Global Warming/Climate Change Discussion Thread

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Which of the following statements best reflects your views on Global Warming?


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I'm probably bumping but I think that glabal warming is real but humans haven't affected it as much as we think and it's nowhere near as serious as what we make it out to be. If I'm right in remembering global heat levels are actually getting colder, but that might be false or outdated, so don't quote me on that.
I would follow the link Danoff just referenced of his before doubling down on that sentiment
 
At the mid-term elections, a new carbon tax was soundly defeated in ultra-liberal Seattle. Now we see nation wide anti-carbon tax protests all across France. But in London, 6,000 rioted in favor of more carbon taxes.

GWPF & Irish Times
France is bracing for a nationwide revolt over the weekend as angry drivers plan to block roads nationwide in protest against the government’s carbon tax and rising fuel prices.

France2018.png

The French government approved a measure in late 2017 increasing a direct tax on diesel as well as a tax on carbon, allegedly to fight against climate change. The so-called Contribution Climat Énergie (CCE), a French version of the carbon tax, has steadily increased fuel prices in recent years. Drivers across the country have balked at the rising price of diesel as it disproportionately affects workers who depend on their vehicles to get to and from their jobs. Two-thirds of French people expect a “social explosion” in coming months.


Meanwhile, in London:
"People need to take their heads out the sand and look at the science and frankly panic and join us. It's extremely frightening."
 
At the mid-term elections, a new carbon tax was soundly defeated in ultra-liberal Seattle. Now we see nation wide anti-carbon tax protests all across France. But in London, 6,000 rioted in favor of more carbon taxes.

GWPF & Irish Times
France is bracing for a nationwide revolt over the weekend as angry drivers plan to block roads nationwide in protest against the government’s carbon tax and rising fuel prices.

Meanwhile, in London:
"People need to take their heads out the sand and look at the science and frankly panic and join us. It's extremely frightening."
Isn't it amazing how people are so in favour of higher taxes...unless the taxes are on them. Rich guy, no problem. Us, no way. Just to highlight how bad the situation is, Macron's popularity is lower than Trump's:eek:
 
We are aware of the South Atlantic Anomaly, where compass needles point south. Now here comes a new anomaly, virtually from conspiracy theory, that looks like all sorts of fun for the real world. By courtesy of The Guardian


Brazil's new foreign minister believes climate change is a Marxist plot


Ernesto Araújo has called climate science ‘dogma’ and bemoaned the ‘criminalisation’ of red meat, oil and heterosexual sex

Jonathan Watts Global environment editor

Thu 15 Nov 2018 12.13 ESTLast modified on Thu 15 Nov 2018 22.32 EST


Ernesto Araujo, right, has been nominated by President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, left, to be Brazil’s top diplomat. His appointment could undermine Brazil’s leading role on climate change. Photograph: Sergio Lima/AFP/Getty Images
Brazil’s president-elect Jair Bolsonaro has chosen a new foreign minister who believes climate change is part of a plot by “cultural Marxists” to stifle western economies and promote the growth of China.

Ernesto Araújo – until recently a mid-ranking official who blogs about the “criminalisation” of red meat, oil and heterosexual sex – will become the top diplomat of South America’s biggest nation, representing 200 million people and the greatest and most biodiverse forest on Earth, the Amazon.

His appointment, confirmed by Bolsonaro on Wednesday, is likely to send a chill through the global climate movement.

Brazil was where the international community first came together in 1992 to discuss reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Its diplomats have played a crucial role in bridging the gap between rich and poor nations, particularly during the forging of the Paris agreement in 2015.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...er-ernesto-araujo-climate-change-marxist-plot
 
This thread has been around for 13 years. I've been asking for accurate predictions of global temperatures for about that long. Here's a post of mine from way back when.



Today I went searching to see if someone has compared it, and there's a neat little video at this link:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming

The predictions that were selected for that comparison stack up pretty well with reality. More on that in a minute.




That chart was linked to one that seems to have auto-updated. So it appears current to show how that cycle has turned out. It was a pretty small cycle. If the trend continues, we're headed for at least a mild ice age. But it appears that will be overwhelmed by warming. Probably couldn't come at a better time. Hopefully it's a strong negative forcing function on temperature while we sort things out. If we're unlucky the next solar cycle comes booming back and we get no break.

Over the last few years, my skepticism about the claims of global warming being attributable to human causes has been waning. For a while there in the mid 2000s the predictions sure looked off base. But they've been roaring back in the last 10 years and have kept on track with predictions. It's enough to make me say that the models do have some of the validation that I was so hungry for a decade ago.

Another thing happened to shove me more toward the "humans are responsible" conclusion. I visited China. During my time in China I went from the northern tip at Beijing to the Southern Tip at Hong Kong and saw much of what was in between (partly on a bullet train). It was stunning to see the degree of pollution all the way across the country. This is just not something we have in the US. We have pockets of pollution in large cities, but in between there are crystal clear skies. With China it was wall to wall (great wall to great wall I suppose), and that experience made the Earth feel quite a bit smaller in my mind. What I had been used to was seeing pollution concentrated in pockets, and what I was seeing was effects that were clearly manmade affecting an entire country (or at least a swath of a country) from one end to the other. The plausibility of the net effect of humanity affecting the entire globe grew.

You have to remember, the surface of the Earth is 71% water-covered. This is where people are not living, cities are not polluting (international shipping is another story). So when I see, in my own country, only small pockets of pollution in our small fraction of the landmass, it's hard not to be skeptical of the claim that we're ruining the atmosphere that surrounds the entire enormous globe. But when I'm brought face to face with such a large amount of country with such a great degree of pollution, like I said, the Earth shrinks a bit in relation to what mankind can do. It seemed almost hubris to me 10 years ago to think that humanity was so influential that we could accidentally sway the entire planet, especially when we occupy such a small fraction. It doesn't seem that way to me any more.
Interesting. I just came back here after watching this video:



Not sure you're a scientist but I remember you (used to?) work at NASA and you were pretty sceptic and well informed on this subjet.

By the way, hello people! Long time I don't visit this place.
 
Not sure you're a scientist but I remember you (used to?) work at NASA and you were pretty sceptic and well informed on this subjet.

By the way, hello people! Long time I don't visit this place.

Yup, used to. I was an engineer, so not an Earth scientist like the people she's talking about. I didn't study climate change. But I did do a number of things while working there that made me skeptical.

One was I worked with a lot of planetary scientists, and I saw how poorly some of them (certainly not every one of them) understood uncertainty. By in large scientists don't live and die by uncertainty. If they estimate some parameter and the real value comes in at 8-sigma off, they already published their paper 10 years ago and have moved on in their career. Engineers, on the otherhand, get absolutely hammered when they're 8-sigma out of bed on an estimate.

Another was that I did a lot of modeling and estimation, where my career actually counted on propagating uncertainties accurately - the same kind of modeling of data and parameters that those Earth scientists are doing for climate change. So I knew a lot about their methods, and I could see how much more cavalier they could be with uncertainty.

The last was that I attended their talks and listed to the state-of-the-art on the subject. The lack of refinement of their models was alarming at the time compared to the degree to which people felt that "the science was in". Even in that video she says there is some debate about whether CO2 or methane is the primary culprit. That's kindof a big deal. She concludes by saying "we know what's causing it and it's time to do something about it", but whether the primary driver is CO2 or methane plays a GIANT role in that.

This is partly why I urged caution from a budding scientific area of research a decade ago. I think less caution is warranted now than back then. Their models are significantly more refined now than they were 10 years ago, and have some battle-tested success as well.
 
One was I worked with a lot of planetary scientists, and I saw how poorly some of them (certainly not every one of them) understood uncertainty. By in large scientists don't live and die by uncertainty. If they estimate some parameter and the real value comes in at 8-sigma off, they already published their paper 10 years ago and have moved on in their career. Engineers, on the otherhand, get absolutely hammered when they're 8-sigma out of bed on an estimate.

It depends. Hard sciences, like physics and chemistry, tend to have a reasonable appreciation. Maybe it's that they tend to be naturally quite math-y anyway, and so the people doing them are OK with hard statistics. But yes, the softer the sciences get, the less appreciation there seems to be of statistics. Which seems a bit backwards to me, it's the softer sciences that can't push up to 6+ sigma confidences just by repeating the test a lot that would really benefit from including a realistic and transparently derived estimation of their confidence.

Although the cynic in me suspects that it would make for less bombastic news headlines.
 
How can a head of state simply state he doesnt "believe" in a scientific rapport based on facts researched by 13 agencies and 300 scientist?

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/26/politics/donald-trump-climate-change/index.html
Quite easily. A better question is "Who cares?"

People who don't like Trump won't pay attention to him and people who do will. It doesn't change anything whether he says he doesn't believe in climate change or not - and nobody has to believe in something that's true for it to still be true (or believe in something that's false for it to still be false).


Wake me up when he says something like showering, garlic, or raping a virgin is a preventative/cure for HIV and AIDS isn't real*.

*This isn't a random example before anyone has a tantrum at me; these have been the official positions of South African presidents over the last 20 years
 
People who don't like Trump won't pay attention to him
Given his position in office do people have a choice? If he didn't believe in climate change but was still just a douchebag shouting at other douchebags on The Apprentice then ignoring him would be the default position. But he's in an unfortunate position where his whims and flailing piñata-based policymaking can actually affect things, so not paying attention to him isn't really an option.
 
How can a head of state simply state he doesnt "believe" in a scientific rapport based on facts researched by 13 agencies and 300 scientist?

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/26/politics/donald-trump-climate-change/index.html

Trump is taking the US out of the Paris climate agreement, and the US is already adopting policies in disagreement with it. There are sound reasons not to put all your eggs in the basket of those paid to ring the alarm about possible events in the future.

1) Major polluters like China, India and Japan are increasing coal usage and energy production in general. For the US to cut back on energy production would be to hurt the US economy.
2) Even if the threat of climate change (of any kind) is real, its going to take loads of energy and a very productive economy to actually do anything about it.
3) Human and domesticated animal populations are increasing, and so are the demands for energy and energy-costly foods, like meats. The plain fact is that global energy production of all kinds is going to go up, up, up, and not down.
4) There is no workable comprehensive plan agreed upon to combat climate change of any kind.
5) The exact role CO2 and methane play in climate change are not fully understood. There have been times in the distant past when, seemingly, CO2 percentage has been higher and climate has been colder, and times when CO2 has been lower and climate warmer.
6) The effects of global cooling would be far, far worse than global warming. There are early signs of global cooling in the magnetic fields of the Sun and Earth, rapid cooling of the upper atmosphere, and weakening of warmth carrying currents to the northern Atlantic.
 
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Global cooling isn't a thing.

Global cooling has been a fact in the past. For instance, there have been ten Ice Ages in the last million years. "Seattle" and "London" were buried under miles of ice! These Ice Ages have occurred on a regular, cyclic basis. They last much longer than the brief warm periods in between. At each of these transitions are terrible disruptions in the climate. We are, generally speaking, due for another Ice Age in the not-too-distant future.

Additionally, there have been Little Ice Ages in the very recent past. In these, crops fail in the summer and rivers such as the Thames freeze over.

All I'm saying is that we should not run around like chickens with their heads cut off, and stampede over the suggestion of global anything. We should continue to patiently study both global cooling and global warming. Above all, we need a strong, prosperous economy to have any hope of placating a growing global population.
 
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Given his position in office do people have a choice? If he didn't believe in climate change but was still just a douchebag shouting at other douchebags on The Apprentice then ignoring him would be the default position. But he's in an unfortunate position where his whims and flailing piñata-based policymaking can actually affect things, so not paying attention to him isn't really an option.
Well, there's a difference between hearing someone and paying attention to them.

When Trump says "Well, somebody's doing the raping, Don! I mean somebody's doing it! Who's doing the raping? Who's doing the raping?", that's what I hear. I don't think "Actually, that's a good point... who is doing all the raping?", because I don't have any reason to pay attention to what he's saying.

What he says on climate change won't alter anyone's mind. Nobody who's a "Warmer" will think "Well bugger me, Trump says it ain't happening, so I was wrong all along." and I can't imagine all that many "Deniers" saying "Trump agrees with me! I must be right!". Apart from those who inexplicably think he talks sense.
 
I think Trump is "speaking in political tongues" to his base of religious and down-at-heel followers.
Weather is not climate. But politics is about the money. Trump is concerned about politics, money and the economy. He took cynical advantage of the Paris agreement to bolster his politics. His beliefs, or maundering tweets, have nothing to do with science or the environment.

Like a fox, an animal with a brain the size of golf ball but good at cunning and self-preservation, Trump was able to figure out that complying with the Paris agreement was bad for the US economy and thus bad for his near term political success.
 
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What he says on climate change won't alter anyone's mind. Nobody who's a "Warmer" will think "Well bugger me, Trump says it ain't happening, so I was wrong all along." and I can't imagine all that many "Deniers" saying "Trump agrees with me! I must be right!". Apart from those who inexplicably think he talks sense.
I might just be being dumb here, but I'm not sure that choosing whether or not to listen to him is the problem.

Trump won't sway people either way, but if he say, appoints someone who sued the EPA multiple times as head of the EPA, invests heavily in coal mining or chips away at the borders of national parks to allow for oil drilling, those are all things that would have an effect whether or not people choose to listen to him.

To put it another way, something the Pope says won't convince me one way or another of God's existence, but if the Vatican was in control of the European Union then his decisions would affect me regardless.
 
I might just be being dumb here, but I'm not sure that choosing whether or not to listen to him is the problem.

Trump won't sway people either way, but if he say, appoints someone who sued the EPA multiple times as head of the EPA, invests heavily in coal mining or chips away at the borders of national parks to allow for oil drilling, those are all things that would have an effect whether or not people choose to listen to him.

To put it another way, something the Pope says won't convince me one way or another of God's existence, but if the Vatican was in control of the European Union then his decisions would affect me regardless.
Yeah, sure, he can do that - but then he can do that without saying what he thinks about it. It's actually marginally more preferable that he does say he doesn't believe in climate change and then appoints an anti-environmentalist EPA head, because at least it's in the open, rather than pretending one thing and doing the other - although he probably does that too. He basically governs by Gish Gallop.

Either way, what he actually says is pretty meaningless. Likely he'll forget what it was in ten minutes and make something else up.
 
Trump is only a small part of the problem - the Republican party and a large slice of the US electorate are a far bigger problem.

I would have more respect for them if not for the nature of their opposition to climate science - too many people don't really know or care about the genuine scientific case/debate about the issue, and for many of them it is all about leftist conspiracies to constrain their freedom and redistribute their wealth. Pitted against these types of arguments, the scientific case for accepting climate change as a real problem has little chance - and it doesn't help when the President himself not only rejects the scientific case, but actively exploits the bogus arguments that turn people against even considering the scientific case.

That said, a smarter president/administration would not deny the scientific case but challenge the proposed 'solutions' - ironically, one could make a far more compelling case against, say, the Paris accords without having to resort to bogus conspiracy theories and a deliberate ignorance of scientific facts. The challenge for people who wish to see something change in terms of the world's use of fossil fuels is to make alternative energy sources more attractive - cheaper, cleaner, more abundant, and in a way that doesn't put people's jobs and future prosperity at risk. Unfortunately that is an almighty challenge.
 
Isn't it amazing how people are so in favour of higher taxes...unless the taxes are on them. Rich guy, no problem. Us, no way. Just to highlight how bad the situation is, Macron's popularity is lower than Trump's:eek:

That's not what this is about. For us this actually hits us hard, because they continually increase taxes and fuel prices on fuel, yet offer no alternative. Meanwhile life keeps getting more expensive, but wages aren't going up to reflect inflation. I perfectly understand why people are starting to get out on the streets.

Many families in my country cannot even afford their own house, because the average price of buying a piece of land and building a house is nearing €600,000. No one has that kind of money unless you know the back alleys around taxes. Meanwhile my country is running out of electricity, so they decide to up those prices as well. Being energy independent is also illegal here. If you're connected to the public power network, and send some of your leftovers from your solar panels into the system, you pay extra taxes. If you're not connected, and you don't use the public network which is already depleted, you pay huge fines.

It's just ridiculous. They want everyone to commit to emission goals, yet introduce absolutely nothing for us families as option or alternative. More and more people generally feel like they're with their backs against the wall. Life is getting so expensive, that I already know at an age of 29 I cannot afford an own house in this country. Either I rent a small appartment, or I go work abroad for the extra pay.

At this rate socialism will return in this country. They always say the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. In the last years I'm really noticing central parties losing a lot of votes, and the people are separating more and more into outer left and outer right.
 
Read this the other day, and it made me very sad.

It's pretty clear to me now that there is too much industrial & economic inertia to overcome. Goals will never be met and we'll trundle closer and closer to the abyss.

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
 
As carbon tax protests spread across Europe, similar clashes may be in prospect in the US.

So how do climate activists get their way? Some openly talk of imposing authoritarian governance to override democratic institutions. Former NASA climate researcher James Hansen suggested in 2007 that “the democratic process does not work.” Other scientists have called the threat of global warming the equivalent of war while calling for the crushing of dissent and the jailing of “deniers.”

Those who see climate change as a dire and urgent threat have some work to do to convince voters in the Western democracies to give up their way of life in exchange for unspecified benefits of a slightly less warm world—and that’s assuming China, India and over a billion people in Africa can be convinced not to try to pull themselves out of poverty—something that may only be done with greater use of fossil fuels.

Thus, one well-worn tactic employed by those who would presume to tell the rest of us how to live, where to live, and how to work—all of the good of the planet, of course—is the alarmist study, making copious use of lies of omission and commission.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckd...te-change-taxes-is-america-next/#57a93975632e
 
Weather is not climate. That said, it is interesting to note that today 46.7% of North America is covered in snow.

Snow cover anomalies for the month of November across “North America”; courtesy Rutgers Snow Lab


NH_snow_Nov.PNG

Snow cover anomalies for the month of November across the “Northern Hemisphere”; courtesy Rutgers Snow Lab




Source: https://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/
 
Weather is not climate. That said, it is interesting to note that today 46.7% of North America is covered in snow.

Snow cover anomalies for the month of November across “North America”; courtesy Rutgers Snow Lab


NH_snow_Nov.PNG

Snow cover anomalies for the month of November across the “Northern Hemisphere”; courtesy Rutgers Snow Lab




Source: https://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/
Snow cover in November in the northern hemisphere is an anomaly? I could have sworn we called it the end of fall and beginning of winter....
 
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When the Polar Vortex is disrupted and colder air dips down south instead of staying up at the pole making more ice cover, then yes, that is an effect of Climate Change.
 
It is curious that the arctic was a warm open ocean when much of North America was locked in ice - during the Ice Age.
 
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