From: https://shorturl.at/Kle30 (nypost.com)

===
Opinion

Climate change doom-and-gloomers are finally bowing out- and showing that common
sense prevails

By Matt Ridley
Published Dec. 5, 2025, 8:51 p.m. ET

Finally, thankfully, the global warming craze is dying out. To paraphrase
Monty Python, the climate parrot may still be nailed to its perch at the
recent COP summit in Belem, Brazil - or at Harvard and on CNN - but
elsewhere it's dead. It's gone to meet its maker, kicked the bucket,
shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir
invisible. By failing to pledge a cut in fossil fuels, COP achieved less
than nothing, the venue caught fire, the air-conditioning malfunctioned -
and delegates were told on arrival not to flush toilet paper. Bill Gates's
recent apologia, in which he conceded that global warming "will not lead
to humanity's demise," after he closed the policy and advocacy office of
his climate philanthropy group is just the latest nail in the coffin.

In October, the Net Zero Banking Alliance shut down after JPMorgan Chase,
Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs
led a stampede of other banks out the door. Shell and BP have returned to
being oil companies, to the delight of their shareholders. Ford is about
to cease production of electric pickups that nobody wants. Hundreds of
other companies are dropping their climate targets. Australia has backed
out of hosting next year's climate conference.

According to analysis by the Washington Post, it is not just Republicans
who have given up on climate change: the Democratic party has stopped
talking about it, hardly mentioning it during Kamala Harris's campaign for
president last year. The topic has dropped to the bottom half of a table
of 23 concerns among Swedish youths. Even the European Parliament has
voted to exempt many companies from reporting rules that require them to
state how they are helping fight climate change.

It has been a long, lucrative ride. Predicting the eco-apocalypse has
always been a profitable business, spawning subsidies, salaries,
consulting fees, air miles, best-sellers and research grants. Different
themes took turns as the scare du jour: overpopulation, oil spills,
pollution, desertification, mass extinction, acid rain, the ozone layer,
nuclear winter, falling sperm counts. Each faded as the evidence became
more equivocal, the public grew bored or, in some cases, the problem was
resolved by a change in the law or practice.

But no scare grew as big or lasted as long as global warming. I first
wrote a doom-laden article for the Economist about carbon dioxide
emissions trapping heat in the air in 1987, nearly 40 years ago. I soon
realized the effect was real but the alarm was overdone, that feedback
effects were exaggerated in the models. The greenhouse effect was likely
to be a moderate inconvenience rather than an existential threat. For this
blasphemy I was abused, canceled, blacklisted, called a "denier" and
generally deemed evil. In 2010, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal I
debated Gates, who poured scorn on my argument that global warming was not
likely to be a catastrophe - so it is welcome to see him come round to my
view.

Greta has moved on

The activists who took over the climate debate, often with minimal
understanding of climate science, competed for attention by painting ever
more catastrophic pictures of future global warming. They changed the name
to "climate change" so they could blame it for blizzards as well as heat
waves. Then they inflated the language to "climate emergency" and "climate
crisis," even as projections of future warming came down.

"I'm talking about the slaughter, death and starvation of six billion
people this century. That's what the science predicts," said Roger Hallam,
founder of Extinction Rebellion in 2019, though the science says no such
thing. "A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe
out humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years,"
tweeted Greta Thunberg in 2018. Five years later she deleted her tweet and
shortly after that decided that Palestine was a more promising way of
staying in the limelight.

Scientists knew pronouncements like this were nonsense but they turned a
blind eye because the alarm kept the grant money coming. Journalists
always love exaggeration. Capitalists were happy to cash in. Politicians
welcomed the chance to blame others: if a wildfire or a flood devastates
your town, point the finger at the changing climate rather than your own
failure to prepare. Almost nobody had an incentive to downplay the alarm.

Unlike previous scares, climate fear has the valuable feature that it can
always be presented in the future tense. No matter how mild the change in
the weather proves to be today, you can always promise Armageddon
tomorrow. So it was that for four long decades, climate-change alarm went
on a long march through the institutions, capturing newsrooms, schoolrooms
and boardrooms. By 2020 no meeting, even of a town council or a sports
team, was complete without a hand-wringing discussion of carbon
footprints. The other factor that kept the climate scare alive was that
reducing emissions proved impossibly difficult. This was a feature, not a
bug: if it had been easy, the green gravy train would have ground to a
halt. Reducing sulfur emissions to stop acid rain proved fairly easy, as
did banning chlorofluorocarbons to protect the ozone layer. But decade
after decade, carbon dioxide emissions just kept on rising, no matter how
much money and research was thrown at the problem. Cheers!

Switching to renewable energy made no difference, literally. Here's the
data: the world added 9,000 terawatt-hours per year of energy consumption
from wind and solar in the past decade, but 13,000 from fossil fuels. Not
that wind and solar save much carbon dioxide anyway, their machinery being
made with coal and their intermittency being backed up by fossil fuels.

Dwindling donations

Despite trillions of dollars in subsidies, these two "unreliables" still
provide just 6 percent of the world's energy. Their low-density,
high-cost, intermittent power output is of no use to data centers or
electric grids, let alone transport and heating, and it effectively
poisons the economics of building and running new nuclear and gas
generation sites by preventing continuous operation. Quite why it became
mandatory among those concerned about climate change to support these
unreliables so obsessively is hard to fathom. Subsidy addiction has a lot
to do with it, combined with a general ignorance of thermodynamics.

Now the climate scare is fading, a scramble for the exits is beginning
among the big environmental groups. Donations are drying up. Some will
switch seamlessly to trying to panic us about artificial intelligence;
others will follow Gates and insist that they never said it was the end of
the world, just a problem to be solved; a few will even try declaring
victory, claiming unconvincingly that promises made at the Paris
climate-change conference a decade ago have slowed emissions enough to
save the planet.

Of course, Al Gore, the former vice president who did more than anybody
else to alarm the world about climate change and made a $300 million
fortune from it, has been at the recent conference in the Brazilian jungle
- the one where they felled a forest to build the access road. As he
railed against Gates last week for abandoning the cause and accused him of
being bullied by President Trump, he sounded like one of those Japanese
soldiers emerging from the jungle who did not know World War Two was over.

Perhaps Gore might now regret his exaggerated preachings of hellfire and
damnation. In his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, for which he jointly
won a Nobel Prize, he predicted a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet "in the
near future" - out by around 19 feet and nine inches. In 2009, he said
there was a 75 percent chance all the ice in the Arctic Ocean would
disappear by 2014. In that year there was 5 million square kilometers of
the stuff at its lowest point - about the same as in 2009; this year there
was 4.7 million square kilometers. At the film's showing at the Sundance
Festival, Gore said that unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse
gases were taken within 10 years, the world would reach a point of no
return. Yet here we are, 19 years later.

Wears down voters

Gore is correct that fear of retribution from the Trump administration
drives some of the corporate retreats. President Trump has already
canceled $300 billion of green infrastructure funding and purged
government websites of climate rhetoric. But even if the Republicans lose
the White House in 2028, it will be hard to reinflate the climate balloon.
The proportion of Americans greatly worried about climate change is
dropping. If Trump takes America out of the 1992 treaty that set up the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change it would require an
unlikely two-thirds vote of the Senate to rejoin.

Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish economist who is president of the Copenhagen
Consensus and has fought a lonely battle against climate exaggeration for
decades, recently explained the shift in public opinion: "The shrillness
of climate doom also wears down voters. While climate is a real and
man-made problem, constant end-of-the-world proclamations from media and
campaigners massively overstate the situation."

A key figure in the collapse of the climatocracy is Chris Wright, the
pioneer of extracting shale gas by hydraulic fracturing who was appointed
by Trump as Energy Secretary this year. Wright commissioned a review of
climate science by five distinguished academics who set out just how
non-frightening the facts of climate change are: slowly rising
temperatures, mainly at night in winter and in the north, correspondingly
less in daytime in summer and in the tropics where most people live,
accompanied by a very slow rise in sea level showing no definite
acceleration, minimal if any measurable change in the average frequency
and ferocity of storms, droughts and floods - and record low levels of
deaths from such causes. Plus a general increase in green vegetation,
caused by the extra carbon dioxide.

Melissa, the category-5 hurricane that devastated Jamaica last month,
killed around 50 people. In the past - before global warming - hurricanes
like that killed tens if not hundreds of thousands. In total, weather
events killed just 2,200 people globally in the first half of this year, a
record low, whereas indoor air pollution caused by poor people cooking
over wood fires because they lack access to gas and electricity kills
three million a year. So yes, Gates, influenced by Lomborg and Wright, is
correct to say that getting cheap, reliable, clean energy to the poor is
by far the more urgent priority.

Sources tell me that Wright is treated like a rock star at international
conferences: his fellow ministers, especially those from Africa and Asia,
are thrilled to talk about the need to get energy to people instead of
being hectored about emissions. Only a few western European ministers
sneer, but even some of them (the British being an exception) quietly
admit that they need to find a way to climb down off their green high
horses.

Gas glut

Fortunately, they now have convenient cover for doing so: artificial
intelligence. We would love to go on subsidizing wind and solar, say the
Germans privately, but if we are to have data centers, we need lots more
reliable and affordable power so we will now build gas - and maybe even
some nuclear - turbines.

Likewise, throughout the tech world of the American west coast, emoting
about climate suddenly seems like a luxury belief compared with the need
to sign contracts with firm power suppliers, mostly burning natural gas -
or get left behind in the AI race. The world's gas glut is impossible to
overstate: thanks to fracking, we have centuries' worth of cheap gas. The
tech bros are piling into nuclear, too, but that won't address the needs
for extra power until well into the next decade - and the need is now.

The climatastrophe has been a terrible mistake. It diverted attention from
real environmental problems, cost a fortune, impoverished consumers,
perpetuated poverty, frightened young people into infertility, wasted
years of our time, undermined democracy and corrupted science. Time to
bury the parrot.
===

-- Sean

--- MultiMail/Win
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)

Finally, thankfully, the global warming craze is dying out. To paraphrase

>Monty Python, the climate parrot may still be nailed to its perch at the
>recent COP summit in Belem, Brazil - or at Harvard and on CNN - but
>elsewhere it's dead.

It's an easy subject to find people to violently argue either side..

I've always figured it was being blown out of proportion, not because
climate change doesn't exist, but because it's happened over and over
through history and I doubt we can be blamed for more than a tiny
percentage of the change. We can maybe speed it up or slow it down
very slightly but it's happening one way or another, just like it did
4000 years ago where we still have written records about it rather
than just the archaelogical evidence of climate shifts.

That time it lasted for about 3000 years so get used to it..
Any idea that we could turn this around in even a few hundred
years by changing our habits is fantasy..

They were growing crops in Britain 4000 years ago that they can't
grow today because it is now too COLD..

The world has spent about 65% of its time with no polar ice caps.

Global warming or returning to normal?

I often suggest that people who really want to know more, and not
just go with the popular talk, should read a book by Michael Crichton
called State of Fear, an entertaining thriller about eco-terrorists
but which contains a lot of factual information about climate change
and even lists the scientific articles to back it all up.

I beleive it was in that book where I read how any scientists who
went against the government party line on global warming lost their
funding and couldn't get papers published.

---
* SLMR Rob * No sense being pessimistic. It wouldn't work anyway
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (618:250/1)

Hello Rob!

** On Monday 08.12.25 - 08:25, Rob Mccart wrote to SEAN DENNIS:

I often suggest that people who really want to know more, and not
just go with the popular talk, should read a book by Michael Crichton called State of Fear, an entertaining thriller about eco-terrorists
but which contains a lot of factual information about climate change
and even lists the scientific articles to back it all up.

The book is certainly an odd creation of speculation, fiction,
and fact.

--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.64
* Origin: (618:400/23.10)

Hello Rob,

08 Dec 25 08:25, you wrote to me:

I beleive it was in that book where I read how any scientists who
went against the government party line on global warming lost their funding and couldn't get papers published.

Climate change is real as the Earth is a dynamic environment. However, it's the so-called "man-made" climate change I have issue with since all the data for that has been delibrately skewered.

In 2012, I was going to East Tennessee State University to get a bachelor's degree in geoscience. However, when the staff found out I was not a worshipper, they ran me out of the university on a rail.

I mean, Mother Nature is gonna do what she wants anyway. If the Yellowstone caldera blows, we're all dead. XD

-- Sean

... There's no future in time travel.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240209
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)

I beleive it was in that book where I read how any scientists who
went against the government party line on global warming lost their
funding and couldn't get papers published.

Climate change is real as the Earth is a dynamic environment. However, it's

>the so-called "man-made" climate change I have issue with since all the data
>for that has been delibrately skewered.

Yes, we may have a slight influence on things but in the scale of
the world I don't think we have much of an effect.
In any case, if we started it we won't be able to stop it for
probably hundreds of years because we aren't going to stop making
carbon any time soon..

In 2012, I was going to East Tennessee State University to get a bachelor's

>degree in geoscience. However, when the staff found out I was not a
>worshipper, they ran me out of the university on a rail.

That bites.. I've had teachers who didn't agree with me retaliate with
bad marks but at least I was still there, and I could always fake my
opinions to get the marks back up. I gave up early looking at school
as a place to learn, it was just a chore to get through before moving
on to Real life..

I mean, Mother Nature is gonna do what she wants anyway.

>If the Yellowstone caldera blows, we're all dead. XD

That's happened 3 times in the past and we are still here so, it
likely wouldn't be pleasant, but I think some of us would survive it.

People in Florida and Texas would just have to get used to Canadian
weather for a few hundred years.. B)

---
* SLMR Rob * All extremists should be taken out and shot
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (618:250/1)

Yes, we may have a slight influence on things but in the scale of
the world I don't think we have much of an effect.
In any case, if we started it we won't be able to stop it for
probably hundreds of years because we aren't going to stop making
carbon any time soon..

Oh, of course we can! All we have to do is give in and stop using cars and start eating the bugs and the lab-grown goo they caringly supply us with... while they sit back and eat steaks and fly in private jets.

Mike

* SLMR 2.1a * Warning! Incomprehensible action is about to occur.
--- SBBSecho 3.28-Linux
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (618:250/1)

I often suggest that people who really want to know more, and not
just go with the popular talk, should read a book by Michael Crichton called State of Fear, an entertaining thriller about eco-terrorists
but which contains a lot of factual information about climate change
and even lists the scientific articles to back it all up.

The book is certainly an odd creation of speculation, fiction,

>and fact.

Sometimes the only way to get facts in front of people is to
include them in a fantasy environment. It makes me think about
all the Sci-Fi books by authors who are often highly educated
scientists (Like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan)
who used entertaining stories to get some actual science into
the heads of mostly young readers.

---
* SLMR Rob * The moral majority is neither
* Origin: Capitol City Online (618:250/1)

Yes, we may have a slight influence on things but in the scale of

>> the world I don't think we have much of an effect.
>> In any case, if we started it we won't be able to stop it for
>> probably hundreds of years because we aren't going to stop making
>> carbon any time soon..

Oh, of course we can! All we have to do is give in and stop using cars and

>start eating the bugs and the lab-grown goo they caringly supply us with...
>while they sit back and eat steaks and fly in private jets.

The infamous 'They'.. B)

Even if it were everyone trying to stop carbon output, with the number
of people in the world spread far and wide, those needing to generate
heating or cooling would still be adding to it.

Plus there's another issue at work. Now that it's mostly warmer and
dryer in a lot of areas you hear about how many more forest fires
there are now compared to even the recent past . Trees are known to
soak up carbon but that means they release it all at once when they
burn. And the melting permafrost is releasing carbon that has been
trapped under the ice for hundreds or thousands of years so, once it
starts, there's almost no way to stop it..

Although.. I hear we are overdue for an Ice Age.. Those often are
pretty good at cutting down the population, which is really the
main problem. I heard once that some scientific group worked out
that the world could safely support about 50 million humans in total
without doing any damage to the planet..

There are lots of numbers if you try to look that up but most are
based on being able to feed the population, not on the population
not doing any harm to the world. Most estimates come out a lot
lower than the current population though.

---
* SLMR Rob * It's not hard to meet expenses; they're EVERYWHERE!
* Origin: Capitol City Online (618:250/1)

Oh, of course we can! All we have to do is give in and stop using cars and

>start eating the bugs and the lab-grown goo they caringly supply us with...
>while they sit back and eat steaks and fly in private jets.

The infamous 'They'.. B)

In this case, some of "they" have names... Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Greta Thunberg (sp?)... those "theys". :D

Plus there's another issue at work. Now that it's mostly warmer and
dryer in a lot of areas you hear about how many more forest fires
there are now compared to even the recent past . Trees are known to
soak up carbon but that means they release it all at once when they
burn. And the melting permafrost is releasing carbon that has been
trapped under the ice for hundreds or thousands of years so, once it
starts, there's almost no way to stop it..

Some of what you describe here... drier in places and wetter in others...
is man-made. When you are diverting large amounts of water into areas to create a desert oasis for the rich... complete with many well kept golf
courses per-capita... and away from the fertile crop areas, forests, and mountains, you are changing the likelihood of rain in those previously wet areas. They are not as humid as they should be because the water the rain cycle feeds off of has been diverted elsewhere. So the forested parts get drier and burn more easily.

There are lots of numbers if you try to look that up but most are
based on being able to feed the population, not on the population
not doing any harm to the world. Most estimates come out a lot
lower than the current population though.

Yeah, feeding the population has always been the challenge.

Mike

* SLMR 2.1a * Squirrels swim on their backs to keep their nuts dry!
--- SBBSecho 3.28-Linux
* Origin: Capitol City Online (618:250/1)

Some of what you describe here... drier in places and wetter in others...

>is man-made. When you are diverting large amounts of water into areas to
>create a desert oasis for the rich... complete with many well kept golf
>courses per-capita... and away from the fertile crop areas, forests, and
>mountains, you are changing the likelihood of rain in those previously wet
>areas. They are not as humid as they should be because the water the rain
>cycle feeds off of has been diverted elsewhere. So the forested parts get
>drier and burn more easily.

Yes, they do some things that can make a difference. I was reading the
other day about where some North American Colonization caused a large
amount of land that was farmland to be abandoned to nature and it
was slowly taken over by forest, and that changed the climate over
huge areas. One must assume that when forests were originally cut
down to create farmland, the reverse problem was created but that was
long enough ago people weren't thinking about such things yet.

They are clearing forests like crazy in South America which will
affect the oxygen created by the trees and increase the carbon that
the trees tend to store. This probably does more harm than all
the other things people complain about. Brazil alone has cleared
over 240,000 sq miles of forest and they are not slowing down.
Their deforestation is up about 260% over the past 8 years.

There was talk as well about slowly planting forests at the
edge of deserts which change the weather in the area to be
self sustaining but, as you say, the water has to come from
somewhere else.

---
* SLMR Rob * Yes, I know I'm off topic. Thankyou for your concern
* Origin: Capitol City Online (618:250/1)

Hello Rob!

** On Sunday 14.12.25 - 07:55, Rob Mccart wrote to MIKE POWELL:

There was talk as well about slowly planting forests at the
edge of deserts which change the weather in the area to be
self sustaining but, as you say, the water has to come from
somewhere else.

I've read that there a technique of "planting" deserts that
creates pools for water to collect and eventually turns the
desert into a thriving place for flora and fauna, and keep the
sands from blowing around.

--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.64
* Origin: (618:400/23.10)

probably hundreds of years because we aren't going to stop making
carbon any time soon..

Remember that YOU are the carbon that they want to reduce.

opinions to get the marks back up. I gave up early looking at school
as a place to learn, it was just a chore to get through before moving
on to Real life..

I've often said that high school was 4 years of wasted time because I learned so little (from school) during that time.

College was 4 years long, but only 1 year was wasted - but that was back in the late 1980's. Today, the same college would be 4 years of wasted time, plus lots of wasted money.

... When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Classic BBS (618:250/46)

Sometimes the only way to get facts in front of people is to
include them in a fantasy environment. It makes me think about
all the Sci-Fi books by authors who are often highly educated
scientists (Like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan)
who used entertaining stories to get some actual science into
the heads of mostly young readers.

Schools have done a great job of turning kids off to just about everything.

Even going back 40 years, when I was in school, teachers nearly ruined my love of literature - mostly because teachers have AWFUL taste in books, especially for teen boys.

I've often said that I am where I am today not because of the public education system, but in spite of it.

... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Classic BBS (618:250/46)

There was talk as well about slowly planting forests at the
edge of deserts which change the weather in the area to be
self sustaining but, as you say, the water has to come from
somewhere else.

I've read that there a technique of "planting" deserts that

>creates pools for water to collect and eventually turns the
>desert into a thriving place for flora and fauna, and keep the
>sands from blowing around.

Yes, that's what I was referring to. It sounds like a great idea
for that area but you have to wonder where the water comes from
that would create that. If it ends up there it has to come from
someplace else, although I suppose technically it could come from
the oceans where the only damage might be a tiny increase in
salinity which might not hurt anything.

You're fighting mother nature there since there is all sorts of
evidence that the deserts used to be covered in vegitation and
there are even marks on underground parts of the Pyramids showing
water damage from flooding a long time ago..

Plus things are always changing. In Canada, the desert areas in
the prairies used to be grasslands and when things were warmer
the far north was mostly grassland too where the permafrost is
now (for the moment)..

---
* SLMR Rob * I hate people who keep talking while I'm interrupting
* Origin: Capitol City Online (618:250/1)

probably hundreds of years because we aren't going to stop making
carbon any time soon..

Remember that YOU are the carbon that they want to reduce.

Who are the rich people going to exploit if they get rid of
the normal people.. B)

opinions to get my marks back up. I gave up early looking at school
as a place to learn, it was just a chore to get through before moving
on to Real life..

I've often said that high school was 4 years of wasted time because I

>learned so little (from school) during that time.

For the most part it is. Mostly it's to try to give you a taste of
several different subjects so you can better choose what you want
to do with your life.

College was 4 years long, but only 1 year was wasted - but that was

>back in the late 1980's. Today, the same college would be 4 years
>of wasted time, plus lots of wasted money.

3 years in Canada back then (we had Grade 13) for the semi-useless
degrees. Most even basic government jobs insist on a college diploma
even if it's just in basket weaving.

It's always been about making choices that will work best for you.
Things have changed some since then so students have to make
different choices now or they have just themselves to blame when
they end up joining the ranks of the well educated unemployed..

That said, I didn't pursue further education in what I was best at.
But in the end I ended up working a lot less than most people do
(after the first 15 or so years) and it all worked out fairly well..
I've been more or less semi retired since I was 32 years old.

---
* SLMR Rob * Well, if it was funny then I MEANT it to be funny
* Origin: Capitol City Online (618:250/1)

Sometimes the only way to get facts in front of people is to
include them in a fantasy environment. It makes me think about
all the Sci-Fi books by authors who are often highly educated
scientists (Like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan)
who used entertaining stories to get some actual science into
the heads of mostly young readers.

Schools have done a great job of turning kids off to just about everything.

Even going back 40 years, when I was in school, teachers nearly ruined

>my love of literature - mostly because teachers have AWFUL taste in books,
>especially for teen boys.

I've often said that I am where I am today not because of the public

>education system, but in spite of it.

I remember back in Grade 9 we were given Stranger in a Strange Land
to read for English class. I thought that was great, to finally get a
book that was interesting.. And then the teacher tore it apart later
equating the main character to Christ and pretty much ruined it for
me (even though there was probably some truth to the author's intent).

But reading is a great thing. I've always said that you can't read
a book without learning something new from it. Obviously not 100%
of the time but there's a lot of truth to that.

I go through 3 to 5 books a week depending on how busy I am and how
thick the books are so, with any luck, I'm learning new things faster
than I'm forgetting old things.. B)

---
* SLMR Rob * Overdrawn ??? But I still have three checks left!
* Origin: Capitol City Online (618:250/1)

Who are the rich people going to exploit if they get rid of
the normal people.. B)

They don't want us all gone. Just less of us. Easier for them to control us and they think that there will be more stuff for them.

For the most part it is. Mostly it's to try to give you a taste of
several different subjects so you can better choose what you want
to do with your life.

Yes, that's what it was SUPPOSED to do, but didn't. The most useful class I took in High School was Personal Typing. That made my career choice of Computer Scientist go much easier. But the school did everything that they could to derail my career choice.

For me the tipping point was when English class had us read Lord of the Flies (awful book), which showed us what High School actually was.

It's always been about making choices that will work best for you.
Things have changed some since then so students have to make
different choices now or they have just themselves to blame when
they end up joining the ranks of the well educated unemployed..

I agree. But
1. At least my school, actively tried to discourage me from exploring different choices.
2. I will argue that students today have much fewer choices, at least in school, than I did.

... Marriage is one of the chief causes of divorce

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Classic BBS (618:250/46)

to read for English class. I thought that was great, to finally get a
book that was interesting.. And then the teacher tore it apart later equating the main character to Christ and pretty much ruined it for
me (even though there was probably some truth to the author's intent).

I always hated when teachers did that - especially to a good book.

I had a teacher do that in college. She wanted to tell her what the "meanings" were in the book. "What did the author think about...?" Heck, I don't know and you can't infer that from some writing.

I explained that I read for 2 reasons:
1. To learn
2. For pleasure

When I read to learn, I get a book that explains it. Not a book that hides the meanings of things under other words. When I read for pleasure, I don't look for meanings under the words.

... Classic: A book which people praise but don't read. - Mark Twain

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
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Hello Rob!

** On Tuesday 16.12.25 - 08:08, you wrote:

I've read that there a technique of "planting" deserts that

creates pools for water to collect..

Yes, that's what I was referring to. It sounds like a great idea
for that area but you have to wonder where the water comes from

The water comes from the dew/condensation of the
plants+barriers they put in the ground.

There are yt-vids that illustrate the science of it.

--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.64
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Who are the rich people going to exploit if they get rid of
the normal people.. B)

They don't want us all gone. Just less of us. Easier for them to

>control us and they think that there will be more stuff for them.

It would probably do all of us good if there were fewer of us, and
excessive poor people are an obvious issue. The problem is our
system is set up so that more and more workers are required to
pay enough taxes to support those who are retired or not working
for whatever reason.

For me the tipping point was when English class had us read Lord of

>the Flies which showed us what High School actually was.

I got that one too..

1. At least my school, actively tried to discourage me from exploring

>different choices.
>2. I will argue that students today have much fewer choices, at least
>in school, than I did.

I obviously haven't been in school for a long time and I didn't have
kids so I don't have their experiences to fill in the blanks either.

As for different choices, in our schools you took a 4 year course if
you were not planning on University or the 5 year course if you were.
(The 5th year was grade 13 which eliminated one year of University.)

But.. I wanted the 4 year Tech courses so I'd learn how to work
on cars and machine shop for building stuff and welding and
wood working, electronics and such..

BUT I wanted the 5 year course because there was always a
chance I'd end up going to University so the school went nuts
trying to schedule half the one course and half the other.
Likely they wouldn't go that far out of their way anymore..

I benefitted from both though.. I built a few muscle cars and
custom motorcycles over the years and renovated houses but I
was also pretty good at the tougher subjects, mainly math.

When we were taking very complex algebra in grade 11, I didn't
like the time it took to do a question taking up half a page.
I started thinking about it and one Sunday afternoon when I didn't
have to work I started working the questions in different ways and
came up with a way to do them in a line or two that worked every
time. Later I got caught doing a question that way by my math
teacher and he asked who showed me that. I told him I'd come up
with it myself, so he wrote down a Super long Algebra question
and told me to try that one. It took me a minute or so longer
than usual but I did sort it out, and he informed me what I'd
just done was 2nd year level University Calculus.

I'd never even heard of Calculus before that. (It was a Grade 13
math course at that time.) It was actually rather disappointing.
I thought I'd invented something new.. B)

---
* SLMR Rob * Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names
* Origin: Capitol City Online (618:250/1)

When I read to learn, I get a book that explains it. Not a book that

>hides the meanings of things under other words. When I read for pleasure,
>I don't look for meanings under the words.

As I've mentioned, I read a lot. Usually 3 to 5 books a week, but I
virtually never read non-fiction books. I read mainly for pleasure
but that doesn't mean you don't learn things, sometimes a Lot, from
all types of books. You learn about different countries and cultures,
the past and educated guesses at the future a well as mythology and
there's Real science often buried in the science fiction books, etc..

---
* SLMR Rob * It's a queer sort of memory that only works in reverse
* Origin: Capitol City Online (618:250/1)

I've read that there a technique of "planting" deserts that

>> creates pools for water to collect..

Yes, that's what I was referring to. It sounds like a great idea
for that area but you have to wonder where the water comes from

The water comes from the dew/condensation of the

>plants+barriers they put in the ground.

There are yt-vids that illustrate the science of it.

Yes, I've seen shows on that in the past. The thing is, if a plant
takes moisture out of the air or the ground, that moisture doesn't
go to where it used to go. It will be drier somewhere else.

It's still a good idea but massive changes to one part of the world
usually has an affect on another part of it.

---
* SLMR Rob * Compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof
* Origin: Capitol City Online (618:250/1)