I am amazed by the Roman sense of stick-to-itiveness . The Romans were not Sailors. The Carthaginians totally outclassed them in naval technology, but the Romans kept experimenting with ships until they destroyed the Carthaginian navy.

In the Second Punic War Carthage had the brilliant General Hannibal, who defeated many Roman armies, but Rome kept coming back from those defeats and finally won. In WW2 nobody could conceive of how the Soviet Red Army could possibly come back from it's crushing defeats in 1941, and yet it did. Likewise the US had to recover from the Pearl Harbor disaster and all of the terrible defeats of early 1942.

I keep coming back to my central point. The side that can recover best from it's defeats will generally win. Carthage, like Germany and Japan lacked the innate ability to bounce back from crushing defeats.

To get back to the Soviets, I think it is useful to compare the WW2 Soviets to WWI Czarist Russia. The Russian defeats in WWI were not nearly as bad as the 1941 Soviet defeats. Czarist Russia collapsed in WWI.

You sure like to skip around a lot. I like the Rome-Carthage issue. I cannot answer for God, but I have thought about why Rome triumphed and Carthage lost. I think it is similar to why the Allies beat the Axis in WW2.

In both cases the eventual losers had great early advantages and won important victories. Carthage like the Axis had a better military, certainly a better navy. However Rome like the Allies was able to absorb and come back stronger from the early defeats. Rome and the Allies also showed a great ability to learn and adapt.

Carthage and the Axis both lost because despite their early advantages, they could not come back from defeats, once the tide turned against them.

Rome was in it's young adult stage and was able to recover from devastating defeats during the Punic Wars. Contrast that with the latter Western Roman Empire, which could not recover in the 4th and 5th centuries AD from Barbarian attacks. That was Geriatric Rome.

In WW2 both Russia and the US had to come back from early defeats that seemed insurmountable. How very youthful of them. Older Empires cannot do that.

" You must inform OPP what you think about the Timurid Mongol feller, I think he was a bad chap, but the question remains, why on earth did God employ him, if you can answer that, I guarantee a sizeable reward will be yours to keep. "

Why does God allow evil to have it's day ? No idea. Why did God allow Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. to murder millions ? no idea.

It is easier to analyze their net influences on history. The bad parts are easy. The constructive results are more difficult. As far as Tamerlane, even though he was a Muslim, he set back the causes of Islam. A good percentage of the civilizations and human beings he destroyed were Muslim. He also delayed the inevitable conquest of Constantinople by half a century when he put Bayezid in a cage.

" You must inform OPP what you think about the Timurid Mongol feller, I think he was a bad chap, but the question remains, why on earth did God employ him, if you can answer that, I guarantee a sizeable reward will be yours to keep. "

Why does God allow evil to have it's day ? No idea. Why did God allow Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. to murder millions ? no idea.

It is easier to analyze their net influences on history. The bad parts are easy. The constructive results are more difficult. As far as Tamerlane, even though he was a Muslim, he set back the causes of Islam. A good percentage of the civilizations and human beings he destroyed were Muslim. He also delayed the inevitable conquest of Constantinople by half a century when he put Bayezid in a cage.

I can see us having a good conversation on the Mongols. While I have holes in my knowledge because I study things as I come across them, I know quite a bit about the Mongol invasions. You seem to know a few things I don't about Batu and the Golden Horde. My point is that the ravishes of the Mongols had a lot to do with the Russian acceptance of Authoritarian leaders.

One of my favorite Mongol characters is Tamerlane. That guy gives Ghengis Khan a run for his money in terms of savagery and brilliance as a military leader. The legend, whether or not it is true, is that when he died he warned everyone not to disturb his tomb. " An evil worse than me will be unleashed on you. " In June of 1941 Soviet scientists opened up his tomb and examined his remains. The very next day Hitler invaded the USSR.

**************************************

CLIMATE SCIENCE

**************************************

I am not a scientist (except maybe in manner of thinking, occasionally).

I've taken very few physical science classes after Freshman year in hs. Chem & Physics in hs 50 years ago, 1 general sci class in college; all totalling only 5 semesters. I've taken math classes which occasionally help me some but they're not the same thing as science classes.

I do have a strong opinion about C*****e C****e, anyway. Presumably I'm biased. (Virtually everybody's biased about some things.)

HOW MUCH WORK WOULD IT TAKE TO FIND OUT?

How much work would it take a lay person such as myself to find out whether "g****l w*****g is real" or "g****l w*****g is a h**x"? A lot, I think. S/he would have to study scientific papers and discover, first-hand by reading and understanding, which ones are well done and which ones are shoddily done.

Is there a way to do so without bias? Probably. As above. But it would take enough work that hardly anyone would do it. A dedicated scientist might do it. But even scientists can be biased or lazy. I'm guessing most scientists (good, useful people though they are) are either biased or lazy, just like almost all of us.

THE USUAL SHORTCUT: JUDGE THE CHARACTER OF THE MESSENGER

The usual approach to such questions, I think, is to judge the factions' characters. For example, such and such group, think tank, industry, or political party have wasted our time in the past, so we're not going to pay attention to them now. Or we may judge their manner of expression. For example we might think that those prone to inflammatory statements, or derogatory utterances about _other_ peoples' characters, or incomplete sentences, are less worthy.

THE LAY-PERSON'S GUIDE TO EVERYTHING

This evening I spent a half hour or so researching it in Duckduckgo.com (a search engine on the web, which claims it doesn't track the user -- therefore avoiding some bias in its list of results). I entered search queries such as:

g****l w*****g nations science leaders

I was looking for an enumeration of nations and nations' official science leaders who have given official statements about g****l w*****g (or "c*****e c****e" which is a phrase used more often lately).

(Why would they used to say "g****l w*****g" but now instead they would say "c*****e c****e"? Maybe because "warming" is so often misinterpreted as a description about _weather_; whereas the g****l w*****g of _climate_ is the real topic that the scientists are discussing.)

STRUCK GOLD!

This Wikipedia article is probably as good as I'm going to get in one evening:

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

Here's a rough partial summary of it:

"Statements by scientific organizations of national or international standing":

These are classified by whether they agree, disagree, or are noncommittal with respect to the "IPCC view".

IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on C*****e C****e

The "IPCC view" (in 2007 -- the date cited in this Wikipedia article) is (summarized by me):

======================

THE IPCC VIEW:

======================

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal ..."

and

"Most of the g****l w*****g since the mid-20th century is very likely due to human activities."

and

"... Overall, net effects are more likely to be strongly negative ..." where negative means bad.

Etc.


------------------------------------

CONCURRING:

------------------------------------

(in 2001) "the science academies of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom."

(in 2005) "The national science academies of" "Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States".

(in 2007) "the national science academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States". And: "the science academies of Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, as well as the African Academy of Sciences".

(in 2008) (similar to 2007)

(in 2009) (similar to 2007)

(in 2007) also: "the General Assembly of the Polish Academy of Sciences".

(in 2006) the "American Association for the Advancement of Science"

(in 2008) the "Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies"

(in 2001) the "United States National Research Council"

Plus about 40 or so other organizations (too numerous to list here but if you're curious you can see them in the same Wikipedia article).

---------------------------------

NON-COMMITTAL:

---------------------------------

"American Association of Petroleum Geologists"

"American Institute of Professional Geologists"

---------------------------------

OPPOSING:

---------------------------------

It says:

"See also: List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of g****l w*****g" (that's a link) (I did not bother to follow it; it would be a list of scientists, not a list of international nor national official organizations.)

(As you can see, I'm favoring the national and international scientific bodies, rather than individual scientists. Does this reflect some bias that I have? Maybe.)

and:

"Since 2007, when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists released a revised statement,[24] no national or international scientific body rejects the findings of human-induced effects on c*****e c****e."

----------------------------

My Conclusion:

----------------------------

I already said I was presumably biased. The Wikipedia article has not _changed_ my opinion; it confirms it (rather strongly, I think).

A quick reading shows that (according to that Wikipedia article) the only mentioned "national or international scientific body" which _might_have_ rejected "the findings of human-induced effects on c*****e c****e" would be: (drum roll ...):

The American Association of Petroleum Geologists

(does that word "Petroleum" suggest a bias?)

and a closer reading reveals that as of 2007 even THEY didn't reject the findings.

Their (AAPG's) backing off from the topic makes interesting reading; there are two paragraphs about that in the same article, in the "Non-committal" section.

The whole Wikipedia article could be biased; we don't know what it leaves out. (And, I didn't even bother to look at the list of dissenting scientists -- I was only considering the nat'l & internat'l org's of scientists.)

And, the dates indicate the article may be as much as 9 or 10 years old.

Nonetheless I think it's convincing.

Let someone post an opposing article, similar to this Wikipedia article -- go ahead, go where even the AAPG does not dare to go.

My conclusion is: yes, of course g****l w*****g is real and humanity's causing a lot of it and humanity should stop emitting so much greenhouse gases. Duh. And it's urgent and very important.

(And (in my additional opinion, meanwhile), even aside from all that about g****l w*****g, humanity should stop polluting so much anyway -- even if the "g****l w*****g" issue _were_ a h**x. Pollution's been a huge problem all along, even before anyone identified "g****l w*****g" as an issue.)

So then he is not a good source for research ? I am currently reading a book called The Russians, by Hedrick Smith. It came out in the early 1980s. In my current job, I sometimes have a few hours between jobs, and I will occasionally fill that time in a public library. I missed a few months over the summer and now I am starting up again.

Mr. Smith spent years in the Soviet Union during the 70s. He spent a lot of time in conversations with Soviet citizens of all classes. He analyzes the Stalin years mostly from the remembrances of older Soviets. You definitely get a sense of the ultimate demise of the Soviet Economic System. A super power that could challenge the US militarily and in space, could not keep it's grocery store shelves from running empty for months at a time. He delves into Khrushchev's attempts to fix the system and also Brezhnev's failures and why they failed.

I hope to soon read the successor book The New Russians which deals with the 1980s.

Smith gets into the essential Russian character. I believe their history dooms them to authoritarian government. I now understand how fortunate America is, for having descended from Englishmen. Starting with the Magna Carta the English had a tradition of successfully challenging Despots. The American Revolution was in some ways only a continuation of that struggle.

Russia has a history of being ruled by the worst of human beings. From the mid 1200s when the Mongols ravaged their cities and countryside, their only hope was cruel strong men. The Czars filled that role. Lenin and Stalin were essentially Czars.