Every fossil fuel company is going to lie their pants off because that's what you and all other humans would do if they got into the same situation.
Speak for yourself.
1. A good number of people actually have a spine. I'd not say the majority "is good && have a spine" but enough that you are lying.
2. It doesn't help at all to spread the lie that everyone else lying.
Speaking as someone who has been embarassingly honest, and who also admires his friend who came back and admitted he'd been laughing at me behind my back.
What do you think religion is except for one big lie? Muslims and Christian's can't both be right, either one of them is right or neither of them. That puts a major portion of the world population gauraunteed to be delusional. Delusional behavior as a corporation like Exxon follows. This is logic you can't deny it.
You apparently are better than most humans since you brag about your ability to be embarrassingly honest.
You are correct, regulation is the only path forward. The problem is, when you give too much freedom to a capitalistic society, the major capitalists aka corporations seem to take control. The corporations in turn take their power and influence the very regulatory bodies that are suppose to keep them in check.
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...
As usual, total numbers are meaningless without scaling them by population. If China split into 100 independent states tomorrow, they wouldn't be a problem anymore by your metric, even if they produce exactly the same amount of CO2 as they do now.
Fair comparison with roughly equal population: Europe, the US, and Australia combined vs. China. And the former group produces more CO2 than the latter.
Also, if you look at the trendlines, the US's per capita numbers are going down, while the China's and India's are going up with no signs of slowing. So is their population growth. The US is currently "taking care of itself" more or less, but China and India (already # 1 and #3 in total carbon numbers) are getting worse at a frightening pace. If we spend all of our energy focusing on the US, even if we're extraordinarily successful there, we'll look around in 20 years and see we lost progress globally. As though we didn't heed Amdahl's law and spent all of our time optimizing the wrong function. The most important thing we can do is find some way for China and (especially) India to grow their economies and pull their citizens out of poverty in a way that doesn't destroy the planet.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/20...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02...
And as per article, US companies are also involved in the muddy waters of denialism propoganda.
> that's what you and all other humans would do if they got into the same situation.
Which is literally false if history books and court records are to be belived.
As for religion, people can both be honest and mistaken.
Honesty is about intent, not about being verifyable true.
So while two must be technically wrong, honest Muslims and honest Christians might very well co-exist with honest Atheists.
Also I didn't emphasize hard choices involving death. I was referring to life's work. Something you believed to be true your entire life and suddenly you have to give it all up because it's not true. (Think religion and evolution). There are examples of people slowly accepting the truth rather than instantly but even those are few and far in between. To maintain the illusion people build scaffolds like intelligent design to make sure their old frameworks fit the new ones.
I'm not talking about coexistence either. There is no need to bring that topic up. The only fact to support my thesis here is that part of the population is verfiably delusional for sure.
I also disagree with you about honesty. It's more complex than that. People can lie to themselves. Their biases can mold their behavior to the point where they deny logic. One religion must be wrong and those people will fight to the death for their beliefs just like how a fossil fuel company must be wrong and they will fight to the deaths for their beliefs.
According to Wikipedia, there are 41 countries with more emissions per capita than China, including some with large populations like the US, Japan, Germany, Australia, South Korea, Russia...
Really, my point is that it's wrong to think in terms of "countries" because country boundaries are arbitrary. Like, if there were one small town with 1000x the per capita emissions as the US, it wouldn't matter. What matters is the number of people multiplied by the amount they emit.
Country boundaries aren't arbitrary because they are where policies are made. If you could just pick the top 1-billion polluting individual humans in the world and focus on them, that would be ideal. But that obviously doesn't work. You have to operate on the level of political groups. Nation states are the most obvious groups because they can respond to geopolitical pressures.
Policies and social behaviors (enforced by nations or voluntary) are not. People cause the pollution we're talking about, so we have to deal with them as they are.
> What matters is the number of people multiplied by the amount they emit.
Pointing to per capita rather than aggregate is a deflection. Either the environment is in practical danger and we need to reduce total aggregate emissions, or we need to do that AND need to mildly reduce emissions through personal responsibility (virtue signaling) leading to "eventual good" by habit forming. Either way the aggregate matters most, per capita least.
I believe that the situation will come down to a trade war before a physical war, which still involves nations and absolute measures. Once those measures are involved, then per capita will become a factor internally (to the nations involved). Convince me otherwise. I will not reply, but I will read/listen. I'm genuinely interested in the train of thought that other people follow.
US is trending up again:
https://www.vox.com/2019/1/8/18174082/us-carbon-emissions-20...
My view is that climate change is a world problem. Governments will not oblige their citizens to make steps on their consumption if it means reducing their comfort and their economic power.
Steps should be taken in advance so that once green deals are put in place, countries can implement those effortlessly.
We often hear that some countries don't make enough efforts, but
1. Other countries import carbon emitting products
2. The developed countries of today have emmited greenhouse gases for decades, which allowed them to become developed countries.
The geopolitics of climate change are extremely difficult. I don't think the UN is up for it.
Although a better scenario would be to enact tight regulations on a country basis, but it's a political minefield. Imagine riots because people want to keep using their cars and trade goods that have become illegal, or vendettas against people who emit co2.
Here is the catch - efforts to reduce overconsumption mean slowing economy and lower tax base. No goverment can afford that.
> Imagine riots because people want to keep using their cars and trade goods that have become illegal, or vendettas against people who emit co2.
I believe we are on a verge of Millenial movement of some sort that will make a matter of enviroment a quasi religion of sorts. That would change the attitudes.
It's interesting though that they will oblige them to wars.
This is generally not a true statement. Government is not entirely segregated from the citizenry. It is, in some form, representation of society (even in a dictatorship).
Here, I am less convinced.
Globalisation came about in good part to move from the places with tighter regulation - on pollution, on employment, on finance - to those without.
It is the same way that offshore finance came about by trading each regulation against each other. The net result is there are fewer controls everywhere, despite a few headline money laundering regs. The history of this is fascinating.
> My view is that climate change is a world problem
That's undoubtedly true, and the fossil fuel companies clearly acknowledge this - their 30 year anti-science propaganda campaigns have been waged across the world.
The effects climate change has and will have are doing that for them.
This is not really clear. You could argue that using more solar and electric vehicles will increase comfort due to cleaner air.
The UK government is currently delivering on all three, though I suspect not for any ecological reasons.
The Network (1976)
edit - there was a World Bank blog post about this, but it has mysteriously disappeared.
https://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/miga/world-s-top-10...
here's google's cached version -
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Qt-r1E...
There can, and has been, plenty of discussion as to the reasons, but for at least thirty years now the consensus has been that human activity is responsible for the vast majority of the effects we've seen.
And before I'm downvoted, note that you don't know my position on climate change: all I'm against is punishing people for genuine disagreement of thought.
Beyond that, one major issue is that the extreme politicization of this issues makes it difficult for people to speak freely. Anybody who speaks their mind on this topic, when such view doesn't abide the 'proper' view is labeled, attacked, and ostracized when and if possible. So you end up primarily with radicals, fools, and a handful of people with extremely thick skin willing to speak. A similar treatment was given to those who, for instance, suggested that leaded fuel might indeed be harmful - the official government and 'consensus' position for decades was that it was safe or posed negligible risk.
I am not, in this posting, thus taking any side. But I do think if you ever want to achieve progress on any topic, people being able to speak freely is critical to progress. Only weak or poorly supported ideas need fear 'contrarian' views. And even in the rare case where those weak or poorly supported ideas happen to be the truth, they invariably become stronger over time (due to the accumulation of validated falsifiable evidence) while, vice versa, alternative views become weaker.
But perhaps more importantly, I think the desire to squash contrarian views has a paradoxical effect. The idea is of course to try to prevent the spread of these ideas, yet in reality there never works - even less so now that we've entered the era of the internet. See: China + Winnie the Pooh for an amusing example. But far more critically, I think efforts to avoid discussion are often seen as an inability to compellingly respond. Once ideas reach a critical mass, they will spread unless compellingly challenged. Refusing to challenge these ideas in a fair and impartial way only strengthens them.
There is zero support for that position.
If you would like to debate the merits of Lindzen's views, feel free to do so: he thinks there will be less warming than existing models predict. He doesn't deny warming!
Meanwhile he retired in 2013, and as far as I can tell has produced no active research in this field since 2011. And his 2011 paper was widely panned including by reviewers he selected. He had to correct numerous errors in the paper. According to wikipedia, he eventually argued that at least 75% of predicted warming was happening.
So, a 25% margin off a catastrophic level of warming. And that's the very best name you can produce. And this info is all in the link you sent. And that's apart from the question of whether he was right in his argument in 2011, which is a factual answer we can measure with temperature sensors. (IIRC, warming has progressed faster than expected instead)
Contrary to your point, there is tremendous economic incentive to prove that fossil fuels are safe, cause us no trouble, and can continue to be used. Anyone who decisively proved that would be a hero, as fossil fuels are very useful indeed. The absence of such a person suggests that this view is mistaken.
> According to an April 30, 2012 New York Times article,[67] "Dr. Lindzen accepts the elementary tenets of climate science. He agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, calling people who dispute that point "nutty." He agrees that the level of it is rising because of human activity and that this should warm the climate." He also believes that decreasing tropical cirrus clouds in a warmer world will allow more longwave radiation to escape the atmosphere, counteracting the warming.[67] Lindzen first published this "iris" theory in 2001,[9] and offered more support in a 2009 paper.[51]
Hm.. So he has a diverging view on the consequences of warming on the tropical cirrus cloud coverage, and thinks the models are not good enough to reproduce the real climate. That's disagreement about the projections, not the basics, with most of the community, and that's ok, we can research more and figure out the truth. The problem is, we don't have that time (unless he's right).
Only reality will really tell. Let's hope he's right (not that probable), but act as if he wasn't, and see what else we can learn about the system to improve our understanding.
It's 2019 and humanity is barely starting to think about acting. Global CO2 emissions keep growing as if we were in "business as usual". Humanity needs to realize the magnitude of the problem. Climate change is, by far, the biggest threat it has ever encountered and probably will ever encounter.
The solution will require us to make radical changes to our lifestyle and our culture. For example, we can't keep having irrational leaders that ignore basic scientific facts.
The idea that the humans will somehow adapt to this is the stupidest idea I've ever heard. Koch bros are pushing the same idea, on the evolutionary level, that humans will learn to live.
To me humanity is already dead, we are eternally doomed. We just don't know it yet. It's better to realize and accept it[2], as if we're told we have cancer and our days are numbered. This is a very pessimistic approach, but it is an honest one and may help mitigate problems for future generations.
[1] https://thinkprogress.org/exxon-ceo-what-good-is-it-to-save-...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doo...
1. Have a single CO2 budget for the whole country, with an aggressive, Hard to change roadmap of yearly reduction of said budget down to zero in the not too long future.
2. Estimate the CO2 footprint of every single product, incl. imports by one or several neutral organizations. This doesn’t have to be perfect as long as it attempts to be fair.
3. Tax every product according to this budget using supply/demand markets (certificates trading).
4. Redistribute the tax, especially to mitigate the hardship on low income households and domestic companies.
In my mind, this would create a gigantic incentive for CO2 reduction for your citizens as well as domestic AND foreign companies. Crucially, it would not require any global agreement and consensus. Apart from perhaps renegotiation or canceling of trade agreements on the side of the country that implements the policy.
Note, that you can replace CO2 by greenhouse gases or environmental impact in general. I just use it as a shorthandle.
Very curious about your opinions.
Wow. How does this compare to other predictions at the time?
As a quick refresher: the original climate deal, the Kyoto Protocol, was signed in 1992, by then everyone was well on board with the science. In fact, the climate negotiations were spun off from the convention on reducing CFCs (Vienna Convention of 1985), which are important greenhouse gases as well as being damaging to the ozone layer. It was thought (correctly) at the time that because CFCs were produced and used in a limited number of places, it would be much easier to resolve that problem and move the wider greenhouse gas negotiations into a separate treaty, which took another 7 years until 1992.
I also think the same of Carl Sagan. For all his wonderful and critical achievements, I bet if he could see how things turned out, he would have unquestioningly devoted his life to spreading awareness about climate change here on Earth instead of focusing on astronomy and nuclear war.
Hopefully this company one day will be prosecuted.
Dear HN crowd, I bet a fair share of us belongs to the top 10%, please reduce your emissions.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-r...
A large percentage of emissions is transportation, manufacturing, heating and electricity.
While the rich will consume more, the effect on total emissions is much lower.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/20...
the US is still an order of magnitude higher than India in per capita emissions
You can play it online here: https://tinyurl.com/43softrains-v1-1
I have been considering pursuing funding for making similar choice-based games like this one and integrating them with classroom curriculums.
Is the code open source? I would love to have a translated version of this and encourage the younger members of my family to play it.
What languages are you interested in seeing?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=shell+knew+about+global+warming&t=...
The individualization of environmental problems is a serious obstacle. "We need to stop buying and using plastic water bottles" needs to become "Pepsico and Coke need to stop producing trash."
One solution which I favor is nationalization of US oil companies. While hardly discussed in the US, it's a solution that is currently being discussed in the UK and has been done by many different countries, though usually because of the legacy of imperialism and colonialism. Overtime I have come to the realization free market solutions and incentives are incapable of spurring the changes needed to transition to a cleaner form of energy, especially with the short time scale we have before results are disastrous.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/05/archives/international-te...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...
Exhaust stank, looked dirty. Doesn't take much to figure it out.
(decentralized innovation as politics is too slow)
Also pretty creepy that people go down post comments history to check who it is and where you 're coming from. Eh.
Nowadays the predictions are much higher, because scientists started asking “if the oceans get warmer, what changes will that cause, and how will those changes affect the temperature?” In 1970, Exxon wasn’t suppressing research on whether warmer oceans mean more water vapor in the air, more carbon dioxide outgassing from the oceans, etc. They were only asking “should we really make drastic changes to head off a 1°-2°C temperature change that may not happen for a century? Is there a reason to believe that nothing will change in that time to make the prediction irrelevant?”
Did you mean decades?
1965 - 1979 there were a total of 7 scientific papers predicting a cooling climate. Compared to 42 predicting human caused global warming (Peterson 2008).
I wouldn't bet on it. We know we can cut emissions today by investing in nuclear ... and nothing. We could have invested in nuclear power 30 years ago and prevented trillions of tons of CO2 from being emitted.
Instead we decided wind/solar/natural gas (and those are always package deal) is our best bet at fighting climate change.
>For example, we can't keep having irrational leaders that ignore basic scientific facts.
Facts like nuclear power is by far the best and only way to effectively fight climate change?
> I oversaw the U.S. nuclear power industry. Now I think it should be banned.
> By Gregory Jaczko
> Gregory Jaczko served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2005 to 2009, and as its chairman from 2009 to 2012.
The author is arguably talking his book, since he invested in a wind power company. But it's still noteworthy that nuclear physicists and former regulators don't necessarily agree with you.
It's worth to remember that adaption doesn't necessarily equate survival in the way we tend to think about it, as dinosaurs adapted too.
Humanity, at least on this planet, is already doomed. The sun will eventually consume us as a natural part of its life cycle. It's a very long time until that happens, but life here will eventually end. So as we're already doomed, should we then do nothing to prevent suffering and pain until then?
It should be a rhetorical question, but apparently it isn't always.
The argument can be made quite simple: As long as we continue to have children, or accept people having children, we have chosen - as a species - to not give up on them, and their descendants.
Preserving a livable environment, and preferably much more than livable, is simply a duty springing from that fact.
There is no need for any deep philosophy, to care for the environment is - essentially - a consequence of choices already made.
If you believe you're probably doomed because of what a large number of your most idiotic compatriots believe, what other people think is of great interest.
It's the other species – the ones that had no hand in this – that I worry and feel regret about.
And sure, "cities will move" - so much political chaos happening on Europe just because of a million refugees - now imagine 50 times more coming to northern europe just from southern europe. Similar things happening all over the world. What fun!
If people think the current refugee crisis is bad, boy are they in for a shocker.
Here's one that's in Congress now that you can support: the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (http://energyinnovationact.org) . All revenue from a carbon tax goes to citizens as a yearly check. It has some 30+ cosponsors, including a Republican. A tax at point of source is more efficent than a per-item budget. Any rising cost of CO2 will be accounted for in the price of the product. Fossil-fuel-expensive products will cost more.
The group behind this is the Citizens Climate Lobby, which has been advocating a fee and dividend model for over a decade. It was cofounded by James Hansen, the NASA scientist who first testified to Congress about the perils of climate change over 30 years ago.
In addition, if you live in the states of Oregon and New York, both are on the cusp of passing similar legislation. And there are many more out there in various stages of development...
So, I'd suggest the following for any nation or country:
1. Create an independent institution (like the European Central Bank) with the goal to get to carbon neutrality until, say, 2040 or 2045.
2. Give it the right to tax carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. This should include tariffs for imported goods, and reimbursements for exported goods, and other means to make some special industries pay (airplanes and ships, mostly).
3. Give it the right to perform auctions for negative carbon emissions.
If the world wants a chance to fix the problem, it'll need negative emissions, as far as I know. This is missing in your suggestion. It may also be faster to create new industries than change existing ones.
My suggestion would also follow a well-known, although maybe no uncontroversial principle of "polluter pays". In the end, the price is determined by the goal, not by political considerations.
If I'm not mistaken, such a carbon tax would rise until (positive) carbon emissions equal negative carbon emissions. At this point, carbon neutrality should be reached. Whatever else needs to be done is then up to future generations.
If it's an international effort, there's going to be disagreement on how to set a budget. Does a country with an emerging economy get a higher budget because they're behind more advanced economies who benefited from fossil fuels in their past growth? Getting advanced economies to make a disproportionate sacrifice will be a hard sell. And what is the accountability/oversight mechanism at the international level?
If instead the budget was set at the national level, you're going to have a hard time getting countries on-board if they see other countries not doing the same. "Why should we hamper our economy when country X isn't making a sacrifice?"
In principal this already works in many cases, eg California/US subsidies on electric vehicles or Germany’s subsidies for solar. Both are very expensive with little benefit for the countries citizens compared to all other earthlings. To everyone else. They are just not aggressive enough.
Again, we don’t need an international consensus yet. The interesting part is putting financial pressure on foreign companies to reduce their CO2 footprint.
When there were lots of options for dealing with emissions on the table, including more intrusive ones like carbon taxes and outright emissions restrictions, cap and trade was the favored alternative of conservatives because it was "market-based." When President Obama settled on cap and trade in 2009 in order to get conservatives on board with doing something about climate, though, those same conservatives immediately turned on their heel and started denouncing it as an example of Obama's "socialism."
(Yes, they went from praising a policy as market-based to condemning the same policy as socialist. Such is the sorry state of American political discourse.)
So, the political problem is: if the appeal of cap and trade is that it should theoretically get the support of conservatives who would usually oppose action on climate, but those conservatives will stop supporting it the moment all the other options they like less are taken off the table, is there any point in offering them a cap and trade olive branch in the first place? How do you negotiate with a faction whose only goal for the negotiation is that you have to lose?
For one thing, it will be a temporary windfall. Then you've got to find ways to replace the revenue when you succeed.
I'd rather see the revenue from a carbon tax go into research, development, and infrastructure that further accelerates the transition to carbon neutral energy.
Obviously, the tax already gives you an incentive to look for other alternatives, but this helps make those other alternatives more practical, so it kind of pushes and pulls you in the right direction.
If a person can style their life in a such a way as to have CO2 budget left over at the end of the year, then they carry it over to the next year or allow them to sell it. But any system that doesn't involve giving the budget directly to citizens is broken and designed for graft and fuck that.
Unfortunately, there's still too much disagreement on climate change at the population level for that level of shared sacrifice.
Can you explain your reasoning behind this? It makes no sense to me.
This is fundamentally an economic issue. People will stop burning carbon when it's less expensive to do something else. If you nationalize the industry only to shut it down, that causes the cost of burning oil to increase (the intended effect), but then the higher prices spur foreign suppliers to increase production which blunts the effect. Meanwhile you suffer a massive domestic loss as you not only have to pay higher oil prices, you have to pay them to foreign suppliers like Russia and Saudi Arabia rather than domestic companies.
By contrast, a carbon tax reduces demand and makes production less profitable world-wide, so everyone reduces production (not just domestic producers), and the money from the higher prices goes to your own government which can either use it to subsidize alternatives or return it to citizens to mitigate the impact of the higher costs.
No. There are no even remotely plausible scenarios in which most life (say, all mammals, to pick something specific) go extinct due to climate change caused by human CO2 emissions. If you think that, you have been lied to - and have not been smart enough to recognize the lies.
"Unless nations step up their efforts to protect what natural habitats are left, they could witness the disappearance of 40 percent of amphibian species, one-third of marine mammals and one-third of reef-forming corals. More than 500,000 land species, the report said, do not have enough natural habitat left to ensure their long-term survival."
A summary can be found here: https://www.ipbes.net/sites/default/files/downloads/spm_uned...
This event resulted in 96% of marine species dying and 70% of land animals dying. I don't think anyone thinks such an event is certain or likely, but it is surely a "remote possibility".
If the latest Australian elections are anything to go by, popular (popularist) voter sentiment is swinging towards denial.
The only reliable takeaway is that jobs are more important than climate to majority of voters in Queensland.
Nationalizing those industries and using tariffs to stabilize at a higher price would accelerate adoption of better technology. You could implode demand for natural gas and fuel oil by raising prices and capturing profits to capitalize heat pump adoption in the northeast, for example.
40 year
Lindzen's main issue is that the models are completely broken. As one example of this there is the 'Holocene temperature conundrum.' If you run our models on all data we have from around 10k to 6k years ago they all show there should have been significant warming. Instead we know there was significant cooling. And the reason for this remains completely unknown. In effect we are trying to forecast many decades into the future using models that break, even on their training data! This is a major problem.
And your perception of warming increasing faster than expected is once again being driven by the media. Our warming has lagged far behind models. For instance the first major climate report was the IPCC's report in 1990. That's nice because it forecast out to 30 years, which is just about now! They predicted a global warming of 0.3C per decade with an uncertainty of 0.2C to 0.5C on the 'business as usual' forecast, which is what we have followed. In reality, we haven't come anywhere near that. You can find various global temperature data, but here [1] are NASA's data. In particular (going decade by decade):
- 1990 = starting point
- 2000 = -0.04 'increase'
- 2010 = 0.3 increase
- 2019 = 0.1 increase
The IPCC was expecting an increase of 0.9 by 2020, with a minimum increase of 0.6. We've increased a bit less than 0.4 degrees. We're not even falling within the bottom end of their rather generous interval. That's, again, a major problem.
You're also misunderstanding that 75% comment. What Wiki (and he) was saying is that the temperature response is nonlinear. He is arguing that there will be a fraction of the expected heating due to a nonlinear response. In particular CO2 concentration levels have increased by about 30% and are at 75% of his expected temperature increase for a doubling of CO2. Does this mean his predictions are wrong, or does it mean the heating will slow? And similarly, we are only 15% of the expected heating for IPCC predictions, which are going in the opposite direction. Are the IPCC wrong, or will the rate of heating accelerate? This is an extremely critical distinction because if it turns out that increasing levels do not result in accelerating heating, then there's basically no problem whatsoever. Note both sides agree we'll continue to see 'the hottest year on [modern] record' for the foreseeable future. This might be what drove you to believe we were seeing more heating than expected.
All this said, I somewhat tend to agree that this is a dumb experiment to be running. I'd much rather roll back emissions, but I think the current science surrounding the arguments for such is running in an increasing number of problems as we start to be able to falisify or validate predictions. They're mostly turning up false (or at the very bottom of ranges), yet the media continues running sensationalized fearmongering nonethless. I think this is irresponsible, at best.
[1] - https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
Thank you for reminding me not to hastily extrapolate data when it happens to fit my expectation of what's going on, and when actual data are readily available.
I'll down vote you for the straw man. You have no idea why parent is being down voted, but a top runner on my list of guesses is that "scientists want to disagree, but they don't for fear of speaking up" is a pretty weak argument.
I also post under effectively my real life identity. Could eventually regret that, but there’s definitely downsides to the alternative approaches to online identity too.
Totally agree with the first part.
The second part describes a thing I regularily do as "pretty creepy". To clarify: before deciding to flag, downvote or vouch for someone I might have a look at their comment history to see if I am misunderstanding something.
Also if someone posts something nice I look through their history to find more good comments.
I don't think I'm the only one who does this and in fact I'd recommend it instead of blindly thinking "troll" and hit downvote and flag whenever one sees something one doesn't agree with.
Whether a comment deserves either of those does not in any way depend on the commenter's posting history and to reference posting history in applying them is problematic in a manner akin to the ad hominem fallacy, in that it substitutes a general judgement of the source of an utterance when what is called for is a judgement on the utterance itself.
If you put yourself out there, suddenly eyes are watching everything. That seemed a bit scary (and again sorry for using emotional words), though of course makes sense why it happens.
But in general, I fully agree with you. There are many reasons to do it, and perhaps it's even helpful when something is not clear and you want to understand better where someone is coming from, as you said.
Apologies again.
I'm painfully aware. Which is why I often use this account :-)
> Apologies again.
No need for that after you cleared it up. I might even have been too harsh myself. I actually prefer if there is some room for thought here and I might have read more into your original post than you intended.
I think we can agree there is a some risk of higher costs if climate change is ignored.
Most likely it’ll be beneficial though.
Why would this be any different?
We don't need to replace political choice, or freedoms with repression to bring in carbon taxes and start banning plastic, coal or gas.
If taxes and regulation penalise meat, people will buy less meat - just as taxes and regulation have changed the town landscape from cigarette butts everywhere, to remarkably infrequent. When I was at school pretty much everyone smoked. Now it's really uncommon to see a smoker. Again, there were no riots or oppression.
Considering the clear majority on both sides of the political map in Europe are convinced by AGW, rich and poor alike, I don't think it as tough a sell as you make out. Inequitable solutions will, rightfully, be a tough sell among populations.
Freedom Markets™ proponents always obsesses over taxes and ignore the incentives.
Consumption will follow the subsidies.
Because nobody cares about "freon banning" with plenty of alternatives, or treated water, and leaded fuel had a long runway letting people the time to replace cars etc.
It's the actual "hard" bans and lifestyle change requiring laws that people would complain about.
And doubly so corporations and private interests making money off of them.
Yes we could come up with some automated polinator machine, but treating it like an engineering problem is insane! Nature has had 10000s of years to adapt to specific functions. The notion that a team of starry-eyed engineers can do a better job is egotistical and dangerous.
There is an excellent documentary from the 90s that lays this out in no uncertain terms: https://www.nfb.ca/film/whos_counting/
Sooo - if it's true, great, one problem less! Regardless, there are still many other problems caused by climate change that he did not dispute and that we still have to fight. So the best course forward is still to reduce emissions, and keep an eye on the reef to see what's true.
---
Googling around I found the statement that
“Dr Ridd was not sacked because of his scientific views. Dr Ridd was never gagged or silenced about his scientific views, a matter which was admitted during the court hearing.” [0]
(But if that's true or not.. hard to say from here. The court recordings would have evidence.)
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/16/james-co...
He's just a person with an opinion not a dissenting scientist.
And if his work suffered as a result of voicing such opinion then it was only to be expected.
If you voice stupid opinion regarding domain you know almost nothing about and prop it up with your work reputation it's only fair if that reputation takes a hit.
If you deny climate change, but you support nuclear power you're doing something to fight climate change.
If you believe in climate change, but you campaign against nuclear power you're actively adding to climate change.
Agreed. Most every problem is solvable if there's the will to do it. The problem in this case is that there doesn't seem to be the political/social will to make the changes and sacrifices necessary for this scale.
It's unfortunate, but most people are very present-biased. It's a tough sell to convince them to adopt a forward thinking policy when it causes pain now. Maybe I'm cynical, but if you offered people to vote on whether to double the price of gasoline in order to subsidize renewables because it will be better in the long-run, I doubt that would pass.
Denialism has a real effect.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm
It isn't necessarily denialism nor shilling to question the validity of predictions. It's a good thing.
Unfortunately the whole topic has become breathless "99% of scientists!" and tied in with social economic programs to the point I'm not convinced any more. To say nothing of failed predictions.
Ya, I believe C02 _should_ warm the earth based on the science. But this whole world is ending thing I'm waiting to actually see something.
For the record, I've been hearing this for over 30 years as an adult and so far not much. Perhaps one day it will all catch up, but I'm skeptical at this point.
In reality, the model results are communicated in uncertainty. More akin to "There's a 70% chance the ice caps will be gone by 2100 if the current level of CO2 emissions are not abated." That's a much less sexy headline to say nothing about the fact that most people wouldn't be shocked if a 3 in 10 chance event actually happens. Nate Silver does a much better job explaining this in his book "The Signal and the Noise"
Many people think that the US should not try to cut carbon emissions because China swamps us in this. I strongly disagree with that.
I'm fully in favor of "keep it in the ground." But nationalization isn't necessarily the right way. In fact: if someone sufficiently wealthy were able to buy up certain strategic assets, they'd be able to resist public pressure to reopen them. For instance, if you had bought Arch Coal at its nadir when it went bankrupt for about $1.4 billion, you would've had control over 16% of America's coal supply. From what I can tell, billions of tons of coal. You could shut it down for pennies on the dollar versus any carbon sequestration scheme.
Or buy up and close down export terminals (and revitalize the property around them if in urban areas, making back your money easily while crippling the profitability of coal mining in the US).
If it was nationalized, it could as likely go the way of Venezuela, which has (until recently) actually extremely subsidized petroleum consumption.
IMHO, government power should be used to tax these things what they're polluting (the stick), develop regulations while strongly subsidizing clean alternatives (the carrot). Nationalizing the oil industry and jacking up prices is just going to make people mad at you while enabling a successor to completely undo your work.
Our current situation politically certainly encourages caution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...
From the linked wikipedia article on Greenhouse effect
https://medium.com/@cimuir/we-ve-been-talking-about-climate-...
has a picture of a newspaper commenting on the possibility, dated July 17th, 1912.
Carbon tax + tariffs in proportion to the lack of carbon taxes would be the most logical way of setting up a market-based solution to climate change.
I never said it would be fun, I said we would survive as a species.
Opinions on climate change are irrelevant to my proposal to give the credits equally to everyone or some other scheme. If the population isn't in favor of a carbon regulatory regime, then it doesn't matter how it is implemented, we'll just replace the politicians who act outside of our preferences. The point of giving everyone their share is that it is literally fair and not just a scheme to enrich carbon alarmists or activists.
Of course the lack of opportunity for graft and criminality is exactly why my proposal won't happen. But we should tar and feather any pol or bureaucrat who implements any other scheme.
How would such a proposal be enacted to begin with?
My comment was that for a proposal like that to be passed initially, it would almost certainly need the support of a politician's respective constituents. Anything else would be political suicide and have slim-to-no chance of even getting debated. Blame it on lobbying, or career politicians, or whatever else but that's the reality in the U.S.
There's lots of ways that carbon reduction system could work. If it's largely a man-made problem there's probably many man-made solutions. But, outside of dictatorial solutions, you have to start with the democratic political will to see it changed.
"Among the most-cited is a 2013 study of nearly 12,000 abstracts of peer-reviewed papers on climate science published since 1990, of which just over 4,000 papers expressed an opinion on the cause of recent global warming. Of these, 97% agree, explicitly or implicitly, that global warming is happening and is human-caused."
>The danger from climate change no longer outweighs the risks of nuclear accidents.
If that's the assumption, then yes, let's get rid of nukes.
Do you think the risk of nuclear accidents is more important than cutting CO2 emissions?
I keep hearing this meme, that either wind/solar is cheaper than X (where X is coal or nuclear) or is soon to be cheaper. The reality is that they are cheap and getting cheaper but the point is moot because wind/solar cannot power a modern economy.
By the way, Geothermal and hydro are great, but we're pretty much done with them. We've dammed every river that can be dammed and developed every geyser that can be developed.
>that the nuclear risk is no longer acceptable.
Our only real alternative to nuclear is wind/solar/natural gas (or coal). I put them as a package deal because they are a package deal. Wind/Solar only work when coupled with natural gas - this is why Germany is signing multi-billion natural gas as they are ramping up their wind and solar deployments. This is why every natural gas company now lobbies for wind and solar deployments. The problem is that natural gas is destructive to develop (for example may need fracking to extract) and is a fossil fuel. So if you really think that CO2 emissions are an existential crisis and cutting them to 0 is important - nuclear is still the only game in town. Otherwise, you're investing in natural gas as you are ramping up your solar panels and windmills.
It's happening. And I'm really happy about it.
There is a large movement widely called "Fridays for Future" going on lots of european cities (large and small) in which students will go on a school strike to demonstrate for sensible climate policy.
It's all a bit marginal though, isn't it?
People might object to the 'quasi religious' aspect of what you're talking about. I'd make the point though that any culture which acknowledges even minimally the true nature of the living planet that is our home would appear mystical or religious to the deathly bloodless denatured worldview that so ruthlessly holds power now. The latter is either going to give way to something that is a better fit for physical reality, or it will destroy itself by soiling its own nest, largely in hapless ignorance regarding what's at stake.
Replacing one faith based authoritarian system with another isn't really a leap forward.
You might as well consider every philosopher an authority on everything because every problem ever solved was solved by thinking and that's what philosophers do. While in reality philosophers are only authorities on (the history of?) philosophy.
Some philosophers follow logic but apply it to unanswerable questions. Some can't even do the logic part rigorously enough. Personally I have no respect for this field of culture and humans that pursue it. All of them are not even wrong.
We were not generally malnourished in the West during the fifties, sixties, and seventies, despite consuming far less meat. Though we were far less obese and there was far less type 2 diabetes. A chicken was more a tasty, luxury treat than the tasteless, textureless rubbish readily available everywhere today. Most ate meat, but far less in each meal.
Doesn't seem enough to bring down governments by itself. Defining party by single issue is downright dangerous. Particularly when the popular mood seems to increasingly be "fix the damn climate". The Tories - now polling 9% - probably wish they'd never even thought of mentioning the Brexit they are incapable of delivering.
p.s. The Yellow vests seem to be about the inequality of action rather than prices. French fuel prices are amongst the lower in the EU.
If you ate one of those, you'd find it as filling, tasty, and satisfying as something meat-based.
In fact, eating those (just out of curiosity) was the thing that even opened me up to a meat-free diet, because before that, I'd had friends serve me tempe, tofu, etc., and man that stuff is a bad introduction to a plant-based diet.
If you added a tax on meat to where the tasty, high-quality plant-based thing being sold at the 7-11s was now 20% cheaper, people would switch and not even think twice about it.
The problem is that, up to now, people package plant-based food as part of a lifestyle, and not just something tasty to stand alone on its own. Hopefully the impossible burger and beyond meat close that gap, too. You shouldn't need to be a straight-edge hardcore vegan to eat only plants 6 out of 7 days of the week.
https://terrywahls.com/minding-your-mitochondria-dr-terry-wa...
How much protein do you eat per day? Anything more than 5-6 ounces of meat per day is just wasted, harmful.
Also, "one-third" is not "most".
"Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before. An average of around 25 per cent of species in assessed animal and plant groups are threatened(figure SPM.3), suggesting that around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of drivers of biodiversity loss. Without such action there will be a further acceleration in the global rate of species extinction, which is already at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years."
The report doesn't factor in insect decline and how that will effect the rest of the foodchain (they are the words biggest pollinators). It does bring up the staggering loss of insect biomass:
"Population declines often give warning that a species’ risk of extinction is increasing. The Living Planet Index, which synthesises trends in vertebrate populations, has declined rapidly since 1970, falling by 40% for terrestrial species, 84% for freshwater species and 35% for marine species (established but incomplete){2.2.5.2.4}. Local declines of insect populations such as wild bees and butterflies have often been reported, and insect abundance has declined very rapidly in some places even without large-scale land-use change, but the global extent of such declines is not known (established but incomplete){2.2.5.2.4}. On land, wild species that are endemic (narrowly distributed) have typically seen larger-than-average changes to their habitats and shown faster-than-average declines (established but incomplete)."
Edit: also, in the future, let's refrain from the "not smart enough to understand" style arguments on HN.
They're connected. I mean, everything is.
Even if we didn't emit so much CO2, we destroy habitat for other species through agriculture and forest harvesting. And if we hadn't destroyed so much habitat, there'd be lots more slack for CO2 emissions.
And as you say, destroying habitat through biomass energy production -- whether it's fast-growing trees for pellets, or palm oil for biodiesel -- just makes it worse.
I was in a hurry, and didn't say how habitat loss increases extinction rates from global warming. The issue is habitat fragmentation. We degrade/destroy habitat for other species through agriculture, forest modification and harvesting, urbanization, road building, etc. But that not only decreases the amount of high-quality habitats. It also fragments habitats.
Without global warming, habitat fragmentation hurts other species in various ways. At some point, fragments become too small to support viable populations for many species. Especially larger animals, for example. But overall, it's not a huge issue, relative to the amount of habitat loss itself.
However, with global warming, habitat fragmentation becomes a huge issue. As the planet warms, species tend to shift toward the poles, more or less, to stay in habitats that they're adapted to. But when habitats are fragmented, that can't happen. And so you end up with isolated populations on mountains, for example. Given that "up" ~ "away from the equator". And with further warming, there's no more up, so they die off. One mitigation is creating habitat corridors. Through cities and farmland. Across roads, using bridges or tunnels. You can see habitat bridges in I-78 in eastern New Jersey.
Another factor is the speed of anthropogenic global climate change. It's too fast now for evolutionary adaptation.
Someone could be forgiven for thinking you have an interest in fossil fuels.
Edit: I see from your CV that you have a history of working with the fossil fuel industry - specifically, Exxon in Calgary in the early 80’s. I think it’s safe to disregard anything you have to say on the topic.
Besides this, it's rude to address other community members this way. Just email us at hn@ycombinator.com if you have such concerns, we take them seriously and we have better options for addressing them.
I have never worked for Exxon. I've no idea how you came up with that idea. I once worked briefly, 39 years ago, for a company that did production accounting for oil wells. I once worked, 30 years ago, for a SCADA company that may have had oil industry customers, though my recollection is that they had more to do with municipal water systems. The tendency of global warming alarmists to claim, on no evidence whatsoever, that any critic is funded by the fossil fuel industry is one of their most despicable characteristics (up their with trying to equate their critics with Holocaust deniers).
Edit: though now I’m curious by percentage of animals (presumably 40% of species may be, or even is likely, more than 40% of animals, because of power-law-style distributions).
Change is slow when viewed in a small timescale, and massive when viewed on a large one. I hope we sort our shit out, and I will contribute to the best of my ability to bring this about if at all possible. But, you know, history.
I have a feeling things are actually moving: A few days ago a mid-sized German YouTuber has published a 1 hour long video harshly criticizing the major German party CDU, not for its support of the copyright reform, but largely on economic and ecologic grounds. Everyone, from younger friends to older coworkers are talking about it, sharing how far they have watched it so far, pledging to watch it ...
I don't think it would have spread this rapidly and far (it was at 2.4M views the last time I checked) without the already tense climate.
Maybe this movement is not a "quasi-religion" (though it might become so), but environment-politics are finally a major, widely discussed point.
Some youtuber putting out some random video is marginal at best. Kind of hopeless, honestly.
I call it the 'Global Non-Denominational Death-Cult'. Ultimately it favours no particular group, but the tithe is very high.
However you go one step further and attack anyone who dares question that view, and you do it with the a sense of righteousness as though you did understand the topic and applied the scientific method to get there. That's just bullying, but you get away with it because you're part of a mob. I mean it's one thing for an expert to claim certainty and argue their point of view, but you aren't actually certain - you just picked the safer bet.
To be clear, I think the world would be a lot better place with less burning coal. I care a lot about the poisoning and pollution in the oceans. I think smog is disgusting. I probably have one of the smallest "carbon footprints" of any adult you know. However, I know a fair amount about programming, math, and simulations, and I don't trust anyone who says they can predict a chaotic system 50-100 years into the future.
And concensus doesn't compel me much at all. Once upon a time in America, you could probably get a concensus (even among scientists!) that God was real.
As opposed to ? Being so skeptic that you deny everything you don't personally believe in no matter the amount of proof your are given ?
i'm afraid that in fact your stance on climate warming is a question of your identity instead of logical thought.
Arguing this topic doesn't do me any good. It's like trying to tell a devout christian you think there's room for doubt and uncertainty about whether the apocalypse is coming. Most people just lock their heels and reinforce their current beliefs. This message will probably fade away into a light shade of grey, making me wonder why I even bothered.
However, every time I see someone trot out the word "concensus", as though that's relevant to good science, I grind my teeth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum
Much of the world was under ice 20K years ago. And the earth has generally warmed since then and melted much of the ice ( with occasional refreezes ).
And the "consensus" that human activity is responsible is utter nonsense. Feel free to research where the "consensus" came from. Also, whenever "science" relies on "consensus", you have to start wondering because real science doesn't rely on consensus - it relies on hypothesis and experimentation. The speed of light isn't derived from "consensus" but rather experiments. Science isn't politics, people don't vote for what the facts of science are.
You talk of 30 years of consensus. Do you know what the consensus was before the consensus on global warming? We had 30 years of consensus on global cooling. And before then we had decades of consensus of malthusian collapse. And before then consensus on social darwinism. Strange how all these "consensus" driven science has been debunked as pseudoscientific nonsense.
We are in many millenia long global warming period. This trend started long before humans started using oil. Thinking humans are responsible for global warming is like thinking humans are responsible for the rise and decline of tides because we drink water.
There is no accurate number not even a range which can be scientifically demonstrated.
The data is not showing what you think it is and it's not the data you are getting served. You are getting served interpretation of that data which is very very very different.
The reality is this:
Temperature increased 0.5 degree celcius from late 1800's to 1950 before there were any significant CO2 emissions. Then it took a break and continued with about the same up until today.
How much of those last 0.5-0.6 are caused by humans?
That would be science. What we have today is mostly political and ideological and only a fraction of it is actually scientific by any reasonable interpretation of that word.
[1] https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-re...
There is as an example negative feedback effects too in the system.
The temperature hasn't increased significantly from 1960's til today relative to CO2 more than it did from late 1800 to mid 1900.
So the question still becomes if the temperature increased 0.5 degrees while we weren't emitting that much co2 and it's done more or less the same in more or less the same timeframe with us putting much more co2 out there. How big a part is really humans and how much is natural variation.
If you want to convince me you provide me with actual scientific demonstration that aligns with the claim.
If we know how much humans are actually affecting due to CO2 then we can figure out what we can do about it. But as long as we don't know how much humans affect it I don't see any scientific foundation to go into the kind of panic we have seen the last 20 years really getting into the extremes these days.
It's not science it's politics.
I suggest you do a little more reading on the topic. Storms of My GrandChildren is an easy place to start.
And as always if you have a good source that disputes climate science I would really appreciate a reference.
This "the climate is always changing" was just classic anti-intellectual rhetoric spread in response to changing the name from "Global Warming" (Oh but the Earth isn't warming during winter!) to "Climate Change". Be careful. Don't let yourself be swayed by those who only wish to harm you.
No we didn't. That is completely and utterly false.
Greenhouse effect is a very well studied effect. CO2 / other gases level are a very well studied field. CO2/other gases dramatically increased since the industrial revolution. Are you also denying that ?
When you study something you have to look at the settings in which it happens and look at the time frame. Sure changes happened 10k+ years ago, that's not invalidating anything related to our role in the current change.
> Thinking humans are responsible for global warming is like thinking humans are responsible for the rise and decline of tides because we drink water.
You won't win anyone over with such nonsensical arguments.
https://www.climatecentral.org/news/the-last-time-co2-was-th...
https://theconversation.com/the-three-minute-story-of-800-00...
The consensuses you mention were in their time not a 'consensus' and dubious at best and already recognized by the contemporaries of the time.
> This trend started long before humans started using oil
Correct to a certain extend (see other post for sources), they started using (very broadly as greenhouse gas emissions concern) agriculture/herding first, wood, and coal. Oil as a source of greenhouse gasses is mainly 20th century thing.
> Political influence on the IPCC has been documented by the release of a memo by ExxonMobil to the Bush administration, and its effects on the IPCC's leadership. The memo led to strong Bush administration lobbying, evidently at the behest of ExxonMobil, to oust Robert Watson, a climate scientist, from the IPCC chairmanship, and to have him replaced by Pachauri, who was seen at the time as more mild-mannered and industry-friendly.[142][143]
> So the question still becomes if the temperature increased 0.5 degrees while we weren't emitting that much co2 and it's done more or less the same in more or less the same timeframe with us putting much more co2 out there. How big a part is really humans and how much is natural variation.
First of all, global average temperature increase actually has accelerated significantly since the 1950s: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2011-temps.html
The increase has not been proportional to the increase in C02 in the atmosphere, but that is expected. Temperature is not directly proportional to atmospheric greenhouse gasses. Rather, heat loss is dependent on them (and on other factors like surface color, which is affected by ice melting, to name one. The main one that has changed thus far though is atmospheric C02). Just because the earth is trapping more heat though, doesn't mean that the temperature will make a large change instantaneously. Instead, the change in temperature over time will be proportional to the difference between energy in from the sun, and energy out in the form of emitted heat. By increasing greenhouse gasses, we reduce the latter, causing temperature to rise over time.
Since heat emission is proportional to temperature, eventually (if we stopped emitting CO2) we would reach a new equilibrium at a higher temperature. In order to get back to a lower temperature, we need to eventually actually remove C02 from the atmosphere.
This is precisely why climate change is currently such a crisis: even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emission now, which is obviously impossible, we would still see a significant further increase in temperature due to the imbalance in heat transfer that already exists due to past emissions. The more that is added, the greater that increase will be.
Everything I've said is backed up by clear science, so if you're really looking at this with an open mind, please tell me what part you disagree with or are unsure about, and I'll be happy to provide supporting evidence.
Me too. Because it's spelled 'consensus'.
Sarcasm? Forgive me, but it's honestly tough to tell.
Amusingly, I think anyone who can make a model of the climate which can predict 100 years into the future really should make a model of the stock market a modest 1 year into the future instead. Having done so, they could make enough money to buy whatever technological or political change they think would solve the climate problem.
If they do their research and are convinced, it would mean a lot more to me than if someone who supported the conclusions of environmentalists' policies apriori reaches the same conclusion. If there is any such bias among climate scientists (e.g. people that go into climate science already hold certain beliefs about what should be done politically, and inadvertently favour the models / parameters / methodology that support their beliefs), this would help mitigate it to some extent.
I like how that sets the bar higher for extraordinary claims and extraordinary proof. Although honestly, I'll always be skeptical about extrapolation and predicting the future more than a few cycles out.
> If there is any such bias among climate scientists [...]
I agree. It seems fair to ask who goes into and gets accepted as a PhD in that field. It's pretty easy to imagine there could be a selection bias, and "science advances one funeral at a time".
Thats the point here.
Anyway, this will probably be my last comment in the thread, since I'm getting the impression you're not really open to this information, but hopefully you'll prove me wrong.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/were-...
1-degree increase first 0.5 from late 1800 to mid 1900 when we didn't emit much CO2 second 0.5 degree where we emitted a lot.
You were the one claiming your graph illustrated something.
You have no basis for this claim:
"And again, most of the effect from the greenhouse gasses released over the past 50 years hasn't been seen yet,"
Of course, it has and as we have learned it doesn't have as big an impact as we thought it had which is why they had to adjust it down.
By your logic, the increase in temperature from the first half of the last century was also then delayed from earlier in the 1800s where we used even less.
So perhaps you should consider if it's you not me who should be open to new information.
Also the parent comment is more about risk management. The sensible thing to do in the absence of information is precisely to imagine the worst outcomes and act with them in mind. The precautionary principle is a statutory requirement in law in some jurisdictions to help avoid the worst outcomes.
Simply that there is no such consensus - "'97% Of Climate Scientists Agree' Is 100% Wrong":
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-cl...
From the article:
"Bottom line: What the 97% of climate scientists allegedly agree on is very mild and in no way justifies restricting the energy that billions need...But it gets even worse. Because it turns out that 97% didn’t even say that..."
The Forbes article describes how the "97%" value was fabricated:
"Where did most of the 97 percent come from, then? Cook had created a category called “explicit endorsement without quantification”—that is, papers in which the author, by Cook’s admission, did not say whether 1 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent of the warming was caused by man. He had also created a category called “implicit endorsement,” for papers that imply (but don’t say) that there is some man-made global warming and don’t quantify it. In other words, he created two categories that he labeled as endorsing a view that they most certainly didn’t."
"The 97 percent claim is a deliberate misrepresentation designed to intimidate the public—and numerous scientists whose papers were classified by Cook protested..."
Read it and weep (or laugh).
> In a September 11, 2018 piece at the CIP website, Epstein disclosed “proudly” that one of his industry clients was Tyler White, president of the Kentucky Coal Association. [22]
Also interesting:
> Alexander Epstein planned to release his “Energy Liberation Plan” for consideration by 2016 political candidates. According to an article by Epstein in Forbes, the Energy Liberation Plan seeks to combat “backwards energy and environmental policies that are anti-development, not anti-pollution.” He contends that we are “squandering the opportunity of a generation, through blind opposition to our three most potent sources of power: hydrocarbon energy (coal, oil, and gas), nuclear energy, and hydroelectric energy.” [15]
I am reading, and I am neither weeping nor laughing, because this is exactly what I expected to see.
If this is someone you expect to accurately represent climate science, I think you are mistaken in holding them in that regard.
As a counterpoint, here's another take on the "97%" figure, a review of the several meta-studies that have been done on climate science:
http://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consen...
Their conclusion is that between 90 and 100% of climate science papers agree that 1) climate change is occurring and 2) it is caused by human industrial sources.
Of course, the man paid by the Kentucky Coal Association would disagree, but in this case I would defer to Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Sources:
The use of that number is the kind of outright political manipulation that's so prevalent in this debate.
Keep in mind we aren't even talking about scientifically demonstrated conclusions, we are talking about speculated conclusions. The IPCC doesn't do any research themselves and don't check the data, its a meta-study.
What started my skepticism was when I realized they don't actually know how much human co2 emissions affect the temperature. Go try and find that number, you won't find it cause we don't know. Once I realized that and started understanding how the climate models work and saw how much interpretation and fitting and vague language was being used to obstruct the actual science, I realized that worrying about the environment was more rational. There is very very little actually demonstrated science in the climate debate it's almost entirely ideological and used by politicians to gain more power and create something to rally up voters around. In 10 years the climate catastrophism we see today will be laughed at. Just wait and see.
> The IPCC doesn't do any research themselves and don't check the data, its a meta-study.
The people writing the chapters are involved in doing the research. (It's not like doing that is a full-time job, mind.)
> What started my skepticism was when I realized they don't actually know how much human co2 emissions affect the temperature. Go try and find that number, you won't find it cause we don't know.
For anyone wondering, look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity
Short answer - doubling the atmospheric CO2 should lead to an increase between 1.5 and 4.5°C, though more current work I remember narrowed the range down somewhere around 2.3°C-3°C. There is a lot of work down to narrow it down further.
That is very unlikely.
Then you obviously don't know basic physics. The average temperature is much easier to predict (if some worse feedback doesn't get involved to make the development even worse, that is) than the microscopic "chaotic movements." I rather believe that what's behind your statement is that you just don't care what is going to happen in 50 or 100 years.
Ugh, if you're going to just attack me, why not jump to the big guns and call me a shill for the oil company or some other cliche.
> The average temperature is much easier to predict
If you do enough averaging over a long enough period, this can be true. I mean, we can all tell the average position of a double pendulum. I'm guessing you think 1, 10, or 100 years is enough time to average temperature. Try looking at the last 400,000 years and tell me how well you can predict those swings.
> I rather believe that what's behind your statement is that you just don't care what is going to happen in 50 or 100 years.
You can believe anything you want, but I doubt you used the scientific method to get there.
Actually if we had so reliable measurements for that period like we do for last hundred years, it would not be hard.
Your arguments have no basis, just an attempt to distract from the facts by grasping for what is not being discussed (e.g. 400 thousand years precise inference). Given the information we do have we have very good understanding of the relevant phenomena.
I'm always open to new information. I'm no expert in this stuff, so I can certainly learn more—learned a couple of details while reading to try to fully answer your question actually. And it's a reasonable question why the temperature increase over the past 100 years (in particular broken into two periods) isn't proportional to the C02 increase over the same time. I think I've fully answered it now though; is there anything specific that I wrote above or that's included in that link that you dispute?
So, as someone who seems eloquent and informed, your position is truly perplexing to me. The only explanation I can think of is that you have some vested interest in believing as you do, be it conscious or otherwise. Do you feel that accepting human-caused climate change would be betraying your political affiliations? Or is your livelihood, or those of close friends or family tightly coupled to the fossil fuel industry? Do you tend to distrust scientific evidence in other areas?
You don't need to answer these questions, but maybe ask yourself if there might be another reason why you're resistant to the most likely explanation here.
If we don't know that then how can we know whether we can do anything about it?
The right question is to figure out how much humans affect the climate.
The scientific consensus which EVERYONE agrees about even the so-called skeptics is that the climate is changing.
There is no consensus that it's human-caused, there are some indications that humans have an effect but you won't find any actual scientific proof of how much.
So the real question here is why you blindly believe something that you haven't even understood. You are literally just repeating the media not actually science which is a much more subtle discussion.
If you want to know more, you can google this. It's a discussion that, if not for the fossil fuel money being pumped into stirring up controversy (also well demonstrated, also google-able), would have been settled long ago.
As a depressing parallel, there are also HIV deniers, too. There's one prominent scientist, I think the guy who invented PCR, who claims that HIV has nothing to do with AIDS, and he's got a small following. It's dwindled over the years, but he's still out there, trying to raise doubts despite the mainstream science on HIV leading to treatments and even possible cures, while his work leads to nothing.
Edited to mention: of course! There are also evolution deniers! Why does everyone dismiss them, but open their arms to skeptics of human-caused climate change? What's different about human-caused climate change and evolution?
And I don't need to google it I actually spent years looking at the material and methods. You on the other hand cause if you had you wouldn't claim things like 99% and you wouldn't actually believe consensus was science.
Not a single concrete piece of evidence for your position just claims.
Where is the scientifically demonstrated number that shows how much humans affect the climate?
"Google it".
Couldn't find it? Of course you can't cause we don't know what that number is because we haven't actually demonstrated it. Instead we are speculating that because we can't find other reasons and CO2 emissions correlate with the temperature increase then it must be that.
Yet how do you explain the 0.5 degree increase from late 1800- mid 1900 were we didn't do any significant CO2 emissions and how do you explain that the temperature haven't gotten up much more than the same 0.5 from the mid 1900?
Yes humans probably have some effect but we don't know how much.
If 100% agreed that it was humans caused that doesn't change anything unless they can scientifically demonstrate it which they can't.
All you have is namecalling. No science, no data just an attempt at bullying without anything to back you up.
I can back my beliefs up scientifically, you can't. Yet you call me the denier.
They may well be right, but they weren’t saying that they had reason to believe the IPCC had understated the influence carbon dioxide, methane, or some other gas has on the climate, or that predicted emissions where wrong, etc. They were complaining that the report didn’t have enough scare mongering. That’s not science, and it could easily lead to a big overcorrection in a few years.
There is literally no scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change that we don't know how to deal with today let alone in 10-40-100 years from now.
If you are suggesting most people should do original climate research, you are going to be disappointed.
If I get cancer, I assume that consensus medical science is going to give me the best treatments.
I don't know. I've seen so much fear-mongering in my life. We're all going to die from zika, n1h1, ebola, killer bees, aids, mrsa, terrorists, and so on. In each case, there's something to be afraid of, and you might actually know someone who died in one those ways, but the media and the lay people blow it way out of proportion. The people I've know who died have been from drugs, suicide, heart failure, stroke, and car accidents.
> The sensible thing to do in the absence of information is precisely to imagine the worst outcomes and act with them in mind.
I can't accept that as sensible. It's easy to contrive unacceptable courses of action by applying that rule: "The police don't know who the murderers are, so they lock up everyone to avoid the worst outcome." "The doctor isn't sure how bad the infection is, so we amputate all the limbs just in case."
America has an apocalyptical culture. Probably from the cultural imprint of our end times themed christianity during the early years. That whole book of revelations madness. (The Puritans who first colonized the New World were fruitcakes, even back then.)
But we did come very close to snuffing ourselves with nukes a few times.
And ever since I started paying attention to ecological collapse, mid 1980s, pretty much all the predictions have come true. (The only confusing bit there is we've also had amazing technical progress, masking the underlying destruction.)
I so hope that I'm just being an alarmist and it's all going to work out. I have kids, and hopefully grandkids one day. Yet I remain concerned.
Same for the ozone hole, or dying trees from acid rain. When the source of the problem is identified, we can fix it, and that's the case for greenhouse-gas-caused climate change.
Are future generations worth more than current? Should we militarily prohibit poor countries from using fossil fuels which they use to better their lives?
You can say worst outcomes with other things too, meteor, nuclear war, pandemic, terrorism, etc. you always have to find a balance.
With the climate change debate, this balance is completely ignored and people are seriously suggesting making fundamental changes to society without having any ability to know what the consequences of those will be.
Climate catastrophism is itself a potential danger.
Wind and solar constitute less than 1% of world energy consumption and doesn't have all the other properties and uses that makes oil such a fundamental and necessary ingredient for modern living. Hopefully overtime we will find something that's better, for now it's hard to find as amazing and flexible a resource as oil.
Nuclear would probably win out, then oil and coal
There is a lot of daylight between our respective positions. I don't agree with most of your assumptions, or statements of fact. So of course I don't agree with your conclusions. Alas, our realities are so far apart, there's zero profit in trying to find common ground.
I do have a request, a suggestion: Make some predictions. Set some arbitrary horizons. Guess what you think will happen. Write it down. (No need to share with me.)
I used to be very bullish on both algae for biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol. Much disappointment. As a layperson, I don't know enough to know the why nots and what ifs. Or if those two techs can ever be viable.
Likewise, I totally didn't foresee solar doubling every 30 months. Nor the rise of the wind juggernaut.
I was wrong. I usually am. So with new data, I reluctantly have updated my worldview.
I'm curious if you can do the same.
I'm from Denmark originally I grew up with wind and understand the pros and cons pretty well and I know the reality of wind and solar which isn't what you seem to think it is.
Furthermore, now I am investing in interesting energy companies doing anything substantial and I can just tell you that it's a much harder problem than most thing and is solved by neither sun nor wind.
I am wrong about a lot of things and I will change my position when I am, however, this is not an area I am wrong about but an area I predict you will realize in 10 years from now that I was right about.
This is why I say there is no scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change we can't deal with and I have yet to hear anyone able to refute that. Climate catastrophism is going to be a joke a decade from now and we won't be leaving oil anytime soon, it's simply too valuable for human life and the ability to live with nature.
Furthermore, I seem to be one of the few people who actually care about the only thing that matters in the context of this discussion which is how much do humans affect the climate. What's the number? Where is scientifically demonstrated proof?
If you can give me that and show me it's high then you have convinced me. Until you do that then you are asking me to act on something there is no scientific evidence for.
Anyway, thank you for at least being civil about it and not (I assume) downvote me like more or less anyone do on anyone who dares say anything that isn't part of the normal spiel.
Possibly, but it doesn't seem likely. In most parts of the US, it's cheaper to build new solar or wind than any of the fossil fuels. In some areas, I've read that it's cheaper to build new solar or wind than to run existing fossil plants. I don't know what the rest of the world looks like though.
I would urge you, if you are really interested in the truth and a rational position on this, to go and do the research. |
I did which is why I am very very aware of the difference between speculation and demonstration and how much of the claims of wind and solars ability to power most of the worlds energy needs are a completete utopia.
Again less than 1% of the world's energy is the consumption of solar and wind, and that's with all the political tailwind it has gotten.
A lot of the cost of building nuclear is extreme bureaucracy and the kind of security metrics are being asked, yet it's still much better than solar and wind in the long run, much safer, more stable, cleaner, scalable and cheaper.
So yeah lets remove the subsidies. Wind and solar will fall apart.
