Let me get this straight: people who don't "believe" in anthropogenic global warming due to cold weather in ONE location will be swayed by records of temperatures from ONE location?
Truth hurts! Most of us are probably contributing far more than we suspect to the problem. You can calculate your own carbon footprint, too. Basically, if you live with electricity and use any kind of powered transportation method, you've got a bigger carbon footprint than about half the world's population already. According to that calculator, my footprint is less than half the average for Americans, but I'd also take it with a grain of salt since it doesn't use any kind of precise calculations.
Of all the problems we face in the future, Global Warming scares me the most. Almost every other problem can be "fixed/mitigated" in some way. This one is a much harder to tackle. At this point 97% of climate researchers agree it's a real thing...now we have to convince everyone else. According to the research I've seen, we have roughly a 15 year window to correct the problem.. RAMA
The window to "correct" the problem has long passed. At this point it's just damage control, and even the extent to which we can mitigate the damage erodes with every passing year.
UN, 15 years vital: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-years-vital-panel.html Correct it, not in the sense of it returning to levels of the past, but stopping the rise, as the UN report shows. BTW I think is the original UN conference mentioned by Dennis' article. To be fair, there are ideas to actually FIX the problem, some of which I've mentioned as preventative measures before, and there are some the go beyond that, but I don't know how likely they are: From MIT: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/511016/a-cheap-and-easy-plan-to-stop-global-warming/ http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/publications/special/climate_fix/ University of Calgary climate change scientist David Keith and his team are working to efficiently capture the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide directly from the air, using near-commercial technology. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080929123941.htm Various technologies available to reduce GHG emissions PDF: http://courses.washington.edu/ocean450/Discussion_Topics_Papers/Pacala_Socolow.pdf Far out ideas: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7533600.stm Reducing emissions with a technological fix: Nuclear (4th gen) and hydroelectric: http://nucleargreen.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/technological-fix-for-global-warming.html The Guardian: sucking carbon out of the air, Technique of burning biomass then pumping released carbon underground included in leaked draft from UN climate panel: http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ort-sucking-carbon-air-climate-report-biomass Nanotechnology for Dummies, nanomaterials: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/can-nanotechnology-fix-global-warming.html Nanotech material solutions: http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=8642.php Nanotech to mitigate climate change: http://www.nanotechia.org/news/news-articles/nanotechnologies-mitigate-climate-change Hacking the Planet!! http://www.npr.org/2013/10/20/238548240/turning-to-scientists-to-engineer-a-cooler-climate
That we will not do what we are being told is necessary to really mitigate climate change has been foreseeable, if far from certain, from the time that the outlines of the problem first became clear. There is a tremendous inertia built into the arc of our technological and social development - the way we're living now isn't simply the result of choices made fifty or one hundred or two hundred years ago by inventors and industrialists, but of a trillion choices made by billions of human beings over three or four millennia - and the idea that people will abandon or make dislocating adjustments in our attempts to lead comfortable and secure lives today because of warnings from authority about the future has always been the longest of long shots. One only need look at the way people handle money from week to week or what we choose to put into our mouths on a given day to have a sense of how we "balance" immediate needs and gratification against our general ideas of and anxieties about "the future."
Possible, however, much of the time, when man has to find a solution, he does. It doesn't always require the person who lives week to week. This is why the recent GOP hysteria in the USA towards the sciences is so detrimental. In Australia, many environmental laws are being overturned by the current conservative government. Still, the meme is out there, people know of climate change, so knowing about it is half the battle. RAMA
That is such a meaningless statement. There are things that can't be fixed once you've crossed a certain line and climate change might be one of those. Also blindly believing that "we'll find a solution when we need it" like so many people do when it comes to topics like peak oil is just pure ignorance.
Well that's why it is only half the battle. Now this knowledge is opposed to the vast amount of human history, where we knew nothing concrete and couldn't act. often it took decades or longer to fix things, from city sanitation, to waste disposal, to nuclear cleanup, et al. There are also many examples..more than ever about successful environmental cleanups. I'm not equating the monumental scale of climate change to these, only the willingness and ability to fix them! The most recent example that comes to mind is the huge decrease in smog in LA over recent decades. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2012/20120809_laairqualitystudy.html RAMA
Here's a tip: if you have to make your point by quoting a 1980s children's cartoon program, it may not be a very good point.
This is logically equivalent to saying "God doesn't give you more than you can handle." Those who get more than they can handle aren't around to offer their contrary experience.
Actually, there's no logic to your analogy. I can rip it apart if I wanted to. My claim simply means that an intelligent humanity, when met with problems has succeeded to the point where we demonstrably are now, it never stops learning, and it can't act on what it doesn't know. If someone failed at another point in history, then evolution simply means we failed to adapt properly, but the rest of humanity did. The same applies to global warming, we will either put our minds to it and adapt on a global scale, or we have to leave. Both are a form of adaptation and both could mean survival. Both are still possible. RAMA
You can't. Read it again. Maybe the invocation of the word "God" is freaking you out. History and experience are replete with both successful innovations in the face of necessity and failures to solve overwhelming problems. Your assertion that "man" finds solutions "most of the time" is nothing more than cherry-picking those anecdotes that are reassuring coupled with the obvious tautology that those who survive - organisms, societies, what-have-you - are those who've managed not to be destroyed. It's a meaningless and irrelevant assertion.
I've seen well known skeptics like Michael Shermer and James Randy make the same argument and it's perfectly valid (even if I disagree with it). infinite creativity + large numbers of people + "need" will lead to solutions "in time".
It's not much of an "argument," valid or invalid. It's an assertion on faith, and just because one might find it persuasive doesn't lend it any more support. An awful lot of futurism and chatter about things like the Singularity is nothing other than the religious impulse dressed up in new vocabulary.