is the following quote from Stephen Schneider who was a Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University. "On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both." Sounds a bit like politics.

"Where do get your information....YouTube and Christmas crackers?" Don't be silly! I'm not a Christian, and YouTube videos are far too slow for my learning purposes. I prefer to read the transcripts and/or the pdf versions of actual scientific studies.

"The vast consensus among climate scientists with respect to the effects of human activity is incontrovertible" Where did you get that information from? The media? If you had an enquiring mind and did your own research, you'd find lots of controvertible evidence about the effects of CO2 on the climate. The problem is, the alarm about human CO2 emissions has become a type of religion, and as we know from history, questioning religious faith has had dire consequences. There are numerous scientific studies which provide controvertible evidence, but the results tend to be ignored in the media or dismissed, and the authors are often censored, which is the antithesis of the true 'methodology of science' where every bit of controvertible evidence should be fully examined. "Do I really need to point out that projecting the long-term effects of continued CO2 emissions is quite different from predicting whether or not it’s going to rain tomorrow?" No, you don't. The weather predictions for the next day are reasonably accurate. Usually greater than 50%. However, climate is defined as an average of weather events over a 30 year period. Accurate predictions of the 'average of weather events', 30 years, 60 years, 90 years, and so on, into the future, is not possible.

"What you seem to be “denying” is the human cause of climate change since the Industrial Revolution, greatly accelerated in our own time." I don't deny that human activities in total, including deforestation for agriculture, and the building of cities and roads, and the destruction of land to mine for minerals and fossil fuels, and so on, has had at least some effect on the climate. Everything is connected to some degree. A major issue for me is the unscientific certainty, promoted through the media using the 'claimed' 97% consensus, that our CO2 emissions will eventually cause a climate catastrophe, and if we achieve 'net-zero' CO2 emissions, the climate will stop changing, or change for the better, and become benign. This is in complete contrast to the IPCC statement that, "The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible." Surely everyone has experienced how inaccurate weather forecasts can be just a few days into the future. Why so many people seem to believe that scientists can predict the state of the climate, decades into the future, is bizarre.

A 'climate change denier' is a person who is so ignorant that he/she doesn't understand that climate is always changing and is never static. Over any chosen period, some parts of the world become slightly warmer, whilst other parts become slightly cooler. Some parts will become wetter, whilst other parts will become drier, and so on. A 'climate change denier' is also someone who doesn't understand that climate change is a chaotic, non-linear system with a multitude of contributing factors which cannot be accurately measured. Here's a relevant quote from Working Group 1 section of an IPCC report. "The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible." Can you show me actual evidence for the 'overwhelming consensus among actual climate scientists' that the current climate change is very much caused by human activity? Science is not based upon consensus, but on evidence and data. Most journalists and politicians don't even seem to understand the difference between climate and weather, and cause and effect. How often have you read or heard on the media that a particular extreme weather event was caused by climate change. Climate Change is an effect, as a result of numerous influences, not a cause.

Okay! I just checked the 'World Data info' for the history of extreme weather events in Thailand, and here are the results below. https://www.worlddata.info/asia/thailand/climate.php#:~:text=Temperature records of the last,°C was reported here 1. With 8.90 hours of sunshine per day in February 2024, there was more sunshine than in any February in the last 17 years (9.10 hours in 2007). 2. With just 5.25 liters of precipitation in 2023, August was drier than it had been for 72 years (4.59 l/m² in 1951). 3. With only 13.67 days of rain, it rained less in August 2023 than it has for 14 years (13.21 days in 2009). 4. At 29.39°C, July 2023 was the warmest July in 36 years (29.46°C in 1987). 5. At 30.86°C, May 2023 was the warmest May in 31 years (30.93°C in 1992). 6. With just 0.38 liters of precipitation in 2023, March was drier than it had been for 31 years (0.05 l/m² in 1992). The 'climate change alarmists' do not seem to understand that reports of an extreme weather event that is the worst in 20 years, or 50 years or 100 years, is not evidence of human-caused climate change. In fact, such reports would suggest that these temporary changes in weather patterns are mostly natural effects that occur without the effects of human activity.

I hope this type of mushroom has not been misidentified. Some types are poisonous. It is speculated that the Buddha died as a result of mushroom poisoning.

"Recently, the Ministry of Interior approved a significant initiative: a garbage-fuelled power plant capable of processing around 650 tonnes of waste daily. The project will separate recyclable and non-degradable trash uses. Recyclable waste will be turned into compost, while non-degradable trash will be burnt as fuel for the power plant. This new infrastructure aims not only to mitigate the odour and fly problem but also to provide a more sustainable waste management solution for the region's growing garbage woes." Good news! This process of disposing of garbage should be used everywhere and in every country. Not only will it solve the problem of foul odour and flies, but such 'garbage-fuelled' power plants will probably emit that wonderful, clear and odourless gas called CO2, which helps most plants thrive at increasing levels, and is essential for all life. What could be better.

I'd never heard of Temu before reading this news item. Out of interest, I did a Google search for Temu Australia on the internet, and found the Temu-Australian site with lots of different products at amazingly low prices, including free shipping. So I ordered a few items, less than A$100 in total, to check on their reliability.