Politics and Religion

Chicken Littles like Exxon? In 1977, the same year the FIRST...
BigPapasan 3 Reviews 352 reads
posted

..."Star Wars" movie was released, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of oilmen at Exxon's headquarters.  Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.  It was July 1977 when Exxon's leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.

A year later, Black, a top technical expert in Exxon's Research & Engineering division, took an updated version of his presentation to a broader audience. He warned Exxon scientists and managers that independent researchers estimated a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit), and as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles.  

Exxon responded swiftly. Within months the company launched its own extraordinary research into carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and its impact on the earth. Exxon's ambitious program included both empirical CO2 sampling and rigorous climate modeling. It assembled a brain trust that would spend more than a decade deepening the company's understanding of an environmental problem that posed an existential threat to the oil business.

Then, toward the end of the 1980s, Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research. In the decades that followed, Exxon worked instead at the forefront of climate denial. It put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming its own scientists had once confirmed. It lobbied to block federal and international action to control greenhouse gas emissions. It helped to erect a vast edifice of misinformation that stands to this day.

It was as if Exxon execs slapped themselves on their corporate foreheads and said: "D'oh!  This is hurting our bottom line.  We better do what we do when our wives see our TER account - deny, deny, deny!"


-- Modified on 10/27/2015 2:00:36 PM

Howard Zinn once said that you can't remain neutral on a moving train. On the flip side, you can't free yourself of your own biases unless you remain neutral. No matter your political or philosophical bent, confirmation bias will get you every time. In order to see the world how it really is, it becomes necessary to remain neutral in order to accept all relevant facts.  

I've been asking myself a question lately, and it's "Why are things they way they are?"  

When it comes to economics, it's no secret around the ole P&R that I'm not a very big fan of capitalism. I've often thought that, "people aren't greedy, we're just culturally and socially indoctrinated by capitalism to be mindless consumers."  

But then the thought occurred to me, if that's really the truth, then in all likelihood, capitalism never would existed in the first place.  

So, this means that there's some part of human nature that is driven towards the mindless consumption of resources. And this realization was quite puzzling to me, because I had never really experienced this myself. That's not to say, I don't buy things from time to time, but I really do avoid it if at all possible.  

So in trying to understand this, I happened to stumble across this:  

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-07-24/women-controlling-70-of-consumer-spending-sparse-in-central-bankers-club

I thought, how in the hell do women account for 70% of all global consumer spending, when men make most of the money? The answer is simple. Men just give a lot of their money to women.  

There really is a class of the makers and the takers, it just so happens that the makers are, by and large, men and the takers are by and large, women. How in the blue hell did this happen?

That's when I stumbled across a concept in the field within evolution which discusses Parental Investment theory. Unlike most mammals, human beings have a pretty hard time reproducing. We have large heads with large brains and unlike most mammals, we walk on two legs, making child birth difficult and risky. Prior to modern medicine, dying in child birth was not uncommon. Once born, a child is a further drain on resources, necessitating feeding, care and protection. Most mammalian species have short child hoods, while human beings will spend a significant fraction of their total lives as children. This requires on-going care, protection and resources.  

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

From this, we can see that men and women faced different evolutionary pressures. Men would provide those resources to ensure the survival of his genes, but unlike women, men can never be certain of their paternity (or at least until we invented DNA testing). This paternity uncertainty lead to males valuing monogamy, as it would be a waste of his ability to provide resources for children that did not carry on his genes.  

Women faced different evolutionary pressures, in that child birth is biologically costly, which would mean if women were better able to get resources from men, then that would be an evolutionary advantage to her (and her offspring's) survival.  

From this, we get the concept of hypergamy. An evolutionary designed biological impulse for women to be driven by mindless consumption. You can see this in so many ways. Women going shopping is a cliche. It's irrational when you think about people wearing jewelry (think of how ridiculous a chimpanzee would look with a diamond necklace), but it makes perfect sense if you think of it as displaying a woman's ability to gain resources from others. It demonstrates that her reproductive capabilities are of high biological value.  

With this dynamic of hypergamy in mind, we can see that capitalism is simply an organized mechanism for fulfilling a woman's instinctual desire for resources. That under such a dynamic, the kind of an economy you would expect to develop would be an economy that is specifically tailored for providing women with as many resources as possible.  

Understanding this mechanism of hypergamy is no trivial matter. The human race is facing a new reality in the face of climate change. Our economy is a linear one, that is everything you buy and everything you own, will one day, end up in a land fill.  

In a world that is so full of abundance (at least for human beings), we can see that in so many ways, our entire civilization is just an organized way of men giving women free stuff. Men do this instinctively in order to produce offspring that he is biologically incapable of giving birth to, and women do this instinctively in order protect herself from the dangers associated with child birth.

 The problem today, is, that our evolutionary instincts are killing us, and the world along with it. The evolutionary instincts our ancestral mothers had to develop to ensure our survival as a species is now the very same instinct that, if left unchecked, will spell the end for our species. This desire for resources has gone from ensuring life to guaranteeing death.

If not for women. Everything from common toiletries to exotic cars would be largely superfluous and unnecessary if not for women's predilection for tchotchke, baubles, and men's natural impetus to impress women.

  Why do we need entire boutiques selling a thousand brands and types of expensive scented soaps, body washes and shampoos when the several popular scents offered by the very cost effective "Dawn" detergent can safely clean a crude oil covered baby duck as well as the engine bay of a well used taxi cab?

you are saying that women are responsible for squandering the resources of the planet; they are the cause of strip mining, overflowing landfills and global warming. And the men, well, we are enablers of their wicked and destructive ways... it is up to us to save the planet by stopping the endless consumption of these feckless women!

"The great question which I have not been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does woman want?”    -Sigmund Freud

PS: Dear Siggy: The answer is now apparent. Women want to destroy the world.  

PPS: And I thought women were from Venus?? I guess we should have noticed the skirt sooner...

GaGambler342 reads

but then building a skyscraper on a foundation suitable for no more than a teepee.

I will concede if it weren't for women (pussy) us men never would have bothered moving out of caves, but I suppose to people as virulently opposed to all human consumption over and above the absolute necessities, staying in caves and living a lifespan of around thirty years would be preferable to all the creature comforts we have today.

I do find it ironic that the lefties are always talking about how the religious kooks want to bring us back to the 19th century, when we have Willy from the far left wanting to bring us back to the stone age.

cannot think clearly; fear is the enemy of reason.  

Seems WW has conditioned himself to believe so strongly that the world is going to end through some imminent environmental catastrophe that he has conditioned himself to that fear. Simple neuronal fear conditioning... over-immersion in fears (justified or not) leads to an overenthusiastic response in the amygdala and prelimbic cortex. In other words:

It is WW's lizard-brain speaking.

He wanted an evolutionary explanation

But people are fucked. It's not exactly a secret that human beings are dependent upon our environment. Even if you don't accept climate change, it doesn't take a genius to realize what happens when the human population continues to rise while the planet remains the same size

I'll pass on the Malthusian catastrophe... every prediction made on that basis since the 1770's has been wrong, as they fail to take into account a very important factor:

People are not mice

GaGambler273 reads

and every generation feels more "special" than the generation before.

As long as the religious nut jobs don't blow us all up, I am pretty confident the planet is going to remain habitable for quite some time to come.

I will stipulate however that the environmental nut jobs of the left are necessary to keep the greedy oil men, miners, builders and manufacturers in check. Left unchecked they truly would foul the planet in a generation or two, but we don't need to go writing blank checks to ecological extortionists who would love nothing more than to make us all live lives like the Amish.

..."Star Wars" movie was released, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of oilmen at Exxon's headquarters.  Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.  It was July 1977 when Exxon's leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.

A year later, Black, a top technical expert in Exxon's Research & Engineering division, took an updated version of his presentation to a broader audience. He warned Exxon scientists and managers that independent researchers estimated a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit), and as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles.  

Exxon responded swiftly. Within months the company launched its own extraordinary research into carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and its impact on the earth. Exxon's ambitious program included both empirical CO2 sampling and rigorous climate modeling. It assembled a brain trust that would spend more than a decade deepening the company's understanding of an environmental problem that posed an existential threat to the oil business.

Then, toward the end of the 1980s, Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research. In the decades that followed, Exxon worked instead at the forefront of climate denial. It put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming its own scientists had once confirmed. It lobbied to block federal and international action to control greenhouse gas emissions. It helped to erect a vast edifice of misinformation that stands to this day.

It was as if Exxon execs slapped themselves on their corporate foreheads and said: "D'oh!  This is hurting our bottom line.  We better do what we do when our wives see our TER account - deny, deny, deny!"


-- Modified on 10/27/2015 2:00:36 PM

followme265 reads

Closet thumper, Backstabber likes to quote/link bible verses maybe he can find something in the bible, that he trusts so much, to clear it all up.

 
Thank you
50 = 5

Ideas of a 70's ice age were mostly media driven  
 
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/06/04/the-1970s-ice-age-myth-and-time-magazine-covers-by-david-kirtley/  
 
Meanwhile climate change thru warming was always on the front burner so to speak  
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science

Posted By: GaGambler
The science is hardly "settled" on this issue.

GaGambler253 reads

If this is the best you can do, the prosecution rests it's case.  

Today's "science" of climate change is more of a religion than science and is driven not only by the media, but by people more interested in wealth redistribution than saving the planet/

Rather than looking at how much women spend compared to men, look at what each spend on what, and on whom. Women tend to spend money on their appearance and their household, men often spend money on their 'toys,' which give them pleasure, entertainment, excitement and sometimes power. I find it so funny to watch a guy, day after day, driving to the office, in a big 4 wheel drive truck, which he may use a hand full of times to go to the mountains or the desert, in a year. A toy giving him a sense of power. That's what men's evolutionary drives are centered around pleasure and power. The average man today would seek to increase his sexual encounters while reducing or eliminating progeny . You give men, at the minimum, a pass, and at worse portray them as drones let around by women, while portraying women with all the power. Time for you to study the concept of yin/yang. Two dynamic, but different and equal forces in a dance of creation of life, force and power!  And, as different as they are, each carries a little of the other, in itself! ;)

There certainly is far more to this, which I may or may not expound on. We'll see how this thread goes. I find human evolution extremely fascinating, and what incites it can give us to tell us about our behaviors. Sadly, people often can't help but to take such a topic personally at some level. If people can set that aside, then a fruitful conversation can be had.  

Much of female consumption is certainly related to family needs and the caring for children. But let's not forget that the cosmetics industry is worth some $250 billion world wide. And I dunno about you, but I've never purchased lipstick.  

Men do tend to purchase products that signals their own power, sometimes that's a demonstration of their physical power (an obnoxiously large pickup truck) or their financial power ( an expensive car like a  Lamborghini). Both of these behaviors is really just a kind of male courting ritual, similar to a peacock showing it's impressive plumage.  

Both behaviors is simply a way of increasing your sexual marketplace value.  

But let's be clear here. Almost no one is aware of the evolutionary underpinnings of their behaviors. There are many shitty things about male behavior (war is only one example), but it just so happens that one particular female behavior is having dire consequences for us as a species, given the harsh reality of climate change.

....but the science on this is on solid ground. I'm including a link at the bottom that has over 100 citations of studies that confirm this. Even when women have high incomes (like female doctors and lawyers) there is still an instinctual desire to have a long term mate that has more resources than her. It's well worth reading the entire article.  

Another rather interesting aspect to this, is how reproduction plays out in male/female birth ratios. I had always just assumed that the male/female population was about 50/50, with a slightly higher percentage of females. But as it turns out, that's not the case. It seems that genetically, males are more likely to be born than females. This is perhaps an evolutionary adaptation, as males tend to have a higher mortality rate. But as it turns out, a woman's body will alter during pregnancy, based upon the various resources.  

Just as men seek attractive females (indication of good quality genes that will produce healthy and strong offspring), women seek males who can be good providers and protectors. But a woman's biological drive is also rooted in her ability to reproduce her own genes to carry into the next generation.  

This sets up a strange dichotomy, because males are able to continually produce sperm, while females can only produce 1 egg a month under normal circumstances. If a male copulates with many women you will produce more offspring to carry on their genes than if one woman copulated with many men.  

For this reason, if a woman produced male offspring, she would more likely have someone who would carry on her genes into future generations. However, this by necessity, requires producing a lot of babies and have the resources to care and provide for them. If resources are scarce, then a male might not be able to successfully reproduce with anyone, mean that woman who had male offspring would have her gene line go extinct within one generation.  

So when resources are scarce, it would be an evolutionary advantage for that woman to produce female offspring, to better ensure the survival of her own genes.  

I have just described the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, something long thought likely to be true, but an idea that always lacked supportive evidence. That is, until now. A woman's body will change depending upon the available resources in a manner that will favor a male or female blastocyst.  

http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elissa_Cameron/publication/8405577_Facultative_adjustment_of_mammalian_sex_ratios_in_support_of_the_Trivers-Willard_hypothesis_evidence_for_a_mechanism/links/0c96051ae6432a011a000000.pdf

with wealth, power, social standing/prestige, etc.  They do this to secure the best possible mate and to secure the best possible future for their offspring. But, it just ain't new(s).... this IS a board where money = access to pussy, after all.

Correct or not, to extend that hypothesis to "the earth is in imminent danger from the evolutionary drive of women and their resultant consumption"?  

Your evolutionary argument is not at all a hard pill for me to swallow. It is your premise and cause/effect conclusion that have me SMH.

I agree that evolutionary biology is fascinating, but I disagree that the science, at least on the topic on the wherefores of spending, attraction, etc is even remotely settled.  I consider it a nascent field full of "squishy" data; although there are data points to measure, inferring cause is dangerous territory from a scientific standpoint.

Also, since it sounds like you read that paper, did you notice how in order to support the theory, there was some picking and choosing of data?  Some of that may be narrowing things down to the "true" variables influencing what is observed, but some of it may be a lucky coincidence that happens to support their theory.  In the science world, this is acceptable because other scientists can then build upon or disprove their method and variables used, and in fact, if you look at further studies, you will find that much of what this person wrote about is still not settled.

Posted By: willywonka4u
....but the science on this is on solid ground. I'm including a link at the bottom that has over 100 citations of studies that confirm this. Even when women have high incomes (like female doctors and lawyers) there is still an instinctual desire to have a long term mate that has more resources than her. It's well worth reading the entire article.  
 
And I will tell you one thing regarding the above - most educated/financially well-off women prefer an equal, and while it's easy to read lots of evolutionary reasons into this such as an instinct to find a provider with resources, there are other non-evolutionary reasons for this, like being able to carry on an more cerebral conversation with a mate.  Also, some suspect this trend is slowly evolving because many women are going farther educationally than men, but only time will tell.

As for female spending, yes there are some ladies who purchase the most frivolous things, but as someone else pointed out, much of female spending consists of items for the entire household, not just themselves.

"part of human nature that is driven towards the mindless consumption of resources." It's seeking pleasure while avoiding pain. Read up on Freud's "The Pleasure Principle." If there were no pleasure in sex, there may not even be a human race. Talk to some couples who've had to go through IVF an see how pleasurable sex was for them. It was not. It was not spontaneous, not pleasurable at a certain point. If was more like a chore. If sex was such a chore, for everyone, the old instinct to procreate would be very weak. Or, the example of eating. We get great pleasure out of eating the foods we find tasteful. However, someone on chemotherapy finds few foods are enjoyable, because they can't taste them. They have to force themselves to eat just to survive.

Now, regarding your statement: "There really is a class of the makers and the takers, it just so happens that the makers are, by and large, men and the takers are by and large, women. How in the blue hell did this happen?"  

That implies a power differential, with one side using that power to get their needs met by exploiting the other. If you really understood Freud, you'd know that his studies and theories are based on motivations. If one side truly was exploiting to other, consistently, I could imagine that the other side would stop participating any longer, thus condemning the surviving of the human race. I believe, a study of yin/yang could help you out in this regard. I believe the reality is that both side are getting enough pleasure from the other to keep them in the game. As soon as one side, in a relationship, "strains the ratio" in the reinforcement of desired behavior in the other (see B.F. Skinner and variable interval reinforcement schedules), the whole things collapses. If that wasn't true, why is there so many of us men, here on this board, seeking the companionship of providers? And, I sure hope you're not one of those reviewers perpetually  complaining about a provider charging too much vs. seeking out one that fits you budget! ;)  That smile and a wink means I'm just kidding regard you. But, I do see it a lot in reviews. The poor guys feels totally victimized by what the view as there being an unfair power differential.

...but it is reciprocal. Men are powerless to give birth. Women are powerless from the dangers associated with giving birth. Women do exploit men by using them to gain access to resources, just as men exploit women by bearing the risks associated with child birth. As I said, this isn't shitting on any particular group of people. It's an attempt to understand human nature, based upon the scientific evidence.

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