Global Warming

[fishonjazz]

Recycling, renewable energy, and reducing pollution are good things regardless of whether the world is warming.

Yep and I think that the global warming threat/scare/reality or whatever you want to call it has driven people to recycle more, reduce pollution, drive electric cars, create different energy sources like solar and wind, make and use carpool lanes, ride their bikes to work, etc etc.

I think if no one ever heard of global warming then all those things would be happening allot less

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

I have not heard about allot of the stuff you are speaking of. I think that we care about the environment and worry about global warming means that we rely less on oil and try to use clean renewable energy, recycle more and stuff like that.

I have not heard about governments doing things to cool the earth or building barriers to stop rising water levels (that might be a good idea anyways since tsunamis and hurricanes do occur regardless of global warming)

Massive expenditures are being made to comply with global warming related regulations. Whether any of the measures Siro mentioned are ever undertaken or not the economic impact of the fight against global warming is staggering.

 

[fishonjazz]

Massive expenditures are being made to comply with global warming related regulations. Whether any of the measures Siro mentioned are ever undertaken or not the economic impact of the fight against global warming is staggering.

Sometimes it's good to cover your bases on something as serious and devastating as global warming might be.

Lots of folks without allot of money spend lots o money on guns and ammo to protect themselves from robberies, rapists, and murderers that never end up manifesting themselves.

Sometimes insurance is a good thing to have even if you never suffer the calamity that you bought the insurance for.

 

[Gameface]

The biggest problem of "fake" (I don't think it's fake) global warming efforts are the financial penalties that would very disproportionately affect poorer people and the additional hurdles to economic development.

Much I hear from the global warming crowd is plain old anti-human. Like the solution for the benefit of our planet is to reduce the quality of life of the majority of people, all except the ones who can pay the penalties for their consumption and development.

If global warming is real (and regardless of if it is manmade or not I'm willing to accept that it's happening, and I'm also willing to admit the obvious fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that humans are pouring it into the atmosphere in unprecedented quantities) I want realistic ideas as to what harm it is going to cause. I hear a lot of overblown nonsense about teotwawki (the end of the world as we know it).

I see a sort of paradoxical argument that humans should reduce our quality of life so that the environment doesn't reduce our quality of life. I mean, if climate change is going to hurt us I'd rather let it hurt us than for us to hurt ourselves to reduce the amount the climate hurts us by some relatively small percentage. If that makes any sense.

 

[Siro]

I see a sort of paradoxical argument that humans should reduce our quality of life so that the environment doesn't reduce our quality of life. I mean, if climate change is going to hurt us I'd rather let it hurt us than for us to hurt ourselves to reduce the amount the climate hurts us by some relatively small percentage. If that makes any sense.

This is doubly so when you consider that quality of the environment is in direct proportion to your level of development. It baffles me that some people think that hurting people economically will somehow lead to a cleaner environment, when the exact opposite happened in their own countries. A billion people burning wood for warmth and food is vastly worse than oil burning power plants providing the same amount of energy. If we need to know the best way to improve our lives and fix our problems, we need the best possible information on said problems.

But then again, this discussion is moot. It's not like anyone in a position to make a difference is arguing that a campaign of disinformation is the best way to make a difference. So it's okay if Fish and Cy continue to believe that.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

My point is just f people being more conscious of their own consumption if they believe in global warming, not large scale governmental projects.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

The biggest problem of "fake" (I don't think it's fake) global warming efforts are the financial penalties that would very disproportionately affect poorer people and the additional hurdles to economic development.

Much I hear from the global warming crowd is plain old anti-human. Like the solution for the benefit of our planet is to reduce the quality of life of the majority of people, all except the ones who can pay the penalties for their consumption and development.

If global warming is real (and regardless of if it is manmade or not I'm willing to accept that it's happening, and I'm also willing to admit the obvious fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that humans are pouring it into the atmosphere in unprecedented quantities) I want realistic ideas as to what harm it is going to cause. I hear a lot of overblown nonsense about teotwawki (the end of the world as we know it).

I see a sort of paradoxical argument that humans should reduce our quality of life so that the environment doesn't reduce our quality of life. I mean, if climate change is going to hurt us I'd rather let it hurt us than for us to hurt ourselves to reduce the amount the climate hurts us by some relatively small percentage. If that makes any sense.

Not all advancements that have resulted in larger environmental impact are improving quality of life, at least not enough to justify the cost.

 

[JAZZGASM]

This is doubly so when you consider that quality of the environment is in direct proportion to your level of development. It baffles me that some people think that hurting people economically will somehow lead to a cleaner environment, when the exact opposite happened in their own countries. A billion people burning wood for warmth and food is vastly worse than oil burning power plants providing the same amount of energy. If we need to know the best way to improve our lives and fix our problems, we need the best possible information on said problems.

But then again, this discussion is moot. It's not like anyone in a position to make a difference is arguing that a campaign of disinformation is the best way to make a difference. So it's okay if Fish and Cy continue to believe that.

Right, people in positions of power would never give half truths to the general public to promote their goals of greed and power.

 

[Siro]

Right, people in positions of power would never give half truths to the general public to promote their goals of greed and power.

What does that have to do with anything? I was saying that the debate is about the details and extent of climate change. There is no public debate about whether GW should be promoted regardless of its truth just to influence people's actions.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

What does that have to do with anything? I was saying that the debate is about the details and extent of climate change. There is no public debate about whether GW should be promoted regardless of its truth just to influence people's actions.

Might there be a private debate though? I mean, if there are scientist who believe GW is false, then they must believe all the other scientist are somehow colluding to promote a falsity to promote some kind of agenda, right?

 

[Siro]

Might there be a private debate though? I mean, if there are scientist who believe GW is false, then they must believe all the other scientist are somehow colluding to promote a falsity to promote some kind of agenda, right?

Well no. I know a scientist who does not agree with the consensus in climate science. He thinks that the models depend on too many variables with too much uncertainty, making future predictions meaningless. He thus believes that other climate scientists are drawing too broad and confident a conclusion when the data requires a lot more caution. It has nothing to do with conspiracies.

Some climate scientists believe that while exact predictions are difficult, more general long term predictions can be reliably made with the current data. The language used has become more dramatic once the issue became politicized and people became emotionally involved, but that is just noise.

The argument you made would be a blow to reputation/public confidence of/in science, the health of the economy, the ability to conduct future research, the ability to conduct meaningful discourse about issues confronting us, and it would not provide any real solutions since it is based on falsehood, and the world doesn't run on magic. It is not a serious argument, and no scientist would actually advocate such an approach if they suspected that the data is false.

 

[Siro]

I'm very interested in the response to this video. This speaker seems extremely compelling to me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCy_UOjEir0

Watched the video, and I can't say I find those rebuttals of climate change all that impressive.

1. Temperature has changed only 0.8 degrees in 100 years. That's not much.

So +0.8K in 100 years is MASSIVE. His argument seems to be partly based around the fact that the number 0.8 sounds small, which I find incredible. Average global temperature has changed by only 0.5 degrees since the end of the last ice age!

This is an unprecedented change in Earth's history. Also a change in CO2 concentration of ~50ppm is huge. It has risen by around 30% in just 150 years. Think of that. We've dumped enough CO2 to change an amount of CO2 that had been stable for MILLIONS of years by 30%.

See that tiny steep rise at the very end of the CO2 curve? See how it's preceded by several million years of absolute flatness? It is a logarithmic scale, so we've increased the levels in 100 years to match those of 5 million years ago. It is the largest slope on the curve, despite the fact that as you go further back in time, time gets more and more compressed on the graph.


2. You can't even measure such small variations in average temperature!

Of course you can. Below is a link that shows that increase in average temperature pops up regardless of the method used. I'm gonna ignore the fact that if you really didn't think global temperature can be measured, you wouldn't have bothered dismissing the smallness of 0.8K.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm

From the page, here's the graph that shows LAND ONLY temps, since he suggested a conspiratorial reason for the fact that ocean temperature is now used along with land temp to calculate averages. You know, instead of the fact that the ocean covers most of the Earth and plays a huge role in governing the climate.

3. And who is to say what is optimal anyway?

There is no such thing as optimal. There is only the incidental conditions that we find ourselves in. Those are the conditions that the current biosphere finds itself in, and the one humans built their civilization around. Had we lived in the Triassic, sea level would have been hundreds of feet above current levels, and we would have strove to keep it that way. What matters is that changes that used to take millions of years to occur are now happening over decades due to human activity. There is no way evolutionary mechanisms are capable of adapting to such rapid changes, and global climate change will undoubtedly cause a mass extinction event.

Human civilization has also been built around current conditions. Changing climate means some previously fertile areas will no longer be commercially viable. Previously habitable areas will be submerged. Any change in ocean current would have SERIOUS effects on global weather, and would disrupt the lives of billions. Compare the difference in climate between Alaska and Norway (similar latitude, different ocean current). What is Scandinavia suddenly shifts to the barely livable Alaskan climate?

It would also mean, of course, that some areas will become more fertile, and other areas will become prime ocean-front real estate. But adapting to this new reality will be costly.


4. Even though temperature has risen over the past 100 years, life is better than ever.

Not really relevant. The Earth has a certain capacity to "absorb" the immediate effects of rapid change, but we know for a fact that conditions throughout Earth's history had been very different than conditions today. Our current conditions are "optimal" for us since we evolved around them. Any change will come with an environmental and human cost.

I don't want to spend my night debating climate change, but there are vast number of resources on the internet for those seeking an education on the subject. And the science shows that the temperature is increasing, that it is increasing due to human activities, and that there will be consequences to the increase.

The debate should not be about whether the planet is warming. We already know it is. It should be about the extent to which it is warming, the precise mechanisms causing and mitigating the change in climate, the period over which the changes will unfold, the details of this unfolding, and the best ways to tackle the effects of climate change in the short and long run.