G7 2020

Emperor Tippy

Merchant of Death
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A thread to discuss the 2020 G7 meeting.

And to start things off; Macron being an idiot.

He decided to start things off by adding forest fires in Brazil to the agenda and threatening to tear up the EU-Mercosur trade deal if Brazil doesn't do something about said forest fires. Only to get publicly smacked down by Tusk and Merkel over it, and have Trump say that he refused to talk about the topic without Brazil present.
 

Kobold

The ambivalent trickster
Macron being a monumental idiot, you say? Bon-sang!
Yes, obviously Brazil actively wants some of the most massive and out of control forest fires in history blanketing their cities in dark soot and smoke, yes, clearly the Brazilians wanted this and had to be talked down to about the matter by a foreign President that likely doesn't know how to tie his own shoes. His Mommy/teacher/wife probably still does that for him too.
:rolleyes:
 

Marduk

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It makes me think that he knows that his political career in France doesn't have much of a promising future, so he may aswell make lemons out of the lemonade and make himself a martyr who has sacrificed the peak of a political career for environmentalist causes, hoping to use that to get some cushy position in the UN or other international organization that has cushy positions for environmental activists and would be eager to give one to a former G7 member state president with a reputation for pushing "climate change activism" and other green causes.
 

gral

Well-known member
Yes, obviously Brazil actively wants some of the most massive and out of control forest fires in history blanketing their cities in dark soot and smoke,

What's funny is that not even the 'massive forest fires' story is true. WARNING: Long-winded rant incoming, some data might be slightly wrong as I'm going from memory here.

July and August are the driest months of the year in the Amazon and Near-Amazon regions. It's also the season of the year for pasture clearing - note that here, I'm not talking about forest-burning to creature pasture(which is illegal); this tends to happen around November. What I'm talking here is maintenance of previously-existing pasture.

However, NASA satellite monitoring of forest fires shows:

1) Fires aren't happening in the Amazon, but in the savannah-forest transition belt around it, as well as Bolivia(where forest fires have exceeded the one million hectares mark, in large part due to an Evo Morales decree to allow large scale planting area-clearing by fire);
2) Up to August, forest fires are more numerous(and affected more area) than the January-August 2018 ones, but they are still below the historical average.

So, why have been people asking to pray for the Amazon? Brazilian internal politics.

It is well-known that the current President is... disliked by left-leaning people(which tend to make up for a large part of public servants in Brazil, as well as other sectors). In late-July, someone in INPE(the Brazilian organ responsible for satellite monitoring, among other things) leaked a partial report which implied a large leap(I forget the percentage, but it was easily a 20% increase in relation to the previous reference point) in rainforest destroyed by fire. Two problems with the leaked report:

1) The 'previous reference point' I mentioned wasn't the 2018 January-June period, but the 2015 one;
2) What the monitoring detects can be due to forest burning, can be due to other things. Data collected on this monitoring system has to be cross-reference with satellite photos in order to give you the final result. The report was leaked before that cross-referencing, and the way it was divulged implied that the raw data(which gives you a lot of false positives) was the final result.

This resulted in a minor scandal where the President criticized the report(implying foul play), the head of the INPE attacked the President and got fired for it, the opposition cried the Science Ministry was being purged and there were researchers 'afraid' for what would come and all that circus, which simmered down to give place to the newest 'scandal'.

However, one week ago, a cold front reached the city of São Paulo, and the clouds were so dark that even though it was mid-afternoon, night fell over the city. And those who had cried about the 'scientist purge' started screaming histerically that this was the fault of the 'Amazon forest fires', nevermind the fact that this only happened in a city which is more than 2,000 kilometres away from where the fires are supposed to happen(and that nowhere in between suffered from the same thing), nevermind that the fires in Bolivia were both closer and of much higher intensity. People started posting in Twitter satellite photos of cold front clouds saying it was the smoke of the fires.

And thus was the hashtag about praying for the Amazon born. It got really ridiculous when people started posting photos of other forest fires, like the dead rabbit(which happened in India), photos of the Portugal forest fires, and so on. No photo posted up to August 23rd on twitter, reddit and so on showed the fires that are happening now in Brazil; those are either from fires around the world of from previous Amazon fires(there's a 1989 photo going around; Macron's tweet about our house being on fire had a photo taken in, IIRC, 1999; the photographer that took this one died in 2004).

OK, so what does Macron have anything to do with this? Well, that is due to French internal and external politics. The EU-Mercosur trade agreement is deeply unpopular with French farmers(as well as Irish ones; those were the EU countries that heavily criticized Brazil over the fires and both threatened to block the deal - BTW, the deal will first be ratified in the European Parliament before being submitted for each country's approval - it will be years before the matter reach their hands). So what Macron is trying to do is bolster up his popularity. Thing is, Merkel doesn't want to lose the increased exports the deal will give her, so she promptly cuts Macron down at the knees. Trump is friendly towards Bolsonaro, and doesn't want the precedent of environmental concerns blocking down trade agreements. That is even more so for China, which has stated this is 'a manufactured crisis'.



 

Comrade Clod

Gay Space Communist
Is it really Macron being the idiot though? Climate change is a thing its just that the US republicans get all in a stitch about it.
 
D

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@gral , I really appreciate the insightful post on the subject, thank you.
 

Comrade Clod

Gay Space Communist
I don't think Macron was being an idiot; he pulled a political gambit taking advantage someone else's gambit. Thing is, he failed in a rather vexing manner.

I'm not even sure if I he can be said to have failed. Trump pulled a hissy and that was a given, but everyone expected that anyways.
 

gral

Well-known member
@gral , I really appreciate the insightful post on the subject, thank you.

You're welcome.

I'm not even sure if I he can be said to have failed. Trump pulled a hissy and that was a given, but everyone expected that anyways.

Actually, I say he failed not because of Trump, but because of Merkel and Tusk. Final arbiter of whether he failed or not would probably be the French elections.

EDIT: Some more news on the Amazon forest fires. There was a blip in forest fires on the 10th of August, and the Brazilian Police has announced some 70 people had been part of a "Fire Day" WhatsApp group. The "Fire Day" in question was scheduled for August 10th. Police investigations are ongoing, and there is evidence of at least one NGO being involved.
 
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Marduk

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Is it really Macron being the idiot though? Climate change is a thing its just that the US republicans get all in a stitch about it.
I'm willing to go even as far as to say that even if 100% of what the IPCC says on purely scientific matters regarding climate change is correct, with no stretches, model errors, honest mistakes or coloring in favor of alarmism, alarmists are still dangerous, easily exploitable fools, and causing political crisises for yourself just due to pushing for "fighting climate change" in a hamfisted way is still a bad idea, as that's only going to make some people think again when it comes to putting another alarmist into a position of power and influence.

"Climate change is a thing" is no unlimited license for any action, no matter how extreme, radical, unreasonable or self harming, as long as it's done in the name of countering it.
 

MementoMori

Well-known member
"Climate change is a thing" is no unlimited license for any action, no matter how extreme, radical, unreasonable or self harming, as long as it's done in the name of countering it.
It also doesn't help when the most ardent supporter of "climate change" are rich out of touch 1% that love to preach while on a yacht or private jets. Oh I love when they preach about reducing petroleum usage as an option while we are f'ing dependent on it. These rich privileged assh*le who have the resources to fly themselves to france to protest is a blight upon civilization.
 

Comrade Clod

Gay Space Communist
It also doesn't help when the most ardent supporter of "climate change" are rich out of touch 1% that love to preach while on a yacht or private jets. Oh I love when they preach about reducing petroleum usage as an option while we are f'ing dependent on it. These rich privileged assh*le who have the resources to fly themselves to france to protest is a blight upon civilization.

That is almost the opposite impression I get of who support the idea of climate change.
 
D

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I'm willing to go even as far as to say that even if 100% of what the IPCC says on purely scientific matters regarding climate change is correct, with no stretches, model errors, honest mistakes or coloring in favor of alarmism, alarmists are still dangerous, easily exploitable fools, and causing political crisises for yourself just due to pushing for "fighting climate change" in a hamfisted way is still a bad idea, as that's only going to make some people think again when it comes to putting another alarmist into a position of power and influence.

"Climate change is a thing" is no unlimited license for any action, no matter how extreme, radical, unreasonable or self harming, as long as it's done in the name of countering it.

Believing everything you said, I nonetheless feel that it demands targeted action to eliminate the largest sources of carbon pollution, and the modern Green movement does none of that, and wastes its energy on feel-good, ideologically correct efforts instead.
 

MementoMori

Well-known member
That is almost the opposite impression I get of who support the idea of climate change.
Then we're clearly at an impasse. Check out Greta Thunberg the idiot activist complaining about private airplanes, so she used a sailboat instead creating an even bigger carbon footprint. You want to know the best part? She didn't use it on the return trip using an airplane and needing somebody flown to new york to sail it back. These kind of people is the loudest and they're assh*les.
 

Marduk

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Moderator
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Believing everything you said, I nonetheless feel that it demands targeted action to eliminate the largest sources of carbon pollution, and the modern Green movement does none of that, and wastes its energy on feel-good, ideologically correct efforts instead.
I have major doubts over whether that's feasible at all, barring technological advances making said CO2 sources plainly obsolete, due to the issues of national sovereignty, and some countries being very ardent about exercising theirs, including in having lots of industry for own profit.
 

Comrade Clod

Gay Space Communist
Then we're clearly at an impasse. Check out Greta Thunberg the idiot activist complaining about private airplanes, so she used a sailboat instead creating an even bigger carbon footprint. You want to know the best part? She didn't use it on the return trip using an airplane and needing somebody flown to new york to sail it back. These kind of people is the loudest and they're assh*les.

A reminder that Greta Thurnburg is, last I checked 16 years old.
 

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