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The conservative outlet noted that the figures were based on a survey of **154 respondents **[...]
That's... Not what we call a statistically valid sample size.
Its so tiresome, because none of this shit is going to matter once the next Big Hurricane wipes a few more Gulf Coast cities off the map. The "Best/Worst" Presidents are all yet to be written, not set in stone by some dipshit Frank Luntz poll of 50-something ivy league academics.
People are going to be looking back at the Obama/Trump/Biden Era as absolutely utopian, with the way our economy is pitched. Its the Kamala Harris / Greg Abbott / Beyonce / Tucker Carlson presidencies you're really going to have feelings about over the next thirty years.
TBH, once the really hard consequences of climate change hit--blue ocean events, mass die-offs of fish across all oceans, dust bowls in regions that are currently bread baskets, etc.--I don't think that most people are going to be worrying about a president at all.
If humanity is lucky, we'll all die from a previously unclassified pathogen from melting arctic ice. If humanity is unlucky, it's going to be death from a century of famines.
I don’t think that most people are going to be worrying about a president at all.
We worried quite a bit about the President during the last 30s-era Dust Bowl.
If humanity is lucky, we’ll all die
Its not the end of the world. Its the end of a particular way of life. As the old world dies, the new world struggles to be born.
No, it's not the end of the world; the planet will shrug humanity off and continue without us just fine. The world will do just fine, right up until the sun turns into a red giant and the expanding corona envelops this planet and burns it away, in a few billion years.
It will probably be the end of civilization as we understand it though.
More primitive civilizations have endured more desperate conditions.
We are not more primitive civilizations. We have culturally forgotten most of the things that are absolutely necessary for more primitive cultures to survive, and there are not nearly enough people have have any of these cultural memories to pass knowledge on at a meaningful scale. Tribes in sub-Saharan Africa might be able to survive, if climate change doesn't wipe out their prey animals. Same with certain tribes in Brazil, assuming that temperatures don't go past 95F for wet-bulb temperatures in the Amazon.
But we're not them.
We have culturally forgotten most of the things that are absolutely necessary for more primitive cultures to survive
Developing large agriculture surpluses and potable water reserves, while expanding safe arteries of travel and maintaining peaceful coexistence with our surrounding neighbors?
there are not nearly enough people have have any of these cultural memories to pass knowledge on at a meaningful scale
Global literacy is at a historical peak. And methods of archiving/distributing information have never been more diverse or prolific.
Tribes in sub-Saharan Africa might be able to survive, if climate change doesn’t wipe out their prey animals. Same with certain tribes in Brazil
They'll be some of the first to go, precisely because they don't have industrial agriculture or advanced pluming and A/C.
Advanced plumbing doesn't help you when you no longer have ground water, and there's no snow melt to feed your reservoirs. Agricultural surpluses dry up when the topsoil is exhausted, there's no water for the crops, and the growing zones have shifted so that the land that used to be perfect for corn and soybeans can't grow them at all anymore. Peaceful co-existence stops the minute famine hits. Those safe arteries for travel? That's in large part what's causing this. We keep pumping out carbon dioxide at ever increasing rates with out global production, and blithely assume that there will always be a new technology to prevent the whole house of cards from tumbling down.
And literacy? That's not the same as being able to do a thing. I'm talking about skills, thing that need to be learned and practiced from a young age.
Advanced plumbing doesn’t help you when you no longer have ground water
The great thing about the enormous storms powered by climate change that have been deluging the Midwest and the California coast is how quickly they're replenishing snowpack in the mountains and groundwater in the plains.
Peaceful co-existence stops the minute famine hits.
Hence the need for advanced (specifically nitrogen fertilizer) agriculture techniques.
Those safe arteries for travel? That’s in large part what’s causing this
The majority of climate fumes arise from coal powered electric generation, split between industrial and retail consumption. Car transport makes up the plurality of the remaining quarter for transportation, but that's easily mitigated with public transport (a thing we're headed for anyway as the economy shrinks overall and demand for new vehicles contracts).
And literacy? That’s not the same as being able to do a thing.
Knowing how to do a thing is central to doing it.
quickly they’re replenishing snowpack in the mountains and groundwater in the plains.
That's temporary, as you would know if you had paid attention.
Hence the need for advanced (specifically nitrogen fertilizer) agriculture techniques.
...
That whooshing sound was the point going right over your head.
We're past the point of fixing the soil. The advanced farming we've been doing is what has been depleting topsoil. When your growing regions change around you, it's not going to matter how much you try to compost.
The majority of climate fumes
And concrete production, which is a cornerstone (pun not intended) of our civilization. At this point, there is no viable electric alternative for commercial transport (Nikola is bankrupt, and the owner if going to jail for fraud), and there's no viable way to make public transport work in about 99% of the country. You would need to entirely re-build the infrastructure of the US in order for public transit to be practical for the majority of people, and we're already out of time. Let's say you could do that in a mere ten years (which is hopelessly, impossibly optimistic); you'd still have ten years of increasing carbon emissions that have already started to create a cascading, self-perpetuating chain reaction. We're already seeing a 1.5C rise in seawater temperatures, and that's over a decade earlier than was worried about. We're fucked. We're bleeding out from a severed artery, EMS hasn't even gotten in the bus, and you're saying, nah, it's just a little cut. It's fucking delusional. If we'd been doing this shit 40 years ago, when I was a kid and we were talking about stopping acid rain and holes in the ozone, maybe we wouldn't be fucked. But it's all too little, too late.
That’s temporary
That's cyclical. More heat generating larger stormfronts is the norm. A destabilized jetstream that triggers more polar drift is the norm. The fundamental hazard of the next century isn't simply going to be higher-than-average temperatures but enormous hurricanes plowing through urban areas, unleashing megatons of wind force and teraliters of water, onto real estate wholly unprepared for the damage.
But the notion that we're simply not going to have rain anymore because of rising heat is... incorrect on a few very basic levels.
We’re past the point of fixing the soil.
We've made more progress reclaiming desert territory in the last twenty years than humans have achieved in the last millennia. The question isn't whether we can but whether we choose to dedicate the human labor and industrial capital to actually do the thing.
And concrete production, which is a cornerstone (pun not intended) of our civilization.
The great thing about a shrinking global population is a decreased demand for new concrete.
At this point, there is no viable electric alternative for commercial transport
Denying that trains even exist.
there’s no viable way to make public transport work in about 99% of the country
Denying that buses actually exist
You would need to entirely re-build the infrastructure of the US
You would not. If anything, we've overbuilt infrastructure and would do well to tear down a bunch of the surplus and consolidate in denser urban centers. But we can get by just fine on what we've already built, assuming we're willing to maintain it and shift to bus/train transit over everyone driving their own cars.
Let’s say you could do that in a mere ten years (which is hopelessly, impossibly optimistic); you’d still have ten years of increasing carbon emissions that have already started to create a cascading, self-perpetuating chain reaction.
Industrial scale changes are going to take place whether we want them to or not. The current pace and direction of development isn't sustainable.
But huge drop-offs in human activity - the Mississippi cultural collapse being a classic example as is the Chernobyl zone - can and does result in quick reversals and reclamation of territory by wildlife.
Note, that is not 154 random people on the street. That is 154 US academics specializing in presidential politics, a much smaller total population.
That's not the way that I read that. If that's true, then the phrasing was very unclear.
I did not read this article in particular, but the actual report: http://www.brandonrottinghaus.com/uploads/1/0/8/7/108798321/presidential_greatness_white_paper_2024.pdf
Respondents included current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, which is the foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics, as well as scholars who had recently published peer-reviewed academic research in key related scholarly journals or academic presses. 525 respondents were invited to participate, and 154 usable responses were received, yielding a 29.3% response rate.
why in the unholy shitting fuck is MAGA considered a person
The cool thing about a propagandized population is it creates something akin to a hivemind people. All you really have to do is determine whether or not X person has fallen victim to a certain flavor of propaganda, and it's a decent indicator of whether or not that person believes several other falsehoods and behaves in accordance with actions laid out by the source of the propaganda. MAGA is a solid example of a propagandized people who behave and believe in very predictable ways: They skew alt-right, believe Trump is good for the country, range from racially apathetic to completely racist, champion capitalism and billionaires, are unable to be swayed by new information that runs counter to their established narrative, are aggressively white and Christian, and they generally align with Republican politicians across the board, as long as those politicians are in the same realm of insanity that Trump inhabits. MAGA is a philosophy born and raised by bad faith propaganda.
i would stop using the tagline they picked out and instead just call them right wing fascists
Doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easy.
Because they're all just clones