Is Global Warming The Greatest Lie In Human History?

[demonfork]

Denying climate change and global warming seems like one of the biggest lies out there.

We should always and constantly question, research, revaluate and rethink. If we get into DONT QUESTION IT'S A FACT we'll end up in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction.

You're confusing science, which is entirely about that, and is at a consensus across a huge variety of research fields and disciplines with shady spy politics, HR.

It's a false equivalency. Scientists constantly question their data. They run experiments to test it. They have to get it reviewed by their peers in order for it to be validated. Then another set of scientists will do it again, just to confirm it, and another set will try it in a different way.

Colin Powell telling a lie to the UN isn't really in the same league. Nor is some bloke who says he's just not sure that the science is settled.

Look- I know a lot of scientists working in various fields. I'm not an expert myself, but they all agree, coming from different approaches that it's happening.

So, here's the thing, scientists are always questioning, researching, re-evaluating, and rethinking. Climate change deniers are not.

Even if there was a consensus (there isn't) It wouldn't matter as consensus isn't now, nor has it ever been, a part of, or even a goal of, the scientific method.

"scientific consensus" is a political term that is mostly used in an attempt to manufacturer a claim of authority that doesn't exist.

[Neoteny]

Lol what a dork

[jusplay4fun]

There; THAT settles the debate. One cannot argue against the impossible.

LOL.

When you can build a replica of the solar system and run experiments on it, you can verify your theories.

Empirically and scientifically.

[tzor]

Human's produce less than .04% of the CO2.

And most of that is probably going into the oceans leading to the acidification of the oceans.

If there is global warming, humans certainly aren't causing it.

If there is global warming, I would suggest that the biggest human factor is methane from animal farming because we love our meat produced by methane producing creatures. And methane is an order of magnitude greater as a "Greenhouse" sa than CO2.

[Symmetry]

Denying climate change and global warming seems like one of the biggest lies out there.

We should always and constantly question, research, revaluate and rethink. If we get into DONT QUESTION IT'S A FACT we'll end up in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction.

You're confusing science, which is entirely about that, and is at a consensus across a huge variety of research fields and disciplines with shady spy politics, HR.

It's a false equivalency. Scientists constantly question their data. They run experiments to test it. They have to get it reviewed by their peers in order for it to be validated. Then another set of scientists will do it again, just to confirm it, and another set will try it in a different way.

Colin Powell telling a lie to the UN isn't really in the same league. Nor is some bloke who says he's just not sure that the science is settled.

Look- I know a lot of scientists working in various fields. I'm not an expert myself, but they all agree, coming from different approaches that it's happening.

So, here's the thing, scientists are always questioning, researching, re-evaluating, and rethinking. Climate change deniers are not.

Even if there was a consensus (there isn't) It wouldn't matter as consensus isn't now, nor has it ever been, a part of, or even a goal of, the scientific method.

"scientific consensus" is a political term that is mostly used in an attempt to manufacturer a claim of authority that doesn't exist.

What makes you think that claims of authority don't exist? Or authority itself?

Modern scientific methods always move towards consensus. Can my results be independently verified? Can they be replicated? Can they withstand peer review? Just a few examples.

[spurgistan]

Denying climate change and global warming seems like one of the biggest lies out there.

We should always and constantly question, research, revaluate and rethink. If we get into DONT QUESTION IT'S A FACT we'll end up in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction.

You're confusing science, which is entirely about that, and is at a consensus across a huge variety of research fields and disciplines with shady spy politics, HR.

It's a false equivalency. Scientists constantly question their data. They run experiments to test it. They have to get it reviewed by their peers in order for it to be validated. Then another set of scientists will do it again, just to confirm it, and another set will try it in a different way.

Colin Powell telling a lie to the UN isn't really in the same league. Nor is some bloke who says he's just not sure that the science is settled.

Look- I know a lot of scientists working in various fields. I'm not an expert myself, but they all agree, coming from different approaches that it's happening.

So, here's the thing, scientists are always questioning, researching, re-evaluating, and rethinking. Climate change deniers are not.

Even if there was a consensus (there isn't) It wouldn't matter as consensus isn't now, nor has it ever been, a part of, or even a goal of, the scientific method.

"scientific consensus" is a political term that is mostly used in an attempt to manufacturer a claim of authority that doesn't exist.

So, the world might be unsafe for human life in less than 30 years if current projections hold, but let's argue about semantics?

[Dukasaur]

If there is global warming, humans certainly aren't causing it.

If there is global warming, I would suggest that the biggest human factor is methane from animal farming because we love our meat produced by methane producing creatures. And methane is an order of magnitude greater as a "Greenhouse" sa than CO2.

You're quite right. Methane is one of the most significant greenhouse gasses we're putting out, and a large part of that is through beef agriculture. I've heard it said that boycotting beef is probably the single most important thing the average person can do to fight global warming.

If you could prove empirically that man's activities (.04% of CO2) was causing global warming, that would settle it scientifically.

By the time it's absolutely provable, it will be too late. You have to go with the preponderance of the evidence.

If you smell smoke in the middle of the night, do you jump out of bed at once, or do you wait until your room is engulfed in flames (positive proof)?

I would also like to address your point about the "0.04%", which I assume you are implying is too small a change to be significant. But it doesn't take a large change to destabilize a system which was previously in equilibrium. If you're driving down the road in a nice straight line, and you turn your wheels 0.04% to the right, without any corrections to the left, how long will it take you to crash into a tree? It doesn't take a very large deviation from an equilibrium to have drastic consequences.

In this little example, assuming the tree line is 14 metres from the edge of the road, with only an initial 0.04% error in steering, you're crashing into the trees in about 5500 metres, or less than 3 minutes at highway speeds.

In actual fact, though, with that initial steering error, you would crash much sooner. As your tires bit the edge of the road and started slanting downhill, the initial steering error would be greatly magnified. This is what's known as "positive feedback" where an initial error is magnified by other factors down the road. In terms of global warming, the tiny increase in heat trapped by greenhouse gasses is amplified by other factors. For instance, as glaciers are lost, the albedo of the earth increases.

[warmonger1981]

I love this guy.

=

[thegreekdog]

The problem with climate change is not whether it's happening, it's what people are willing to do about it. I've made this point before in this forum and elsewhere but I truly believe the debate about climate change comes down to some people wanting to do X and some people wanting to do Y. A few anecdotal examples:

- Many proposals to affect positive results on climate change involve people losing money or their jobs. We had a debate in here years ago about the spotted owl. There were two alternatives: stop cutting trees to save the spotted owl and thousands of loggers lose their jobs vs. the spotted owl becomes extinct. If 10,000 people lose their jobs to affect positive results that may be worthwhile, but not to the 10,000 people who lost their jobs.
- There's a great article somewhere about how the oil companies (and others) took over the climate change argument. This was obviously done for economic reasons; oil companies did not want to become less profitable so they started lobbying against both environmental measures AND climate change itself. It was frankly a brilliant idea, but really problematic.
- For all intents and purposes, Al Gore is a well-known supporter of environmentalism. And yet he still flies around in airplanes and lives in a mansion and does all the things that are antithetical to environmentalism. People see this and don't believe he is an environmentalist and thus that degrades his argument. There are many examples of people that do this: warn about climate change but do nothing about it in their personal lives. There are plenty of excuses (e.g. "I'm only one person") but they ring hollow with people that may lose their jobs (see above).
- Democrats are in favor of environmentalism until it works against their own self-interests. For example, nuclear power is safe and environmentally friendly, but many Democrats are against it because the Republicans are in favor of it. Again, this position provides some ammunition for people who say "if there was truly climate change, Dems would support more nuclear power."

I'm not sure how to solve these problems. We're in a bad spot climate-wise. I do what I can (and am willing to do) including taking public transportation, recycling, using energy efficient lighting, etc. I don't think we're going to get many people on board with wholesale changes but I'm confident that we will come up with some non-government regulated positive environmental impacts.

[tzor]

Modern scientific methods always move towards consensus. Can my results be independently verified? Can they be replicated? Can they withstand peer review? Just a few examples.

Not always. In some cases it tends to move towards a mutual admiration society (I'll give you a good review if you give me a good review). Generally speaking this applies to the so called "sciences" which tend to drift from a solid basis in the scientific method. Climate change in general doesn't apply in this case although climate models generally do get this treatment because who really wants to verify that a climate model prediction of twenty years ago could possibly be an abject failure.

But the science isn't the problem. The problem becomes that of a detective story. There are multiple factors that leads to temperature changes and man made CO2 / methane is only one of those factors. There are probably a plethora of other man made changes that can cause changes to the temperature on the global scale. A good example is the man made global warming on the moon. Yes, the footprints of the Apollo astronauts actually resulted in a long term measurable increase in global temperature in the 70's (live science link)

So at the end of this we come up with the ultimate question: does any solution actually do something? In general any answer that says in effect, "throw more money at the government" is going to be a dismal failure unless the acual goal has nothing to do with the actual problem of the global temperature.

I would also like to address your point about the "0.04%", which I assume you are implying is too small a change to be significant.

The problem is more than just the "0.04%" but the logical adjustments to the "0.04%" that we can reasonably make. Human beings aren't going to disappear overnight. Most proposals barely can implement a percentage of man made output, so a one percent change in man made output results in "0.0004%" of the total CO2 amount.

In addition the historical record shows quite well that the earth is stable within percentage points. Problems on the local scale may seem massive on the local scale but the continental United States has mostly been a flood basin in its history and life managed to get along just fine. The earth has never been globally stable over historical time frames never mind geological time frames.

[DoomYoshi]

We're in a bad spot climate-wise.

We're in a good spot climate-wise. Canada and Russia will both get richer while the rest of the world will transform into an unliveable hell hole. We just need you Yanks to build enough nukes that we can use to keep away the Mexicans.

[The ram]

No global warming. Agenda 21, all about control. Read the UN agenda 21.

[jusplay4fun]

THAT is THE PROBLEM: there are many who do not admit that this problem even exists.

[quote="thegreekdog"]The problem with climate change is not whether it's happening,

[thegreekdog]

THAT is THE PROBLEM: there are many who do not admit that this problem even exists.

The problem with climate change is not whether it's happening,

Like I said above, everyone would know except that we've equated "climate change is not happening" and "I don't want to change [insert thing] because of climate change."

[warmonger1981]

Has anybody ever taken into account geoengineering and weather modification? Why is it always the humans that are the problem through beef and fossil fuels being consumed and never take into account geoengineering or weather modification programs? Or maybe the thousands of nuclear bombs that have been detonated in the atmosphere? Can you please show me a computer model that takes this into account? Or why China and India don't have to cooperate. What good is one country that has a third of the population try to do something when you have to other countries that don't give a s*** about the Earth? Maybe economics is more of a drive then saving the Earth.

[tzor]

Has anybody ever taken into account geoengineering and weather modification? Why is it always the humans that are the problem through beef and fossil fuels being consumed and never take into account geoengineering or weather modification programs? Or maybe the thousands of nuclear bombs that have been detonated in the atmosphere? Can you please show me a computer model that takes this into account? Or why China and India don't have to cooperate. What good is one country that has a third of the population try to do something when you have to other countries that don't give a s*** about the Earth? Maybe economics is more of a drive then saving the Earth.

There are two basic and different questions here. I'm going to take the first one and give it my own unique name; the Mothra Effect. Apparently you don't need nuclear bombs "in the atmosphere" ... it has been recently verified that the bombing of Berlin in WWII had a direct and measurable effect on the ionosphere above Great Britain. Blowing them up on the surface would also massively disrupt the ionosphere. Yes those monster butterflies can have a major impact on weather.

I have a tendency to cut India some slack because it's a subcontinent. More importantly, they are actually trying to do their part.

China on the other hand (as they do with almost everything else) screws the world and doesn't care. Here is a 2016 report from Harvard.

Provincial aggregated CO2 emissions increased from 3 billion tons in 2000 to 10 billion tons in 2016. During the period, Shandong province contributed most to national emissions, followed by Liaoning, Hebei, and Shanxi provinces. Most of the CO2 emissions were from raw coal, which is primarily burned in the manufacturing and the thermal power sectors.

Now to be fair, China is massively huge and different parts of China are at different technological levels. Frankly, for an empire that wants to pwn the entire third world into debt slavery (through the use of the one road one belt project) I don't give a flying pig. If you want to wear the big empire pants you have to act like a proper big empire. The rise of China is the biggest threat in human history because that will be the biggest cause of global warming in a few decades.

[armati]

I think the next century belongs to China.

The one road is going to be huge, its going to cause an economic boom.

By the time its over we will be putting up high rises on Mars having created an atmosphere.

I hear coke has the already sold distributorship rights, or was that just the moon?

[spurgistan]

Has anybody ever taken into account geoengineering and weather modification? Why is it always the humans that are the problem through beef and fossil fuels being consumed and never take into account geoengineering or weather modification programs? Or maybe the thousands of nuclear bombs that have been detonated in the atmosphere? Can you please show me a computer model that takes this into account? Or why China and India don't have to cooperate. What good is one country that has a third of the population try to do something when you have to other countries that don't give a s*** about the Earth? Maybe economics is more of a drive then saving the Earth.

There are two basic and different questions here. I'm going to take the first one and give it my own unique name; the Mothra Effect. Apparently you don't need nuclear bombs "in the atmosphere" ... it has been recently verified that the bombing of Berlin in WWII had a direct and measurable effect on the ionosphere above Great Britain. Blowing them up on the surface would also massively disrupt the ionosphere. Yes those monster butterflies can have a major impact on weather.

I have a tendency to cut India some slack because it's a subcontinent. More importantly, they are actually trying to do their part.

China on the other hand (as they do with almost everything else) screws the world and doesn't care. Here is a 2016 report from Harvard.

Provincial aggregated CO2 emissions increased from 3 billion tons in 2000 to 10 billion tons in 2016. During the period, Shandong province contributed most to national emissions, followed by Liaoning, Hebei, and Shanxi provinces. Most of the CO2 emissions were from raw coal, which is primarily burned in the manufacturing and the thermal power sectors.

Now to be fair, China is massively huge and different parts of China are at different technological levels. Frankly, for an empire that wants to pwn the entire third world into debt slavery (through the use of the one road one belt project) I don't give a flying pig. If you want to wear the big empire pants you have to act like a proper big empire. The rise of China is the biggest threat in human history because that will be the biggest cause of global warming in a few decades.

Their per-capita GHG emissions are still way below ours. Like, way. The fact that they will soon emit more at the national level is kinda irrelevant to smart climate change policy - if Monaco was putting out 50 billion tons of CO2 a year and the US was putting out 100 billion, do you think the smart move would be to get the US to come down to Monaco's level? Evaluating China and India's development efforts as "unfair" is the real neo-colonialism here. They get to have a middle class, too. They will still emit less GHG gas than us per capita, which is what counts.

Also, OBOR is about trying to buy political influence, which isn't technically evil just geopolitics, but tomato tomato.

[jusplay4fun]

I do not think any of these points has been refuted in this thread.

Let's look at the scientific data.

Climate change: How do we know?

The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

Scientific Consensus
Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.
The evidence for rapid climate change is compelling:

Sea level rise
Global sea level rose about 8 inches in the last century. The rate in the last two decades, however, is nearly double that of the last century.

Global temperature rise
The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere.

Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 16 of the 17 warmest years on record occurring since 2001. Not only was 2016 the warmest year on record, but eight of the 12 months that make up the year — from January through September, with the exception of June — were the warmest on record for those respective months.

Warming oceans
The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.

Shrinking ice sheets
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005

Declining Arctic sea ice
Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades.

Glacial retreat
Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.

[tzor]

Their per-capita GHG emissions are still way below ours. Like, way. The fact that they will soon emit more at the national level is kinda irrelevant to smart climate change policy ...

"per-capita" numbers don't exactly work well on a continental scale because you can use surplus population in low tech areas to drop your per-capita numbers. If the United States had more manual laborers on the farms and less machinery doing the work we could drop those numbers as well, especially if those workers live a medieval lifestyle. But it's not the case and we actually emit CO2 in our agriculture sector that has far fewer people in it. Doing a quick multi web search I see that "By the end of 2014, 54.7% of the total population lived in urban areas, a rate that rose from 26% in 1990." So we are talking about the fact that 45.3% of the population is not in rural areas. The number for the United States is 19.3%

But wait, there's more. Look at that trend and that trend is a fact. China will probably start to look a lot like the US in demographics in a few decades; the people are moving to the cities where the jobs are. GHG emissions are only going to skyrocket for the nation if it does not take serious steps immediately.

[tzor]

I do not think any of these points has been refuted in this thread.

Scientific Consensus
Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.

This is a stupid point for a number of reasons.
1) The universe doesn't operate by consensus ... ninety seven percent could just as easily be wrong.
2) Climate change is not a "forensic" science ... it's not a "who done it" discipline and "very likely" is a crap assertion.
3) Worldwide organizations generally concentrate on fundraising which means they have to support the cause of the day of their national sponsors.

But let's suppose that this is true ... what activities are we talking about? I can think of a plethora of activities that have directly impacted warming trends on a local level and no doubt in enough numbers a global level that have nothing to do whatsoever with CO2 emissions.

The suburbanization of a significant portion of the United States, turning former wooded areas into large seas of asphalt (known as parking lots). This has been going on for decades and the thermals and the effects of those thermals are well documented. If the Apollo astronauts could raise the global temperature of the room merely by revealing darker material with their footprints, imagine the effect of all those damn parking lots.

The destruction of the rainforest ...

Heck, even turning desserts into farmlands because deserts tend to reflect sunlight striking it.

[jusplay4fun]

I cite EIGHT points and you want to ONLY dispute scientific consensus? By that alone, you lose the argument because you ignore the scientific evidence of the other 7 points. DEBATE OVER. NO Lie, JUS Facts.

QED

I do not think any of these points has been refuted in this thread.

Scientific Consensus
Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.

This is a stupid point for a number of reasons.
1) The universe doesn't operate by consensus ... ninety seven percent could just as easily be wrong.
2) Climate change is not a "forensic" science ... it's not a "who done it" discipline and "very likely" is a crap assertion.
3) Worldwide organizations generally concentrate on fundraising which means they have to support the cause of the day of their national sponsors.

But let's suppose that this is true ... what activities are we talking about? I can think of a plethora of activities that have directly impacted warming trends on a local level and no doubt in enough numbers a global level that have nothing to do whatsoever with CO2 emissions.

The suburbanization of a significant portion of the United States, turning former wooded areas into large seas of asphalt (known as parking lots). This has been going on for decades and the thermals and the effects of those thermals are well documented. If the Apollo astronauts could raise the global temperature of the room merely by revealing darker material with their footprints, imagine the effect of all those damn parking lots.

The destruction of the rainforest ...

Heck, even turning desserts into farmlands because deserts tend to reflect sunlight striking it.

[tzor]

I cite EIGHT points and you want to ONLY dispute scientific consensus?

It's all I need. This entire thing about Global Warming is based on a chain; all I need to do is break the chain.

1) global temperatures are changing
2) The most significant factor is due to a single human condition
3) It is possible to eliminate this Global Warming by changing that single human condition through the Bureaucracy

With the exception of the point you refuted the other points are all about the first chain of the link.

[spurgistan]

I do not think any of these points has been refuted in this thread.

Scientific Consensus
Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.

This is a stupid point for a number of reasons.
1) The universe doesn't operate by consensus ... ninety seven percent could just as easily be wrong.

Well, no. If 97 informed people pick the Pats to win, and 3 informed people go with the Jets, there's an inferred 32:1 chance that the Jets will win. We can infer that from the data. Would you bet 50-50 on the Jets in this scenario, never mind who has the more handsome quarterback?

[tzor]

Well, no. If 97 informed people pick the Pats to win, and 3 informed people go with the Jets, there's an inferred 32:1 chance that the Jets will win. We can infer that from the data. Would you bet 50-50 on the Jets in this scenario, never mind who has the more handsome quarterback?

Science isn't sports betting either. (Mind you football is a much more predictable game than other sports, such as baseball but I digress.) In fact almost every significant scientific theory started out with a majority of the scientists at the time being absolutely against it.

But if you insist let's look at the 97% National Review: The 97 Percent Solution

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