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Doubts about climate change?

Here’s what got that seed of doubt sown. 30 years ago A bold plan was hatched Americas oil industry execs and a top PR guru. An $850,000 a day contract was at stake meaning it was in the oil industry’s best interests to create seeds of doubt about climate change.
A bit like the NRA telling supporters that guns don’t kill people.

Obviously the plan worked because climate changed doubters are everywhere today. Sadly actual climate change is wacking us in the face every hour of every day.
redredred · M
@LeopoldBloom And all the problems and you want even more laws, you want even more taxes you just need a big nanny to hold your hand and make you feel all better and safer because, even given your tiny share of introspection, you realize you need lots of help and freedom scares the crap out of you.

I don’t need a libertarian nation I just want people to know that there’s no way to drink yourself sober. The solution to most of our issues is not more government. Other than the ones they created, government hasn’t solved any problem since WWII. Think I’m wrong? Name the problem they’ve solved that doesn’t track back to the government.
@redredred The national highway system, which made it possible to traverse the country safely (read about Eisenhower trying to cross the country with military). After WWII.

The national park system, and other interlocking bits to preserve places of natural beauty, historic value, etc. Ongoing though begun before WWII.

Dept. of Agriculture developing small communities with special grants/loans (don't know when this started, but it's ongoing).

Rural electrification, the TVA.

NASA, given a huge "to-do" and generating all sorts of tech to do that.

Clean Air & Water Acts.

Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

Federal flood insurance.

FEMA.

Work to make it easier to have better standards for our systems of measurement (NIST).

Encouraging charity, mobility for jobs, education, retirement savings through the tax code.
redredred · M
@SomeMichGuy A big list is shit I never wanted, most of which is of no benefit to me but I have to pay for. Fuck that. That’s no solution for me. It’s like telling me that by paying for your hospital care I’m benefitting.

Try again
@HoraceGreenley says
Read the comments. That data is faked.

Nope. Your whole "East Anglia" conspiracy theory doesn't hold up under examination. Ten years later, journalists from The Guardian and The Daily Mail went back and examined the whole thing.

“In fact, the email was an entirely innocent and appropriate conversation between scientists,” Mann states in this week’s BBC Four documentary, Climategate: Science of a Scandal. He and Jones were merely trying to find appropriate ways of illustrating a graph of global temperature changes.

This view was not shared by Sarah Palin: the former US vice-presidential candidate wrote a Washington Post op-ed article that claimed the emails “reveal that leading climate ‘experts’ … manipulated data to hide the decline in global temperatures”.

. . .

but his views were supported by many others, such as Mike Hanlon, former science editor of the Daily Mail. “Scratch and sniff as we did, there was no smoking gun, no line that would show that there had been a conspiracy to fabricate a great untruth,” he said later. Thus, from the Guardian to the Daily Mail, the notion that Climategate represented “the worst scientific scandal of a generation” – as one UK newspaper had claimed – was found in the end to be unsupportable.

And now for the GOOD stuff!

Other powerful support was provided by physicists at University of California, Berkeley, who decided to test if deniers had been right to question Jones’s temperature charts. Led by Professor Richard Muller and backed by funds that included a $150,000 grant from noted climate-crisis denial supporters, the Charles Koch Foundation – the team re-analysed more than 1.6bn land temperature measurements dating back to the 1800s – and came to exactly the same conclusions as Jones: the fairly level temperatures that had continued through the past few centuries began to spike sharply a few decades ago as atmosphere carbon levels rose.

“Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with warming values published previously,” said Muller. “This confirms these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate-change sceptics did not seriously affect their conclusions.”

The East Anglia emails show nothing wrong was done. “In fact, the email was an entirely innocent and appropriate conversation between scientists,” Mann states in this week’s BBC Four documentary,...

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2019/nov/09/climategate-10-years-on-what-lessons-have-we-learned







@HoraceGreenley
People behaving badly and science lost a lot of credibility.
I agree that the East Anglia emails show scientists are people too. And when those people communicated privately and informally, they said things outsiders could misinterpret, like "use Mike's trick" which doesn't mean fake the data, it means correlate it with tree rings.

The journalists at the Guardian & Daily Mail looked long and hard at the East Anglia emails. Either those journalists joined the conspiracy, or they can be trusted when they say they found no wrongdoing, just informal personal communications that could be spun in a negative way.

Science is not as objective as most believe.
I've been part of the writing & publication of peer reviewed papers; I've also been a peer reviewer. Each individual publication is subject to question and doubt, but after a while they begin to pile up more and more evidence.

Science is a decentralized process. You could throw out everything done at East Anglia and barely make a dent in the work done on climate change. And that's where consensus comes in. Since I'm not trained to vet all the equations and assumptions climatologists use, I have to look to those others who can do so.

Thus I tend to accept the consensus opinion of the American Physical Society AND the American Chemical Society. Add in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and at least 15 other national organizations of publishing scientists, and you start to get a pretty strong consensus. See https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/







@HoraceGreenley
I get it. I disagree.
Everybody is entitled to his/her own opinion. But your original claim here,
the historical data that forms the basis of Climate Change models was faked
is dead. It doesn't hold up under inspection. The two 'climate gates' didn't uncover anything terrible despite your beliefs to the contrary, and, because science is so decentralized, climate science doesn't need East Anglia at all.







@HoraceGreenley
there's no global data set available during this time period.
Actually, there is plenty of data recorded. Just not by humans.

There are ice cores from glaciers on multiple continents, sea & lake sediment cores, and tree ring data. And they all correlate. Oops, don't forget peat! Here's a pretty picture:

For just a taste, here's an article identifying major volcanic events over the last 11,000 years. In upper portions of glaciers you can count the years by layers and correlate different glaciers by volcanic events. CO2 can be read from trapped ice bubbles. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020JD032855

For yucks, look up "eruption of 1267"

Also see "Bristlecone pine tree rings and volcanic eruptions over the last 5000 yr"
https://media.longnow.org/files/2/Salzer_Hughes_2007.pdf

And "Marine sediments unlock secrets about climate change in South Africa"
https://theconversation.com/marine-sediments-unlock-secrets-about-climate-change-in-south-africa-56942

And "Climate connections between the hemisphere revealed by deep sea sediment core/ice core correlations"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0012821X96000830

Awww... Australia is feeling left out. There there, "12,000 year temperature record"
https://www.ansto.gov.au/news/12000-year-temperature-record







@HoraceGreenley On the side of climate change there are multiple independent models converging to very similar results.

Opposed to climate change there is nitpicking. Yes, you can always question this ice core or that model's methane equation, but it's all nitpicking.

When climate change deniers actually have a numerical climate model that both accurately backcasts all the prior data and forecasts a different future climate, you'll have a leg to stand on. You can always find a few more nits to pick and I don't have the patience to address every nit.

You have no model, you have no backcasts or forecasts, you have nits. If that's enough to satisfy you, so be it.

Regardless of your nits, your original claim here,
the historical data that forms the basis of Climate Change models was faked
is dead. It doesn't hold up under inspection. The two 'climate gates' didn't uncover anything terrible despite your beliefs to the contrary, and, because science is so decentralized, climate science doesn't need East Anglia at all.







@HoraceGreenley And conveniently, none of the climate skeptics managed to keep a copy of the definitive proof of climate change malfeasance. RIIIIIGHT.

But dippyjoe has a friend who has it, LOL!!!

When you start proposing that Fox News and the Wall St Journal and National Review and The Sun are all participating in some kind of leftwing blackout of alleged definitive proof of climate change malfeaasance, then I have to conclude that from your perspective reality has a bias.







@HoraceGreenley What you've done is demonstrate clearly that you've got nothing here; that your original allegation:
the historical data that forms the basis of Climate Change models was faked
is dead. It doesn't hold up under inspection. The two 'climate gates' didn't uncover anything terrible despite your beliefs to the contrary, the 3rd one is a figment of your imagination, and, because the science is so decentralized, climate science doesn't need East Anglia at all.
Thinkerbell · 41-45, F
I'll know it's time to start worrying when the Obamas move from their $11,000,000 waterfront mansion on Martha's Vineyard.
@Thinkerbell @jackjjackson You've both dropped the original subject; can I infer then, that you're yielding the point that the geographically averaged first derivative of carbon over time shows a negative second derivative, and that that negative second derivative could, in some quarters, be reason for optimism?

I just want to settle the original issue before we move on to the free market system as it applies to CO2.
Thinkerbell · 41-45, F
@ElwoodBlues

"can I infer then, that you're yielding the point that the geographically averaged first derivative of carbon over time shows a negative second derivative, and that that negative second derivative could, in some quarters, be reason for optimism?"

No such luck Ellie.

The yearly noise level at Mauna Loa is perhaps +/- 0.5 ppm/year, and is about +/- 0.15 ppm/yr when points are averaged over 10 years (straight black lines in the graph). A linear regression (red line below) fits very nicely.


Remarkable that all these marvelous claimed reductions in rate of carbon emissions don't show up at all, even if Mauna Loa is only one place.

But just to make you happy, I took (presumably worldwide) data from Statista and plotted 10-year average changes in CO2 levels (shown as black dots).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1091926/atmospheric-concentration-of-co2-historic/

As you can see, the difference between the Mauna Loa averages and the wordlwide averages is negligible, and the linear regression gives an excellent fit to the data.

No sign of a negative 2nd derivative; it is at best zero.

And I notice you were remarkably silent as to the reliability of carbon emissions data from reporting countries, especially China.
@Thinkerbell You fit a LINE!!! And you're surprised that when you fit a line the result is linear and it's second derivative is zero?? You would need to fit a higher order function to see a non-zero second derivative. Of COURSE the second derivative of a line is zero!!

Plus, you fit your line to ten year averages. And not moving averages either. In this process averaged away most of the details. You reduced 60 degrees of freedom to six. And, looking closely, you dropped off the final two data points. Sorry, but your process averaged away most of the info that's represented in the graph I posted:


I have searched for and posted more sources of data and discussion; I put them in a separate top-level post so all the pretty graphs won't scroll away.
Philth · 46-50, M
How did I just *know* that TheHippy would be a climate change denier?
redredred · M
@SomeMichGuy What you hear and what I say are rarely the same things due to your inherent bias. Anything that differs from the lefttard herd is seen as right wing since leftards are unable to think beyond right or left.
@redredred Anyone who says "lefttard" is not interested in serious discussion.

I have seen many of your posts, and I stand by how most of them come across.
redredred · M
@SomeMichGuy I thought it was more polite than “fucking idiot” which accurately describes any leftist.
badminton · 61-69, MVIP
Evidence for Human caused Climate Change:

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
NASA: "There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause."

https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/scientists-strong-evidence-human-caused-climate-change-intensified-2015-heat-waves
National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration: "Human-caused climate change very likely increased the severity of heat waves that plagued India, Pakistan, Europe, East Africa, East Asia, and Australia in 2015 and helped make it the warmest year on record, according to new research published today in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society."

https://www.edf.org/climate/9-ways-we-know-humans-triggered-climate-change
Environmental Defense Fund: "Tens of thousands of scientists in more than a hundred nations have amassed an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing to a clear conclusion: Humans are the main cause of climate change. We're the ones who burn fossil fuels, produce livestock and clear trees, increasing the amount of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere."
MrBrownstone · 46-50, M
@badminton Yes to the first paragraph. No to the last sentence. Would Al Gore be as rich as he is if climate change didn’t exist?
badminton · 61-69, MVIP
@MrBrownstone Gore would be much wealthier if he became a shill for the oil industry. The oil industry is the wealthiest, most powerful industry on the planet.
MrBrownstone · 46-50, M
@badminton Not what I asked.
The global warming / climate change we're seeing in the last 100 or so years is MUCH different from anything measured in the glacial & sea sediment records covering the last 700,000 years. CO2 is rising 100x faster, and temps 10x faster.

"How is Today’s Warming Different from the Past?" https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page3.php "As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming."

How is today's CO2 increase different? https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide "The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago."

Fact is, anthropogenic global warming is accepted by a YUGE segment of the scientific community. Would you accept the consensus opinion of the American Physical Society AND the American Chemical Society? How about the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and at least 15 other national organizations of publishing scientists? See https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
@hippyjoe1955 And you can cite publications to back that claim? No, of course not, LOL!!!
hippyjoe1955 · 61-69, M
@ElwoodBlues again with you 'studies"? Son let me explain it to you in real simple terms. Eons ago the CO2 levels were close to 6000 PPM. Now they are around 400 PPM. If the earth didn't burn up at 6000 PPM why would we be so stupid as to assume it will burn up at 400 PPM?
@hippyjoe1955 says
again with you 'studies"?
So you're anti- studying too?? Good to know!!

Let me explain it to you again. "Earth burning up" is a silly straw man cited by right-wing nut cases. The real concern is sea level rise. Sea level rise. Got it? Good!

We have, in very round numbers, something like $100 trillion invested in buildings & infrastructure near sea level. If we let the seas rise to much or too rapidly, we risk flooding a big chunk of that investment. For me, protecting sea level investment worldwide is the main reason to limit CO2. So it comes down to a cost benefit analysis.

I'm gonna post my piece on climate change and cost benefit analysis at the top level so it won't scroll away. Please continue the conversation there.
dakotaviper · 56-60, M
It gets even better. The best to way to get rid of any opposition to World Domination is to fabricate a catastrophic calamity. Hence Climate Change. As of right now, the only entity to prevent this from happening is the USA. But if you convince enough highly educated Leftists here in the USA that we must lead the way first, it'll be so much easier to eliminate us from within and destroy everything in their path.
dakotaviper · 56-60, M
@tindrummer yep. Proving my point by not trying to at least prove me wrong. Thank You.
MasterLee · 56-60, M
@tindrummer source?
@dakotaviper Dude, YOU are the one making extraordinary claims.

There are all sorts of evidence, from varied sources, which all point to climate change, and the vast majority of scientists studying it agree it is real, due to the various datasets, some going deep into the past. The extraordinary claim of climate change HAS been proved.

So YOU furnish the proof of your outlier opinion.

Just because an idea come from an actually educated person doesn't mean it's wrong. Your smartphone works because a LOT of educated people built the knowledge, technology, etc., which you hold in your hand.

Just because someone doesn't accept an established idea doesn't mean THEY are right.
HoraceGreenley · 56-60, M
There is no climate change. Check out my pinned post
justanothername · 51-55, M
@ElwoodBlues The NRA is successful for the same reason aka PR spin doctors cater to politicians with millions of dollars of campaign funding to help promote guns.
GeniUs · 56-60, M
@HoraceGreenley
Read the comments. That data is faked.
Data from numerous collection agencies around the world and perhaps you don't live in an area where you can see it (let's say Texas you wouldn't notice much of a heat rise there) but in the UK and many other areas a rise in temperature has taken miserable summers to enjoyable ones- I know I shouldn't complain but that is evidence people can see and feel without resorting to listening to anybody else.
@GeniUs
Data from numerous collection agencies around the world
That's for SURE!! Some of the data goes back 700,00 years!!
And here's where the various data sets were collected:
Some of that data comes from bubbles in ice glaciers; some from lake & sea floor sediments, and some from peat bogs.
There's a silly rumor going around that volcanoes emit far more CO2 than human activity. That silly rumor was debunked in 2009, LOL!!!

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the world’s volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide. Despite the arguments to the contrary, the facts speak for themselves: Greenhouse gas emissions from volcanoes comprise less than one percent of those generated by today’s human endeavors.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/

Want more details?

33 measured degassing volcanoes emit a total of 60 million tons of CO2 per year.
There are a total of ~150 known degassing volcanoes, implying (based on the measured ones) that a total of 271 million tons of CO2 are released annually.
30 historically active volcanoes are measured to emit a total of 6.4 million tons of CO2 per year.
With ~550 historically active volcanoes total, they extrapolate this class of object contributes 117 million tons per year.
The global total from volcanic lakes is 94 million tons of CO2 per year.
Additional emissions from tectonic, hydrothermal and inactive volcanic areas contribute an estimated 66 million tons of CO2 per year, although the total number of emitting, tectonic areas are unknown.
And finally, emissions from mid-ocean ridges are estimated to be 97 million tons of CO2 annually.

Add all of these up, and you get an estimate of around 645 million tons of CO2 per year. Yes, there are uncertainties; yes, there's annual variation; yes, it's easy to get led astray if you think that Mt. Etna is typical, rather than the unusually large emitter of CO2 that it is. When you realize that volcanism contributes 645 million tons of CO2 per year – and it becomes clearer if you write it as 0.645 billion tons of CO2 per year – compared to humanity's 29 billion tons per year, it's overwhelmingly clear what's caused the carbon dioxide increase in Earth's atmosphere since 1750.

In fact, even if we include the rare, very large volcanic eruptions, like 1980's Mount St. Helens or 1991's Mount Pinatubo eruption, they only emitted 10 and 50 million tons of CO2 each, respectively. It would take three Mount St. Helens and one Mount Pinatubo eruption every day to equal the amount that humanity is presently emitting.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/06/how-much-co2-does-a-single-volcano-emit/?sh=4c086085cbf5







Now Horace will tell you somebody somewhere has better data that supercedes the USGS CO2 analysis, but when pressed, he doesn't seem to know who published it or where or where to find it. Almost as if his bluff was called and he got defensive.
tindrummer · M
@ElwoodBlues I compliment you for having the patience to interact with him and the other willfully ignorant naysayers here.
@ElwoodBlues:

(Bravo !!)
@hippyjoe1955 asks
So what actual evidence do you have
Dude, I'm SO GLAD you asked!!!!!!!!!

but I've yet to hear a rational explanation of how miniscule increases in an atmospheric trace gas such as CO2, causes the earth to warm.
It's because CO2 & methane are transparent to visible light but more opaque to infrared. The solar energy comes pouring in via the visible spectrum, but the heat can't leave so easily via the infrared spectrum due to that opacity. Kids' version:
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/explainer-co2-and-other-greenhouse-gases
idealized quantitative model: https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/coriolis-force/a-simple-mathematical-model-of-the-greenhouse-effect.html

In order to actually prove human carbon emissions influence climate, all variables would have to remain constant
Nope. With multiple data points we can solve for multiple variables simultaneously. Detailed climate models account for all the variables you list and more. They are verified and calibrated based on 700,000 years of prior climate data.
http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/climate.html

Global warming models are based on small amounts of data. The earth is 4.6 billion years old, and we are expected to believe they can draw conclusions based on a hockey stick graph with 50 years of data?
Nope, not 50 years, 700,000 years, covering about 7 ice ages. The climate data comes from bubbles in glacial ice, and is corroborated by data from sea floor sediments.
https://icecores.org/about-ice-cores

Here's where the various data sets were collected:

The most salient thing about the 700,000 years of climate data is the rate of change during those previous 7 ice ages compared to the current rate of change this century.

Where does the money for climate research come from?
Fair question. Equally fair: where does the money for climate denial come from? The US oil industry makes about $110 billion per year; coal another $20 billion. Big Oil spends $3.6 billion per year on advertising; a sum equal to about 8X the whole NSF climate budget. You're not naive enough to believe none of that money goes to propaganda, are you?

At best scientist can make correlations.
So you're saying that when science predicts an eclipse ten years in advance accurate to the second, that's only a correlation? C'mon dude, science makes predictions all the time.
@redredred You have it backwards! Raising CO2 raises temperatures, which in turn raise H2O, which raises temperatures further. This is known as positive feedback. P.S. it would be a mistake to assume the greenhouse gases are independent; the positive feedback cycle proves they are interdependent.

Kiddie version:
Although water vapor probably accounts for about 60% of the Earth’s greenhouse warming effect, water vapor does not control the Earth’s temperature. Instead, the amount of water vapor is controlled by the temperature. This is because the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere limits the maximum amount of water vapor the atmosphere can contain. If a volume of air contains its maximum amount of water vapor and the temperature is decreased, some of the water vapor will condense to form liquid water. This is why clouds form as warm air containing water vapor rises and cools at higher altitudes where the water condenses to the tiny droplets that make up clouds.
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html

Hardcore version: http://www.globalwarmingequation.info/

Also see:
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-04.pdf
redredred · M
@ElwoodBlues humans aren’t the only source of CO2. CO2 doesn’t just sit in the atmosphere, it’s a limiting component, like phosphorous, in plant growth. Increasing it in the atmosphere Spurs plant growth and O2 production.
@redredred True. And I'm a big fan of plant growth. But I'm NOT a big fan of sea level rise.

We have, in very round numbers, something like $100 trillion invested in buildings & infrastructure near sea level. If we let the seas rise to much or too rapidly, we risk flooding a big chunk of that investment. For me, protecting sea level investment worldwide is the main reason to limit CO2. So it comes down to a cost benefit analysis.

I'm gonna post my piece on climate change and cost benefit analysis at the top level so it won't scroll away. Please continue the conversation there.
Climatards are brilliant because they can alter the weather with carbon taxes and getting people to surrender their rights. 🙄
hippyjoe1955 · 61-69, M
@BizSuitStacy Imagine a generation so out of touch with reality that they think they can change the weather by sending money to the government.
@hippyjoe1955 insanity...and yet...
Oster1 · M
I'm reading down, about flooding.

OK, Obama's Mansion is 3 feet above SL.

Next, there is boom building of Ocean front developments in Ocean front, South Florida, both on the Atlantic and Gulf.

Why are not Bankers, Wall Street backed Gauarantors, Insurance Co's, Local Planning Dept's, not worried about, the effects of presumed, Climate Change?
windinhishair · 61-69, M
@Oster1 That's fine. I always heart you when I agree with you, which is as it should be.
Oster1 · M
@windinhishair Don't gloat.When I was on City Council, I witnessed a whole neighborhood, wiped out, by one faulty storm drain. 34 houses. I never forgot that! It still haunts me, to this day!

I'm a businessman, involved in many endeavors, some three generations.

This is why, someimes, I get so upset. I have witnessed people, working so hard and giving back, to their community.
windinhishair · 61-69, M
@Oster1 Who's gloating? If you are correct you are correct. Nothing more or less.

I did flood modeling for the FIA and storm drainage design for years and have personally seen the changes necessitated to infrastructure by climate change. Some areas have done a better job than others in taking care of their citizens. It bothers me when a city like Houston allowed thousands of homes to be built INSIDE a large drainage berm in Northwest Houston, because it had never been needed before. When the area received 56 inches of rain a few years ago, exceeding the Probable Maximum Precipitation, the entire area flooded and turned into a lake for weeks. That was what it was designed for, after all.

Ever heard of Indianola? It was the largest city on the Texas Gulf Coast after the Civil War, and a significant port, larger than Galveston, Houston, Brownsville, Corpus Christi, or Beaumont. It was hit by a major hurricane in 1875, rebuilt, and destroyed by another hurricane and fire in 1886. It was never rebuilt and it is now a ghost town on Matagorda Bay. It was in a poor location to begin with. Now that we should know more due to better science, we are making the same mistakes with Galveston. That city was completely flooded and destroyed in 1900 with over 6,000 dead. Now there are over 50,000 people there, and the last time I checked there were only two routes off the island. WHEN that area takes another direct major hurricane hit, there will be another massive death toll, because you can't evacuate people quickly enough. Those are the kind of scenarios that keep planners up at night and make people justifiably upset.
SW-User
Climate has been changing and fluctuating since human first set foot on the planet. So what.

Global warming IS BS though.
[image/video deleted]
@SW-User Sounds like, I'm not an environmental scientist but I do have common sense? Let's wait until climate change becomes irreversible and a total catastrophe happens and then plan ahead? 🤔 Sounds like a Genius plan.
dakotaviper · 56-60, M
@windinhishair I do remember a certain former Vice President of the USA with the last name of Gore inform everyone back during his campaign for President that NYC, Miami, Boston and other major Liberal Enclaves would be under water by 2020. The last time I checked, they're still above water.
windinhishair · 61-69, M
@dakotaviper Interesting that you "remember" something Al Gore never said. But it makes a great right-wing misinformation story, doesn't it?

Even if Gore had said such a thing, he's not a climate scientist. I trust the scientists who study climate for a living, not a politician.
@redredred Here's another way to look at managing climate change; thru the lenses of probability and cost benefit analysis.

The total stock capitalization of American businesses traded on the stock exchanges is $48 trillion. Someone on Quora calculated the land & resource value of the whole USA at $5000 trillion. So I don't think it's unreasonable to value US seaside land buildings & infrastructure at the very round number of $100 trillion.

If you are CEO of a $100 trillion corporation, and some of your people are telling you the whole thing could be flooded in 20 years or 40 years or whatever, what's the prudent thing to do? Answer: ask for cost benefit analyses.

This approach removes the whole "religious war" aspect of the question and focuses on insurance style calculations.

What are the cost estimates for protecting your $100 trillion from floods, and what's a reasonable probablility estimate that the doomsayers are correct? The religious war approach pins those probabilities at 0% and 100%, but suppose you allow a 25% probability that the doomsayers are correct, or, alternatively, that they're only 25% correct (25% is just for the sake of argument; I'm not married to the figure).

With that assumption, you now have $25 trillion at risk, so what's the prudent amount to spend to insure that $25 trillion?

A quick google says homeowners insurance costs about $3300/yr for each $1 million of value. Scaling to $25 trillion, that works out to $82 billion per year, or a 12 year investment of about $1 trillion.

So there's nothing outlandish about a ten year one trillion dollar green energy plan, especially given that the plan includes plenty of jobs, infrastructure upgrades, and goods purchased from American businesses.
@Thinkerbell Starting here so the graphs don't scroll away.

This graph ends at the end of 2016, shows definite negative 2nd derivative.
Source: "5 ways to think about the remarkable slowdown in global CO2 emissions"
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/21/14998536/slowdown-co2-emissions
This pause in CO2 emissions growth, the IEA says, was driven by “growing renewable power generation, switches from coal to natural gas, improvements in energy efficiency, as well as structural changes in the global economy.” Notably, US energy-related emissions fell 1.6 percent in 2016, thanks to the ongoing shift from coal to cleaner natural gas, wind, and solar. Chinese coal consumption appears to be declining (though stats can be unreliable there), led by a shift away from heavy industry. And Europe’s emissions stayed flat last year.

This graph shows a big drop for the pandemic year; ignore that; it still shows a flattening of emissions.
Source: https://theconversation.com/global-emissions-are-down-by-an-unprecedented-7-but-dont-start-celebrating-just-yet-151757

Yet another analysis showing leveling off of CO2 emissions:
Source: http://country.eiu.com/ArticleIndustry.aspx?articleid=389146622&Country=China&topic=Industry&subtopic=Energy
Global CO2 emissions flat-lined in 2019 following two years of successive increases, according to estimates released in February by the International Energy Agency (IEA). This was achieved despite an over 2% increase in global GDP. The rate of growth in annual CO2 energy-related emissions in the last six years has slowed by two-thirds to 0.6% in 2013-19, compared with 1.8% in 2007-13. This suggests a weakening correlation between GDP and emissions growth, which is a positive sign.

However, recent progress in emissions reduction is heavily skewed towards high-income countries, where coal in the power sector has been displaced by renewables and gas. Meanwhile, emissions in the rest of the world are still increasing, as are emissions from oil and gas use. Global emissions growth might be slowing to a walk, but substantive emissions reduction needs to be seen in areas other than the power sector in high-income countries.

It's not just one graph or one report. There's lots of evidence of leveling off of CO2 emissions, prior to the pandemic.

Another:
Global Emissions Were Slowing Even Before the Pandemic
Releases of greenhouse gas dwindled thanks to declining coal use and new climate and energy policies coming into effect.

The growth rate of human-created greenhouse gases was slowing even before the pandemic hit the global economy—just not fast enough to hold back the rate of climate change.

Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels increased just 0.1% in 2019 from the previous year. In 2020, they’ll fall a record 7%, to 34 billion metric tons of CO₂, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international effort by researchers to measure CO₂ emissions. The results line up closely with a major United Nations report released this week that also showed an anticipated 7% drop in emissions this year.

“This level of reduction is unprecedented and about five times bigger than the drop during the global financial crisis in 2018,” said Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Budget. “Although the future is yet to be written, there is indeed an unprecedented opportunity that could curve down the future trajectory of emissions if we actively choose to do so.”
Source https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-11/global-emissions-were-slowing-even-before-the-pandemic
Thinkerbell · 41-45, F
@ElwoodBlues

"I'm sorry, but with all that other data & analysis out there, I'm not going to be swayed by your six CO2 data points made up of ten year averages."

OK, since you insist, here is a cubic polynomial fit to all of Statista's worldwide [i]atmospheric[/i] CO2 data between 1960 and 2021.


On the x-axis, 0 corresponds to the year 1960, other points to years since 1960.
The y-axis corresponds to worldwide atmospheric CO2 in ppm, as per Statista.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1091926/atmospheric-concentration-of-co2-historic/

As you can see, the coefficients of the powers of x are all positive, the curve is concave up, the 2nd derivative is positive, as is obvious from even a visual glance at the Statista data.

" But first you need to explain your model. Quadratic? Great, but why a quadratic?... What about sigmoid? Fourier series? Spherical harmonics? Same questions - how do you motivate that model over other models?"

Easy as pie.
For the purpose of determining the character of the 2nd derivative, a polynomial fit is easiest, involving only simple differentiations.
Expansions in terms of other functions that give good approximations would tell you exactly the same thing, but the calculations would be more difficult.

But now back to my early question, which you have been consistently dodging:

WHY HAVEN'T THE ALLEGED MODERATIONS IN THE INCREASES OF CO2 EMISSIONS SHOWN UP AS CORRESPONDING CHANGES IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2 LEVELS?
@Thinkerbell Sorry for being so slow getting back to this. And thank you for your newest lovely polynomial fitting efforts. I really mean that. However (you know a however was coming):

That fit is a great way to illustrate a 60 year trend. It's NOT a great way to illustrate if we have been diverging from that trend for the past 5 years or so. The sites I link to in the top post all say we appear to be leaving the old trend.

In your plot, divergence from the trend would show up as recent data having a growing error from the curve; bending a bit downward as the trend curve accelerates upwards, so negative error. Could you possibly show us what the "errors"* to the fit look like? Especially the last ten years of errors.

* I'm putting errors in quotes because, as you know, least squares fit assumes all data that deviates from the fitted curve are "noise" or "errors." Not a big problem as long as we remain aware that the data might be saying something slightly different from the assumptions of the fit.
Thinkerbell · 41-45, F
@ElwoodBlues

"In your plot, divergence from the trend would show up as recent data having a growing error from the curve; bending a bit downward as the trend curve accelerates upwards, so negative error. Could you possibly show us what the "errors"* to the fit look like? Especially the last ten years of errors."
Ok.

The "noise" level is about 0.5 ppm, and if anything, the data has been showing a positive "error" in the past few years.

No sign of a statistically significant downward inflection in the past 10 years.


One might more realistically have argued that a negative inflection occurred around 1989,
alas, only to have been countered by a larger positive inflection in 1995.

So I repeat:
WHY HAVEN'T THE ALLEGED MODERATIONS IN THE INCREASES OF CO2 EMISSIONS SHOWN UP AS CORRESPONDING CHANGES IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2 LEVELS?

To which I might add:
WHY DO YOU PUT SO MUCH STOCK IN EMISSIONS "STATISTICS" THAT THE GOVERNMENTS IN QUESTION HAVE EVERY REASON TO FUDGE?
wildbill83 · 41-45, M
According to science, there have been five ice ages in Earths history...

What ended them?

I mean, I'm no paleontologist, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't cave man coal plants... 🤔

The climate changes, that is a fact, there is no denying it. It changed long before we were here, and will continue to do so long after we're gone. The Earth has suffered far worse cataclysms than humans could ever throw at it, and yet it survived. But this notion that humankind has any significant impact on it is utter nonsense
Budwick · 70-79, M
Of course it's not really about climate change at all.
It's about controlling the masses.
Government and big money are the controllers.
We be the masses.

And, it doesn't really matter if REAL science and common sense proves the climate freaks wrong.
Government will jam it down our throats.
Take COVID for example.
They made the masses do all kinds of stupid shit.
They still are.

We can't count on the elites accepting defeat.
We gotta take 'em out.
CorvusBlackthorne · 100+, M
@Budwick
I cannot begin to address the level of stupidity in this comment.
Budwick · 70-79, M
@CorvusBlackthorne
I cannot begin to address the level of stupidity in this comment.

That's because there is none.
CorvusBlackthorne · 100+, M
@Budwick You misspelled "plenty".
Even a former CalTech Physics prof., Dr. Steven E. Koonin, has been an anti-climate change person...smh.
windinhishair · 61-69, M
@Oster1 Hahahahaha.
Oster1 · M
@Oster1
We are so sick of the pseudo science!

Then stop quoting it.
GeniUs · 56-60, M
I can only assume the people who are getting rich off causing climate change think they'll be immune to it's effects. Well I hope they remember to keep some of us underlings safe too otherwise they'll die out pretty quickly when they have to start doing things for themselves.
windinhishair · 61-69, M
Many of the same people and companies that sowed doubt about cigarettes causing cancer back in the 1960s were employed by the oil industry to create doubt about global climate change. But the industry has known for decades that it is real and profound.
hippyjoe1955 · 61-69, M
So what actual evidence do you have that CO2 is causing global warming? After all EVERY prediction made by those who think CO2 is the problem did not happen. The AGW crowd and a 100% FAILURE rate. Care to keep that record intact with your bold predictions?
MasterLee · 56-60, M
[image/video deleted]
Oster1 · M
Well of course I do, especially, after reading, this nonsense!

Reading Pine Cones, HAHAHAHAHAHA!

All you guys believe in this, fake Science!
Oster1 · M
@hippyjoe1955 CO2 is the most important element, to sustain life, and our atmosphere. There has been a decline in CO2, and needed badly. Yes, I went to good schools. (perhaps, the best ones) What, a fooking joke!!!
hippyjoe1955 · 61-69, M
@Oster1 Exactly. Millions of years ago the CO2 levels were almost 6000 ppm. Now they hover around 400 ppm. So if the globe didn't catch fire when 6000 ppm was normal why would we think that 400 ppm will have any effect at all?
Oster1 · M
@hippyjoe1955 Correct!!! It hovers around 0.4% of total!!!
MrBrownstone · 46-50, M
Name a time the climate never changed.
I don't think people, be they gun rights supporters or climate change skeptics, are so easily manipulated. At least, not by political intrigue. I blame the sexual revolution: you know, that way of thinking that didn't bother worrying about consequences if they were 5 minutes away. Well, with that kind attitude, how are people going to take repercussions 50 years away seriously???
Philth · 46-50, M
@ImperialAerosolKidFromEP
Fascinating. Could you expand upon this please?
@Philth probably not, but I can tell you what I've seen: in the 70s governments went into debt. Who cares? Free money is all we see! In the 80s, divorce rates skyrocketed. Since then, we've dealt w/some of the more egregious problems (in part due to natural phenomena, like HIV) but clearly deficits isn't one of them--not completely at least. Attention spans have increased beyond 5 minutes, but not nearly enough to comprehend the gravitas of something like climate change and the snail's-pace at which it happens and can be rolled back!
It's extremely unfortunate for the world that just as this problem was coming to a head, the civilization producing the most emissions suddenly became the most indifferent it ever has been.
@ImperialAerosolKidFromEP

the gravitas of something like climate change and the snail's-pace at which it happens and can be rolled back!

It is now so far along its trajectory, it can't be rolled back at a snail's pace.

If we had listened to Pres. Carter and even made a Manhattan Project-/Moon project-like declaration of energy independence & self-sustainability, we would have decoupled most of our economy from the various disasters to which petroleum is subject--market instability, OPEC, war, problems with refineries, different formulations of gasoline, etc.

We could be a leader in non-petroleum energy...rather than a cautionary tale.
AbusedNeglected · 41-45, M
Cast doubt of the doubters!
ChipmunkErnie · 70-79, M
Nope, no doubts.
exexec · 61-69, C
No doubts.
CorvusBlackthorne · 100+, M
Yet the fools who have been taken in by the petroleum industry refuse to admit to their gullibility.

 
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