Happer has testified at a number of government hearings on climate change—including one in Minnesota for which he was paid by Peabody Coal. At a 2015 Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness hearing, he voiced support for explicitly dedicating funding to scientists who reject the consensus conclusions of climate science. (Any researcher can submit study proposals to the National Science Foundation, where they are judged on scientific merit and funded based on the available budget.)
"there's this myth that's developed around carbon dioxide that it's a pollutant […] Carbon dioxide is a perfectly natural gas, it’s just like water vapor, it’s something that plants love."
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
lock that motherfucker in a box with a tailpipe sticking directly into it
Happer has testified at a number of government hearings on climate change—including one in Minnesota for which he was paid by Peabody Coal. At a 2015 Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness hearing, he voiced support for explicitly dedicating funding to scientists who reject the consensus conclusions of climate science. (Any researcher can submit study proposals to the National Science Foundation, where they are judged on scientific merit and funded based on the available budget.)
"there's this myth that's developed around carbon dioxide that it's a pollutant […] Carbon dioxide is a perfectly natural gas, it’s just like water vapor, it’s something that plants love."
Look, there's this myth developed around electric fields that they can be dangerous. Electrons are a perfectly natural particle, just like neutrons! They are something that plants love.
Happer has testified at a number of government hearings on climate change—including one in Minnesota for which he was paid by Peabody Coal. At a 2015 Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness hearing, he voiced support for explicitly dedicating funding to scientists who reject the consensus conclusions of climate science. (Any researcher can submit study proposals to the National Science Foundation, where they are judged on scientific merit and funded based on the available budget.)
"there's this myth that's developed around carbon dioxide that it's a pollutant […] Carbon dioxide is a perfectly natural gas, it’s just like water vapor, it’s something that plants love."
CO2 Brawndo, it's what plants crave! It's got electrolytes (TM)!
Carbon monoxide is natural and has a role in the body. Why the heck do I need this carbon monoxide detector then?
I mean if he said that my answer would be "Well, I uh, you don't! Also proper air circulation isn't really necessary and ducts get so dirty you should probably just cover all of those pesky vents up."
BREAKING NEWS
The Trump administration wants to make it easier to release methane into the air, its third major step this year to roll back climate rules.
Monday, September 10, 2018 5:39 PM EST
Methane, which is among the most powerful greenhouse gases, routinely leaks from oil and gas wells, and energy companies have long said that the rules requiring them to test for emissions were costly and burdensome.
I just...
[sigh]
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
I get the feeling that climate change due to industry is the biggest of the final great filters in the Fermi Paradox.
This post has haunted me for 5 months now and today’s news amps its terrible hold on me
Eh, if you want some good thinking on that front, if we hadn't irrationally decided they were bad we could have transitioned to like 80% nuclear power sources back in the 50s.
Well I suppose I should make that trip to go see some glaciers sooner rather than later
If you want to see one not in a picture, yeah I would.
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
I was told that the glacier in Glacier National Park was supposed to have been completely melted in 2016. Does anyone know if that actually happened? I did some quick searching but can't find anything but articles from like 2013 mentioning it.
I was told that the glacier in Glacier National Park was supposed to have been completely melted in 2016. Does anyone know if that actually happened? I did some quick searching but can't find anything but articles from like 2013 mentioning it.
So there are multiple glaciers in the national park. Of the ~150 glaciers that existed in the late 19th century only 26 remain (defined as moving ice/snow larger than 25 acres). The average reduction in size of the remaining glaciers is about 40% (over the past 50 years) and it's projected that the park will lose all its glaciers by the 2030s (assuming current melting rates and temperature rises).
I get the feeling that climate change due to industry is the biggest of the final great filters in the Fermi Paradox.
This post has haunted me for 5 months now and today’s news amps its terrible hold on me
There's little point in giving in to defeatism. If it wasn't global warming, it would have been a new ice age in another few ten thousand years. Predicting the future is notoriously difficult. Especially when it comes to people.
The Earth will eventually be fine, people are in for a difficult time. But there's no reason to assume things are a total loss.
I get the feeling that climate change due to industry is the biggest of the final great filters in the Fermi Paradox.
This post has haunted me for 5 months now and today’s news amps its terrible hold on me
There's little point in giving in to defeatism. If it wasn't global warming, it would have been a new ice age in another few ten thousand years. Predicting the future is notoriously difficult. Especially when it comes to people.
The Earth will eventually be fine, people are in for a difficult time. But there's no reason to assume things are a total loss.
But I'm a person not Gaia. Forgive me for being really worried about the effect on people.
How can people change the earth's atmosphere if we can't even dig deeper than 12-13 kilometers into the ground. We think we are soooo powerful we change the entire planet. I think it's a natural occurance, nothing special. We are like ants building a nest. I wonder if anyone is aware that plants use CO2 and the sun to produce the air we breathe? And we want to remove CO2 from the planet, also removing plants. Double the digits for what? The Sun and the micro iceages happen every few thousand years, it's just a phase, not the end of a planet.
How can people change the earth's atmosphere if we can't even dig deeper than 12-13 kilometers into the ground. We think we are soooo powerful we change the entire planet. I think it's a natural occurance, nothing special. We are like ants building a nest. I wonder if anyone is aware that plants use CO2 and the sun to produce the air we breathe? And we want to remove CO2 from the planet, also removing plants. Double the digits for what? The Sun and the micro iceages happen every few thousand years, it's just a phase, not the end of a planet.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or a particularly hot take.
How can people change the earth's atmosphere if we can't even dig deeper than 12-13 kilometers into the ground. We think we are soooo powerful we change the entire planet. I think it's a natural occurance, nothing special. We are like ants building a nest. I wonder if anyone is aware that plants use CO2 and the sun to produce the air we breathe? And we want to remove CO2 from the planet, also removing plants. Double the digits for what? The Sun and the micro iceages happen every few thousand years, it's just a phase, not the end of a planet.
You're right about one thing, the planet will eventually be just fine after we've driven ourselves to extinction. Devastating climate change caused by a civilization becoming too advanced is a natural occurrence if you think about it.
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Blackhawk1313Demon Hunter for HireTime RiftRegistered Userregular
How can people change the earth's atmosphere if we can't even dig deeper than 12-13 kilometers into the ground. We think we are soooo powerful we change the entire planet. I think it's a natural occurance, nothing special. We are like ants building a nest. I wonder if anyone is aware that plants use CO2 and the sun to produce the air we breathe? And we want to remove CO2 from the planet, also removing plants. Double the digits for what? The Sun and the micro iceages happen every few thousand years, it's just a phase, not the end of a planet.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or a particularly hot take.
How can people change the earth's atmosphere if we can't even dig deeper than 12-13 kilometers into the ground. We think we are soooo powerful we change the entire planet. I think it's a natural occurance, nothing special. We are like ants building a nest. I wonder if anyone is aware that plants use CO2 and the sun to produce the air we breathe? And we want to remove CO2 from the planet, also removing plants. Double the digits for what? The Sun and the micro iceages happen every few thousand years, it's just a phase, not the end of a planet.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or a particularly hot take.
This kind of reminded me of that guy from Parks and Rec who gets super angry when they try to pass the soda tax.
"What's so bad about corn syrup? It's natural! Corn's a fruit. Syrup comes from a bush!"
Plants use X CO2, and produce Y oxygen. Animals and plants (plants produce CO2 all the time, oxygen only during the day when not dormant) use Y oxygen and produce X CO2.
The global CO2 production of both life and human activity is substantially higher than X, however. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has doubled in less than a century (it slightly more than doubled over 10,000 years the last time this happened naturally).
More carbon doesn't mean more plants, because carbon is no the limitng factor in plant growth. It can mean more algae, but but it's noxious types like cyanobacteria and red tide and causes massive fish dieoffs.
Nor does less carbon mean less plants, because even if we cease all human industry life still produces the needed CO2. Everything we add is surplus that is not used.
And too much CO2 can mean less plants. As mentioned, plants also respirate. The use oxygen to metabolize sugars and produce CO2 in the process. If CO2 partial pressure in the atmosphere rises, it reduces plants ability to respirate the same way it does animals, and plants can still die of CO2 poisoning.
We know the extra carbon is from humans, too. Fossil carbon has a specific and identifiable ratio of isotopes, being old and mostly depleted of radioactive isotopes. Life produces a different ratio, with a highly specific ratio of radioactive carbon isotopes that can be used to identify exactly how old it is. The current atmospheric content is roughly consistent with half of it being organic in origin and the other half being fossil.
The depth we can drill has nothing to do with what we can do to the atmosphere. The atmosphere is thousands of times less dense and the challenge it poses lessen with distance rather than growing. The atmosphere is highly dependent on an X in/X out balance, all you need to do to change the concentration of a gas is to push in or out just a couple percent off of X and hold it there for a while. We've also managed to measurably increase methane and radon, among others, while reducing several trace gasses, in the same way - just push them a couple percent and sit on it.
How can people change the earth's atmosphere if we can't even dig deeper than 12-13 kilometers into the ground. We think we are soooo powerful we change the entire planet. I think it's a natural occurance, nothing special. We are like ants building a nest. I wonder if anyone is aware that plants use CO2 and the sun to produce the air we breathe? And we want to remove CO2 from the planet, also removing plants. Double the digits for what? The Sun and the micro iceages happen every few thousand years, it's just a phase, not the end of a planet.
Yeah climate change is perfectly natural. And I also do think that the majority of the people lack the necessary knowledge to see how all the little things we do have a miniscule but measurable negative effect on the world around us.
- microplastics
- PBA
- ocean acidification
- reduction of biodiversity
- desertification/soil erosion
- burning of the rainforest to plant crops for biofeuls
- flying planes
- intensive agriculture
- methane emissions from permafrost
- strategic water aquifers contaminated by fracking
- etc etc
All of those things add up.
How can people change the earth's atmosphere if we can't even dig deeper than 12-13 kilometers into the ground. We think we are soooo powerful we change the entire planet. I think it's a natural occurance, nothing special. We are like ants building a nest. I wonder if anyone is aware that plants use CO2 and the sun to produce the air we breathe? And we want to remove CO2 from the planet, also removing plants. Double the digits for what? The Sun and the micro iceages happen every few thousand years, it's just a phase, not the end of a planet.
I am at least smart enough to know that scientists are smarter than I am. And the consensus of 99% of them is that we are obviously damaging our planet at a rapid pace.
So I can never comprehend how so many people will declare that all these intelligent people who understand this stuff in way more detail than the average person could are wrong, or have some huge conspiracy or something to get you to recycle. How are so many people still doubting man-made climate change? It boggles the mind.
How can people change the earth's atmosphere if we can't even dig deeper than 12-13 kilometers into the ground. We think we are soooo powerful we change the entire planet. I think it's a natural occurance, nothing special. We are like ants building a nest. I wonder if anyone is aware that plants use CO2 and the sun to produce the air we breathe? And we want to remove CO2 from the planet, also removing plants. Double the digits for what? The Sun and the micro iceages happen every few thousand years, it's just a phase, not the end of a planet.
Yes, we're all aware that plants use CO2, because we took 4th grade science. I suggest you do the same.
It's still important to understand just how dumb fossil fuel use has been in retrospect. Fossil fuels are the remains of the Carboniferous Era, a time when oxygen rich life didn't exist on the large scale. It was only the sequestration of that carbon that led to the oxygen rich environment that allowed us to evolve.
Even if we'd continued to run society off of burning wood, we wouldn't have done as much damage to our environment as we've done by releasing fossil fuels.
Eons ago a biological revolution changed the atmosphere from having almost no O2 to having enough O2 to support aerobic life. There is nothing special about a lifeform spreading itself across the planet and altering it through chemical changes.
To say that humanity is incapable of such a thing is to say that humanity is some supernatural being that cannot leave a mark on its environment.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
It's still important to understand just how dumb fossil fuel use has been in retrospect. Fossil fuels are the remains of the Carboniferous Era, a time when oxygen rich life didn't exist on the large scale. It was only the sequestration of that carbon that led to the oxygen rich environment that allowed us to evolve.
Even if we'd continued to run society off of burning wood, we wouldn't have done as much damage to our environment as we've done by releasing fossil fuels.
Interesting alt-history idea: Nuclear Science is 100 years ahead of where we are and society develops and adopts nuclear power before the fossil fuels driven industrialrevolution takes off.
Considering one of the largest extinction events was caused by a single celled organism, the idea that a species that can make fusion bombs is somehow incapable of affecting the planet is laughable.
Posts
(Note: Republicans will not drink said water)
Another commodity to own, control, and sell to the top bidder!
This shit is like an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Heathen.
electricity's post is only going to ripen with age.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/scientist-who-thinks-more-co₂-is-great-joins-national-security-council/
Look, there's this myth developed around electric fields that they can be dangerous. Electrons are a perfectly natural particle, just like neutrons! They are something that plants love.
Gosh fucking shitting damnit aaargh! :bigfrown:
I mean if he said that my answer would be "Well, I uh, you don't! Also proper air circulation isn't really necessary and ducts get so dirty you should probably just cover all of those pesky vents up."
I just...
[sigh]
This post has haunted me for 5 months now and today’s news amps its terrible hold on me
Eh, if you want some good thinking on that front, if we hadn't irrationally decided they were bad we could have transitioned to like 80% nuclear power sources back in the 50s.
If you want to see one not in a picture, yeah I would.
So there are multiple glaciers in the national park. Of the ~150 glaciers that existed in the late 19th century only 26 remain (defined as moving ice/snow larger than 25 acres). The average reduction in size of the remaining glaciers is about 40% (over the past 50 years) and it's projected that the park will lose all its glaciers by the 2030s (assuming current melting rates and temperature rises).
There's little point in giving in to defeatism. If it wasn't global warming, it would have been a new ice age in another few ten thousand years. Predicting the future is notoriously difficult. Especially when it comes to people.
The Earth will eventually be fine, people are in for a difficult time. But there's no reason to assume things are a total loss.
But I'm a person not Gaia. Forgive me for being really worried about the effect on people.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or a particularly hot take.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
You're right about one thing, the planet will eventually be just fine after we've driven ourselves to extinction. Devastating climate change caused by a civilization becoming too advanced is a natural occurrence if you think about it.
Made all the hotter by greenhouse gasses.
This kind of reminded me of that guy from Parks and Rec who gets super angry when they try to pass the soda tax.
"What's so bad about corn syrup? It's natural! Corn's a fruit. Syrup comes from a bush!"
The global CO2 production of both life and human activity is substantially higher than X, however. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has doubled in less than a century (it slightly more than doubled over 10,000 years the last time this happened naturally).
More carbon doesn't mean more plants, because carbon is no the limitng factor in plant growth. It can mean more algae, but but it's noxious types like cyanobacteria and red tide and causes massive fish dieoffs.
Nor does less carbon mean less plants, because even if we cease all human industry life still produces the needed CO2. Everything we add is surplus that is not used.
And too much CO2 can mean less plants. As mentioned, plants also respirate. The use oxygen to metabolize sugars and produce CO2 in the process. If CO2 partial pressure in the atmosphere rises, it reduces plants ability to respirate the same way it does animals, and plants can still die of CO2 poisoning.
We know the extra carbon is from humans, too. Fossil carbon has a specific and identifiable ratio of isotopes, being old and mostly depleted of radioactive isotopes. Life produces a different ratio, with a highly specific ratio of radioactive carbon isotopes that can be used to identify exactly how old it is. The current atmospheric content is roughly consistent with half of it being organic in origin and the other half being fossil.
The depth we can drill has nothing to do with what we can do to the atmosphere. The atmosphere is thousands of times less dense and the challenge it poses lessen with distance rather than growing. The atmosphere is highly dependent on an X in/X out balance, all you need to do to change the concentration of a gas is to push in or out just a couple percent off of X and hold it there for a while. We've also managed to measurably increase methane and radon, among others, while reducing several trace gasses, in the same way - just push them a couple percent and sit on it.
Yeah climate change is perfectly natural. And I also do think that the majority of the people lack the necessary knowledge to see how all the little things we do have a miniscule but measurable negative effect on the world around us.
- microplastics
- PBA
- ocean acidification
- reduction of biodiversity
- desertification/soil erosion
- burning of the rainforest to plant crops for biofeuls
- flying planes
- intensive agriculture
- methane emissions from permafrost
- strategic water aquifers contaminated by fracking
- etc etc
All of those things add up.
I am at least smart enough to know that scientists are smarter than I am. And the consensus of 99% of them is that we are obviously damaging our planet at a rapid pace.
So I can never comprehend how so many people will declare that all these intelligent people who understand this stuff in way more detail than the average person could are wrong, or have some huge conspiracy or something to get you to recycle. How are so many people still doubting man-made climate change? It boggles the mind.
Yes, we're all aware that plants use CO2, because we took 4th grade science. I suggest you do the same.
Even if we'd continued to run society off of burning wood, we wouldn't have done as much damage to our environment as we've done by releasing fossil fuels.
To say that humanity is incapable of such a thing is to say that humanity is some supernatural being that cannot leave a mark on its environment.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Interesting alt-history idea: Nuclear Science is 100 years ahead of where we are and society develops and adopts nuclear power before the fossil fuels driven industrialrevolution takes off.