I am not a climate scientist, but the reports that lay out the scientific case as readily available and some are accessibly written for lay audiences. In legal terms, the evidence for global warming is between "a preponderance of evidence" (the low end) and "beyond a reasonable doubt" (the high end).
All of the CO2 we are releasing through the use of fossil fuels was in the air before -- back in the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago. It was very warm back then, and algae and higher plants grew like crazy for millions of years. The plants died, accumulated, were buried, and eventually were folded under geologic formations where they were pressure cooked into oil and coal.
Since the late 19th Century, we have burned roughy 1 trillion barrels worth of oil. We have, and are burning trillions of tons of coal, thus releasing into the atmosphere CO2 that has been out of circulation for many millions of years.
That's the basic story.
Lots of variables go into climate, some human produced, some not. CO2 is one (big) factor in global warming, but it is one among several. There are other gases (methane, H2O, Nitrous oxide (N. 2O)Ozone, Chlorofluorocarbons, mainly) that contribute, some more potently than CO2. When gases trapped in ice (from deep cores) are analyzed, abnormally large amounts of these gases are not found. These gases (particularly CO2) begin to show up in the last 200 years--the period corresponding to the industrial revolution and huge increases in fossil fuel burning.
We can't ignore global warming because the effects are profound and pervasive, to which we are already witnesses. Bigger changes are in progress now. It may be the case that there is little we can do about it. More likely, we can have at least a moderating effect on climate change, and since this is the only place we have, we would do well to get on with whatever we can do.
In legal terms, the evidence for global warming is between "a preponderance of evidence" (the low end) and "beyond a reasonable doubt" (the high end).
I think one reason for the shift in terminology from "global warming" to "climate change" is that the latter is less controversial; of course the climate changes over time. The question then becomes the degree to which human activity is the cause of its detrimental aspects.
Lots of variables go into climate, some human produced, some not.
I agree - my view is that the proposition that human activity has had and is having some negative effect on climate is "beyond a reasonable doubt," but so far there is not "a preponderance of evidence" that human activity is the sole or even dominant reason for allof the worrisome climate changes that we are observing.
It may be the case that there is little we can do about it. More likely, we can have at least a moderating effect on climate change, and since this is the only place we have, we would do well to get on with whatever we can do.
I am on board with this, but it will require reaching widespread consensus on both the problem and the solutions. For better and for worse, politics will be involved because people will be involved.
I think one reason for the shift in terminology from "global warming" to "climate change" is that the latter is less controversial; of course the climate changes over time. The question then becomes the degree to which human activity is the cause of its detrimental aspects.
Your last sentence is a non sequitur. The question of human contribution has no relation to whether the whole issue is nicknamed "global warming" or "climate change." Anyway, whatever the political expediency of one term or the other, "climate change" is a more accurate term, because the process is much more complex and diverse than just the rise of average global temperature (which does take place, of course).
I agree - my view is that the proposition that human activity has had and is having some negative effect on climate is "beyond a reasonable doubt," but so far there is not "a preponderance of evidence" that human activity is the sole or even dominant reason for allof the worrisome climate changes that we are observing.
And you are basing this conclusion on your own extensive but unpublished research in climate science? Because published research paints quite a different picture.
but so far there is not "a preponderance of evidence" that human activity is the sole or even dominant reason for all of the worrisome climate changes that we are observing.
Says who?
Without even having to quote specifics, it is general knowledge that human consumption of fossil fuels has injected hundreds of billions of tons of gases into the atmosphere since the advent of industrial civilization.
Is there any good reason to believe that this would not have an effect on the composition of the atmosphere?
'Inconvenient Truth' showed ten years ago that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been clearly measurable since the 1970's when observations started being made in Hawaii.
It's a clear causal chain. But there's also a lot of disinformation circulating in the form fear, uncertainty and doubt being propogated by merchants of doubt on behalf of vested interests in the energy industry.
Is there any good reason to believe that this would not have an effect on the composition of the atmosphere?
Of course not, but it is another matter to claim that this is the only or primary reason why we are seeing detrimental changes to the global climate. Even if I grant that there is "a preponderance of evidence" for this, it does not rise to the level of being "beyond a reasonable doubt."
Pierre-NormandMarch 02, 2017 at 21:32#588610 likes
Even if I grant that there is "a preponderance of evidence" for this, it does not rise to the level of being "beyond a reasonable doubt."
This is a standard of evidence that is required before a jury delivers a verdict of criminal culpability, such that the convicted individual is liable to be jailed. If the way in which you are cooking you chicken is liable to burn the house down, then "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" isn't required to justify finding a safer way to cook your chicken.
Reply to Pierre-Normand As I said before, I am on board with doing what we can, but it will require reaching widespread consensus on both the problem and the solutions.
Pierre-NormandMarch 02, 2017 at 21:38#588670 likes
'Inconvenient Truth' showed ten years ago that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been clearly measurable since the 1970's when observations started being made in Hawaii.
Just picking a nit: The continuous Mauna Loa CO2 record reaches back to 1958. There are earlier spot observations when Charles Keeling was refining his pioneering measurement methods.
Pierre-NormandMarch 02, 2017 at 21:42#588680 likes
As I said before, I am on board with doing what we can, but it will require reaching widespread consensus on both the problem and the solutions.
The main obstacle to reaching consensus on the existence of the problem (and the anthropogenic cause of global warming) is the politically motivated resistance of Republicans in the American Congress.
I think one reason for the shift in terminology from "global warming" to "climate change" is that the latter is less controversial; of course the climate changes over time. The question then becomes the degree to which human activity is the cause of its detrimental aspects.
Average world temperatures will go up, which the earlier research focused on and is still true. Midway the 80s this was common knowledge even with the big oil companies who often pioneered the research back then. 1985 is the year Shell wrote its internal memo on the greenhouse effect.
1991 Shell published a movie Climate of Concern. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/28/shell-knew-oil-giants-1991-film-warned-climate-change-danger
ExxonMobil knew in 1981 (well, just Exxon back then).
1988 the IPCC is established and Hansen, a climatologist, states there's a 99% confidence level that recent temperature rise of 1/2 degree is caused by human activity. That it will be paired with more extreme weather also becomes clear, which is why it's a panel on climate change (IPCC duh). So there wasn't a shift in terminology. At least not in the past 30 years.
1989 Shell adjusts designs of oil platforms to withstand bigger waves due to expected changes in weather. That's the same year the Global Climate Coalition is set up by US oil companies with the express purpose to emphasise uncertainty in the research and sow disinformation, because of the bottom line.
I am on board with doing what we can, but it will require reaching widespread consensus on both the problem and the solutions.
The problem is, such comments represent the very kind of attitude which makes reaching consensus impossible. If, as pointed out, you demand the kind of evidence required to reach a verdict in a criminal trial, then how would it be possible to reach a consensus with a 'jury' of billions of people, hundreds of nations, thousands of interested parties?
Already, it is very late, maybe too late. From today's NY Times:
Next week, Mr. Trump plans to sign an executive order directing Mr. Pruitt to start the lengthy legal process of unwinding Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations for cutting greenhouse pollution from coal-fired power plants. Those regulations are the linchpin of the last administration’s program to meet the nation’s obligations to reduce climate emissions under the Paris agreement.
I am on board with doing what we can, but it will require reaching widespread consensus on both the problem and the solutions.
Who, exactly, has to reach consensus? About 97% of climate scientists have reached a consensus. Everyone doesn't have to join the consensus. There are, though, a few thousand top echelon decision makers that need to join the consensus.
The main obstacle to reaching consensus on the existence of the problem (and the anthropogenic cause of global warming) is the politically motivated resistance of Republicans in the American Congress.
Exactly. And their corporate pay masters.
James Howard Kunstler [World Made By Hand series of novels and several non-fiction books on oil, particularly The Long Emergency] §§§ - next post - has written convincingly of what life without oil will be like. In a nutshell, life without oil means much, much more animal and human powered work, fewer people, and the loss of everything that cheap abundant oil made possible--which is a good share of the world wide culture.
I think some people are paralyzed by the awfulness of what the absence of cheap abundant oil, coal, electricity, transportation, etc. mean. It means an end to life as we know it. Some of those people are in positions of national power. If they aren't paralyzed, they may be too shocked to deal with it. I found the details in Kunstler's books pretty unappetizing.
THE END OF OIL won't happen abruptly, and it won't happen tomorrow (literally, March 3, 2017). But we are running out, and in the meantime the climate is warming up and changing unpredictably. We have time to make other plans, other arrangements. We have time to adjust our sensibilities -- but we should now be in route to those ends, instead of dickering about whether it is a real problem.
§§§ Kunstler's fiction depicts the worst possible case for resource depletion. It's great post-apocalyptic stuff. But... The Long Emergency's main point is that cheap abundant oil is simply not replaceable by any technology that we know of.
Not solar, not wind, not tidal energy, not hydro, not geothermal, not biomass, not conversion of garbage to crude petroleum, nothing. All of the proposed solutions offer a small percentage of the power and benefit we get from cheap oil and coal, and all those small percentages add up to maybe a quarter of the power we need to operate the world in the manner to which we are accustomed.
The main drawback of oil (in the context of life as we know it) is that its supply is not infinite. We've used up half, and much of the remaining half will be much harder and more expensive to obtain. The end of oil (coming sometime around mid-century or soon after to an exhausted oil field near you) doesn't mean the end of civilization, but it does mean an end to our accustomed and preferred way of living.
Nye sure pleas for everyone to take the science serious.
Ignoring scientific findings is kind of like burying the head in the sand. Incredulity?
Can we afford simply claiming that climate changes aren't due to human activities (going against consensus among subject matter experts), or that we can't do anything anyway (not particularly substantiated, anti-proactive)?
It seems the potential stakes are too high, for future generations in particular (not just humans), to simply dismiss.
Besides, what bad might come of limiting everyone using the ecosphere as their own sewer?
If the politics doesn't follow up on the science, then it's kind of useless in this case.
Changes in climate are due to many, many factors. One of the major factors is probably the enormous amount of crap that we release in the air (after all everyone needs to make a trip to the Amazon in order to save it) and pour into the ground. The overall impact of such pollution is hard to say but it is reasonable to suspect that this amount of junk isn't healthy for life.
The iconic blossoming cherry trees that ring the Tidal Basin [in Washington] have symbolized the arrival of spring for nearly a century. This year, they will be one more sign of wacky and warming weather.
The National Park Service, which maintains the trees, said on Wednesday that the pink and white blossoms could reach their peak as soon as March 14, a full three weeks earlier than normal. If the flowers indeed pop on that date, it will be the earliest bloom on record.
And you can bet your boots that there will be members of Congress who say, it's the Good Lord's doing, what height of [liberal atheist] folly to believe that humans have anything to do with it.
Reply to Bitter Crank The good thing about End of Oil is that that will (belatedly) solve global warming as well. There's a limit to how much stuff we can burn after all.
Metaphysician UndercoverMarch 03, 2017 at 13:56#590090 likes
It is my opinion that the effects which human activity have had, and continue to have, on atmospheric ozone, has a far greater influence on climate change than does CO2 emissions.
Atmospheric ozone O3, has come about due to the presence of free oxygen O2. O2 is not native to earth's atmosphere, it was put there by the activities of living creatures and it's an important catalyst for the evolution of higher life forms. In its interaction with sunlight, some O2 becomes O3, and O3 is very effective at absorbing certain wavelengths of UV radiation into the stratosphere. This energy is intercepted and prevented from heating the earth's surface, and is later radiated to space. Fluctuations in solar UV radiation are considerable, so O3 plays an important role in stabilizing the earth's surface temperature, and therefore the climate in general.
Overall, the intensity fluctuations of solar radiation are small. In long-term average they amount to only the fraction of a percent of the total irradiance. The ultraviolet radiation, however, shows greater fluctuations and is also regarded as particularly climate-effective. Since the Earth's atmosphere absorbs this radiation to a large extent, it influences critical chemical reactions in the upper layers of the atmosphere. Indirectly, these processes can also affect the temperature at the Earth's surface.
I think some people are paralyzed by the awfulness of what the absence of cheap abundant oil, coal, electricity, transportation, etc. mean. It means an end to life as we know it. Some of those people are in positions of national power. If they aren't paralyzed, they may be too shocked to deal with it.
I think that the unwillingness to recognize and act upon the issues raised by climate change and natural resource exhaustion is more commonly caused by indifference than by shock and paralysis.
Contrary to common denialist conspiracies, governments hate to do anything that doesn't serve some immediate, tangible purpose, preferably with a turnaround within one or two election cycles. The only thing that would motivate them to expend limited resources and manpower on an issue that will be someone else's problem some time in an indefinite future is a strong public demand for action. (And that's democratic governments - undemocratic ones don't much care about anything other than staying in power, stuffing their pockets, and perhaps stroking their egos with grandiose projects; public welfare has little correlation with those goals.)
As for the common folk, especially of the conservative-libertarian temperament, their primary motivation tends to be self-interest. The fate of future generations is too abstract a concern. What have future generations ever done for me? Nothing, so fuck them. They want to take all they can for themselves, and they want it now. They will only sacrifice their wealth and comfort under compulsion, and future generations are not around to compel anyone.
Of course, put starkly like this, these are not very PC positions, and in any case, most people don't reason them out. Instead, these implicit positions motivate their reasoning about ostensibly scientific, factual matters. So we get a lot of hedging about how science is uncertain and evidence is insufficient.
VagabondSpectreMarch 04, 2017 at 23:14#591710 likes
Climate change is definitely occurring...
Climate change (a warming trend) is definitely being accelerated by human emissions and land use (see: "greenhouse effect")...
For some reason though it doesn't worry me a whole lot. During my quintessential 90's childhood I was constantly told my Michio Kaku et al that unless I turn all my lights out that I'm going to wind up destroying the planet. When I was 15 or so, having failed my quest, was then informed that it was too late, and that the earth is irrevocably fucked, and that the noble polar bear will soon die out, and that the seas will rise, and that mankind will need to emigrate to underground cave networks in the future dystopian spaghetti western that we all get to enjoy while the last remaining spiritually pure humans escape to space in search of a new and unblemished home-world.
It sounded kinda cool I must admit... They probably should have focused on something cuter than polar bears as a means of guilting my younger self... (penguins?...)...
So here I am today, in basically the precise year which twenty years ago was hailed as the beginning of the end, and instead of worry or anxiety, the main emotions I feel toward climate change are curiosity and a kind of urgency or excitement. I look at climate change and instead of focusing only on the ways in which it can be or is bad for life, I am much more interested to know about the ways in which we can take advantage of and exploit it.
For example(s), the crops that are lost in the equatorial regions through drought and bad weather resulting from global warming might be a fraction of what we could gain by exploiting longer and better growing seasons farther and farther north and south. As the oceans warm, what long term effects will this have on sea life? While some plankton and fish species decline, which species of plankton and fish might thrive in the warmer waters? Could they possibly become more abundant? Which mammals stand to benefit? As glaciers recede, what possible use can we make of the land it reveals and what fuels and minerals might it contain? As higher CO2 levels basically means more fuel for plants (along with warmer temperatures), what will the overall effect of globally increased vegetation growth be? What will actually become of global weather patterns? Will the future be predominantly a desert or something else?
It is cliché, but the Chinese word for "crisis" also means "opportunity", and I think it applies in this case. Out of a natural desire to be safe humans tend to air on the side of caution when it comes to protecting the things we come to value, which is why we disproportionately focus on the ways in which things can go wrong and where appropriate air on the side of alarm-ism. Climate change does pose definite challenges and risks that we would all rather not have to ever face, but if we can adapt to these changes successfully enough then there might actually be some rewards on the other side, which is especially important given the additional resources we constantly require to satisfy our growing population.
Worry about climate change is useful to motivate masses undoubtedly, and I'm not suggesting that we should not limit our GHG emissions, because the slower climate change occurs the more easily and successfully we can adapt to it, and adapt we must. Population growth alone ensures our future emissions, and so no matter what we do GHG driven warming and the resulting climate change is inevitable (see deforestation and agriculture). The war on climate change was probably lost before it had ever begun but still it rages with the same ultra-doom's day attitude that had swayed me in my youth. The result of this attitude was that I had to spend quite a bit of time trying to actually learn about what was real and what wasn't when it came to the short and long term effects of global warming along with a sensible picture of it's human causes. Now that I finally understand why and how no amount of emission reducing accords and hippie-style earth-ship communes is going to stop the climate from eventually changing, my predominant focus has shifted from convincing people to halt or reverse climate change through major sacrifice because the the sky will fall, to instead accept it as an inevitability. The future is scary, and in order to get there we must be intrepid. It's time for the Chicken Littles and Foghorn Leghorns of the world to stop rocking the boat in opposite directions (We're doomed vs man-made climate change isn't real) so that the Eggberts of the world can actually figure out where to steer it, lest we crash...
The boat sped on down the river. The river was getting narrower. There was some kind of a dark tunnel ahead - a great round tunnel that looked like an enormous pipe - and the river was running right into the tunnel. And so was the boat! "Row on!' shouted Mr Wonka, jumping and waving his stick in the air. 'Full speed ahead!' And with the Oompa-Loompas rowing faster than ever, the boat shot into the pitch-dark tunnel, and all the passengers screamed with excitement.
'How can they see where they're going?' shrieked Violet Beauregarde in the darkness.
'There's no way of knowing where they're going!' cried Mr Wonka, hooting with laughter.
'There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction they are going!
There's no knowing where they're rowing,
Or which way the river's flowing!
Not a speck of light is showing,
So the danger must be growing,
For the rowers keep on rowing,
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing...'
It's not skepticism. To be skeptical is to withhold belief when there is little or no evidence to support that belief, and is the approach of all good scientists (and, one might argue, all good philosophers).
What the climate change deniers are doing is almost the opposite of skepticism. They are refusing to accept the mountain of evidence that is before them. Sometimes they even start saying nonsense like 'where's the proof?', showing that they don't even understand the difference between science and algebra.
David Hume would be turning in his grave at the attempt of the FUD-merchants to appropriate the honourable term 'skeptic' (except that, being an acute student of human nature, he'd be more likely to just observe that it is no surprise that greed, extremist ideology and self-delusion led to a failure to act on an unfolding catastrophe). Let's not do their work for them by yielding the term skeptic.
So here I am today, in basically the precise year which twenty years ago was hailed as the beginning of the end, and instead of worry or anxiety, the main emotions I feel toward climate change are curiosity and a kind of urgency or excitement. I look at climate change and instead of focusing only on the ways in which it can be or is bad for life, I am much more interested to know about the ways in which we can take advantage of and exploit it.
In my quintessential middle age, I was also reading science and hearing about global warming. Warming was something of a relief because 20 years earlier, scientists were worried about nuclear winter: 40,000+ nuclear weapons aimed at the USSR and the US: What would happen to the climate if the cold war turned hot? The dust-saturated atmosphere would reflect too much solar energy and we would all freeze -- those who weren't killed by blasts or radiation -- not sure how few that would be.
It's not too late: most of the atomic and hydrogen bombs are still around.
But here we are, and global warming is delivering on-time changes. The arctic will be ice free all year round pretty quick, and the polar bears will not have ice flows to hunt from. They will probably starve. Or they will begin eating humans whom they can catch and eat on the thawing tundra. There will be enough humans to go around as we all flee the heat further south. My only request of the bears is that they totally kill us before they begin the banquet.
I see it as my job here to run the lawnmower of bad news over the garden hose of optimism.
While it will warm up, for sure, it will warm up too fast for environments to adapt. We can't just move banana and pineapple production up to Kansas, and wheat up to Hudson's Bay. The weather over North America is already becoming a bit less stable than it has been, and more violent storm systems could well make it difficult to successfully grow a lot of anything.
The population will shrink. It won't be nice, but as food production falls, billions that the earth can no longer feed will die. That will bring consumption closer to production at a much lower level.
Warmer oceans will suit some sea animals--probably not the ones we like a lot. Maybe we'll get more lethal stinging jelly fish, poisonous sea snakes, killer sharks, and deadly algae blooms. The ocean will be more acidic.
Remember, Nature bats last.
VagabondSpectreMarch 05, 2017 at 05:42#592110 likes
Reply to Bitter Crank The poor bears... We really should get some pelts for posterity while supplies last!
BitterCrank:The population will shrink. It won't be nice, but as food production falls, billions that the earth can no longer feed will die. That will bring consumption closer to production at a much lower level.
I don't exactly see it as a sure thing that the population is going to actually shrink anytime soon, even in the face of drastic climate change. Local famines may cause population declines in certain regions, but unless the global economy is completely compromised there would still be growth overall. We might not be able to rapidly expand north and southward with kiwis and coconuts in tow, but we can take cow shit and vegetables pretty much everywhere. If Monsanto is to be believed we'll have fast growing low-light -cold-resistant pumpkin-spice leeks before you Americans even cross the 49th parallel! Massive new and high-density agriculture simply must be contrived through technology or sheer man-power lest we actually get to the point where widespread human hunger tests the limits of our food production. I think it would take a global catastrophe, or a long and resisted period of global depression, to actually put population growth into the negative.
Nature might take 100 years to adapt and bounce back through over fancy and highly praised "natural selection" (bleh! Who needs it! We burned that bridge with an industrial blow-torch anyhow!), but when humans feel threatened in large enough numbers it sometimes leads to drastic change. As the cost of living rises and global population growth continues to slow, out of greed and foresight markets will eventually divest toward more basic needs and infrastructure will slowly be adapted. The earth's population has grown by over two billion humans since my birth, and around 6 billion in the last 100 years. This kind of insane growth has got to come to an end at some point, and global population growth has been slowing since the 60's, but I have a hard time guessing when our ability to improve, expand, and innovate will finally succumb to the realities of a harsh and indifferent world that dictates we've lived beyond our means (If nature is our mother we're her teenage daughter who won't take no for an answer). The major problems facing our species currently - energy, fuel/fuel technology, climate - are and will be the center of focus of what are set to become the most lucrative industries and markets in human history. Perhaps burning fossil fuels such as we have is a one-hit wonder; our one trick that we will never surpass, but I say nay to that. The stakes, and the payoffs, have never been higher. I say let it ride.
All the works of Monsanto, Syngenta, Land 'O Lakes, DuPont, Groupe Limagrain, Bayer, et al assume plentiful, cheap petroleum (for fertilizer, transportation, farm operation, irrigation, etc.)
Massive new and high-density agriculture simply must be contrived through technology
The Green Revolution (Norman Borlaug) depended on, and "massive new high-density agriculture contrived through technology" assumes plentiful, cheap petroleum (for fertilizer, transportation, farm operation, irrigation, etc.)
This is where the lawn mower chews up some more of your optimistic garden hose.
In roughy 30 more years of all out pumping, petroleum will no longer be plentiful or cheap. Remember, we passed peak oil. INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY WAS BUILT ON CHEAP FOSSIL FUEL. Less cheap fossil fuel, less industrial society, more hand labor. More hand labor, less world food production. Less world food production, more death from starvation. Plus, heat, rising oceans, new insect vectors and tropical diseases to boot.
I think it would take a global catastrophe, or a long insufferable period of global depression, to actually put population growth into the negative.
And just what do you think the combination of global warming (aka climate change) and the steady decline of cheap, plentiful oil (and all the industrial, technical prowess that it brings) is if not "a global catastrophe"?
Listen, the agriculture/medical/pharmaceutical industries all depend on cheap, plentiful petroleum for power, but also many products and chemical feedstock.
The poor bears... We really should get some pelts for posterity while supplies last!
The bears will do fine once they switch from seal to primate meat. There are so many of us, there may be a glut of white bear fur on the market. Too bad pandas can't switch from bamboo to a robust primate flesh diet. Eating Chinese would give them more gumption so they could get it on and breed more successfully. They are so very, very cute but so clumsy and possibly so stupid from their vegan diet. The same goes for elephants, lions, tigers, leopards, white rhinos, scarce birds, wolves... Eat the people.
BTW, I don't desire any of this bad stuff to happen. I dread what seems to be coming. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be an escape hatch from the problem.
The Green Revolution (Norman Borlaug) depended on, and "massive new high-density agriculture contrived through technology" assumes plentiful, cheap petroleum (for fertilizer, transportation, farm operation, irrigation, etc.).
Fertilization boosts efficiency but it's not necessary. Through additional land use and crop diversification we could still manage soil health and maintain current production levels. Operating a farm depends on how the farm is set up, but industrial scale electric harvesting vehicles are very foreseeable to me. New and cheaper forms of irrigation are constantly being invested in, and assuming we can satisfy the electricity requirements, all the horse power that currently gets our farming done for us can come from electric and renewable sources. Transportation of goods will always be an on-going cost, but as our infrastructural networks expand we get more bang for our buck. Tesla also seems to actually be getting somewhere in their electric car, which gives me hope that the horse and buggy won't be making any comebacks.
It is possible to do industrial scale farming strictly with electricity, but right now electricity is too expensive and the technology we would use to do so is still too new and inefficient. Electric tractorswill inevitably become widespread though, and it's just one example of the many innovative switches that we will attempt in the necessary upcoming scramble to maintain what we have already built.
And just what do you think the combination of global warming (aka climate change) and the steady decline of cheap, plentiful oil (and all the industrial, technical prowess that it brings) is if not "a global catastrophe"?
Well the seas won't rise at any severely threatening rates so far as I know. The polar bears are fucked, that's true, along with many other animal populations that thrive in the current climate, but the threats to humans and human agriculture is hard to accurately predict. How wide-spread and prevalent droughts and turbulent weather will become, and how fast, might not sufficiently dent our ability to expand agricultural infrastructure. Whether or not we will be able to be as successful as we have without cheap oil, or at least have an equitable fraction of that success, depends on the limits of our ability find replacement energy sources and efficient ways to package and deploy it. We won't stop global warming, but we might just surpass oil and the combustion engine mainly via solar, battery, and electric motor technology.
Listen, the agriculture/medical/pharmaceutical industries all depend on cheap, plentiful petroleum for power, but also many products and chemical feedstock.
The medical and pharmaceutical industries depend on cheap oil currently, but mainly for transportation, energy, and packaging purposes. Petrochemical derivatives used for actual medicine isn't a huge gas guzzler so far as I know, although we might have to endure a century of being charged an arm and a leg for the rubber gloves our physicians burn through so quickly. Most aspects of our medical infrastructure such as transportation and energy needs can possibly be met with alternative technology. Replacements for rubber and plastic might be far out, and so we will stomach the extra cost until viable replacements can be found. The self-driving Teslambulance™ has a comically high change of actually existing one day.
This all hinges largely on drastic improvements in the cost/output of renewable energy sources and at least steady improvement in our ability to store, transport, and deploy it, which will essentially be the bare bones of electric machine driven industry. I'm not saying I think we will definitely stick the landing, but I do think we have a real shot at doing so, and we really do have serious incentive to try.
Metaphysician UndercoverMarch 05, 2017 at 14:03#592490 likes
What the climate change deniers are doing is almost the opposite of skepticism. They are refusing to accept the mountain of evidence that is before them. Sometimes they even start saying nonsense like 'where's the proof?', showing that they don't even understand the difference between science and algebra.
What is the mountain of evidence that global warming is a bad thing?
What is ironic is all the people who reject science and it's explanations, and how these same people propose that what isn't experienced doesn't really exist, yet they use "science" to promote one of their political positions. This is another great example of how people don't integrate their knowledge from all domains of investigation into a consistent whole.
Another thing these people don't seem to realize is what other domains of science - domains that have a greater amount of evidence than does "global warming by man" - like evolution by natural selection. This whole argument about man-made global warming is ridiculous when we realize that humans are as natural as everything else. We are not separate from nature, so to make these assertions that the climate is changing due to some non-natural causes (man), is non-sensical. Would these same people be complaining if elephants were causing climate change - or would it simply be natural change?
The Earth changes - and that includes everything on it. Global catastrophes and extinction events occurred well before human beings came on the scene. Other organisms can change their environment and given enough time and enough population growth, they can have widespread consequences to the Earth.
Human beings are natural outcomes and produce natural effects on their environment. Those that don't take this into account haven't yet taken the objective high ground on this issue.
WhiskeyWhiskersMarch 05, 2017 at 19:20#593140 likes
It's amazing how the climate change 'scepticism' of a few political and corporate elites, who have pretty obvious hidden agendas (money, ideology & power), somehow got picked up and perpetuated by regular people as if they themselves are the ones who need to continue getting those campaign donations for re-election or making those millions and billions from oil shares and profits. It's equivalent to the rich and powerful convincing the poor old proles to willingly vote in their favour at the expense of their own best interests.
It's very unlikely climate change deniers have the relevant training to even know how to go about mounting realistic opposition to climate change theory in the first place. Frankly, probably no one here really knows whether humans are contributing (the denial of which therefore means conveniently that humans are safe to engage in any practices that maximise capital without having to sacrifice any of it for the sake of the planet - see paragraph one). Fortunately, we have a group of individuals whose job it is to find the evidence and let us know one way or the other. If someone wants me to listen to a priori lay-questions posturing as credible opposition instead of yielding to professionals with mountains of actual empirical evidence, they're going to have to lobotomise me (which will also be the fate of anyone who accuses me of appealing to authority). The people who call themselves 'climate sceptics' don't seem to realise that before you can even start properly debunking something, a pretty deep understanding of the subject is required first.
Anyone who wants to be intellectually honest when it comes to climate change theory ought to accept the conclusions of scientists. Ought to. Even if it's all wrong and the deniers were on the right side of the debate all along. If it turns out that all these scientists are wrong, we were still right to accept it because we had (as far as we knew, which is the best we can ever do) very good justifications for doing so. The same cannot be said currently of the deniers because they will only be accidentally right, since their arguments will not be what debunks climate change theory. That will be the job of actual scientists.
The question isn't whether or not man is causing changes to his environment. There is no doubt that he is. But the sun is also causing changes to our environment and the sun changes, and those changes have nothing to do with human activity. The question should be, "Is this natural change?" If you believe in the theory of natural selection, (if you believe in climate change, then you should believe in this too), then there is no questions that man is a part of nature and anything man does is natural - which includes capitalism, computer programming, cooking your meal, etc. Every organism fills it's natural niche differently, so to say that the way one organism makes it's life is natural while another isn't is inconsistent.
Reply to Harry Hindu Man is certainly part of nature, and our activities are "natural" for us. But using the term "natural" here confuses factors outside of human activity (like solar radiation) and activities that are purely human, like burning coal to make steel.
You are right, though, that many people wrongly locate human activity above or outside nature. But just because we "act naturally" doesn't mean what we are doing is beneficial to ourselves in the long run.
WhiskeyWhiskersMarch 05, 2017 at 19:39#593250 likes
Isn't that what we're talking about here, global catastrophe?
I have no problem calling global warming a catastrophe, but what I was referring to is an actual event resulting from global warming which would actually cause immediate human death. A massively deadly hurricane striking the U.S would be one such example. Extended and widespread heat/drought could be another. But these are not guaranteed to happen as climate change progresses, they are just possibilities. My point is that we don't yet know which will turn out to be the sharpest edge of global warming, and it is entirely possible our population will continue to grow despite things being made more difficult.
Will climate change and other such hurtles, like running out of fossil fuels, result in a net loss of human life on earth? I bet no.
Have you ever tried harvesting garden crops off a piece of land for decades with out putting anything back?
By rotating crops, fallowing fields, and growing diverse plants you can actually effectively manage soil nutrition. Building naturally self-sustaining agricultural systems is messier than monoculture (see: permaculture) and you will get less calories per acre, but each year instead of needing more fertilizer to combat nutrient depletion, soil quality is naturally improved. Different plants absorb and deposit different nutrients from and into the soil, which is how ecosystems become more productive with only water and sunlight as external inputs.
Yeah, this is almost beautiful, isn't it? I've heard quite a few anti-AGW "arguments", but I suppose it takes a philosophy fan to take it to such a surreal level of idiocy.
The question isn't whether or not man is causing changes to his environment. There is no doubt that he is. But the sun is also causing changes to our environment and the sun changes, and those changes have nothing to do with human activity. The question should be, "Is this natural change?" If you believe in the theory of natural selection, (if you believe in climate change, then you should believe in this too), then there is no questions that man is a part of nature and anything man does is natural - which includes capitalism, computer programming, cooking your meal, etc. Every organism fills it's natural niche differently, so to say that the way one organism makes it's life is natural while another isn't is inconsistent.
So it's natural [i]because[/I] it's man-made? As, I suppose, is everything except the supernatural? That's one way to look at it, but I think the man-made/natural distinction is useful and you're kind of missing the point by making a rather trivial semantic point. What is natural in this context is obviously in contrast to what is man-made: nature as uneffected by man.
I think the better question is [i]to what extent[/I] is man causing climate change? And what should we do about it? Naomi Klein has a few suggestions on the latter, and also provides plenty of authoritative sources with regards to the former in her published writings on this topic.
It doesn't much matter who shat on the carpet, it needs cleaning up.
Yes, very good point. Although I was thinking of a better way of phrasing the original question, rather than scrapping it altogether in favour of a different question. There's also a difference in kind of these questions, since one is a question for science and the other is a question of ethics. I'm still interested in the former.
It doesn't much matter who shat on the carpet, it needs cleaning up.
I think it does matter. The global ecosystem is everyone's responsibility. Those who damage the ecosystem should be held accountable and must play a greater role in clean-up and preservation.
Without some form of deterrent policy I don't think things will work out well for nature. The best way to go about it is a carrot and stick policy. Incentive is equally important as penalty.
Climate change is nothing new for planet earth. From what I've read the earth has had a number of climate change events before (ice ages, supervolcanoes, asteroid hits, etc).
The only difference between the expected climate change of this time is faster than those in the past. This makes it difficult for life to adapt since it needs generations up on generations to make a successful adaptation to climate change.
Humans are affecting the environment - there's little doubt about that. However, I'm more worried about the speed of the change than the change per se.
Reply to tomThe evidence to which I was referring was evidence of AGW, not that it is a bad thing. If you can't see why it would be a bad thing, I suggest you ask somebody in Bangladesh or South Sudan.
The evidence to which I was referring was evidence of AGW, not that it is a bad thing. If you can't see why it would be a bad thing, I suggest you ask somebody in Bangladesh or South Sudan.
You mean the Bangladesh that achieved record rice and record total cereal production in 2015? Last year's harvest being marginally below that record. You mean the Bangladesh that has reduced malnourishment to the tune of $1billion due to increased crop yields, and still gaining land due to sedimentation?
If you think the problems in South Sudan are due to the climate, you are politically unaware. Visa fees for aid workers are now $10,000.
But we mustn't ignore the evidence and the best science and economics, such as the empirical fact that the biosphere has become 14% more productive since 1982, which is modeled to reduce the amount of land under agriculture by 11-17%. Human welfare does not seem to score well in virtue-signaling competitions, so I ask you to consider the wild animals!
And, we don't want our best science and economics to obscure the narrative, so let's deny them. Specifically let's deny the result that global warming is expected to be beneficial up to 3 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, of which we have achieved 0.8 degrees.
By the time we hit 3 degrees of warming, the Bangladeshis will be as rich as the present day Dutch, and quite able to afford sophisticated flood defences.
You mean the Bangladesh that achieved record rice and record total cereal production in 2015? Last year's harvest being marginally below that record. You mean the Bangladesh that has reduced malnourishment to the tune of $1billion due to increased crop yields, and still gaining land due to sedimentation?
Yes, that Bangladesh. I think andrewk is referring to the widely-known prediction that Bangladesh, whatever their present magnificent record, is the country most likely to be adversely affected by anthropogenic climate change. Here's a recent article about it.
By the time we hit 3 degrees of warming, the Bangladeshis will be as rich as the present day Dutch, and quite able to afford sophisticated flood defences.
Copenhagen Consensus is, in general, a bit weird. I mean, if I fiddle with the discount rate I get totally different results when looking at this from a pure cost-benefit approach. It's not very sensible.
Here's another nice statistic I read today from the WHO: 25% of infant mortality is caused by man-made pollution.
Man is certainly part of nature, and our activities are "natural" for us. But using the term "natural" here confuses factors outside of human activity (like solar radiation) and activities that are purely human, like burning coal to make steel.
This is like saying that a star burning hydrogen and helium to make other heavier elements in it's core is purely solar and we shouldn't be confusing this with the "natural" production of these elements. Stars are polluting the universe with these heavier elements. Coal is made naturally by natural forces, and because humans are natural, steel is also produced naturally. Shit and piss are produced naturally. CO2 is produced naturally by every organism that breathes oxygen.
You are right, though, that many people wrongly locate human activity above or outside nature. But just because we "act naturally" doesn't mean what we are doing is beneficial to ourselves in the long run.
Now you are making a value statement and values are man-made. Who is to say that what is right for humans is right for the rest of nature? Who is to say that humans deserve to continue to exist? I'm sure if lions had their way, there would be no competitors, like hyenas, for resources. Hyenas would be extinct. I'm sure that we'd want to eliminate every virus and dangerous bacteria from existence. Do we have that right?
Throughout the history of the Earth, there have been mass extinctions and massive environmental and geological change over a short period of time. Were all those changes bad? It led to us, but what about all those animals and environments that are now destroyed thanks to natural forces that led to us? Climate Changers seem to be incapable of stepping back and looking at the big picture.
Another thing: China is one of the worst, if not THE worst polluters on Earth. If Climate Changers really want to put their money where their mouth is, why not go to China and make your claims there? After all, the U.S. has probably spent more money and energy to limit pollution than any other country yet these people still lambaste Americans more than any other country. This is what the left is known for - selective outrage. Anything the U.S. does will be a waste if other countries like China and India don't pull their own weight here. All the effort of Climate Changers will be wasted.
Another thing: China is one of the worst, if not THE worst polluters on Earth. If Climate Changers really want to put their money where their mouth is, why not go to China and make your claims there? After all, the U.S. has probably spent more money and energy to limit pollution than any other country yet these people still lambaste Americans more than any other country. This is what the left is known for - selective outrage.
That's fallacious reasoning. Just because China is the worst polluter doesn't absolve every other country from doing what needs to be done. Moreover, China's expenditure in reneweable energy is also the largest in the world (2015) USD 103 billion compared to USD 44 billion in the US. Considering the choices Trump is making the "selective" outrage is spot on.
Reply to tom As the climate changes, there will be winners and losers. In the US, for instance, the southwestern region will probably be a loser and the northern plains probably a winner. Far more people live in the SW US than in the northern plains, however.
It is also the case that some places will first be winners, then losers; others first losers then winners. How, exactly, and who will be demonstrated over time.
It is also the case that disasters like South Sudan owe a great deal to bad politics. Famines often have political as well as environmental causes.
Then there are economic factors, like having passed peak oil, that come into play. Over time oil is becoming more difficult and expensive to produce, and there will be less of it. This alone will make it more expensive and difficult to adapt to particular climate changes.
That's fallacious reasoning. Just because China is the worst polluter doesn't absolve every other country from doing what needs to be done.
Actually, it makes what every other country needs to do worthless. What good is it for every other country to do something when the world's largest populations and polluters are doing nothing to very little?
As for the amount China is spending; it is comparable to amount of pollution they create compared to the rest of the world, so yes, they should be spending more money that the US, duh. Any info on India, the 2nd largest population and polluter?
But yeah, you and Bitter can ignore the more interesting points about humans being natural causes to Earth's climate, and avoid those questions I posed in my previous post. Cherry-pickers.
But yeah, you and Bitter can ignore the more interesting points about humans being natural causes to Earth's climate
I thought I had agreed with you that humans are a part of nature, and therefore, what they do is "natural". But just being natural isn't in itself always good. Termites are natural too, and if they infest your house, it will eventually collapse as they eat--and weaken--the structure.
Actually, it makes what every other country needs to do worthless. What good is it for every other country to do something when the world's largest populations and polluters are doing nothing to very little?
Actually it makes a lot of difference. A Dutch invention could be exported and used by other countries, for instance. A county can inspire others for demonstrating that co2 reduction and growth are possible (oh wait, the USA and China did exactly that).
And the amount of pollution China creates is largely driven by market demand in the West. So "blaming" them as solely responsible in a global economy is a bit silly. It is global warming after all.
Reply to Harry Hindu You seem to be saying that climate change is natural because human beings are, well, natural and that all this fuss about man-made climate change is barking up the wrong tree.
However vehicles, factories, nuclear powerplants, etc. are not in any form of biological relationship with the ecosystem. There is not even a hint of it. The relationship (if you can call it that) between man-made artefacts and nature is a one-way street and it's jammed with garbage trucks loading tons of toxic pollutants.
Therefore, there's a significant difference between man-made artefacts and natural things. This difference has major consequences for the enviroment.
GLOBAL WARMING: Finding the Missing Heat ~ The real problem for those wishing to ignore the effect of human beings on the climate is the greenhouse effect. One can make any number of arguments that other factors will cause the climate to change, up to and including new ice ages and sunspots. But the fact is, the greenhouse effect is not only more significant than most such postulations, but totally predictable, as it can be modeled in the laboratory and extrapolated with fair accuracy to the entire planet. The problem has been for scientists is that planetary temperature models are partially based on ocean temperature. In fact as water covers most the planet, ocean temperature is extremely important. But the data is extremely sparse. Most of the data is surface temperature. Deep-water sensors are extremely rare. But initially scientists did not believe that was so significant, because they thought warm water rises, so heat would not be stored deeper down.
Then the early extrapolations predicted a greater increase in global temperature than was occurring. That is to say, we may be certain to a very high degree of accuracy how much heat there SHOULD be captured on the planet by greenhouse gases. We have very accurate data of how much greenhouse gases there are in the atmosphere. But we don't know exactly where the heat is going that the gases capture.
Those with fiscal interest in denying climate change immediately trumpeted that scientists were deliberately misleading the public, somewhat to the confusion of scientists who have no motivation to do so.
In 2015, the general consensus was that the largest hole in the dataset was the effect of the icemelt from the Himalayas into the Indian Ocean. Recent spot surveys have indicated that deep-sea undercurrents from the Himalayan icemelt carry warm water deeper than originally thought, and that slipstreams of warmer and colder water form layers in the deep sea which are capturing heat way down below. So last year, an international consortium started deploying a network of about 60 'bouncing weatherbuoys' was distributed across the Indian ocean. The 'bouncing weatherbuoys' move very sensitive temperature and current sensors up and down the buoy cables to gather data across the entire ocean depth. This will increase the amount of data by something like five orders of magnitude, which was calculated to be the amount necessary to determine how much the deep sea is actually absorbing heat across the different slipstream layers, and how the heat is being distributed out of the Indian ocean into the pacific. That only serves to indicate how little data has been available on deep ocean currents. It will take at least several years for the first recomputations to be available, and so there hasnt been alot of news about it yet on the open Internet, because the scientists, from prior experience in this field, have no interest in promising any findings which might be more difficult to establish than they hope.
The general observation should be, if people really wish to challenge the scientific theory, they should be funding such experiments more, rather than withdrawing the funding for military purposes, as is currently happening in the USA. Nothing would delight the scientists more than to discover they are wrong about impending doom. Meanwhile, the search continues for the missing heat, as much as it can, while those who deny the inevitable consequences of the greenhouse effect ratchet up the rhetoric to claim that the second law of thermodynamics is pseudoscience created by fakes, by which same logic, car engines would not work. And that's the world as it is known today )
I thought I had agreed with you that humans are a part of nature, and therefore, what they do is "natural". But just being natural isn't in itself always good. Termites are natural too, and if they infest your house, it will eventually collapse as they eat--and weaken--the structure.
Re-read that post again, Bitter - the part where I mention value statements. Does that give you the right to eradicate all termites on Earth? Who has the right to exist, termites or humans?
Your house collapsing from a termite infestation isn't much different from your house collapsing as the result of an earthquake or tornado, all of which have been happening and shaping the landscape ever since Earth existed.
You have to realize that value statements are always subjective, while what I'm saying is from a far more objective viewpoint - one that you just barely seem to be able to reach while the others in this thread seem hopeless.
My sublime thought is available to the Chinese via the Internet. I am sure there hang on every word.
Uh.. You do realize that the Chinese govt. filters and controls what it's population sees on the internet, don't you? You need to go there to spread your message, but something tells me that you only care enough about the environment to preach to those that need to hear it the least, and only if the environment (termites) doesn't affect your life.
You seem to be saying that climate change is natural because human beings are, well, natural and that all this fuss about man-made climate change is barking up the wrong tree.
However vehicles, factories, nuclear powerplants, etc. are not in any form of biological relationship with the ecosystem. There is not even a hint of it. The relationship (if you can call it that) between man-made artefacts and nature is a one-way street and it's jammed with garbage trucks loading tons of toxic pollutants.
Therefore, there's a significant difference between man-made artefacts and natural things. This difference has major consequences for the enviroment.
Volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, etc. aren't biological in nature either, but they are still natural. You are making a distinction that isn't really there. New non-biological elements are made naturally inside stars. How is that different from the things that humans make? As I said before, we put CO2 in the environment just by breathing.
Actually it makes a lot of difference. A Dutch invention could be exported and used by other countries, for instance. A county can inspire others for demonstrating that co2 reduction and growth are possible (oh wait, the USA and China did exactly that).
And the amount of pollution China creates is largely driven by market demand in the West. So "blaming" them as solely responsible in a global economy is a bit silly. It is global warming after all.
No. It's driven by China driving down the costs of labor and allowing it's people get paid next to nothing for the work they do all in an effort to steal manufacturing power from the US.
And if it is a shared responsibility, that implies that not only should we help the Chinese but they should be helping us. Good luck with that. When are you going to China, Benkei?
Pierre-NormandMarch 07, 2017 at 15:11#596310 likes
As I said before, we put CO2 in the environment just by breathing.
Our exhaling CO2 through breathing is part of a carbon neutral cycle and didn't have any direct incidence on the recent increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration. That's because the CO2 that animals (including us) exhale all comes from plant food and the pants that are eaten already had extracted this CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. So, through this whole nutrition/metabolism cycle, as much CO2 is taken out from the atmosphere and continuously incorporated into the biomass as is continuously emitted by it (including through fermentation of dead biomass). By contrast, the CO2 that we release through burning fossil fuels had previously been stored underground over hundred million years and now is released back by us into the atmosphere in a time frame of mere decades. This is why current atmospheric CO2 concentration is higher now than it has been over the last million years (and likely much longer) and still is climbing at breathless speed (pun intended).
Reply to Pierre-Normand Right, it's rhythmic. CO2 drops during southern hemisphere summer, if I recall correctly, and goes up in the winter. All the CO2 humans are putting out will eventually be absorbed by the oceans. Pop quiz: what is the time frame for that absorption?
Pierre-NormandMarch 07, 2017 at 16:34#596390 likes
So does he (that was implicit in what he said), but not as much as what needs to be done. He might not have worded it in the best possible way, but it gets the point across effectively. If his point was something along the lines that a practical solution is more important than assigning blame, then I agree.
You also make some good points which I agree with. There should indeed be incentives and deterrents.
You have to realize that value statements are always subjective, while what I'm saying is from a far more objective viewpoint
Your replies are sometimes loaded with a lot more subjective value statements than they are objective viewpoints. Your sense of humor is a pit pinched as well. My comment on the Chinese was clearly self-deprecating.
No. It's driven by China driving down the costs of labor and allowing it's people get paid next to nothing for the work they do all in an effort to steal manufacturing power from the US.
Volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, etc. aren't biological in nature either, but they are still natural. You are making a distinction that isn't really there. New non-biological elements are made naturally inside stars. How is that different from the things that humans make? As I said before, we put CO2 in the environment just by breathing.
Yes, volcanoes, quakes, tornadoes, etc. are natural. So, what? That doesn't imply we shouldn't classify dangers to the environment into the categories man-made and natural.
Knowing that human activity damages the environment is owning up to one's mistakes. It's the first step in problem solving. It reveals our role in the preservation/destruction of the planet's biosphere.
It's like psychopathy. It is ultimately human nature BUT it needs to be given a category of its own to distinguish it in the vast and complex world of human nature.
Your sense of humor is a pit pinched as well. My comment on the Chinese was clearly self-deprecating.
Well, it is kind of hard to pick up on humor without being in person. There are those that resort to character assassination when they don't have an argument to make, You must be one of those that veers off topic and tries to make light of things when they don't have an argument to make.
Yes, volcanoes, quakes, tornadoes, etc. are natural. So, what? That doesn't imply we shouldn't classify dangers to the environment into the categories man-made and natural.
Of course it does, that is if you want to remain consistent.
There are 2 parts to their site -- the information map obtained from Stanford and then their own organization page. Their organization looks like a conventional well-meaning non-profit that is promoting some nice idea, but nothing substantial.
Many assumptions and estimations went into the information map projections which would need to be assessed to determine how "real" the projections are. My guess is that the projections and estimations were quite optimistic. Not that a little optimism about solar/wind would be a bad thing.
Around 10-12 years ago, someone in Worthington, MN claimed that the 6 wind generators outside town provided most of the town's energy--though the diesel generating plant was still needed (the wind doesn't always blow). True or not? Don't know. It seemed plausible. Worthington is a town of 10,000 with a couple of ag plants -- an alfalfa dehydrating plant (uses natural gas for heat) and a meat-packing plant. Otherwise, it's just down at the heels retail and residential.
If the short-term storage problem is solved, if residential and commercial demand is reduced, and if transportation is shifted from 1 person per car to 80 people per trolley, freight shifted to electric trains, we might be able to make it work. Whether large-scale agricultural field operations can be conducted by electric motors, I very much doubt -- not with existing batteries. Very long extension cords, maybe?
In the long run, we don't have any choice but to rely on wind and solar (and/or nuclear), so we had better figure out how to do it.
Terrapin StationMarch 08, 2017 at 18:37#598370 likes
In my opinion we don't know exactly what's causing it, but what we should worry about is how we could counter it if it starts getting too out of control.
Pierre-NormandMarch 08, 2017 at 21:18#598640 likes
Right. So maybe it's not so much the CO2, but the massive deforestation that is happening.
Not sure what you mean with "not so much..." It's not either one or the other; it's both. According to an IPCC AR4 figure (fourth assessment report) the "CO2 equivalent" net emissions from deforestation and biomass decay represents 17.3% of the total anthropogenic contribution to the enhanced greenhouse effect, while the fossil fuel burning contribution is 56.6%. (The rest is from N2O, CH4, other greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic sources of CO2 such a cement production.)
Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, has dismissed a basic scientific understanding of climate change by denying that carbon dioxide emissions are a primary cause of global warming.
Pruitt said on Thursday that he did not believe that the release of CO2, a heat-trapping gas, was pushing global temperatures upwards.
“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” he told CNBC.
I think one reason for the shift in terminology from "global warming" to "climate change" is that the latter is less controversial;
I think the term "Global heating' is more appropriate.
It is like heating a mixture of water and ice. The mixture doesn't get any warmer, but the ice melts. Once all the ice is melted, then it will get warmer; significantly warmer.
Comments (81)
All of the CO2 we are releasing through the use of fossil fuels was in the air before -- back in the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago. It was very warm back then, and algae and higher plants grew like crazy for millions of years. The plants died, accumulated, were buried, and eventually were folded under geologic formations where they were pressure cooked into oil and coal.
Since the late 19th Century, we have burned roughy 1 trillion barrels worth of oil. We have, and are burning trillions of tons of coal, thus releasing into the atmosphere CO2 that has been out of circulation for many millions of years.
That's the basic story.
Lots of variables go into climate, some human produced, some not. CO2 is one (big) factor in global warming, but it is one among several. There are other gases (methane, H2O, Nitrous oxide (N. 2O)Ozone, Chlorofluorocarbons, mainly) that contribute, some more potently than CO2. When gases trapped in ice (from deep cores) are analyzed, abnormally large amounts of these gases are not found. These gases (particularly CO2) begin to show up in the last 200 years--the period corresponding to the industrial revolution and huge increases in fossil fuel burning.
We can't ignore global warming because the effects are profound and pervasive, to which we are already witnesses. Bigger changes are in progress now. It may be the case that there is little we can do about it. More likely, we can have at least a moderating effect on climate change, and since this is the only place we have, we would do well to get on with whatever we can do.
I think one reason for the shift in terminology from "global warming" to "climate change" is that the latter is less controversial; of course the climate changes over time. The question then becomes the degree to which human activity is the cause of its detrimental aspects.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I agree - my view is that the proposition that human activity has had and is having some negative effect on climate is "beyond a reasonable doubt," but so far there is not "a preponderance of evidence" that human activity is the sole or even dominant reason for allof the worrisome climate changes that we are observing.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I am on board with this, but it will require reaching widespread consensus on both the problem and the solutions. For better and for worse, politics will be involved because people will be involved.
Your last sentence is a non sequitur. The question of human contribution has no relation to whether the whole issue is nicknamed "global warming" or "climate change." Anyway, whatever the political expediency of one term or the other, "climate change" is a more accurate term, because the process is much more complex and diverse than just the rise of average global temperature (which does take place, of course).
Quoting aletheist
And you are basing this conclusion on your own extensive but unpublished research in climate science? Because published research paints quite a different picture.
Says who?
Without even having to quote specifics, it is general knowledge that human consumption of fossil fuels has injected hundreds of billions of tons of gases into the atmosphere since the advent of industrial civilization.
Is there any good reason to believe that this would not have an effect on the composition of the atmosphere?
'Inconvenient Truth' showed ten years ago that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been clearly measurable since the 1970's when observations started being made in Hawaii.
It's a clear causal chain. But there's also a lot of disinformation circulating in the form fear, uncertainty and doubt being propogated by merchants of doubt on behalf of vested interests in the energy industry.
Of course not, but it is another matter to claim that this is the only or primary reason why we are seeing detrimental changes to the global climate. Even if I grant that there is "a preponderance of evidence" for this, it does not rise to the level of being "beyond a reasonable doubt."
This is a standard of evidence that is required before a jury delivers a verdict of criminal culpability, such that the convicted individual is liable to be jailed. If the way in which you are cooking you chicken is liable to burn the house down, then "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" isn't required to justify finding a safer way to cook your chicken.
Just picking a nit: The continuous Mauna Loa CO2 record reaches back to 1958. There are earlier spot observations when Charles Keeling was refining his pioneering measurement methods.
The main obstacle to reaching consensus on the existence of the problem (and the anthropogenic cause of global warming) is the politically motivated resistance of Republicans in the American Congress.
Yeah it changed just not so drastically.
Quoting aletheist
Average world temperatures will go up, which the earlier research focused on and is still true. Midway the 80s this was common knowledge even with the big oil companies who often pioneered the research back then. 1985 is the year Shell wrote its internal memo on the greenhouse effect.
1991 Shell published a movie Climate of Concern. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/28/shell-knew-oil-giants-1991-film-warned-climate-change-danger
ExxonMobil knew in 1981 (well, just Exxon back then).
1988 the IPCC is established and Hansen, a climatologist, states there's a 99% confidence level that recent temperature rise of 1/2 degree is caused by human activity. That it will be paired with more extreme weather also becomes clear, which is why it's a panel on climate change (IPCC duh). So there wasn't a shift in terminology. At least not in the past 30 years.
1989 Shell adjusts designs of oil platforms to withstand bigger waves due to expected changes in weather. That's the same year the Global Climate Coalition is set up by US oil companies with the express purpose to emphasise uncertainty in the research and sow disinformation, because of the bottom line.
Climate change skepticism is unwarranted.
The problem is, such comments represent the very kind of attitude which makes reaching consensus impossible. If, as pointed out, you demand the kind of evidence required to reach a verdict in a criminal trial, then how would it be possible to reach a consensus with a 'jury' of billions of people, hundreds of nations, thousands of interested parties?
Already, it is very late, maybe too late. From today's NY Times:
Source
Quoting Pierre-Normand
I stand gladly corrected. ;-)
If the future of the earth's habitability isn't THE political issue par excellence, I don't know what would be.
Who, exactly, has to reach consensus? About 97% of climate scientists have reached a consensus. Everyone doesn't have to join the consensus. There are, though, a few thousand top echelon decision makers that need to join the consensus.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Exactly. And their corporate pay masters.
James Howard Kunstler [World Made By Hand series of novels and several non-fiction books on oil, particularly The Long Emergency] §§§ - next post - has written convincingly of what life without oil will be like. In a nutshell, life without oil means much, much more animal and human powered work, fewer people, and the loss of everything that cheap abundant oil made possible--which is a good share of the world wide culture.
I think some people are paralyzed by the awfulness of what the absence of cheap abundant oil, coal, electricity, transportation, etc. mean. It means an end to life as we know it. Some of those people are in positions of national power. If they aren't paralyzed, they may be too shocked to deal with it. I found the details in Kunstler's books pretty unappetizing.
THE END OF OIL won't happen abruptly, and it won't happen tomorrow (literally, March 3, 2017). But we are running out, and in the meantime the climate is warming up and changing unpredictably. We have time to make other plans, other arrangements. We have time to adjust our sensibilities -- but we should now be in route to those ends, instead of dickering about whether it is a real problem.
Not solar, not wind, not tidal energy, not hydro, not geothermal, not biomass, not conversion of garbage to crude petroleum, nothing. All of the proposed solutions offer a small percentage of the power and benefit we get from cheap oil and coal, and all those small percentages add up to maybe a quarter of the power we need to operate the world in the manner to which we are accustomed.
The main drawback of oil (in the context of life as we know it) is that its supply is not infinite. We've used up half, and much of the remaining half will be much harder and more expensive to obtain. The end of oil (coming sometime around mid-century or soon after to an exhausted oil field near you) doesn't mean the end of civilization, but it does mean an end to our accustomed and preferred way of living.
Bill Nye And Bernie Sanders Discuss Climate Change (Full) (youtube, 33m:4s)
Nye sure pleas for everyone to take the science serious.
Ignoring scientific findings is kind of like burying the head in the sand. Incredulity?
Can we afford simply claiming that climate changes aren't due to human activities (going against consensus among subject matter experts), or that we can't do anything anyway (not particularly substantiated, anti-proactive)?
It seems the potential stakes are too high, for future generations in particular (not just humans), to simply dismiss.
Besides, what bad might come of limiting everyone using the ecosphere as their own sewer?
If the politics doesn't follow up on the science, then it's kind of useless in this case.
Yep. Given the potential stakes, it's probably a good idea to not just dismiss it then.
And you can bet your boots that there will be members of Congress who say, it's the Good Lord's doing, what height of [liberal atheist] folly to believe that humans have anything to do with it.
Atmospheric ozone O3, has come about due to the presence of free oxygen O2. O2 is not native to earth's atmosphere, it was put there by the activities of living creatures and it's an important catalyst for the evolution of higher life forms. In its interaction with sunlight, some O2 becomes O3, and O3 is very effective at absorbing certain wavelengths of UV radiation into the stratosphere. This energy is intercepted and prevented from heating the earth's surface, and is later radiated to space. Fluctuations in solar UV radiation are considerable, so O3 plays an important role in stabilizing the earth's surface temperature, and therefore the climate in general.
http://www.mps.mpg.de/4017144/PM_2015_07_09_UV-Schwankungen_der_Sonne_unterschaetzt
I think that the unwillingness to recognize and act upon the issues raised by climate change and natural resource exhaustion is more commonly caused by indifference than by shock and paralysis.
Contrary to common denialist conspiracies, governments hate to do anything that doesn't serve some immediate, tangible purpose, preferably with a turnaround within one or two election cycles. The only thing that would motivate them to expend limited resources and manpower on an issue that will be someone else's problem some time in an indefinite future is a strong public demand for action. (And that's democratic governments - undemocratic ones don't much care about anything other than staying in power, stuffing their pockets, and perhaps stroking their egos with grandiose projects; public welfare has little correlation with those goals.)
As for the common folk, especially of the conservative-libertarian temperament, their primary motivation tends to be self-interest. The fate of future generations is too abstract a concern. What have future generations ever done for me? Nothing, so fuck them. They want to take all they can for themselves, and they want it now. They will only sacrifice their wealth and comfort under compulsion, and future generations are not around to compel anyone.
Of course, put starkly like this, these are not very PC positions, and in any case, most people don't reason them out. Instead, these implicit positions motivate their reasoning about ostensibly scientific, factual matters. So we get a lot of hedging about how science is uncertain and evidence is insufficient.
Climate change (a warming trend) is definitely being accelerated by human emissions and land use (see: "greenhouse effect")...
For some reason though it doesn't worry me a whole lot. During my quintessential 90's childhood I was constantly told my Michio Kaku et al that unless I turn all my lights out that I'm going to wind up destroying the planet. When I was 15 or so, having failed my quest, was then informed that it was too late, and that the earth is irrevocably fucked, and that the noble polar bear will soon die out, and that the seas will rise, and that mankind will need to emigrate to underground cave networks in the future dystopian spaghetti western that we all get to enjoy while the last remaining spiritually pure humans escape to space in search of a new and unblemished home-world.
It sounded kinda cool I must admit... They probably should have focused on something cuter than polar bears as a means of guilting my younger self... (penguins?...)...
So here I am today, in basically the precise year which twenty years ago was hailed as the beginning of the end, and instead of worry or anxiety, the main emotions I feel toward climate change are curiosity and a kind of urgency or excitement. I look at climate change and instead of focusing only on the ways in which it can be or is bad for life, I am much more interested to know about the ways in which we can take advantage of and exploit it.
For example(s), the crops that are lost in the equatorial regions through drought and bad weather resulting from global warming might be a fraction of what we could gain by exploiting longer and better growing seasons farther and farther north and south. As the oceans warm, what long term effects will this have on sea life? While some plankton and fish species decline, which species of plankton and fish might thrive in the warmer waters? Could they possibly become more abundant? Which mammals stand to benefit? As glaciers recede, what possible use can we make of the land it reveals and what fuels and minerals might it contain? As higher CO2 levels basically means more fuel for plants (along with warmer temperatures), what will the overall effect of globally increased vegetation growth be? What will actually become of global weather patterns? Will the future be predominantly a desert or something else?
It is cliché, but the Chinese word for "crisis" also means "opportunity", and I think it applies in this case. Out of a natural desire to be safe humans tend to air on the side of caution when it comes to protecting the things we come to value, which is why we disproportionately focus on the ways in which things can go wrong and where appropriate air on the side of alarm-ism. Climate change does pose definite challenges and risks that we would all rather not have to ever face, but if we can adapt to these changes successfully enough then there might actually be some rewards on the other side, which is especially important given the additional resources we constantly require to satisfy our growing population.
Worry about climate change is useful to motivate masses undoubtedly, and I'm not suggesting that we should not limit our GHG emissions, because the slower climate change occurs the more easily and successfully we can adapt to it, and adapt we must. Population growth alone ensures our future emissions, and so no matter what we do GHG driven warming and the resulting climate change is inevitable (see deforestation and agriculture). The war on climate change was probably lost before it had ever begun but still it rages with the same ultra-doom's day attitude that had swayed me in my youth. The result of this attitude was that I had to spend quite a bit of time trying to actually learn about what was real and what wasn't when it came to the short and long term effects of global warming along with a sensible picture of it's human causes. Now that I finally understand why and how no amount of emission reducing accords and hippie-style earth-ship communes is going to stop the climate from eventually changing, my predominant focus has shifted from convincing people to halt or reverse climate change through major sacrifice because the the sky will fall, to instead accept it as an inevitability. The future is scary, and in order to get there we must be intrepid. It's time for the Chicken Littles and Foghorn Leghorns of the world to stop rocking the boat in opposite directions (We're doomed vs man-made climate change isn't real) so that the Eggberts of the world can actually figure out where to steer it, lest we crash...
The boat sped on down the river. The river was getting narrower. There was some kind of a dark tunnel ahead - a great round tunnel that looked like an enormous pipe - and the river was running right into the tunnel. And so was the boat! "Row on!' shouted Mr Wonka, jumping and waving his stick in the air. 'Full speed ahead!' And with the Oompa-Loompas rowing faster than ever, the boat shot into the pitch-dark tunnel, and all the passengers screamed with excitement.
'How can they see where they're going?' shrieked Violet Beauregarde in the darkness.
'There's no way of knowing where they're going!' cried Mr Wonka, hooting with laughter.
'There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction they are going!
There's no knowing where they're rowing,
Or which way the river's flowing!
Not a speck of light is showing,
So the danger must be growing,
For the rowers keep on rowing,
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing...'
(Roald Dahl)
It's not skepticism. To be skeptical is to withhold belief when there is little or no evidence to support that belief, and is the approach of all good scientists (and, one might argue, all good philosophers).
What the climate change deniers are doing is almost the opposite of skepticism. They are refusing to accept the mountain of evidence that is before them. Sometimes they even start saying nonsense like 'where's the proof?', showing that they don't even understand the difference between science and algebra.
David Hume would be turning in his grave at the attempt of the FUD-merchants to appropriate the honourable term 'skeptic' (except that, being an acute student of human nature, he'd be more likely to just observe that it is no surprise that greed, extremist ideology and self-delusion led to a failure to act on an unfolding catastrophe). Let's not do their work for them by yielding the term skeptic.
In my quintessential middle age, I was also reading science and hearing about global warming. Warming was something of a relief because 20 years earlier, scientists were worried about nuclear winter: 40,000+ nuclear weapons aimed at the USSR and the US: What would happen to the climate if the cold war turned hot? The dust-saturated atmosphere would reflect too much solar energy and we would all freeze -- those who weren't killed by blasts or radiation -- not sure how few that would be.
It's not too late: most of the atomic and hydrogen bombs are still around.
But here we are, and global warming is delivering on-time changes. The arctic will be ice free all year round pretty quick, and the polar bears will not have ice flows to hunt from. They will probably starve. Or they will begin eating humans whom they can catch and eat on the thawing tundra. There will be enough humans to go around as we all flee the heat further south. My only request of the bears is that they totally kill us before they begin the banquet.
I see it as my job here to run the lawnmower of bad news over the garden hose of optimism.
While it will warm up, for sure, it will warm up too fast for environments to adapt. We can't just move banana and pineapple production up to Kansas, and wheat up to Hudson's Bay. The weather over North America is already becoming a bit less stable than it has been, and more violent storm systems could well make it difficult to successfully grow a lot of anything.
The population will shrink. It won't be nice, but as food production falls, billions that the earth can no longer feed will die. That will bring consumption closer to production at a much lower level.
Warmer oceans will suit some sea animals--probably not the ones we like a lot. Maybe we'll get more lethal stinging jelly fish, poisonous sea snakes, killer sharks, and deadly algae blooms. The ocean will be more acidic.
Remember, Nature bats last.
I don't exactly see it as a sure thing that the population is going to actually shrink anytime soon, even in the face of drastic climate change. Local famines may cause population declines in certain regions, but unless the global economy is completely compromised there would still be growth overall. We might not be able to rapidly expand north and southward with kiwis and coconuts in tow, but we can take cow shit and vegetables pretty much everywhere. If Monsanto is to be believed we'll have fast growing low-light -cold-resistant pumpkin-spice leeks before you Americans even cross the 49th parallel! Massive new and high-density agriculture simply must be contrived through technology or sheer man-power lest we actually get to the point where widespread human hunger tests the limits of our food production. I think it would take a global catastrophe, or a long and resisted period of global depression, to actually put population growth into the negative.
Nature might take 100 years to adapt and bounce back through over fancy and highly praised "natural selection" (bleh! Who needs it! We burned that bridge with an industrial blow-torch anyhow!), but when humans feel threatened in large enough numbers it sometimes leads to drastic change. As the cost of living rises and global population growth continues to slow, out of greed and foresight markets will eventually divest toward more basic needs and infrastructure will slowly be adapted. The earth's population has grown by over two billion humans since my birth, and around 6 billion in the last 100 years. This kind of insane growth has got to come to an end at some point, and global population growth has been slowing since the 60's, but I have a hard time guessing when our ability to improve, expand, and innovate will finally succumb to the realities of a harsh and indifferent world that dictates we've lived beyond our means (If nature is our mother we're her teenage daughter who won't take no for an answer). The major problems facing our species currently - energy, fuel/fuel technology, climate - are and will be the center of focus of what are set to become the most lucrative industries and markets in human history. Perhaps burning fossil fuels such as we have is a one-hit wonder; our one trick that we will never surpass, but I say nay to that. The stakes, and the payoffs, have never been higher. I say let it ride.
It won't shrink much at all in the next couple of decades, unless there is a plague, or something.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
All the works of Monsanto, Syngenta, Land 'O Lakes, DuPont, Groupe Limagrain, Bayer, et al assume plentiful, cheap petroleum (for fertilizer, transportation, farm operation, irrigation, etc.)
Quoting VagabondSpectre
The Green Revolution (Norman Borlaug) depended on, and "massive new high-density agriculture contrived through technology" assumes plentiful, cheap petroleum (for fertilizer, transportation, farm operation, irrigation, etc.)
This is where the lawn mower chews up some more of your optimistic garden hose.
In roughy 30 more years of all out pumping, petroleum will no longer be plentiful or cheap. Remember, we passed peak oil. INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY WAS BUILT ON CHEAP FOSSIL FUEL. Less cheap fossil fuel, less industrial society, more hand labor. More hand labor, less world food production. Less world food production, more death from starvation. Plus, heat, rising oceans, new insect vectors and tropical diseases to boot.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
And just what do you think the combination of global warming (aka climate change) and the steady decline of cheap, plentiful oil (and all the industrial, technical prowess that it brings) is if not "a global catastrophe"?
Listen, the agriculture/medical/pharmaceutical industries all depend on cheap, plentiful petroleum for power, but also many products and chemical feedstock.
The bears will do fine once they switch from seal to primate meat. There are so many of us, there may be a glut of white bear fur on the market. Too bad pandas can't switch from bamboo to a robust primate flesh diet. Eating Chinese would give them more gumption so they could get it on and breed more successfully. They are so very, very cute but so clumsy and possibly so stupid from their vegan diet. The same goes for elephants, lions, tigers, leopards, white rhinos, scarce birds, wolves... Eat the people.
BTW, I don't desire any of this bad stuff to happen. I dread what seems to be coming. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be an escape hatch from the problem.
Fertilization boosts efficiency but it's not necessary. Through additional land use and crop diversification we could still manage soil health and maintain current production levels. Operating a farm depends on how the farm is set up, but industrial scale electric harvesting vehicles are very foreseeable to me. New and cheaper forms of irrigation are constantly being invested in, and assuming we can satisfy the electricity requirements, all the horse power that currently gets our farming done for us can come from electric and renewable sources. Transportation of goods will always be an on-going cost, but as our infrastructural networks expand we get more bang for our buck. Tesla also seems to actually be getting somewhere in their electric car, which gives me hope that the horse and buggy won't be making any comebacks.
It is possible to do industrial scale farming strictly with electricity, but right now electricity is too expensive and the technology we would use to do so is still too new and inefficient. Electric tractors will inevitably become widespread though, and it's just one example of the many innovative switches that we will attempt in the necessary upcoming scramble to maintain what we have already built.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well the seas won't rise at any severely threatening rates so far as I know. The polar bears are fucked, that's true, along with many other animal populations that thrive in the current climate, but the threats to humans and human agriculture is hard to accurately predict. How wide-spread and prevalent droughts and turbulent weather will become, and how fast, might not sufficiently dent our ability to expand agricultural infrastructure. Whether or not we will be able to be as successful as we have without cheap oil, or at least have an equitable fraction of that success, depends on the limits of our ability find replacement energy sources and efficient ways to package and deploy it. We won't stop global warming, but we might just surpass oil and the combustion engine mainly via solar, battery, and electric motor technology.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The medical and pharmaceutical industries depend on cheap oil currently, but mainly for transportation, energy, and packaging purposes. Petrochemical derivatives used for actual medicine isn't a huge gas guzzler so far as I know, although we might have to endure a century of being charged an arm and a leg for the rubber gloves our physicians burn through so quickly. Most aspects of our medical infrastructure such as transportation and energy needs can possibly be met with alternative technology. Replacements for rubber and plastic might be far out, and so we will stomach the extra cost until viable replacements can be found. The self-driving Teslambulance™ has a comically high change of actually existing one day.
This all hinges largely on drastic improvements in the cost/output of renewable energy sources and at least steady improvement in our ability to store, transport, and deploy it, which will essentially be the bare bones of electric machine driven industry. I'm not saying I think we will definitely stick the landing, but I do think we have a real shot at doing so, and we really do have serious incentive to try.
Isn't that what we're talking about here, global catastrophe?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Have you ever tried harvesting garden crops off a piece of land for decades with out putting anything back?
What is the mountain of evidence that global warming is a bad thing?
Another thing these people don't seem to realize is what other domains of science - domains that have a greater amount of evidence than does "global warming by man" - like evolution by natural selection. This whole argument about man-made global warming is ridiculous when we realize that humans are as natural as everything else. We are not separate from nature, so to make these assertions that the climate is changing due to some non-natural causes (man), is non-sensical. Would these same people be complaining if elephants were causing climate change - or would it simply be natural change?
The Earth changes - and that includes everything on it. Global catastrophes and extinction events occurred well before human beings came on the scene. Other organisms can change their environment and given enough time and enough population growth, they can have widespread consequences to the Earth.
Human beings are natural outcomes and produce natural effects on their environment. Those that don't take this into account haven't yet taken the objective high ground on this issue.
It's very unlikely climate change deniers have the relevant training to even know how to go about mounting realistic opposition to climate change theory in the first place. Frankly, probably no one here really knows whether humans are contributing (the denial of which therefore means conveniently that humans are safe to engage in any practices that maximise capital without having to sacrifice any of it for the sake of the planet - see paragraph one). Fortunately, we have a group of individuals whose job it is to find the evidence and let us know one way or the other. If someone wants me to listen to a priori lay-questions posturing as credible opposition instead of yielding to professionals with mountains of actual empirical evidence, they're going to have to lobotomise me (which will also be the fate of anyone who accuses me of appealing to authority). The people who call themselves 'climate sceptics' don't seem to realise that before you can even start properly debunking something, a pretty deep understanding of the subject is required first.
Anyone who wants to be intellectually honest when it comes to climate change theory ought to accept the conclusions of scientists. Ought to. Even if it's all wrong and the deniers were on the right side of the debate all along. If it turns out that all these scientists are wrong, we were still right to accept it because we had (as far as we knew, which is the best we can ever do) very good justifications for doing so. The same cannot be said currently of the deniers because they will only be accidentally right, since their arguments will not be what debunks climate change theory. That will be the job of actual scientists.
You are right, though, that many people wrongly locate human activity above or outside nature. But just because we "act naturally" doesn't mean what we are doing is beneficial to ourselves in the long run.
Quoting Harry Hindu
?
I have no problem calling global warming a catastrophe, but what I was referring to is an actual event resulting from global warming which would actually cause immediate human death. A massively deadly hurricane striking the U.S would be one such example. Extended and widespread heat/drought could be another. But these are not guaranteed to happen as climate change progresses, they are just possibilities. My point is that we don't yet know which will turn out to be the sharpest edge of global warming, and it is entirely possible our population will continue to grow despite things being made more difficult.
Will climate change and other such hurtles, like running out of fossil fuels, result in a net loss of human life on earth? I bet no.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover By rotating crops, fallowing fields, and growing diverse plants you can actually effectively manage soil nutrition. Building naturally self-sustaining agricultural systems is messier than monoculture (see: permaculture) and you will get less calories per acre, but each year instead of needing more fertilizer to combat nutrient depletion, soil quality is naturally improved. Different plants absorb and deposit different nutrients from and into the soil, which is how ecosystems become more productive with only water and sunlight as external inputs.
Yeah, this is almost beautiful, isn't it? I've heard quite a few anti-AGW "arguments", but I suppose it takes a philosophy fan to take it to such a surreal level of idiocy.
So it's natural [i]because[/I] it's man-made? As, I suppose, is everything except the supernatural? That's one way to look at it, but I think the man-made/natural distinction is useful and you're kind of missing the point by making a rather trivial semantic point. What is natural in this context is obviously in contrast to what is man-made: nature as uneffected by man.
I think the better question is [i]to what extent[/I] is man causing climate change? And what should we do about it? Naomi Klein has a few suggestions on the latter, and also provides plenty of authoritative sources with regards to the former in her published writings on this topic.
Yes, very good point. Although I was thinking of a better way of phrasing the original question, rather than scrapping it altogether in favour of a different question. There's also a difference in kind of these questions, since one is a question for science and the other is a question of ethics. I'm still interested in the former.
I think it does matter. The global ecosystem is everyone's responsibility. Those who damage the ecosystem should be held accountable and must play a greater role in clean-up and preservation.
Without some form of deterrent policy I don't think things will work out well for nature. The best way to go about it is a carrot and stick policy. Incentive is equally important as penalty.
The only difference between the expected climate change of this time is faster than those in the past. This makes it difficult for life to adapt since it needs generations up on generations to make a successful adaptation to climate change.
Humans are affecting the environment - there's little doubt about that. However, I'm more worried about the speed of the change than the change per se.
You mean the Bangladesh that achieved record rice and record total cereal production in 2015? Last year's harvest being marginally below that record. You mean the Bangladesh that has reduced malnourishment to the tune of $1billion due to increased crop yields, and still gaining land due to sedimentation?
If you think the problems in South Sudan are due to the climate, you are politically unaware. Visa fees for aid workers are now $10,000.
But we mustn't ignore the evidence and the best science and economics, such as the empirical fact that the biosphere has become 14% more productive since 1982, which is modeled to reduce the amount of land under agriculture by 11-17%. Human welfare does not seem to score well in virtue-signaling competitions, so I ask you to consider the wild animals!
And, we don't want our best science and economics to obscure the narrative, so let's deny them. Specifically let's deny the result that global warming is expected to be beneficial up to 3 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, of which we have achieved 0.8 degrees.
By the time we hit 3 degrees of warming, the Bangladeshis will be as rich as the present day Dutch, and quite able to afford sophisticated flood defences.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/climate_change.pdf
Yes, that Bangladesh. I think andrewk is referring to the widely-known prediction that Bangladesh, whatever their present magnificent record, is the country most likely to be adversely affected by anthropogenic climate change. Here's a recent article about it.
The facts are that Bangladesh is gaining land, has suffered no increase in cyclones, and has benefited enormously from CO2 fertilization.
uhuh... The Pretence of Knowledge
Copenhagen Consensus is, in general, a bit weird. I mean, if I fiddle with the discount rate I get totally different results when looking at this from a pure cost-benefit approach. It's not very sensible.
Here's another nice statistic I read today from the WHO: 25% of infant mortality is caused by man-made pollution.
Quoting Bitter CrankNow you are making a value statement and values are man-made. Who is to say that what is right for humans is right for the rest of nature? Who is to say that humans deserve to continue to exist? I'm sure if lions had their way, there would be no competitors, like hyenas, for resources. Hyenas would be extinct. I'm sure that we'd want to eliminate every virus and dangerous bacteria from existence. Do we have that right?
Throughout the history of the Earth, there have been mass extinctions and massive environmental and geological change over a short period of time. Were all those changes bad? It led to us, but what about all those animals and environments that are now destroyed thanks to natural forces that led to us? Climate Changers seem to be incapable of stepping back and looking at the big picture.
Another thing: China is one of the worst, if not THE worst polluters on Earth. If Climate Changers really want to put their money where their mouth is, why not go to China and make your claims there? After all, the U.S. has probably spent more money and energy to limit pollution than any other country yet these people still lambaste Americans more than any other country. This is what the left is known for - selective outrage. Anything the U.S. does will be a waste if other countries like China and India don't pull their own weight here. All the effort of Climate Changers will be wasted.
That's fallacious reasoning. Just because China is the worst polluter doesn't absolve every other country from doing what needs to be done. Moreover, China's expenditure in reneweable energy is also the largest in the world (2015) USD 103 billion compared to USD 44 billion in the US. Considering the choices Trump is making the "selective" outrage is spot on.
It is also the case that some places will first be winners, then losers; others first losers then winners. How, exactly, and who will be demonstrated over time.
It is also the case that disasters like South Sudan owe a great deal to bad politics. Famines often have political as well as environmental causes.
Then there are economic factors, like having passed peak oil, that come into play. Over time oil is becoming more difficult and expensive to produce, and there will be less of it. This alone will make it more expensive and difficult to adapt to particular climate changes.
So, point being, crises are multidimensional.
My sublime thought is available to the Chinese via the Internet. I am sure there hang on every word.
As for the amount China is spending; it is comparable to amount of pollution they create compared to the rest of the world, so yes, they should be spending more money that the US, duh. Any info on India, the 2nd largest population and polluter?
But yeah, you and Bitter can ignore the more interesting points about humans being natural causes to Earth's climate, and avoid those questions I posed in my previous post. Cherry-pickers.
I thought I had agreed with you that humans are a part of nature, and therefore, what they do is "natural". But just being natural isn't in itself always good. Termites are natural too, and if they infest your house, it will eventually collapse as they eat--and weaken--the structure.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Somebody has to pick the cherries.
Actually it makes a lot of difference. A Dutch invention could be exported and used by other countries, for instance. A county can inspire others for demonstrating that co2 reduction and growth are possible (oh wait, the USA and China did exactly that).
And the amount of pollution China creates is largely driven by market demand in the West. So "blaming" them as solely responsible in a global economy is a bit silly. It is global warming after all.
However vehicles, factories, nuclear powerplants, etc. are not in any form of biological relationship with the ecosystem. There is not even a hint of it. The relationship (if you can call it that) between man-made artefacts and nature is a one-way street and it's jammed with garbage trucks loading tons of toxic pollutants.
Therefore, there's a significant difference between man-made artefacts and natural things. This difference has major consequences for the enviroment.
Then the early extrapolations predicted a greater increase in global temperature than was occurring. That is to say, we may be certain to a very high degree of accuracy how much heat there SHOULD be captured on the planet by greenhouse gases. We have very accurate data of how much greenhouse gases there are in the atmosphere. But we don't know exactly where the heat is going that the gases capture.
Those with fiscal interest in denying climate change immediately trumpeted that scientists were deliberately misleading the public, somewhat to the confusion of scientists who have no motivation to do so.
In 2015, the general consensus was that the largest hole in the dataset was the effect of the icemelt from the Himalayas into the Indian Ocean. Recent spot surveys have indicated that deep-sea undercurrents from the Himalayan icemelt carry warm water deeper than originally thought, and that slipstreams of warmer and colder water form layers in the deep sea which are capturing heat way down below. So last year, an international consortium started deploying a network of about 60 'bouncing weatherbuoys' was distributed across the Indian ocean. The 'bouncing weatherbuoys' move very sensitive temperature and current sensors up and down the buoy cables to gather data across the entire ocean depth. This will increase the amount of data by something like five orders of magnitude, which was calculated to be the amount necessary to determine how much the deep sea is actually absorbing heat across the different slipstream layers, and how the heat is being distributed out of the Indian ocean into the pacific. That only serves to indicate how little data has been available on deep ocean currents. It will take at least several years for the first recomputations to be available, and so there hasnt been alot of news about it yet on the open Internet, because the scientists, from prior experience in this field, have no interest in promising any findings which might be more difficult to establish than they hope.
The general observation should be, if people really wish to challenge the scientific theory, they should be funding such experiments more, rather than withdrawing the funding for military purposes, as is currently happening in the USA. Nothing would delight the scientists more than to discover they are wrong about impending doom. Meanwhile, the search continues for the missing heat, as much as it can, while those who deny the inevitable consequences of the greenhouse effect ratchet up the rhetoric to claim that the second law of thermodynamics is pseudoscience created by fakes, by which same logic, car engines would not work. And that's the world as it is known today )
Re-read that post again, Bitter - the part where I mention value statements. Does that give you the right to eradicate all termites on Earth? Who has the right to exist, termites or humans?
Your house collapsing from a termite infestation isn't much different from your house collapsing as the result of an earthquake or tornado, all of which have been happening and shaping the landscape ever since Earth existed.
You have to realize that value statements are always subjective, while what I'm saying is from a far more objective viewpoint - one that you just barely seem to be able to reach while the others in this thread seem hopeless.
Quoting Bitter CrankUh.. You do realize that the Chinese govt. filters and controls what it's population sees on the internet, don't you? You need to go there to spread your message, but something tells me that you only care enough about the environment to preach to those that need to hear it the least, and only if the environment (termites) doesn't affect your life.
Volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, etc. aren't biological in nature either, but they are still natural. You are making a distinction that isn't really there. New non-biological elements are made naturally inside stars. How is that different from the things that humans make? As I said before, we put CO2 in the environment just by breathing.
And if it is a shared responsibility, that implies that not only should we help the Chinese but they should be helping us. Good luck with that. When are you going to China, Benkei?
Our exhaling CO2 through breathing is part of a carbon neutral cycle and didn't have any direct incidence on the recent increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration. That's because the CO2 that animals (including us) exhale all comes from plant food and the pants that are eaten already had extracted this CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. So, through this whole nutrition/metabolism cycle, as much CO2 is taken out from the atmosphere and continuously incorporated into the biomass as is continuously emitted by it (including through fermentation of dead biomass). By contrast, the CO2 that we release through burning fossil fuels had previously been stored underground over hundred million years and now is released back by us into the atmosphere in a time frame of mere decades. This is why current atmospheric CO2 concentration is higher now than it has been over the last million years (and likely much longer) and still is climbing at breathless speed (pun intended).
Yes, this seasonal cycle occurs because of the annual death and regrowth of land vegetation over mostly northern hemispheric land masses.
So does he (that was implicit in what he said), but not as much as what needs to be done. He might not have worded it in the best possible way, but it gets the point across effectively. If his point was something along the lines that a practical solution is more important than assigning blame, then I agree.
You also make some good points which I agree with. There should indeed be incentives and deterrents.
Did I suggest that I had the right or intention to eradicate all termites on earth? No. Am I not the founder of "Termite Lives Matter" after all?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Both, of course. Just not in each other's houses. I believe in segregation.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Your replies are sometimes loaded with a lot more subjective value statements than they are objective viewpoints. Your sense of humor is a pit pinched as well. My comment on the Chinese was clearly self-deprecating.
Steal? Seriously. I think we're done here. >:O
Yes, volcanoes, quakes, tornadoes, etc. are natural. So, what? That doesn't imply we shouldn't classify dangers to the environment into the categories man-made and natural.
Knowing that human activity damages the environment is owning up to one's mistakes. It's the first step in problem solving. It reveals our role in the preservation/destruction of the planet's biosphere.
It's like psychopathy. It is ultimately human nature BUT it needs to be given a category of its own to distinguish it in the vast and complex world of human nature.
I'm curious what everyone thinks about this
Like...?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well, it is kind of hard to pick up on humor without being in person. There are those that resort to character assassination when they don't have an argument to make, You must be one of those that veers off topic and tries to make light of things when they don't have an argument to make.
Can you specify where I'm inconsistent.
There are 2 parts to their site -- the information map obtained from Stanford and then their own organization page. Their organization looks like a conventional well-meaning non-profit that is promoting some nice idea, but nothing substantial.
Many assumptions and estimations went into the information map projections which would need to be assessed to determine how "real" the projections are. My guess is that the projections and estimations were quite optimistic. Not that a little optimism about solar/wind would be a bad thing.
Around 10-12 years ago, someone in Worthington, MN claimed that the 6 wind generators outside town provided most of the town's energy--though the diesel generating plant was still needed (the wind doesn't always blow). True or not? Don't know. It seemed plausible. Worthington is a town of 10,000 with a couple of ag plants -- an alfalfa dehydrating plant (uses natural gas for heat) and a meat-packing plant. Otherwise, it's just down at the heels retail and residential.
If the short-term storage problem is solved, if residential and commercial demand is reduced, and if transportation is shifted from 1 person per car to 80 people per trolley, freight shifted to electric trains, we might be able to make it work. Whether large-scale agricultural field operations can be conducted by electric motors, I very much doubt -- not with existing batteries. Very long extension cords, maybe?
In the long run, we don't have any choice but to rely on wind and solar (and/or nuclear), so we had better figure out how to do it.
Not sure what you mean with "not so much..." It's not either one or the other; it's both. According to an IPCC AR4 figure (fourth assessment report) the "CO2 equivalent" net emissions from deforestation and biomass decay represents 17.3% of the total anthropogenic contribution to the enhanced greenhouse effect, while the fossil fuel burning contribution is 56.6%. (The rest is from N2O, CH4, other greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic sources of CO2 such a cement production.)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/09/epa-scott-pruitt-carbon-dioxide-global-warming-climate-change
This statement is factually incorrect, and again demonstrates total disregard for truth from the Trump administration.
I think the term "Global heating' is more appropriate.
It is like heating a mixture of water and ice. The mixture doesn't get any warmer, but the ice melts. Once all the ice is melted, then it will get warmer; significantly warmer.