The Sad Truth About Global Warming
- Thread starter Rhykker
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More like: if a house is on fire, do you put it out, or argue over who left the oven on?Rhykker said:
Global Warming/Climate change/Whatever is happening, and will almost certainly continue to happen whether we know what specific thing(s) caused it or not. Knowing the causes might help, maybe, but more likely it would just show us what we should have done a long time ago to prevent it. Very helpful. Developing a solution on the other hand... Well... Develops a solution.
I don't know the political inclination of my overlords, but this is just a boilerplate disclaimer I put up along with my first such editorial last week on Space Porn. It's not specific to this climate change piece, but rather an indication that this is an editorial on news, rather than straight-up news.Rawbeard said:
So I'm not arguing against finding solutions; I'm arguing against giving up the search for the cause. The better analogy here is a patient with an undiagnosed illness. He is exhibiting certain symptoms, and we have an idea of what the disease may be, so sure, let's start looking into treating what we think it may be, but let's keep trying to find out what he has, exactly, to be able to find a better treatment.Lunncal said:
And if Global Warming is a natural climate cycle do we prevent it too? I mean, it is also a very possible scenario, the Earth has gone through a few hot/cold cycles since it's inception, by "putting out the fire" without knowing what we are doing, may we not be screwing around with something that would initially be what was "supposed to happen"?.Lunncal said:
So the student of a professor who was partially shunned from the scientific community for taking funding from big oil companies writes an article about how there should be way more doubt that humans have anything to do with global warming (instead of 'wasting' valuable funding on finding solutions) and I read the comments and it's full of people saying "Hah, you're right, I knew I should never take that climate change rubbish seriously" and then quoting a lot of incorrect and scientifically disproven facts.
I don't actually doubt that the article was written with good intention, but it had exactly the effect I feared it would have.
EDIT: Also if the author, disapproves of my criticism of his background, please consider for a moment that it would be superhuman of someone not to take onboard some of the views of the people who helped teach them, and this is true of anyone in any profession. If you talk to someone who is friends with a policemen, they'll provide a compelling argument for cutting bureaucracy and extending police powers. If you talk to the friend of a humans right lawyer they'll provide a compelling argument for the opposite.
It is entirely possible that your professor is being genuinely discriminated against and that funding has moved on far too quickly. But that is also the side of the story you would know even if it weren't true. That's the power and importance of scientific consensus, even if consensus can also be a hindrance. One person's opinion piece is both authoritative and entirely dangerous to believe.
I don't actually doubt that the article was written with good intention, but it had exactly the effect I feared it would have.
EDIT: Also if the author, disapproves of my criticism of his background, please consider for a moment that it would be superhuman of someone not to take onboard some of the views of the people who helped teach them, and this is true of anyone in any profession. If you talk to someone who is friends with a policemen, they'll provide a compelling argument for cutting bureaucracy and extending police powers. If you talk to the friend of a humans right lawyer they'll provide a compelling argument for the opposite.
It is entirely possible that your professor is being genuinely discriminated against and that funding has moved on far too quickly. But that is also the side of the story you would know even if it weren't true. That's the power and importance of scientific consensus, even if consensus can also be a hindrance. One person's opinion piece is both authoritative and entirely dangerous to believe.
It really hasn't. You can basically replace any claim of a pause with "hey, 1998 was weirdly hot". Somehow, that single outlier has led even people who ought to know better to ignore the obvious trend. People like to talk about records, but records are very poor signifiers of chaotic data.Super Not Cosmo said:
Small numbers add up over long periods of time.Super Not Cosmo said:
No. A diagnosed illness, concurred with a second opinion, and indeed a thousandth one.Rhykker said:
With that attitude, you're doomed regardless. It's merely a question of time. (I guess we're all doomed in the long run, but I mean decades or at most centuries, not millions or billions of years.) The oil will run out. How well are you investing this resource windfall? How well are you conserving it? What will you do when it's gone?NuclearKangaroo said:
And what right do you have, in turn, to squash the livelihoods of people working towards renewable energy sources? Are they somehow less worthy of what you call "surviving"?
I believe that focusing more on renewable energy sources would be a net positive for the world economy as a whole, and by a rather large margin. Certainly there will be losers, but there will also be winners, and more of them. But of course those countries, corporations, and even individuals who depend on the current scheme are opposed to anything that threatens their livelihood. That doesn't mean they couldn't do something else. The truth is that they're uniquely positioned to actually do so - but instead of investing in the future, they invest in misinformation.
In this case however the "certain symptoms" that are being exhibited are going to kill the man regardless of what specifically caused them, so we should keep using the few doctors (or limited funds) we have available to fix his crashing life signs first, and then we can find out what he has exactly, and figure out a better treatment.Rhykker said:
The problem is that there's only a limited amount of resources people can or will devote to this. The search for the cause is a good thing to fund, sure, and it will still be a good thing to fund after we've figured out how to deal with global warming for now, which is where we really the need the funding and as soon as possible in order to minimise the damage that will be done.
I don't see why that's a problem. If what is supposed to happen is bad then we change it, that's pretty much the main purpose of many of the advancements and innovations humankind has made throughout its history. Agriculture allows us to provide far more food than we are "supposed" to, vehicles allow us to travel further than we were ever "supposed" to, medicine allows people who were "supposed" to die to live.Razhem said:
Perhaps human beings never were supposed to change things, but if that's the case that ship has sailed long ago, and it's pointless worrying about it now. Any attempts we make to "put out the fire" may very well screw us all over, but then failing to attempt to put it out at all can screw us just as bad. Nature is heartless and random, if I've a choice in the matter I'd rather leave my fate to people and the solutions they come up with, imperfect though they may often be.
I walked in skeptical on what this article was going to be talking about, only to find this article says the same thing I have been feeling for a while now. I love science, but it is also practiced by humans, so it contains those same inherent flaws. Part of any science always going to be science by social structure. From Evolution to N-Rays to Special Relativity, people build their whole careers on something and it becomes an immutable fact to them, when the real crime is people have a hard time admitting they don't know something.
I agree 100%. Ultimately, no matter what anyone wants to think, climate change is a real thing. Anyone who is unwilling to deny that is just blind. But it's also just as blinding to settle on it as a matter of fact and not even bother investigating the hows and whys of it. If we don't know why, then we can't change things to positively affect it or even find meaningful ways to counteract it. It now becomes science by policy, which doesn't benefit as much as it claims to.
I agree 100%. Ultimately, no matter what anyone wants to think, climate change is a real thing. Anyone who is unwilling to deny that is just blind. But it's also just as blinding to settle on it as a matter of fact and not even bother investigating the hows and whys of it. If we don't know why, then we can't change things to positively affect it or even find meaningful ways to counteract it. It now becomes science by policy, which doesn't benefit as much as it claims to.
Erm that graph still shows a rise in temperature. The thing is, it's very difficult to predict the weather more than a couple of weeks out, predicting global temperature changes are even harder to predict over years. There's so many things that can affect it, be it weather patterns, volcanic eruptions, algae blooms, or even solar activity. But be sure, just as your graph shows the temperature is increasing and will spell out disaster if left unchecked.Super Not Cosmo said:
Also these graphs are probably better at showing the extent of climate change, and how it all kind of conveniently started around the industrial revolution.
Regardless of one's stance towards global warming/climate change, I think everyone can agree that something is fucked up with regards to nature and the weather. Storms are growing in size and intensity, amphibians are disappearing, coral reefs are dying, etc. Hell, I see the effects in my hometown. We used to have lots of toads this time of year, but with a long string of dought years and increased use of pesticides they're practically nonexistent now. I miss those cute lil' buggers 
It's an opinion piece, having such a disclaimer is par for the course. Journalistic integrity and all that.Rawbeard said:
Frankly, i wonder why nobody seems to acknowledge that the human popuation is the root cause of everything.flarty said:
If there were less humans around, there simply wouldnt be a need to produce so much to support them.
Probably going to get some flak for that statement. Wouldnt be the first time and i look forward to adding some names to the ignore list.
You missed the point completely. We are attempting to find a solution for a problem we don't fully understand. We do not know the cause of the problem, we have only theories. Money is therefore being dumped into things which may - and most likely will not - fix the problem.Lunncal said:
Furthermore, climate change is a thing that has existed from the beginning of Earth's history. While it's not unbelievable for human pollution to be having an effect on that, it's an inarguable truth to anyone who's studied the history of the planet that there is, ultimately, little we can do to control the climate. It will change regardless of what we do based on a variety of factors beyond our control, many of which are probably still unknown to us.
And, as the article points out, it bogs down legitimate discussions of how to deal with pollution, a thing which has negative effects on the world even disregarding climate change as an issue. Science is bogged down by politics, preventing advancement. This is the point of the article.
This has been the reactionary history of environmental politics for damn near 80 years now. Look at the history of Yellowstone. It's one disaster after another because people saw what they thought was a problem and said, "Fix it! We don't have time to study it and find out what's going on, just fix it! Here's lots of money!" instead of finding out exactly what's going on first. Billions of dollars over the years have been wasted funding environmental policies that either don't accomplish anything, or are outright counterproductive to their intent because we didn't stop to figure out what's going on. And despite this having gone on before the first world war, we're still making the mistake of not looking before we leap when it comes to environmental policies.
I was totally on board with this article until this paragraph. Really disappointing to see what was up to that point a decent opinion piece suddenly devolve into "It's all the fault of evil governments and corporations. Capitalism is bad!" This is just pandering to everyone who wants to point their finger and assign blame while accepting no personal responsibility.Rhykker said:
Frustratingly, the author comes very close to identifying the actual root cause of the problem earlier in the article when he writes:
It isn't governments or corporations that are the problem here, it's us. As a species we have strained to develop ways to enhance our standard of living, have raised that standard by consuming resources without consideration for the consequences and now we aren't prepared to give up that status quo.Rhykker said:
We could have a green society. We could generate all our electricity with solar, wind and hyro. We could cut our consumption of resources. We could even, over time, replant the damned rain forests. But here's the rub: we arent willing to pay for it. We aren't prepared to shoulder the higher energy prices or reduce our useage, we aren't prepared to go without things we want and we aren't prepared to repair and re-use, preferring instead to replace.
There are many problems with governments, but they are nothing if not populist, and if we demanded investment in green energy, and were willing to pay for it (either through tax or higher bills), governments would fall over themselves to make it happen.
People like to take shots at oil companies. The truth? If you don't buy it they won't pump it. If people want to reduce oil consumption then they should commute to work on public transport, walk the kids to school and think twice before buying plastic products.
Bemoan the "soulless consumerism" of our capitalist society? Next time you have a hole in your sock, darn it instead of throwing it away and buying a new pair.
The real inconvenient truth is that we are the problem. People create the pressures which governments capitulate to. People create the demand that corporates earn profit by satisfying. We are not helpless cattle being led by our noses against our will into some apocalypse, we are in the driving seat, with our eyes closed and our fingers in our ears desperately crying that we are about to crash and that it is anyone's fault but our own.
I, too, hate how various politics get wrapped up in absolutely everything. It means I can't take what anyone says at face value, either, because they are probably ignorant or lying about their position, and get hostile for needing to clarify it. Everyone has some sort of agenda, and nobody can be trusted, even in small, everyday things.
I'm so burnt out on politics. So tired of all the phony bullshit and mind games.
I'm so burnt out on politics. So tired of all the phony bullshit and mind games.
The good thing about science is that it exists regardless of whether or not you believe in it.Razhem said:
When science is held hostage to public opinion and politics
Public opinion itself is held hostage of politics:
Rich, inept, parasitic heirs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family] whose livelihood is directly dependent on the sale of fossil fuels bribe politicians pundits and sometimes scientists like your beloved mentor to act as their propagandists. Their rhetoric is then repeated by people not much because they're genuinely convinced, but because they will never publicly admit that their voting patterns make them the lackeys of leeches' minions.
That's why arguing about global warming is so infuriating: one is not facing disagreement or ignorance: chances are the contrarians faced know that they're repeating someone else's lies but keep doing it as part of a perverse signaling game where the goal is to demonstrate one's steadfast submissiveness toward dynastic wealth without openly stating it.
So I, for one, won't shed a single tear to the fact that your teacher got deservedly ostracized by his peers when he pulled a Jastrow.
Public opinion itself is held hostage of politics:
Rich, inept, parasitic heirs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family] whose livelihood is directly dependent on the sale of fossil fuels bribe politicians pundits and sometimes scientists like your beloved mentor to act as their propagandists. Their rhetoric is then repeated by people not much because they're genuinely convinced, but because they will never publicly admit that their voting patterns make them the lackeys of leeches' minions.
That's why arguing about global warming is so infuriating: one is not facing disagreement or ignorance: chances are the contrarians faced know that they're repeating someone else's lies but keep doing it as part of a perverse signaling game where the goal is to demonstrate one's steadfast submissiveness toward dynastic wealth without openly stating it.
So I, for one, won't shed a single tear to the fact that your teacher got deservedly ostracized by his peers when he pulled a Jastrow.
Why does it matter? Are we really not going to continue living if the earth heats up and water levels rise? we will just move further inland. I might be biased living in Canada but it does not exactly seem like we are using up all our space over here. I'm worried about bees though.
Er, no. You will notice the global mean temperature actually rose .6 degrees celsius and has maintained that steady increase over the last 60 years. Not to mention this is an age old problem I keep seeing: small does not mean insignificant.Super Not Cosmo said:
Uh-huh. Debunked by whom? The hockey stick graph was made to show the correlation between temperature and greenhouse gasses. That's all. The temperatures have followed suit as such. Yes, some have debated the subject since Mann relied heavily on tree-ring data, but the conclusion was still found to be plausible. Then there's Edward Wegman, who was found to have plagiarised his research from wikipedia.
Mann took the criticisms of his data to heart and did more research as well, recreating the graph in 2008 with the new data and new methods. It came to a similar conclusion, as did several reconstructions by several scientists, many of whom did not use tree ring data. The end result was the same: a steep acceleration of warming in the mid 20th century.