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'Gaia' Scientist Admits Mispredicting Rate of Climate Change
DesScorp writes "James Lovelock, the scientist that came up with the 'Gaia Theory' and a prominent herald of climate change, once predicted utter disaster for the planet from climate change, writing 'before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.' Now Lovelock is walking back his rhetoric, admitting that he and other prominent global warming advocates were being alarmists. In a new interview with MSNBC he says: '"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened," Lovelock said. "The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said. "The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that," he added.' Lovelock still believes the climate is changing, but at a much, much slower pace."
Turning off the lights in the room you're not in is dismantling western civilization ?
Don't just whine about it, do something! Personally, I plan on running my air conditioning all summer with my windows and doors open. If we all work together, we can turn this thing around. WHO'S WITH ME!?
Yes, but Lovelock is a nut; he was on the alarmist edge. Always was. The "Gaia" model is a cool thing to talk to the public about, but it's not real science.
The mainstream climate scientists are not and have not been mispredicting the rate of climate change. If you look at the data from models from 1979 (the National Academy of Science study), or even the models from 1967 (the Manabe greenhouse-effect calculation)-- the actual data fits the model very nearly exactly.
The lesson to take home is that denying climate change is wrong, but exaggerating it is also wrong. Pay attention to the real scientists, and try not to give the fringe too much credance. Look at the data.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"if it is it ain't happening at anything like the rate that would justify dismantling civilization"
And this is where anti-AGW is at its most dishonest.
No, but the anti-consumer, anti-consumption attitudes most greenies have, is.
This pretty much brings James Lovelock into agreement the mainstream science, where the consensus prediction is for anthropogenic warming of at most a few degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. And hey, that's exactly what you're supposed to do when confronted with actual data, isn't it?
I'm still waiting for the deniers to do the same.
"Most" is an utter lie. Maybe most of the ones you see on Fox are like that, but in reality most people who are interested in and concerned about anthropogenic climate change realize that we need to balance economic necessity and long-term conservation priorities, and we aren't even remotely beginning to do that. It's very convenient to paint the people who disagree with you as enemies of civilization, unfortunately it is completely dishonest and counterproductive.
So where's the news here? This nut was never a credible climate scientist in the first place, and I don't think any of his previous views were shared by anybody who is a credible climate scientist.
Lovelock makes a living out of making sensational, half-baked pronouncements and selling them as science. Good for him for admitting he was wrong, but that doesn't discredit any of the actual science.
Actually, I was pretty sure because we had computer images that showed the hole, showed it was growing over time, and most importantly we could reproduce the effects of CFCs on ozone in a lab instead of just in a computer simulation. It also helps that we didn't have to dismantle civilization to get rid of CFCs.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Sorry, this doesn't vindicate climate denial at all. He's just one scientist who made kooky predictions and if you think he's at all important then you need a remedial course in logic. As a matter of fact, climate change has been occurring shockingly fast, faster than even the worst case scenarios were predicting (source http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/06/us-climate-canada-idUSTRE6145KP20100206). Due to a complete political failure to address the issue, an 11 degF rise in temperature is expected.
Since when is James Lovelock a climate scientist ?!? His predictions on the subject always had the same value as just about any other rambling slashdoter.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
What pisses me off are the people who think that wealth redistribution in the form of carbon-credit trading will do anything to solve the problem, if there really is a problem. Witness the latest insult by the UN that basically taxes the hell out of leading nations to support "green project" in third-world countries. There are ALWAYS sticky fingers in schemes like this. It would be one thing to require a leader nation to actually procure the solar plant equipment and set it up somewhere but that's not what they want. They just want the money.
That aside, if global catastrophe is such a big deal e.g. An asteroid is headed directly for Earth, every person is going to be affected in the same way therefore every person is equally responsible for dealing with it. There will be no "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others" here. So, by that logic, nobody gets a pass on carbon emissions. Nobody gets to buy their way out of it and no industry or enemy of the regime gets punished. Note that the carbon trading in commodities markets has be severely scaled back if not eliminated. Take money out of the equation and oh look, gee whiz, the problem isn't such a big problem anymore.
Where does all this "dismantle civilization" stuff come from? Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yes, Lovelock was being overly alarmist. He also has no expertise in climate change prediction, so his guess is as good as yours. The fact that he's wrong doesn't mean that actual experts who've made less extreme predictions are also wrong.
Lovelock is a black-and-white kind of guy(*), who tends toward hyperbole. His Gaia hypothesis is the same way: he takes a small truth about negative feedbacks in Earth systems and blows it up into some huge quasi-religious theory of everything.
* Yes, that was a Daisyworld joke.
Lovelock's climate change, the stuff he predicted 30 years ago and which he's now saying was inaccurate, was the stuff of bad science fiction movies and bears very little resemblance to the actual predictions made by climate scientists. No serious climate scientist has ever predicted 90% of the worlds surface being uninhabitable. Compared to his predictions, the less than 1 degree C rise in temperatures we have seen is "nothing much", the problem is that 1 degree C is more than enough to screw up all kinds of stuff. It's just not enough to drive humanity to the brink of extinction like he predicted two decades ago.
Lovelock is a chemist, not a climatologist, and his hypothesis is clearly a chemists view. Also, no living organism supports Lovelocks theory; which shoots it in the foot. In other words: Natural selection would need a means of cross species reproductive communication.
Consensus of actual experts in the field did no agree with the pace of his predictions. Media loved it "FEAR NOW!" and Hollywood used is to spawn another round disaster movies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Conversely: Anthropogenic global warming would very convenient for all the scientists researching it, as it brings in tons of research money, therefore it must exist, and be ridiculously powerful.
People keep making this assertion over and over like it is proven fact, but nowhere have I ever seen any proof that there is substantial economic incentive for any given scientist to come out in support of global warming theory. In fact, the most likely Nash equilibrium if they were to game it would be to have half of them come down on either side of the issue so that they could use the debate to fuel research dollars. That is absolutely nothing like what is happening.
The thing is that GW as a whole is being exaggerated by both sides one way or the other, and I fear not enough unbiased info is being collected either way.
Okay, let's pretend that there is a bunch of bias like you are talking about. What portion of the 90+% of climatologists who purport to believe AGW is a real and dangerous thing do you think are being manipulated? Can you pick a high enough number to convince anybody that we shouldn't at least be highly concerned without also picking a number so high that it would be impossible without a massive global tinfoil-hat conspiracy?
I may not be so well informed on this, but I don't believe Mr. Lovelock took any of your tax money for climate or weather science. For starters, he lives in Great Britain, and is a British citizen. According to the Google.
But if you're paying taxes in Great Britain, he still hasn't taken any of your money. Mostly he just writes books. There's no public subsidy for what he does, and very little science involved. He's essentially a crank.
As glad as I am we got rid of CFCs, it's actually a bit of a funny story where things went from there. The replacement chemicals for CFCs are greenhouses gasses over 4,000 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071901817.html
No one is saying that.
What is being said is that climate is incredibly complicated.
What we know for sure is that we do not know. They were not a little bit off here. They were way off the mark.
Not because they are stupid. Not because they want to lie.
There was a TED talk on this. Where we think we can understand things that are really way too complicated for our brains to ever understand.
Luckily he does also point out that just because we can not truly understand something does not mean we can not solve it.
Everyone should watch this TED talk.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Where does all this "dismantle civilization" stuff come from? Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
That, Little Johnny, is what we call "over-the-top hyperbolic rhetoric spawning from extremist zealots."
Typically, when someone starts screaming that this or that will lead to the end of civilization as we know it, you're best off to just keep on truckin' by...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
There are (hopefully) experiments on the effects of CFCs on O3 molecules, that made us come to the conclusion that CFC damages the ozone layer. That was simple in my opinion. AGW/ACC on the other hand is far from being simple. I for one am very sceptical about the pace and the amount of global warming happening because of humans.
Uh, the science of AGW is so simple that it has been known since the 19th century. It's way simpler than the effect of CFC's on the ozone layer.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
How did this make the front page of Slashdot??? James Lovelock is not a Climate Scientist, he's and an independent scientist and environmentalist who is famous for the Gaia Hypothesis a half-scientific half-philosophical metaphor for understanding Earth's biosphere. There is no reason anyone should give this man any credibility when it comes to speaking on the subject of Climate Change projections.
Do you know who is qualified to speak on this subject? James Hanson, and a 1981 paper he published in a peer-reviewed journal attempted to project the rise in temperatures over the next 30 years. Those projections still managed to underestimate the observed rise in temperatures by 30 percent and even the worst case scenario of those projections managed to underestimate the observed trend.
So no. You are not vindicated. You have demonstrated that you have no understanding of how science works, elevating the opinion of someone speaking outside their realm of expertise over the peer-reviewed published research of an expert with over three decades working inside the subject of climate change.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
> Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
If there isn't anything to change to it is. And there currently isn't. Name one potential source that could replace fossil fuels and I'll show you a source the same greens are already trying to deem unacceptable. Lets review:
1. Nuke. Do I even have to go there? Even if we perfect fusion the greens will still wet themselves over the notion of power from anything with the N word attached.
2. Hydro. Disrupts Gaia. Harms fish reproduction and prevents 'healthy' rivers. And there is some point to their arguments. If nothing else our attempts at dams for flood control have certainly had a mixed record of success.
3. Wind. Assume it could actually produce enough energy. (Work with me here.) NIMBY is already rampant, greens are up in arms because when you fill square mile after square mile with windmills birds die. Who would have thunk it?
4. Solar. Makes sense as a source of off-grid energy but will never compete on a cost basis. And that is if you ignore the horrid ecological side effects of making the panels. And again, now that there are plans to actually cover over mile after mile of desert with the things the usual suspects are aghast.
5. Geothermal. Causes earthquakes.
6. Biofuels. Will cause widespread famine long before providing a noticable fraction of world energy production. Take the recycled plant waste, switchgrass on land unusable for more productive use but don't plan on it being anything but a boost. Not a primary source.
And if I have left your pet alternative energy source off this list be assured that it won't work either. It is great for soaking up grant money, deploying on a small scale to give egoboo to celebs but the second someone things it can be produced at a profit the downside will become clear.
Democrat delenda est
Our current civilization is built upon the ability to have relatively cheap and dense energy.
Currently nothing comes close to hydrocarbon based fuels in these areas. That is not even taking into account all the non energy uses for hydrocarbons.
Drugs, and Materials. Make all oil disappear tomorrow. You will see a very harsh dismantling.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
You might be interested in reading some actual analysis - the Rocky Mountain Institute has done great research for years on this. Reinventing Fire What you have above is a good case study of a set of logical fallacies. How many can you find?
People got alarmist over Global Cooling then Global Warming and then Climate Change when the first two didn't pan out by name at hyped levels. The biggest problem is that people are fighting the wrong fight, being too concerned about CO2 levels. These energies are well intentioned, however they are misplaced.
Climate change is inevitable no matter what we as a species do or don't do. We have a fossil record going back billions of years proving this, forces like plate tectonics and changes from our own solar system or even supernova's all impact our climate.
People have forgotten their environmental basics and in their zeal have created a self feeding hype machine. Scheduled catastrophes kept turning out to be false alarms. The problem is that this is causing a loss of credibility in scientists and science. People need to be concerned about pollution, for the sake of fighting pollution.
Were spending so much time worrying about whether or not the concrete being poured for a windmill is going to have the proper carbon offset. As a result were forgetting about bigger things like rampant unregulated coal power plants in China and the smelting of old electronics by hand in Africa.
We need to get back to science, back to fighting pollution and away from the hype.
What pisses me off are the people who think that wealth redistribution in the form of carbon-credit trading will do anything to solve the problem,
Ah, but that's a very different question from the question of whether carbon dioxide emissions are affecting the climate... and it is a question that gets almost no discussion at all, because the people who think that carbon-credit trading is not a good idea don't address it, but instead argue that the greenhouse effect doesn't exist, or it exists but is saturated, or it exists but volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than humans so it doesn't matter what we do, or the weather data is wrong, or the scientists who study the problem are all frauds, or the cosmic rays are changing the climate more then humans do, or solar activity has gone up recently, or solar activity has gone down recently, or some hithertofore unknown feedback mechanism cancels out the changes created by humans, or... every six months there's a new purported explanation for why human-generated carbon dioxide doesn't affect the climate. (Yes, I've heard all those arguments, and many more that make even less sense.)
By denying that a possible problem even exists, the discussion of solutions ends up being completely one-sided. No one critiques carbon-credit trading, because the people who would do so are spending their efforts denying that the science.
if there really is a problem.
See? You can't even complete a single sentence before you start suggesting the greenhouse effect isn't real.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So because fringe enviro-kooks have a problem with anything other than reverting to bronze-age living nothing is viable. Nuke, wind, solar, plus hydro and geothermal where they won't cause too much harm should be fine. And don't forget tidal.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
And I'm sure if the cooling business had its way, we'd still be arguing about CFCs and have a massive, inexplicable hole.
Japan has just finished turning off all nuclear power over a "disaster" that proved just how safe modern nuclear can be. Wind, hydro, tide .. these are all bullshit: they will never matter in the big picture, they'll feelgood measures that's don't actually accomplish anything large scale, just like most green initiatives.
Solar is different. There's plenty of solar power. But current solar-electric panel are still bullshit (I drive past the Soylendra buildings every day). Solar-thermal remains viable (just heat a working fluid so that it pushes a turbine). Solar thermal can be baseload if you supplement with natural gas for the cloudy days. California did a plant like that - it was great, and 90% of power came from solar overall. It was shut down, due to concerns by the environmentlists.
And where's the actual proof that CO2 does harm? We're still in an Ice Age. We're still in an interglacial period that has lasted thousands of years longer than they usually due. When the climate reverts to the long-term norm, all of Canada and most of Europe and the old USSR states will be covered by glaciers, a far worse fate than the seas rising a few meters. Even if mankind's CO2 release actually matters (and we don't understand the usual mechanism by which CO2 falls significantly every 100k years, so we don't know that it matters), do we want the climate to be warmer or colder than its likely to become without us?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> And don't forget tidal.
You mean forget the horrid ecological cost to vital spawning grounds for (whatever blah blah).
> So because fringe enviro-kooks have a problem with anything...
Yup, because they are the, to a high enough percentage to ignore the outliers, the exact same set of people who are pushing AGW. Whether AGW is true or not doesn't really matter either. It is just one weapon all leading to the same result. In the 1970's it was Global Cooling. Same policy prescriptions. When the Soviet Union fell and the ChiComs moved to a more viable mixed economy the Reds occupying our elite institutions (universities, media, etc.) simply took down (well some of em) their Che and Lenin posters and replaced them with Green ones. And suddenly almost all of the same policy prescriptions were rebranded as saving the earth. Now we need a world government regulating every sparrow that falls to control carbon instead of the equally dishonest redistribution of wealth/elimination of poverty, etc. crap.
The only answer is to realize that playing their game at all is to lose. So don't.
Democrat delenda est
What amuses me about this is the total lack of irony or self-awareness. You are accusing jmorris42 of "hyperbolic rhetoric spawning from extremist zealots" for saying that the prescriptions of CAGW "extremist zealots" are aimed at "dismantling civilization," while ignoring that the CAGW zealots themselves frequently engage in "hyperbolic rhetoric" about the end of the polar bears, the end of the ice caps, the end of winter, the end of life on Earth and the like. Even ignoring that, yes, many of the policy prescriptions of the CAGW extreme (not all CAGW advocates, mind you) would in fact be adequately and accurately summarized as "dismantling civilization," the failure to note the extreme of one claim while noting the extreme of the other is beautifully obtuse.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Japan has just finished turning off all nuclear power over a "disaster" that proved just how safe modern nuclear can be
And this is why no one takes you or your kind seriously.
#1 Japan didn't turn off all nuclear. For one, it would take far longer than a few months to do so. For two, they're taking them offline for security checks. They plan on bringing them back online. It just so happens that there will be a period of time when no nuclear plant will be online.
#2 Solar panels work great. I have em, and they cut my bill in half. You mean they can't replace coal by themselves by tomorrow? SHocking. They must be useless and tossed out.
#3 One solar thermal plant wasn't built because the company didn't want to immediately fork over the money to alleviate environmental concerns brought on by the government. You should know better, considering you seem to live in the Bay Area.
#4 Even if we are in an ice age (and we really aren't), that doesn't matter one lick. What matters is that there are drastic changes coming to our civilization, which has been built according to the climate variations of the past 300 years. That's going to cost money.
#5 And the rest of your arguments are just total nonsense (long-term norm? glaciers in Europe? a few meters of oceans rising is not a problem?)
Seriously, I'd love to hear a good argument about a) why AGW isn't real, and b) why we shouldn't worry. Instead, I get the worst Monday Morning quarterbacking possible.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Why's that? Not many people would stop using refrigeration just because the coolant is more expensive. The cost of coolant is a relatively small factor in most Americans' lives.
On the other hand, AGW proponents want us to change transportation, construction, agriculture, etc, making almost everything in life more expensive. So you've got increased costs in many areas, plus legislation that often comes off as petty or patronizing. I mean, a tax on plastic grocery bags? And the point is to get all those evil oil users to change their behavior and be more good and eco friendly.. that's a far bigger role for government than I'm comfortable with.
Right now, yes, but nuclear can provide the base load (comes from the ground but doesn't release fossil CO2 into the air) and a range of renewables can do the rest. Then over time we can shift to less nuclear and more renewable as the tech matures.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
And I'm sure if the cooling business had its way, we'd still be arguing about CFCs and have a massive, inexplicable hole.
Actually, the cooling industry for many enterprise systems was very happy they got to retool entire cooling systems as it made them tons of money.
Where does all this "dismantle civilization" stuff come from? Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
No. ELIMINATING power sources is dismantling civilization. We could gladly change power sources. Unfortunately, none exist.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Why's that? Not many people would stop using refrigeration just because the coolant is more expensive. The cost of coolant is a relatively small factor in most Americans' lives.
On the other hand, AGW proponents want us to change transportation, construction, agriculture, etc, making almost everything in life more expensive. So you've got increased costs in many areas, plus legislation that often comes off as petty or patronizing. I mean, a tax on plastic grocery bags? And the point is to get all those evil oil users to change their behavior and be more good and eco friendly.. that's a far bigger role for government than I'm comfortable with.
Everything that should have been more expensive to begin with. I don't know where people get off thinking they can spend 5% of their income on food when throughout history it required practically 100% of their labor. How about spending 25%. I really don't care about people's corporate propaganda induced need for "small government". If it wasn't for government regulation and unions, you'd be working 7 days a week, breathing foul air, drinking very filthy water and God even knows what else. Left to its own devices, business is pretty nasty and only out for one thing: profit at *any* cost. The bastards need more regulation, not less.
You are wrong in fact and wrong in logic.
The impact of climate change is not equal. The poor live disproportionately in vulnerable areas. This is true not just for climate change, but for environmental disasters in general. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who live on the deforested hillsides that collapse in landslides. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who live in flood-prone areas. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who make a living from dry and marginal soils susceptible to droubt. And it is the poor who lack the resources to cope when the water dries up, when food prices rise, when hit by torrential rains or brush fires. Global warming is not like an asteroid. It will not wipe out all life. But it will create great suffering, and that suffering will fall disproportionately on the poor. That is your error in fact.
Your error in logic is your claim of equal responsibility. If you and I are in a car crash, are we equally responsible because we both suffer the same loss? Even though I was speeding, talking on my cell phone and weaving in traffic while you were driving predictably and defensively, but were unable to avoid me when I suddenly swerved in front of you? Of course not. Responsibility results from the actions we take and the choices we make. We in the developed countries have produced most of the emissions and reaped most of the benefits. We are far more responsible for climate change than the peasants of India or Mexico or Bangladesh. Responsibility flows from actions, not consequences.
I do not think that means what you think it means.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
You do realize that the term "global warming" implies that it is global right? The sea ice in the Arctic has indeed been on a decline in the satellite era, however, during that same time period, the sea ice in the Antarctic, you know, at the other end of the planet, has been increasing. uh oh.
That doesn't even cover the fact that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from various sources which predate the satellite era which suggest that there has been as little or even less ice in the Arctic as there is now. Uh oh.
According to wikipedia, Portugal produces 52% of its energy from renewable sources, with a combination of hydro, solar, wind and geothermal. Do you see 52% of the energy produced in a country with a population of 11 million as "all bullshit" and a failure to "actually accomplish anything large scale"?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
They are growing, but at a much slower rate than you predicted.
[Alarmist]
Have gnu, will travel.
AGW proponents want us to change transportation, construction, agriculture, etc, making almost everything in life more expensive.
It's odd that so few /.ers seem to know this, but "going green" is actually much cheaper than business as usual. Amory Lovins has been demonstrating this for decades already. RMI makes most of its money by consulting with the likes of 3M, IBM, the Pentagon, etc. on how to save TONS of money by investing in efficiency.
It's time to put this myth to bed, once and for all. Going "green" is NOT more expensive, it's actually much cheaper. And this is why more and more companies are ALREADY investing in this area.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
> #1 Japan didn't turn off all nuclear. For one, it would take far longer than a few months to do so. For two, they're taking
> them offline for security checks. They plan on bringing them back online.
If you seriously think they will ever go back online you aren't paying attention. Nope, the lights just went out over there for good. Germany is shutting their nuke down. Frace would if they weren't so utterly dependent on them, and being French and just electing a Socialist government I still wouldn't bet a lot on them still having nukes a decade out.
> #2 Solar panels work great. I have em, and they cut my bill in half.
Nope. Take the government subsidies out of photoelectric and you wouldn't have bought them. Because the total value of the electricity derived from one over it's normal service life doesn't equal the TCO of the equipment. Large scale solar is close to net positve vs fossil fuel and will eventually get there but the greens are already mobilizing against the large scale installations that are required to generate useful quantities of electricity.
> #3 One solar thermal plant wasn't built because the company didn't want to immediately fork over the money to alleviate environmental concerns..
Probably because they realized the money would tip the project to uncompetitive, or because they realized that paying off this group would not solve the problem, the lawsuits would be endless until they abandoned the project. Alleviating 'environmental concerns' are like achieving diversity, there is no way to actually do it but you can waste an unlimited amount of time and money trying.... or relocate to a more friendly climate.
#4 Even if we are in an ice age (and we really aren't), that doesn't matter one lick.
Actually, if we are heading into an Ice Age there probably isn't anything we can do about it. WIth the current state of Climate Science we probably can't say and with the politics in it no sane person should trust it anyway.
> What matters is that there are drastic changes coming to our civilization, which has been built
> according to the climate variations of the past 300 years. That's going to cost money.
Considering that the only longterm constant in the environment is change that is almost certainly true. Whether it is going to change in the ways predicted by AGW theory, whether it will change BECAUSE of the influence of man, which influences but doesn't determine the BIG question of whether we can control the changes are all pretty open questions at this point.
Democrat delenda est
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
And I'm sure if the cooling business had its way, we'd still be arguing about CFCs and have a massive, inexplicable hole.
Actually, the cooling industry for many enterprise systems was very happy they got to retool entire cooling systems as it made them tons of money.
It's funny, isn't it? A lot of change works that way. Big money fights it and fights it, and then profits significantly when they finally concede. Think safety regulations in cars. The big auto makers fight every new regulation that comes their way, and then when they're forced to do it, they immediately work to make a selling feature out of it over their competition who don't rate nearly as well in the rating system that they didn't want in the first place.
A few years ago, the IIHS celebrated their 50th birthday by doing a head-on collision between a 1959 Chevy BelAir and a 2009 Malibu. Chevrolet has certainly had their lean years, but in general, it's a multi-billion dollar corporation which has managed to turn nearly every regulation to their advantage. There's no reason to think that stricter fuel standards and alternative fuel requirements couldn't see the same level of success over the next 50 years.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Yes, because a large (massive) government that heavily controls industry is soooo much better for the environment. *cough*China*cough*USSR*cough*.
HA shows how little you know about government and industry. The reason China has such filthy industry is unregulated capitalism and lack or regulation enforcement. Has nothing to do with the SIZE of government, simpleton. The problems with the USSR had nothing to do with the SIZE of government and the government had nothing in common with socialism, contrary to populat opinion. In fact, the propagandists in the USSR wanted its citizens to think they were living in socialism because the people there (rightly) wanted it. It was really totalitarian. That all worked out well for the propagandists in the US who wanted us to think socialism sucks, so they could point at the USSR and say "Look, that's an example of socialism". Same propaganda for different purposes. Pick up a book someday.
What amuses me about this is the total lack of irony or self-awareness.
Like, say, the irony of accusing me of directing my comment at a single individual, whereas the text of it does not distinguish a particular philosophy, thus indicating that it applies to extremists of all philosophies, then subsequently falling into an extremist rant yourself? Here, this should help: http://abcteach.com/directory/reading_comprehension/
Hehe yeah, you sure did turn that around on him didn't you? Sure, if you had a solid position you could have falsified what he said, argued against his reasoning, etc., but hey who has time for all of that? Just cut corners, be intellectually lazy, take a shortcut, fail to admit he made a point because you don't have the integrity, or all of the above?
Just say "well Criminal A is a robber and you might think that's bad, but Criminal B is a murderer so obviously Criminal A didn't do anything wrong!" Or if you point out some of Obama's stupidity and someone doesn't like that, they just have to mention some of Bush's stupidity and that magically makes what Obama did ok!
Do you have any idea how fucking infantile that is and how absurd it is for you to think you're making a point here?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Your post points out one of the problems with progress in a lot of controversial areas. The language is half the problem. You say "going green". The going "green" that saves money is not the same "green" that is being recommended to stop AGW. If you suggest that buying a more fuel efficient car is a way to "go green", that MAY save me money. If you suggest that I get rid of my car and switch to public transportation/bicycles to "go green", it would cost me dramatically more money if it didn't crack my ability to keep my job completely and drive me into poverty.
Sure, there are lots of things that are both better for our environment, and saves money. Those are not the things that the parent is talking about. The parent is talking about the bad ideas that get wrapped up with the good ones. A large part of the problem for the "green' folks is that they don't recognize this, and keep proposing bad ideas. So, yes. Going "green" IS more expensive if you are going to use the "environmentalist's" definition.
We see the same bad language being used with "Climate Change". Of course the climate is changing. It always has, and always will. What we see is that the AGW alarmists like to use that definition to get everyone to admit that "Climate Change" is happening, and then change the definition of "Climate Change" to "The world is burning up because someone drove to the store instead of riding a bike".
I don't know where people get off thinking they can spend 5% of their income on food when throughout history it required practically 100% of their labor.
This is because agricultural productivity was so much lower in the past. It's not that food is artificially cheap today – it's that food is much cheaper and easier to produce now due to advances in technology. Mechanization, chemical research (fertilizers) and more recently biotechnology have all dramatically increased how much food you can get out of an acre of land, and decreased how much labor you need to put in to get it. Just 100 years ago, farmers were about 31% of the workforce in the United States. Nearly one of three Americans was a farmer. Today it's one-tenth that and yet we are producing far more food than ever before.
however, during that same time period, the sea ice in the Antarctic, you know, at the other end of the planet, has been increasing. uh oh.
First of all, it's important that people know what "sea ice" is and its not. It *is* frozen sea water, which in the Antarctic mostly melts in the summer. It is *not* the permanent Antarctic ice sheets, which originate in glaciers (land ice, not sea ice, even though it is on the sea). The ice sheets are losing about 40 gigtons of mass per year[5].
Second, the gain in sea ice in the Antarctic is tiny, and it is not the result of atmospheric temperature decreases. There has been an increase in Antarctic atmosphere temperatures [1], accompanied by a stronger winds blowing cold surface water to the northwest which produces the increase in winter sea ice extent [2]. In the lee of the Antarctic Peninsula, which blocks this surface movement, there has been a dramatic decrease in sea ice [3]. Another factor is that slightly warmer surface temperatures can actually lead to an increase in ice extent by reducing the salinity of water near the edge of ice-formation[6].
Overall, the changes in polar sea ice are consistent with models predicting CO2 induced global warming [2][4], and in any case land ice is a much better indication of antarctic temperature changes, and that has being lost; if the small sea ice increases we've been seeing were due to cooling, we would see an equilibrium or gain in land ice.
CITATIONS:
[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7228/abs/nature07669.html
[2] http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq/#wintertimeantarctic
[3] http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/seaice.html
[4] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/278/5340/1104.short
[5] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010EGUGA..12.6127I
[6] http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/Zhang_Antarctic_20-11-2515.pdf
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