It's too bad that truly stupid people are convinced that their opinion is equal to actual facts. So they insist on endlessly debating something that has been known for decades (over a century in some cases).
The problem with denying that humans NEED to make significant changes to prevent global climate change from becoming a catastrophe is that there is no justification for such denial. First: If you are a religious Christian then you believe that God gave men and women the responsibility to look after the Earth. In addition, the Bible states that God will bring to ruin those ruining the Earth. Sooooooo don't you think that it might be a good idea not to piss off the One who gave us this awesome planet, AND gave us the job to care for it? Second: If you are an adherent of any other major religion, almost all of them talk about caring for the planet, other humans, etc. Third: If you are a secular person, with little to know belief in God, you certainly should be convinced by the science and facts presented, and have no reason to balk at the needed changes.
^ Exactly. Remember when I've said apathy will kill us all (probably not, but that's okay)? I meant it. I'm having a similar discussion on my Facebook page, and from the one comment I got so far, it's essentially, "eh, species die, we'll be fine."
Well if you worship money, none of that matters. All that matters is making as much as you can right now. Tomorrow has no meaning, just make as much as you can without a concern of the consequences. It's similar to drug addicts in many ways.
Yep. Ironically, all major religions have prohibitions AND warnings against worshiping money. As for apathy, well that's just stupid. It's like an ant standing on train track rail who hears a train approaching and says "Trains come by every day and nobody gets hurt - why is today going to be any different?" The Earth has seen major extinctions, and major climate changes, but GUESS WHAT BUDDY - this one actually will affect either myself or the people I love, so my reaction is going to be a LITTLE bit different. Cripes. Even ostriches are smart enough not to bury their heads in the sand. The planet's smartest, most advanced species is the one who is too stupid to respond to what the very home they live in is telling them. Makes me sick.
As they say "That's another story!" Does take away a lot of their moral authority on other issues when they can't even follow the basic precepts of their own faith when it regards financial matters.
Which reminds me, one of the arguments I've heard from the deniers' side is that this is one big money-making conspiracy, as if almost every climate scientist from almost every academic/scientific research center from virtually every country on the planet is in on it. Hence why 97% of all who study the climate say that something should be done (as if they all were manipulating data so that they could, what, make $60k a year?). And yet, non-scientists who deny climate change somehow have equal footing with them. But then to put things into perspective, it's like going to 100 doctors to see if you get cancer. Out of those 100, 97 say that you do, and 3 say that you don't. Of those 3 doctors, two don't actually have MDs, and one of those two is trying to get you to buy his homeopathic remedies. And then you buy the remedy and forget those 97 doctors.
I'm certain the usual suspects will post a wall of text of why this is wrong and the oil companies are as pure as a newborn baby. But if this thread was about which shade of blue the sky is, they'd post how we are all wrong and the sky is really red.
LMAO at the attempt to call activism evangelism. Even as an attempt at hyperbole it's laughably ignorant of semantics. Fact is, this week's episode, and its activist message, is based on facts - evidence and rigorous scientific review - not faith in some ordained idea. The only "faith" that one requires is in the scientific method, and considering how demonstratively self-corrective it has proven itself to be, one can safely rely on the scientific method as the best tool we have to identify long-term trends in climate, as well as offer valid alternatives.
Right. Climate change was a prediction in the '50s, a suspected reality in the '80s. Now it's already part of history. We're way, way past the point where it makes any sense to deny it. The denialists are like a cartoon character who's run off a cliff and still hasn't realized he's going to fall.
Just because most scientists "believe" in gravity, that doesn't make it real. I have studies that prove it wrong. You can google that yourself. It's all a myth by parachute companies and scientists who work in the airplane industry trying to make money.
Quite right. That bolded part, in particular. At this point, saying climate change doesn't exist, and hasn't already happened, is like saying the universe hasn't ever expanded, and it certainly isn't doing so now, because I have this one outlier of a data point that could conceivably, possibly, suggest the potential that ... Love the visual, by the way.
Unfortunately, the facts don't fully support climate change because the temperature has been flat-lined for almost 18 years despite massively increasing CO2 levels, giving a correlation between the two of about zero. That's a fact. All scientists agree that all things being equal, a doubling of CO2 should increase the temperature by 1 degree C, 0.42 C of which is already here, so we have 0.58 C to go, which on average is the change you get from a 50 mile shift in latitude. Since that doesn't motivate politicians to cough up billions of dollars in research funding, it was postulated that contrary to all sense, the Earth's climate must have strong positive feedbacks to amplify the negligible warming from CO2. Actual scientific evidence is indicating negative feedbacks, which is what you'd expect in a system that shows long-term stability (with two dominant modes) despite frequent and large perturbations from solar and volcanic forcings. The solution to this non problem is to switch to cleaner natural gas and ship our coal to India and China (West Virginia just landed a huge export deal with India), so we can pretend to be clean while adding even more CO2 to the atmosphere than we would have without the green activism, while blaming it on a third party. Other ways we're trying to up our CO2 contribution is with biofuels and cement for infrastructure projects, plus flying private jets to climate conferences. Heck, Al Gore even had a gas-heated outdoor swimming pool. One set of rules for the clergy and evangelists, one set for believers, and one set for "denialists." Recently leading climatologists have begun to decry the religious thuggery that's taken hold, especially among American climate scientists. Unlike real science, open debate is no longer to be allowed, nor is doubt. Many say their field has been taken over by activists and extremists who have absolutely no interest in sound science. As even what passes the pal-review process keeps settling for lower and lower numbers for climate sensitivity, the activists and acolytes don't even bother paying attention to the "science" that is shifting out from under them, and are completely blind to the severe damage being done to the reputation of science in general. Sanity occasionally reasserts itself, as it did a week or so ago when Australia slashed its green spending from about $2.6 billion a year to $500 million a year, probably after realizing that they were tanking their economy and that even if they reduced their income to zero and committed mass suicide, it would only reduce projected temperatures by 0.001 degrees C.
A) Saying things don't make them so. B) A "flat lined" temperature over 18 years means nothing when we're talking about climate. The ice masses at the poles (most importantly the South Pole) are decreasing. That is a fact, an observable truth. Ice melts in warming temperatures. Also a truth.
Before gdenier pops in. There always going to be some melting during the summer. But there is a net loss of ice now. Meaning that ice is melting and not freezing back in the winter.