Convincing people that global warming is a real thing

Feral · July 2009

Let's get a little perspective on the two "sides" of this debate:

On one side, you have every major meteorological, climatological, and geological institution in the world supporting the idea that global warming is real. The vast majority, with only a handful of exceptions, support the idea that humans are the primary cause. This includes nonprofit organizations with no economic incentive to lie. This includes this short list of organizations:

Spoiler:

On the other side, you have a motley assortment of players. You have a handful of front groups (for example, junkscience.com, which is run by a tobacco lobbyist) for corporate interests. Some global warming deniers are non-scientists who publish more or less as a hobby (like Christopher Monckton.) Pretty much any yahoo with a video camera and a copy of iMovie can post a dissenting opinion to YouTube.

Keep in mind that I'm not a climatologist, even an armchair one. I just get frustrated when people take on an anti-science or anti-intellectual attitude for no compelling reason.

That said, here's a very high level overview of the basic evidence that is easy for laypeople (like me!) to understand:

Spoiler:

Now it's possible that the earth is not actually warming. However, all of the strongest evidence suggests that it is.

It's also possible that this warming trend is not being caused by human CO2 emissions, however it's unlikely, given that the warming trend started about the time humans started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

Skepticism is healthy, but in this case, there's no rational reason to be skeptical of the basic premises that global warming is real and that humans are a major if not the primary cause of it.

Sentry · July 2009

Chanus wrote: »

Sentry wrote: »

This is why you shouldn't bother engaging people in debate about this issue. It turns into this.

A discussion with a side that disagrees with your viewpoint? Gasp!

In the help/advice forum?! Gasp!!

D&D is ---->

Zombie Nirvana · July 2009

This is what I do professionally and I'm here to tell you that very few people disagree that greenhouse gases exist. What people do disagree on are the ramifications of anthropogenic emissions, modeling accuracy (we're just not getting good localized modeling with CalPuff), and the whole environment vs. economy/human life debate.

Then we've got the debate as to who will be tasked with regulation. Some people want EPA to regulate it under the Clean Air Act, which is an absolutely horrible idea. Some people like Cap & Trade, which would probably be a slightly better way. Carbon tax, which is most likely the best of the bad ideas. Alternatively, they could amend the Clean Air Act to function appropriately for CO2e legislation, which would probably be the most effective and least economically painful way of doing it. Unfortunately it would take time, and global warming is a trendy issue right now, so they're rushing through legislation.

To be honest, no one can speak authoritatively on the issue, nor should a layman like yourself be trying to convince people of something that you don't understand. I don't and it is part of my job, why would you?

Chanus · July 2009

Feral wrote: »

Skepticism is healthy, but in this case, there's no rational reason to be skeptical of the basic premises that global warming is real and that humans are a major if not the primary cause of it.

This graph from UNEP seems to indicate that CO2 levels have been higher in the past, well before man-made causes.

Spoiler:

It's nice to take a snapshot of global temperatures during a well-known global Ice Age and claim the warming trend since then is man's fault, but I can understand some "rational" skepticism. I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing what we can to mitigate the damage we do to our environment, nor that a) the planet isn't warming, or b) we aren't at least partially at fault. I do very much disagree with the notion that we are the main cause of the problem.

Neaden · July 2009

I have been reading about the history of the AIDS virus recently and I think it is fairly sadly similar to the global warming debate. You have what is originally a small group of scientists speaking out and saying that we need action now or millions of people will die, and you have conservative politicians who say the scientists are chicken little's and we will be fine. You have corporations with a vested interest in the science not being true throwing up smokescreens and trying to obfuscation the issue. Sadly today no one disagrees that HIV is real and can be transmitted heterosexually and is a big problem. Millions of people just had to die first. I would hope that since so many of our conservative politicians (Such as George Bush mk. 1) turned out to be so tragically wrong about AIDS that they would show some wisdom when dealing with global warming.
I get disappointed a lot.

Chanus · July 2009

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Man-Made Global Warming = AIDS and if you disagree you're a Holocaust denier!!

Richard_Dastardly · July 2009

I have a friend who actively denies global warming. I don't argue with him. I just ask whether or not it's true that humans are polluting the Earth. He can't deny that fact, so I just follow up with my second question: Aaaaaaaand then what's your point? I win and also save a couple of hours of arguing in circles with an idiot.

Dibs · July 2009

I think your perception of the global warming debate is off. I'd say the majority right now are clamoring for action, not the minority.

We've also definitely learned our lesson about viruses - hello freaking out about SARS and avian and swine flu.

GPIA7R · July 2009

The reason it's so opposed is because of the fear that the current administration is using it as an excuse for fast-tracking their policy changes. The idea of passing through trillions of dollars in bills and policies in a matter of 6-months is extreme, and if you've got something that's hard to debate (like global warming), it's easy to push through other things (like closing car companies for making non-green cars and creating 'cap and trade', and making coal-power impossible [by saying "sure they can try to open a coal power plant, but they'll be taxed into the ground], which in turn will raise the costs of power substantially.)

Neaden · July 2009

Chanus wrote: »

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Man-Made Global Warming = AIDS and if you disagree you're a Holocaust denier!!

Yes pointing out that the actions of politicians in two similar situations parallel each other is obviously is a Godwin. It is not like for a long time many people denied that AIDS existed, then denied that you could catch it from heterosexual sex, then said that it was not nearly as contagious as the scientists said, or that it was not as prevalent, and then denied that HIV caused AIDS. Obviously these situations are not alike at all. Now just because HIV causes AIDS does not mean global warming will kill us all obviously. It is just in both times we pitted the scientific consensus against right wing politicians and a minority science opinion. I know who I am putting my money on.

Feral · July 2009

Chanus, I'm torn between taking one of two paths with your post.

The first path is to demonstrate why you're misinterpreting that chart (the biggest reason is that this chart stops at 1950, so you're missing over a third of the 150-year trend that scientists are so alarmed about). But I know how that will go, you'll post another piece of evidence and then I'll have to post a counterargument, and then you'll post something else and I'll post a counterargument. Eventually we'll end up discussing the fineries of a topic at a level of granularity that is clearly outside of both of our areas of expertise. These discussions always end up dealing with the minutiae of the statistical method used to track trends of CO2 in ice core samples from some godforsaken corner of Antarctica or some other absurdly obscure detail. That's annoying enough in D&D, and this isn't even D&D - the only reason I'm engaging in this topic at this level is because override is asking for help with it.

The second path is to ask you why you think you know something that these guys don't:

Feral wrote: »

American Meteorological Society
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
UK Royal Meteorological Society
World Meteorological Organization
American Astronomical Society
American Institute of Physics
American Statistical Association
US National Research Council
European Science Foundation
American Geophysical Union
European Federation of Geologists
US Federal Climate Change Program (commissioned by President Bush, incidentally)

Oh, and the national science academies of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Ghana, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, India, Japan, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, New Zealand, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Sweden, Tanzania, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Every discussion we can have on this topic is reinventing the wheel. Thousands of people smarter than us and more well-schooled on this topic than us have pored over papers, statistics, samples, models, and a heaping mountain of data that no one person could ever hope to understand - and they have reached a consensus.

There's such a thing as healthy skepticism, and this ain't it.

Chanus · July 2009

Fair enough.

GPIA7R · July 2009

I keep reading very disappointing stories of scientists and global warming researchers being silenced and threatened with their jobs when they bring forward information that could possibly prove global warming differently. I can't say how notable those stories are, but they are numerous... and a quick google search brings back many results on various views of the stories, all from different places.

So, sure, those societies may know what they're talking about... but if they're in the back-pocket of someone that has a plan and doesn't want anything to get in their way, that could speak for a bit more of it. But, hey, that's just one side of it... and may or may not be as reliable.

Edit: And just to get it out there - I'm not referring purely to the current administration. Some of these stories date back to 2007. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1545134/Scientists-threatened-for-climate-denial.html

ceres · July 2009

Well, all I can say is that the advice in this thread *should* be "educate yourself on the issue and all viewpoints of it as best you can and make up your own mind what's true". I'm not seeing any "majority of scientists", from the people I've been talking to, and for instance someone earlier on this very page posted graphs that are, frankly, terrible and misleading because when put next to each other they make the correlation between the two look so striking, except that the time frames are different and therefore the graphs are not made to the same scale. If you make the mental adjustment, I don't think the graphs actually prove his point at all.

If/when you decide to do this research, always be skeptical of what you're seeing. That's what scientists are *supposed* to be doing. For every graph or chart you see, carefully read the caption and make sure you compare the correct time frame, not just the size of the bar or line or curve. This is key to doing any research. Most of the graphs I've seen over the past couple days correlate solar activity and temperature, and when you overlay CO2 production with the proper time frame, well.. something really does not add up. I don't know what it is yet. I might never.

tl;dr, Before you start preaching, read the book. If you want to be convincing in your arguments, first figure out why you believe them, and then learn as much as you can about the different sides of the issue.

And beware: There isn't a scientist out there who isn't working on somebody's dime. The US Government gives out a whole lot of grants to people who will tell them things they might be interested in knowing. Oil companies aren't the only people out there with vested interests, and most people *are* being paid for their work in any field.

BladeX · July 2009

Chanus wrote: »

Feral wrote: »

Skepticism is healthy, but in this case, there's no rational reason to be skeptical of the basic premises that global warming is real and that humans are a major if not the primary cause of it.

This graph from UNEP seems to indicate that CO2 levels have been higher in the past, well before man-made causes.

Spoiler:

It's nice to take a snapshot of global temperatures during a well-known global Ice Age and claim the warming trend since then is man's fault, but I can understand some "rational" skepticism. I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing what we can to mitigate the damage we do to our environment, nor that a) the planet isn't warming, or b) we aren't at least partially at fault. I do very much disagree with the notion that we are the main cause of the problem.

Out of my own curiosity is there a graph that takes this and then adds the past 60 years since this graph ends in 1950? The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is closer to 400 ppmv today compared to the 280 or so the graph ends at. This plots today at higher then any other point on that graph...

Chanus · July 2009

There is a general trend of ridiculing and laughing away people with a dissenting opinion... or dismissing them as right-wing nutjobs.

I mean, Al Gore declared the debate was over years ago.

tofu · July 2009

Who got politics in my science!

romanqwerty · July 2009

ceres wrote: »

And beware: There isn't a scientist out there who isn't working on somebody's dime. The US Government gives out a whole lot of grants to people who will tell them things they might be interested in knowing. Oil companies aren't the only people out there with vested interests, and most people *are* being paid for their work in any field.

This is one a the recent things I've heard. There's been some mudslinging by the right wing skeptics saying that climate scientists are paid to agree with the general consensus and that they have to agree with everyone else, that man made global warming exists, otherwise they are out of jobs.

The point i'd like to make is that if anything, science encourages people to go against the trend. Most of the biggest scientific discoveries (e.g. Einstein's work) are done by going against the general consensus of the scientific community.

ceres · July 2009

romanqwerty wrote: »

ceres wrote: »

And beware: There isn't a scientist out there who isn't working on somebody's dime. The US Government gives out a whole lot of grants to people who will tell them things they might be interested in knowing. Oil companies aren't the only people out there with vested interests, and most people *are* being paid for their work in any field.

This is one a the recent things I've heard. There's been some mudslinging by the right wing skeptics saying that climate scientists are paid to agree with the general consensus and that they have to agree with everyone else, that man made global warming exists, otherwise they are out of jobs.

No, this is actually something that's true. I'm not saying people are being threatened with their jobs everywhere, only that *everybody* out there doing research on *anything* IS being paid by somebody to do it, or they'd have to clean toilets or type records for a living and do amateur climatology in their spare time.

It's just something to be aware of when you're doing your research. All funding comes from somewhere. Researchers who work for oil companies might get paid a bit more than researchers who work for non-profit environmentalist organizations, but they all gotta eat.

Feral · July 2009

ceres wrote: »

Well, all I can say is that the advice in this thread *should* be "educate yourself on the issue and all viewpoints of it as best you can and make up your own mind what's true". I'm not seeing any "majority of scientists", from the people I've been talking to, and for instance someone earlier on this very page posted graphs that are, frankly, terrible and misleading because when put next to each other they make the correlation between the two look so striking, except that the time frames are different and therefore the graphs are not made to the same scale. If you make the mental adjustment, I don't think the graphs actually prove his point at all.

If/when you decide to do this research, always be skeptical of what you're seeing. That's what scientists are *supposed* to be doing. For every graph or chart you see, carefully read the caption and make sure you compare the correct time frame, not just the size of the bar or line or curve. This is key to doing any research. Most of the graphs I've seen over the past couple days correlate solar activity and temperature, and when you overlay CO2 production with the proper time frame, well.. something really does not add up. I don't know what it is yet. I might never.

I picked the CO2 graph because it came from an unbiased source and the originating article was easy to read. There are also plenty of graphs that show CO2 concentrations on a 1,000 year timeframe but I didn't want to pick one from an openly biased source (like planetforlife.com) or from wikipedia, and I didn't want to pick one that's too technical.

I see you saying "do your own research!" Okay, so do your own research. If you think the above graph of CO2 concentrations is misleading because of the timeframe, then a simple Google image search will give you plenty of graphs on a longer timeframe. I posted a graph of temperatures across a 1,000 year timeframe, so what happens if you GIS "atmosphere carbon dioxide last 1000 years?"

You get this: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=atmosphere+carbon+dioxide+last+1000+years&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=

Investigate any of those links. Or all of them if you want. Depends entirely on how much time and interest you have.

Sheep · July 2009

As an average person that doesn't necessarily believe every tenant of Global Warming, I can say that the main reason I'm not very receptive of the idea, and the people who try to sell it on me, is because there never once seems to be an actual conclusive set of facts on either side of the aisle, the incredibly dubious cottage industry that has cropped up around it, that at least every five years or so the Earth is under some man made environmental threat, conflicting stories from both sides of the debate, and some of the junk science behind it.

I've seen plenty of scientists with a long string of credentials behind their names make statements both for and against it.

- Earth is getting hotter, but China and the world are experiencing some of the coldests temperatures in years

- Statistics show that the world has gotten warmer since man industrialized, but our statistics show that CO2 output by active volcanoes eclipses the CO2 output of man.

- Like with Liberal/Conservative media, both sides whine and complain about being locked out of public talks.

The dubious, unregulated, cottage industry is despicable.

- How many websites out there allow you to buy CO2 offsets but are not created by specialized people in the field? There is no vetting process.

- Al Gore and that terrible film. Nothing was more trumped up than Gore getting the Nobel Peace Prize for a shoddy, inconclusive, and terrible film.

- Corn based ethanol wastes money and energy and people are getting fucking rich off of it.

- I noticed a conscious effort to rebrand Global Warming right around the time people started experiencing colder than normal temperatures. Then it was "Climate Change".

Every decade the Earth has some new threat.

- In the 70's it was Global Cooling.

- In the 90's it was hair spray and the ozone.

- The ice level thing is one that sticks out in my mind. It's down, what? 8%? Yet I've read plenty of articles that acknowledge that the % is down, but then point out that it was up drastically from 40 years ago.

Junk Science.

- Again, corn ethanol.

- There was a scandal at NASA over data being tampered with to show information sympathetic to Climate Changers.

I'm just a skeptic by heart and it doesn't help that I've seen plenty of convincing evidence to the contrary of what I'm being told about Global Warming. Couple that with the culture of hypocrisy and catering to relatively wealthy consumers, and I'm just not going to be easily convinced.

In the end most Climate Change proponents are seen as the crazy old guy on the corner with a THE END IS NIGH sign made out of an old TV box.

Thanatos · July 2009

This is way more of a D&D thing than an H/A thing.

Feral · July 2009

Oh, yay, D&D.

Sheep wrote: »

- Statistics show that the world has gotten warmer since man industrialized, but our statistics show that CO2 output by active volcanoes eclipses the CO2 output of man.

Yeah, this is totally false.

Volcanoes: 145-255 million tons of CO2 per year.
Humans: 30 billion tons of CO2 per year.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php

Sheep · July 2009

I wasn't vouching for it, just providing an example.

While double checking a few things in Google I found a chart that had something like humans at a small percentage and water vapor at a drastically huge percentage in CO2 creation.

Darkewolfe · July 2009

Don't forget that CO2 isn't the only relevant GHG.

Echo · July 2009

Sheep wrote: »

- Earth is getting hotter, but China and the world are experiencing some of the coldests temperatures in years

Natural balances. Global warming doesn't mean "gets warmer everywhere in a perfectly uniform manner".

The temperature getting one degree warmer in one place could cause two years of snowing elsewhere.

Sheep · July 2009

Echo wrote: »

Sheep wrote: »

- Earth is getting hotter, but China and the world are experiencing some of the coldests temperatures in years

Natural balances. Global warming doesn't mean "gets warmer everywhere in a perfectly uniform manner".

The temperature getting one degree warmer in one place could cause two years of snowing elsewhere.

I think that speaks to another problem that Climate Change proponents face.

For years it was "THE EARTH IS GETTING HOTTER AND WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE". When that's not the exact truth, it harms any good will you may have tried to do.

sanstodo · July 2009

ceres wrote: »

romanqwerty wrote: »

ceres wrote: »

And beware: There isn't a scientist out there who isn't working on somebody's dime. The US Government gives out a whole lot of grants to people who will tell them things they might be interested in knowing. Oil companies aren't the only people out there with vested interests, and most people *are* being paid for their work in any field.

This is one a the recent things I've heard. There's been some mudslinging by the right wing skeptics saying that climate scientists are paid to agree with the general consensus and that they have to agree with everyone else, that man made global warming exists, otherwise they are out of jobs.

No, this is actually something that's true. I'm not saying people are being threatened with their jobs everywhere, only that *everybody* out there doing research on *anything* IS being paid by somebody to do it, or they'd have to clean toilets or type records for a living and do amateur climatology in their spare time.

It's just something to be aware of when you're doing your research. All funding comes from somewhere. Researchers who work for oil companies might get paid a bit more than researchers who work for non-profit environmentalist organizations, but they all gotta eat.

That's true but also misleading. For example: My girlfriend's uncle, Steven Schneider, is a leading climate change scientist (he and his wife even got Nobel's as part of the IPCC! I was there when they got them, it was pretty cool). He works at Stanford University. They pay in part for his research, and pay him for teaching classes. He supplements his income by giving speeches and stuff like that.

He has absolutely no monetary investment in one side over the other. Frankly, he could make just as much if not more if he flipped sides and gave speeches to conservative think tanks/universities/groups. Oddly enough, he was also the coauthor of the paper about global cooling in the 1970's (they were wrong because the dataset was too small/didn't go back far enough). But once he dug more (like a good scientist should), he realized that he was wrong. The decision was absolutely NOT about money, and if you spent any time in their house, you'd notice right away that they live like just about any other Stanford professor (comfortably but hardly extravagantly).

sanstodo · July 2009

Sheep wrote: »

Echo wrote: »

Sheep wrote: »

- Earth is getting hotter, but China and the world are experiencing some of the coldests temperatures in years

Natural balances. Global warming doesn't mean "gets warmer everywhere in a perfectly uniform manner".

The temperature getting one degree warmer in one place could cause two years of snowing elsewhere.

I think that speaks to another problem that Climate Change proponents face.

For years it was "THE EARTH IS GETTING HOTTER AND WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE". When that's not the exact truth, it harms any good will you may have tried to do.

Well, if you don't make the problem dramatic enough, the public just tunes you out. So it's a fine line between "WE"RE ALL GONNA DIE" and people completely ignoring you.

Humans are very, very bad at dealing with disasters that play out over time. We discount the future and push problems off until the absolute last minute. So the apocalyptic rhetoric was calculated to break through our apathy and grab our attention. At the very least, it brought the idea of climate change into the public's awareness.

JebusUD · July 2009

Sheep wrote: »

- Earth is getting hotter, but China and the world are experiencing some of the coldests temperatures in years

It deals with global average temperature. Average. Global. You can point at one place and say but wait what about blah! It's called cherry picking data.

Sheep wrote: »

- Statistics show that the world has gotten warmer since man industrialized, but our statistics show that CO2 output by active volcanoes eclipses the CO2 output of man.

This is simply flat out not true. If anything volcanoes cool the earth by letting out particles that reflect light.
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php
"Volcanoes release more than 130 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year."

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2130288020070521
"26.9 billion tonnes in 2004"

Note, billion with a b. Not even close. Not even far. Lightyears away from the truth.

Sheep wrote: »

- Corn based ethanol wastes money and energy and people are getting fucking rich off of it.

Yep. + ten points for knowing this.

Sheep wrote: »

- I noticed a conscious effort to rebrand Global Warming right around the time people started experiencing colder than normal temperatures. Then it was "Climate Change".

And? It is a change because it is, once again, about global average. Calling it global warming makes it prone to people saying but wait! it is so cold in kansas this year! it must be fake!

Sheep wrote: »

- In the 90's it was hair spray and the ozone.

Which was promptly taken care of by getting rid of CFC's in most things. I don't see how this factors in. It was a problem, we headed it off. More support for playing it safe with global warming?

Topweasel · July 2009

Everyone is missing the most important aspect and the one that affected the whole solar system the most. Solar energy in the form of sun spot activities. In the late eighties and the early 90's during the whole Ozone craze, one of the biggest worries was about the ozone depletion and increased sunspot activities where going to force us all to wear sunglasses's and SPF 70 everywhere we go.

Then early last year sunspot activity died almost completely. We just weren't seeing the cycle restart like we had. Instantly we had a pretty large drop in 2008 while trending down in the the last 3 years. Even then the last year temperature increased (05) wasn't even as hot as 98.

But really what does it matter. The world is better off as it stands with an increase in temperature then a decrease. Its also horribly dangerous to start treating the out put of gas that every living being in this world outputs is a dangerous pollutant. Ever think as plant life is allowed to grow for longer periods of time during the year that an "increase" in C02 output might actually be advantageous. If this isn't even a problem that can't be "stopped" on a global level and comes down to external force. Isn't it a horribly destructive action to be trying to limit the output of the very materials that plant life need to survive.

ElJeffe · July 2009

GPIA7R wrote: »

Discussing income is way safer than religion

Ah, true. Didn't think of that one.

I say that as though I'm not going to have an argument about it with you in H&A.

Never intended to argue. My point is... if I see a thread titled "How to convince someone that purple is actually green", I want to discourage that sort of thinking. One shouldn't strongly push their views on the unwilling. I agree, it's irritating when people are so ingrained in their thoughts and beliefs that they close off their mind to anything that opposes them... But there are others that are willing to have an intelligent discussion on any issue, and while they may not agree, they are willing to listen and discuss without "arguing".

One should push their beliefs on the unwilling when the beliefs of the unwilling will actually cause harm. If I believe you shooting me in the face with a potato gun will hurt like a fucker, and you disagree and decide you'd like to find out, I'm not going to say, "Oh, hey, difference of opinion hurfa-durOWFUCKMYFACE."

Echo · July 2009

sanstodo wrote: »

Humans are very, very bad at dealing with disasters that play out over time.

It sure is shocking to discover that ice ages don't start by the temperatute dropping 20 degrees over two years.

(It's more like 2 degrees, and then ice bergs melt/calf slower than new ones are formed, and 2000 years later they're vacationing at the equator.)

Feral · July 2009

sanstodo wrote: »

Sheep wrote: »

Echo wrote: »

Sheep wrote: »

- Earth is getting hotter, but China and the world are experiencing some of the coldests temperatures in years

Natural balances. Global warming doesn't mean "gets warmer everywhere in a perfectly uniform manner".

The temperature getting one degree warmer in one place could cause two years of snowing elsewhere.

I think that speaks to another problem that Climate Change proponents face.

For years it was "THE EARTH IS GETTING HOTTER AND WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE". When that's not the exact truth, it harms any good will you may have tried to do.

Well, if you don't make the problem dramatic enough, the public just tunes you out. So it's a fine line between "WE"RE ALL GONNA DIE" and people completely ignoring you.

Humans are very, very bad at dealing with disasters that play out over time. We discount the future and push problems off until the absolute last minute. So the apocalyptic rhetoric was calculated to break through our apathy and grab our attention. At the very least, it brought the idea of climate change into the public's awareness.

And, honestly, people could die. Not the whole human race or anything, but if climate change makes it harder to grow food in areas already beset by poverty and famine, starvation is a possible outcome. Climate change affects disease transmission patterns, too - like malaria mosquitoes migrating to regions previously inhospitable - which is why epidemiological organizations like the CDC are interested in the topic.

JebusUD · July 2009

Topweasel wrote: »

But really what does it matter. The world is better off as it stands with an increase in temperature then a decrease. Its also horribly dangerous to start treating the out put of gas that every living being in this world outputs is a dangerous pollutant. Ever think as plant life is allowed to grow for longer periods of time during the year that an "increase" in C02 output might actually be advantageous. If this isn't even a problem that can't be "stopped" on a global level and comes down to external force. Isn't it a horribly destructive action to be trying to limit the output of the very materials that plant life need to survive.

The body makes methane. We should probably delist that as a pollutant. We piss out ammonia. Yeah, that must be okay in large quantities too.

sanstodo · July 2009

Feral wrote: »

sanstodo wrote: »

Well, if you don't make the problem dramatic enough, the public just tunes you out. So it's a fine line between "WE"RE ALL GONNA DIE" and people completely ignoring you.

Humans are very, very bad at dealing with disasters that play out over time. We discount the future and push problems off until the absolute last minute. So the apocalyptic rhetoric was calculated to break through our apathy and grab our attention. At the very least, it brought the idea of climate change into the public's awareness.

And, honestly, people could die. Not the whole human race or anything, but if climate change makes it harder to grow food in areas already beset by poverty and famine, starvation is a possible outcome. Climate change affects disease transmission patterns, too - like malaria mosquitoes migrating to regions previously inhospitable - which is why epidemiological organizations like the CDC are interested in the topic.

Nate Silver did an interesting analysis of a comment by Jim Manzi, who argues that climate change isn't all the damaging. In 100 years, Manzi argues, climate change will reduce the world GDP by 5%, a seemingly small amount. Nate then took this as a given (while noting a few possible counterarguments, such as fat tail events) and then observes, as you correctly noted, most of this damage will be confined to the poorest parts of the world.

In typical Nate Silver fashion, he then tries to figure out the maximum number of people you could wipe out by reducing the world's GDP by 5%

His result?:

Zimbabwe, indeed, is the first country on the chopping block, whose 11.7 million greedy bastards consume a whole 0.0196 percent of the world's output -- a global low of just $55 per person. After that, we get to destroy Burundi, The Congo (the larger of the two Congos -- the one that used to be called Zaire), Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Eretrea, Malawai ... do you really me to go through the whole list? You do? ... Malwai, Ethopia, Sierra Leone, Niger, Afghanistan (big problem solved there), Togo, Guinea, Uganda, Madagascar, the Central African Republic, Nepal, Myanmar, Rwanda, Mozambique, Timor-Leste, the Gambia -- we've only used 0.27 percent of GDP to this point, by the way -- Bangladesh (which has 162 million people), Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Lesotho, Ghana, Haiti, Tajikistan, Comoros, Cambodia, Laos, Benin, Kenya, Chad, The Soloman Islands and Kyrgyzistan. Next up is India, which, while growing, still consumes only 2 percent of world GDP. Then Nicaragua, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Mauritania, Pakistan (another problem solved), Senegal, SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe, CÃ´te d'Ivoire, Zambia, Yemen, Cameroon, Djibouti, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Nigeria (another pretty big country -- we've now got only about 1.4 points of GDP left), Guyana, the Sudan, Bolivia (our first foray into South America), Moldova, Honduras, the Philippines, Sra Lanka, Mongolia, Bhutan and Egypt.

At this point, we've used up 4.4 points of GDP. Indonesia is next on the list of lowest per-capita GDPs. But unfortunately we can't quite fit them into the budget so we'll spare them, opting instead for Vanauatu, Tonga, Paragua, Morocco, Syria, Swaziland, Samoa, Guatemala, Georgia (the country -- not the place where they have Chik-Fil-A), the other Congo, and Iraq. Skipping China, we then get to Armenia, Jordan, Cape Verde, the Maldives -- and another big bunch of skips follows here since we're very low on budget -- Fiji and finally Namibia. Collectively, these countries consume 4.99997 percent of the world's GDP. There's absolutely no budget left for anyone else -- not even St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which would be a great band name, BTW.

SanderJK · July 2009

The CFC's is especially hilarious as an anti Climate Change argument, since it is probably the biggest success story for a global iniative to stop a harmful widespread problem. We mostly stopped using them, and we're already seeing an improvement in the antartic ozone layer.

If only we hadn't given a "developing country free pass" to India and China in that agreement....

There are very few things to contest about Climate Change:

- Is the composition of the atmosphere changing? Ice boring up to a million years back says yes, we're at a point of atmosphere composition that's pretty much unheard of in "recent history." (Yes, further back things were even more radical, but the last million years have been rather cyclical with predicatable upper and lower limits, and we're now beyond that, with no major outside source to tell us so).

- Are humans significantly altering the earths atmosphere? All signs point to yes. We are certainly outputting a lot of CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gasses, to be a significant contributor. At the same time we started doing this, the levels of those gasses in the atmosphere started to rise, by a fraction of our output (We output X megatons, and the levels increase by say 0.6X megatons).

- Do these gasses correspond with changed weather, and an overall heating? It certainly seems to be the case. Not only is our average temperature rising at the moment, geological evidence certainly seems to correlate high CO2 amounts with higher temperatures.

Why is it worrying:

- Weather in general is made by temperature differences. Change the temperatures, and the weather will change, almost certainly drasticly in some areas.

- Higher temperatures = less ice on the arctic, antarctic, and greenland. We're certainly seeing evidence on all three. Now the total scenario for this can go a hundred million ways, from 30cm to 7m of rising seas. Never mind what the hell that will do with the ocean streams, such as the gulf stream. (If it ceases to be, europe will switch to Canada's climate all of a sudden).

sanstodo · July 2009

Topweasel wrote: »

Everyone is missing the most important aspect and the one that affected the whole solar system the most. Solar energy in the form of sun spot activities. In the late eighties and the early 90's during the whole Ozone craze, one of the biggest worries was about the ozone depletion and increased sunspot activities where going to force us all to wear sunglasses's and SPF 70 everywhere we go.

Then early last year sunspot activity died almost completely. We just weren't seeing the cycle restart like we had. Instantly we had a pretty large drop in 2008 while trending down in the the last 3 years. Even then the last year temperature increased (05) wasn't even as hot as 98.

But really what does it matter. The world is better off as it stands with an increase in temperature then a decrease. Its also horribly dangerous to start treating the out put of gas that every living being in this world outputs is a dangerous pollutant. Ever think as plant life is allowed to grow for longer periods of time during the year that an "increase" in C02 output might actually be advantageous. If this isn't even a problem that can't be "stopped" on a global level and comes down to external force. Isn't it a horribly destructive action to be trying to limit the output of the very materials that plant life need to survive.

What, exactly, is your point? That sunspot activity has a larger impact on global heat fluctuations than CO2 and other greenhouse gases?

The 2007 IPCC report already dealt with this. They reanalyzed sunspot data over the past 250 years and estimated the maximum likely influence of solar forcing (what you're trying to describe) as 20%. And that's the maximum influence it could have had. Plus, solar output since 1978 shows a rise and fall due to sunspots' 11 year cycle but without any clear upward or downward trend. The Earth's consistent warming is not due to a corresponding rise in solar activity, because solar activity has been stable.

You can find all of this information on the IPCC website.

_J_ · July 2009

Sentry wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ

This is Pascal's Wager applied to Global Climate Change as opposed to God.

I'm wondering if the people who find this argument compelling believe in God.

Sentry · July 2009

_J_ wrote: »

Sentry wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ

This is Pascal's Wager applied to Global Climate Change as opposed to God.

I'm wondering if the people who find this argument compelling believe in God.

One has scientific evidence, the other doesn't. Like I said, take it to whatever conclusion you want, but to pretend they are the same is just intellectually stupid.

Penny Arcade

Convincing people that global warming is a real thing

Posts