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Most Americans Support Government Action On Climate Change
mdsolar points out this report in the NY Times:
An overwhelming majority of the American public, including nearly half of Republicans, support government action to curb global warming, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future. In a finding that could have implications for the 2016 presidential campaign, the poll also found that two-thirds of Americans say they are more likely to vote for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change. They are less likely to vote for candidates who question or deny the science of human-caused global warming.
Among Republicans, 48 percent said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports fighting climate change, a result that Jon A. Krosnick, a professor of political science at Stanford University and an author of the survey, called "the most powerful finding" in the poll. Many Republican candidates either question the science of climate change or do not publicly address the issue.
Among Republicans, 48 percent said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports fighting climate change, a result that Jon A. Krosnick, a professor of political science at Stanford University and an author of the survey, called "the most powerful finding" in the poll. Many Republican candidates either question the science of climate change or do not publicly address the issue.
Ask them what they willing to actually SACRIFICE to fix it and I bet you'll get a very different answer.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
most americans also support "action" on a lot of things. it does not mean most americans have any idea what the right things to do are.
remember, polls can be made to say whatever you want them to. Follow the money and see whos actually funding the poll to know what the desired outcome is.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Leftist news outlet trumpets success in convincing Americans they need to give up more power to the state. The majority agrees, so you should too!
"I have altered the planet's climate. Pray I do not alter it further."
Support is fine until it comes out of a paycheck.. then, no flipping way. Watch what happens when Walmart shoppers are asked to pay higher prices for higher wages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
But whats the point if we keep moving our manufacturing to china where they basically have no regulations when it comes to pollution, which in return pollutes the whole earth anyway. I would rather have all manufacturing back here with all the regulations in place and if corporations don't like it, well, they and their stock holders can go and fuck themselves.
Which part?
a) That climate change exists.
b) That climate change is caused by human behavior
c) That the change might be have significant negative effects
d) That altering human behavior could ameliorate c)
e) That the costs of d) might exceed the benefits of d)
f) That d) can be administered effectively by government(s)
Without knowing the wording of the question, there is no way to evaluate these results. I have seen too many polls reported in ways which distort what the actual results say to buy this one.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Most Americans support government action on labeling food products that contain DNA. These surveys are worthless.
Sure. But you started polluting the earth long before Chinese could do it, like, 200 years? So now it won't be China's turn until next century.
BTW rich Chinese people are busy migrating elsewhere, soon there won't be any problem at all!
I'm trying to download the poll document pdf and all I get is some Democrat advertising invoice.
Now, if only they could do something about the number of people who keep voting for assholes who break campaign promises, then campaign promises to do something about climate change might actually matter.
Log in or piss off.
Good points. May I add one?
g) That anything that happens in c) is likely to be irreversible. (Just think how hard it will be to re-freeze the polar ice that currently reflects significant energy from the sun. Has anybody got any idea how to do that?)
It fascinates me that anyone would think that releasing carbon which was sequestered over the course of millions of years back into the atmosphere over the span of just a few hundred would have no effect at all on the climate - especially when said carbon (as CO2) has a known, measurable warming effect.
"Nonpartisan" means that Resources For The Future doesn't officially support the Democrat party. Everyone who works there, however, voted Green or for Obama.
IOW, it's effectively partisan.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I am not opposed to reducing pollution to a level where I can safely walk outside and breath, and fish are reasonably safe to eat.
I am opposed to reducing pollution to zero and getting rid of all the modern niceties that cause it ... like this computer that I'm typing this post on and the server that is storing it.
Everything in between is up for discussion and probably has multiple supporters and detractors somewhere.
I'll wager that almost no one disagrees that reducing pollution is a good thing.
The discussion is how much are we willing to pay or give up for how big a reduction.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
As for "B", climate changes are not due to human activity alone. Climates change due to factors other than those related to humans as well, and that is a well known fact. Science is unable to accurately measure our effect due to the inability to properly apply the scientific process to prove global warming theories. Science tries to use data in the absence of process, but the period of recording is still insufficient to make much of a determination. Climate conjecturists will always try to convince you otherwise, and exclaim how we must ACT NOW!!!
People on both sides of this argument frequently lose track of what we can prove. Pollution is bad, period. I can take a few degrees warmer, but air and water quality is critical NOW. Maybe not so much in the middle of America, but there are places in China I would not want to visit. Not my problem because I don't live there? No, it is my problem as I contribute to the misery of humans in China who are being exploited by greed in serving me products.
Everyone I know believes humans do influence changes in climate. The difference is that a few people are complete deniers, and a few people are total climate change zealots. With all due respect, your message seems like a cut and paste from a climate zealot site.
Politicians don't pay attention to voters. They follow the money. Koch et al who are making big bucks from fossil fuels control the politicians.
You can find similar polls on other topics... gun control, health care, education, etc. Politicians vote for the policies of their donors.
The US has the most corrupt political system... it's really fascism where the corporations and the rich control the government.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Then research on the other side of the coin is invalid as well. You can't have it both ways.
Also, "New York Times study" lol.
https://www.google.com/search?...
Everyone I know believes humans do influence changes in climate. The difference is that a few people are complete deniers, and a few people are total climate change zealots. With all due respect, your message seems like a cut and paste from a climate zealot site.
Wait... what?
I'm sure we've got climate zealots on here, but claiming that a request for clarification on which part is a scam, outlining the various ACTUAL issues for debate, doesn't seem very zealotish to me.
And it's a checklist that I think should be part of any debate on HIGW. I bet if each of those items were polled, we'd get much different results for each one than we do for HIGW as a whole.
Yah, you tell em!... And it was slightly colder than average yesterday, global warming LOL!
That was amusing, thanks.
I suspect that, sometime in the next 200 years, someone (not necessarily a government) will start releasing aerosols into the upper atmosphere to reflect away more sunlight, preventing it from reaching the surface at all. Only military action could stop something like this, as any given country or rich enough individual or group could do it.
The real question is, will there be a way to remove these aerosols once the resulting cooling (together with increased sequestration of carbon) leads to an increase in surface ice? Or will they just dim the sun and leave a future generation to fix that?
No Highlander jokes, please.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
>. A lot of this really just boils down to 60s ideas of environmentalism and reducing pollution. It's just that the modern spin ads an extra level of extreme hysterics to the situation that are likely to alienate people and trigger skepticism. ...
>. Someone thinks they need to generate a sense of urgency by any means necessary.
Exactly. That strategy DOES get some people hyped up, but it also makes a lot of tune you out. They then miss the message that's actually potentially accurate. The other day I posted a bunch of examples of leading climate researchers from Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Yale making statements like "by 2010, New York City will be underwater". Well, 2010 has come and gone and NYC is still there. With so much of that crap out there, it gets old hearing about it.
Somewhere, there is probably a reliable source for objective information. Since Stanford, Berkeley and Yale are provably spreading hyperbole (in the extreme), I don't know where to look for trustworthy information.
Government Action can be anything - building seawallls and dykes, seeding the ocean with iron, mandating living in caves, resettling populations, handing out vouchers, giving contracts to lobbyists, doing nothing, adopting policies to reduce carbon emissions.
But this is never stated, which is damn annoying. Most people automatically assume the last option, which may well be the worst option, and then arguing over the details.
There is much bloviating over how much science has gone into proving AGW. But there is very little science indeed as to the optimal response.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
"The trouble with ignorance is that it feels so much like expertise." We Are All Confident Idiots
These show the frightening level of ignorance about science in the general US population:
http://news.nationalgeographic...
http://www.pewinternet.org/201...
Depending on which study you look at, apparently only 40% - 66% of Americans even believe evolution is real. What are you guys smoking over there?
"Most X Support Y" is such a lame argument for doing anything.
Most people here would like to kick your ass but that doesn't mean we should.
Most drivers on the freeway would like to speed but that doesn't mean the should.
Most kids support not brushing their teeth but that doesn't mean they should skip it.
Most people would like a double-wopper-hopper burger with extra fries but that doesn't mean they should eat it never mind every day.
Most people supporting something is a lame argument for anything.
Stop rationalizing and get rational.
I don't know if by "you" you literally mean me, or if that's the 'royal' you. But if you mean me I was merely posing a question, not prescribing any answers. I was very careful to include all the "key words" you've identified to avoid revealing bias.
I *do* have a position on most of those, but that position likely isn't what you think it is.
This kind of study is hard on the deniers because it begins moving them toward Flat Earth Society status. In a democracy, the minority just doesn't matter very much once the majority has made up its mind. They stop being a part of the conversation. The only way they will be able to get back into the conversation is to start drawing lines in the sand saying what they will and will not give up. And that will be a good thing. We need to start talking about the tradeoffs that we will have to make.
You mean as opposed to all the other decades of the 19th through 20th century's idea of "let's just slash and burn and pollute all the ecosystems on the planet with our newfound technological power, and see how that goes for our descendants, because we don't give a rat's ass?" That genius idea that we are pretty much living by today? Remember that "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose".
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
That makes way too much sense. Therefore, it's political suicide. Fuggedaboudit.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
If one read the article you'll see no questions or answering that reflect the headline at all.
Misleading and inaccurate. Have the AGW supporters got so little that they must actively lie now?
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
What we can 'proof' is not really relevant.
Either you have common sense or not.
When Gallileo dropped his samples from the tower in Pisa, he was well aware he can not drop all kinds of combinations of materials to be certain that gravity works regardless of weight.
Would he have dropped a toddler to see if it falls slower/faster than lead, iron, stone?
I don't guess so. So according to your idea of science it is unproven if toddlers fall slower or faster or at the same rate than any other material.
I don't go into the rest of your argumentation, as it is all wrong.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sorry, you are jsut an idiot.
If someone claimed 30 years ago, we already had sea level risings of meters/yards today, he was an idiot, too.
If you believed that idiot, you are a doubke idiot.
All that changes nothing to the fact that everyone below the afe of 50 who is reaching a normal age will eye witness dramatic changes (in the next 30 years).
replace ... with healthy scientific skepticism and you might convince people like me.
How should I if I start becomming sceptic, convince an idiot like you?
Facts fon't comvince you, but if I step back from thise facts (being sceptic) you suddenly are convinced?
Why don't you simply learn about the facts instead of spreading your ideology?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Oh, some of them have updated it. Not long ago the Obama administration was circulating a piece with just such predictions, after having done a SEARCH AND REPLACE update to change "2010" to "2050". I kid you not.
There is some sound research out there, but it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff because there's a lot more propaganda than there is solid science.
Try to take a breath and have a little intellectual honesty. As you know, in these institutions updated there materials in the 1970s to early 1980s, from "OMG panic man-made ice age" to "OMG panic global warming" WITHOUT passing through any period of
"gee, maybe we were wrong, maybe there's nothing to panic about". It's ALWAYS panic about something. If you're at all honest with yourself, you'll recognize that going from one extreme theory to the other without passing through the middle shows many people have a need to be alarmist - it doesn't matter about what, they just need to be alarmist.
Experience indicates that sky is not in fact falling.
"Most Americans Support Government Action On Climate Change"
Didn't we JUST have a story about how ignorant the general public is about science?
Ergo...?
-Styopa
Here are a few names for you. Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
Cristina Tirado (University of California) again made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. ÃoeThe West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under waterà , Hansen said.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"The entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
There hasn't been any warming for 18 years, so the magical free market solution is a done deal.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
> What "leading climate researchers" said this?
Here are a few examples. You can of course easily find more. Just Google for "global warming" and set it to show results from whatever time you desire. I wanted to see predictions for 2000-2015, so I Google "global warming" for resources published in 1995 or earlier.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
Cristina Tirado (University of California) again made the claim of 50 million climate refugees, changing it to "by 2020" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by a journalist how the greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under water" , Hansen said.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"The entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work.
> Rising CO2 levels and climate change are politically controversial only because the fossil carbon industry hired a bunch of PR firms to sow public doubt. Who needs science, when industry PR is gospel?
Indeed, who needs this "science" from NASA, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, and the UN, when Comedy Central is gospel?
Look at the PDF you posted. It's not the poll.
> So tell my why addressing CO2 emissions is a bad idea (not that you explicitly stated as much in your comments)
Indeed, I've said the opposite, right here in this thread. In the thread last week I said it over and over and over, while the alarmists in the thread just couldn't hear that. To them, it has to be either believe everything you hear and panic, or complete denial. No room for thought, for considering the veracity of the claims, or considering past claims the source has made. Odd.
There are, however, a lot of ways of "addressing the problem" that are REALLY bad ideas. I don't know if you are clear that there is a lot of hype an gross exaggeration, along with some reason for concern. If that's not a point we can readily agree on, I'll refer you to post also in this thread:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
I think that post pretty well establishes that there are definitely plenty of people making wacko claims who have "respectable" titles - that there's plenty of extreme alarmist BS mixed in with more reasonable analysis.
We spent around $100 million per year to reduce drunk driving, and that saved 10,000 lives per year. So by that example, when spending wisely, saving lives costs about $10,000 per life. In other words, if you spend $1 million on the right things, you can expect to save 1,000 people. Maybe you spend it on stop-smoking initiatives, CPR training, driver training, whatever is shown to work best.
Based on the mix of science and alarmism, we're spending up to* $360 billion dollars per year, several thousand dollars per family in the US. I say "up to" because it's from source that will tend to count high. Let's guesstimate that source quadrupled the real amount, and the real cost that we should be using is only around $100 billion. We know that a $100 million drunk-driving campaign saved 10,000 people, so $100 BILLION spent wisely could save about 10,000,000 people. Ten million lives saved. Per year. That's the opportunity cost of devoting those resources to climate change related initiatives rather than health initiatives, or cancer research, or wherever they would make the most difference. That's why I think we should be very careful not to allocate huge amounts of resources based on alarmist, political, and clearly biased studies - because by doing so we're choosing to NOT use those resources on things proven to save many lives. To put it very bluntly, people are dying as a result of poor decisions made by politicians, based on exploiting and manipulating the emotions of their constituents.
What if I'm wrong, and not just a little bit wrong, but wrong by an order of magnitude. If I'm really, really wrong, only 1 million people would be saved each year by using these resources more wisely. When you're talking about major US government initiatives, hundreds of billions of dollars, the consequences are enormous. Putting $100,000,000,000 toward the wrong program means a lot of people die needlessly, because that $100,000,000,000 spent wisely could save a lot of people.
Well, then... I retract my statement as being directed at you.
It wasnt exactly clear from your post :)
We spent $100 million per year on the campaign to reduce drunk driving. Drunk driving deaths were reduced by 10,000 per year. So roughly speaking, if you're willing to spend $100 million, you can save about 10,000 people every year. Campaigns to get people to stop smoking, disease and health research, and traffic safety programs can achieve similar results, for the good programs - about $10,000 per life saved.
Depending on how you count, global warming initiatives of various types such as research, PR, and new regulations cost us $100 billion - $280 billion per year. That's billion with a B, compared to $100 Million to drastically drunk driving. We know that when we use our resources wisely, we can save one person per $10,000, so $100,000,000,000 can save 10 million people if spent wisely. That's the true cost of spending $100 billion on mostly alarmist hype. We could instead divide that money as follows:
$10 billion for cancer research
$5 billion for traffic safety
$5 billion to reduce child abuse
$2 billion to fight teen smoking
$1 billion to help alcoholics and addicts who wish to stop
$1 billion for heart disease and health initiatives
And 75 more such programs.
How many millions of people have died because you'd rather play hippy than deal with the issues that are actually killing millions of people every year? Well, about 10 million people every year, the math shows. Do you want to keep playing silly politics, or should we put the resources toward actually saving lives, maybe yours.
You might enjoy the post more if you pay attention to the "will happen by" dates. Things are all things leading climate researchers were saying would happen by 2000, or 2010 or whatever - all dates that have come and gone. Amazingly, it's 2015 and California is still here, not underwater. Whether that's a good thing or bad you can decide for yourself.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
The UN climate panel said it would happen, the date in question has passed, and nothing like that happened. Ergo, the UN climate change panel is full of it.
They obviously got the date wrong, but that doesn't mean the day will never come.
Even in places that have mass transit _and_ massive funding for mass transit, improvements are horrible to non-existent (see California).
If I take mass transit, the cost is 80.00/wk to go about 100 miles round trip daily, and I have to walk or bicycle the last 1-2 miles. It's not cheap, it's not convenient, and it's not faster than driving most of the time. In large part, this is due to the California welfare state and a large portion of riders not paying their fair. The bigger part however, is that instead of putting money into this system the legislature decided to build an 80billion dollar bullet train to run from near LA to near SF. Because the only way to get 9 million commuters off the freeway is to do absolutely nothing about it. *sigh*
Detroit is another example of a place that took shit tons of tax payer money to build a fancy merry go round called "The People Mover", which is a laughable system that supports the Casinos, a couple parking garages, and the RenCen.
In other words, demand for public transit does not make public transit happen.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
We spent around $100 million per year to reduce drunk driving, and that saved 10,000 lives per year.
Can you give a reference to the source for this?
(I'm not disputing your assessment; just want to throw it all up in Excel sheet to see how much we could save per year if we diverted all military spending on Iraq+Afghanistan on social programs like that.)
But what is happening is BS. Unless ALL nations are involved, then nothing will change.
As it is, the largest polluter, China with more than 1/3 of the CO2 emissions, is being allowed to continue GROWING their emissions while only the west are to cut back.
This will NEVER succeed if this continues.
the only possible solution is if all nations cut back, and if they are cut back predicated on CO2 / $ GDP. The reason is that emissions are NOT tied to ppl,but dirty manufacturing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I cant believe people still believe that paying a carbon tax is going to do anything but make a few people richer and everyone else poorer.
What? Who are these few people who are going to get rich off a carbon tax?
There is no attention paid to space weather trends
There has been a lot of attention given to space weather, like solar dynamics. So far there has been no evidence that space weather is having warming effects. That doesn't mean that nobody has been looking. People have, especially in the energy industry, and so far what little evidence there is actually points in the opposite direction.
or the use of a carbon tax to fund a corporate policy boards that will act as a defacto world government with an agenda that is not friendly to individual rights.
I've heard this point made a lot- we can't reduce CO2 because that means a one-world government would take my guns away and force me to be an atheist, or something.
Proponents don't seem to notice that there are weather manipulation programs in place right now.
Have any reference to that other than geoengineeringwatch? Scientists do talk about that as a possible idea but so far it remains speculative, and nobody is actually trying it. Those jet trails you see over your house are from carrying passengers. Sulfuric acid just doesn't have the money to afford the ticket prices.
How is screwing up natural weather by spraying compounds into the atmosphere and shooting it with radiation just dandy but using any petroleum product is killing the earth?
(If anyone got confused by that, the "compounds" he's talking about are sulfur aerosols, not CO2.) To my knowledge the idea strikes everyone as fanciful and distasteful; it only gets discussed as a possible last ditch, desperate option. Cities would have to be pretty flooded before anyone would actually seriously consider doing that. The main argument in its favor is that one ton of sulfuric acid would be potent enough to offset the warming of about 100000 tons of CO2. That's about all that can be said for it. (FWIW, CO2 is also an acidic gas, and obviously it also "shoots the atmosphere with radiation".)
All of you Al Gore subscribers pay honor to the creation but not the creator.
The Senate just voted 98 to 1 that the climate is changing, but refused to vote on whether humans were in any way responsible. I think that if anything qualifies as "paying honor to the creation but not the creator".
You are looking for your keys under the streetlamp instead of where you lost them because the light is better there.
I think that's because we can see them under the streetlamp- if we're the type who even bothers to look at all.
I love how the lefties always say global warming is ruining everything and it is not up for debate and that 100% of scientists agree.
IIRC it's 97%, not 100%. But that's still a really good consensus for a scientific theory, especially given the financial incentives for scientists to dissent.
The planet will gain it's equilibrium back with or without your participation if it needs to.
That's definitely true- a typical CO2 molecule remains airborne for about 10,000 years before being reabsorbed. in several million years the planet will have forgotten about us, except for any mass extinction event that we might have triggered- similar to what happened during the Carboniferous period, when today's fossil fuels were actually fossilized.
The NOAA all stars could not even predict the New York blizzard accurately. Why do you think they know what the climate is going to be like in 25 years?
Rush Limbaugh said this the day after the storm. Weathermen and climatologists aren't actually the same people. In fact most of the "skep
The really sad thing is that people will post back and forth about this change and that change that we should make.
Close coal power plants, build more electric cars, install more LED light bulbs...
None of it matters... not a single bit of it...
Why? Because over the next 30 years, the four nations that make up BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) will increase their output by about as much as the US produces today.
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The United States of America could cut our output by 100%, we could all go back into caves... and it wouldn't make any difference, in 30 years our entire output will be replaced by other people.
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The only real possible solutions are those that work worldwide, it doesn't take very many people ignoring them to make the entire effort pointless.
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I'm open to suggestions that actually might lower the global total output by 50% over the next 50 years... Not reduce the increase, but actually lower the global total from today.
Because if you aren't reducing the global total, then you're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...
Where do I make my voice heard that I don't want the US government manipulating the climate?
Quite an extermist, you are! But realistically, the best we can hope is manipulating the climate less. That's what the whole "fighting the anthropogenic climate change" gig is all about.
If we call it what it is.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Okay, two people remember the conversation differently - one after having been thoroughly embarrassed by the reporter's recollection. Let's give Hansen the benefit of the doubt and assume he conditioned it on co2 at 560 the article you linked suggests. In other words, let's have a look at what Hansen now claims to have said.
CO2 levels have been above 350 for a good while now, right? Correct me of I'm wrong on that, I'm going by memory. That's an increase of around 50% from preindustrial levels as opposed to doubling. At the time, the West Side Highway was an elevated freeway, so Hansen was saying the water would rise twenty or thirty feet with CO2 at 560. CO2 is at 350 and how many feet has it risen? Zero feet. Hansen's claim still sounds rather fishy to me.
Certainly we agree that the reporter's quote of the scientist is crap, and that's what most people read - quotes from scientists, or claimed scientists, as reported by the media.
>. Although I still give opposing scientific views strong consideration - it's just so hard to find them in all the crap published.
Well we agree on that much. I'm just real clear that neither side has a monopoly on crap.
I gave one example of the cost of a campaign and the lives saved, the campaign to reduce drunk driving. You can easily calculate a few more, it's just division. Look up the cost of some program - a safety program such as requiring seatbelts perhaps, or vaccine research, or whatever. Then look up the number of lived saved and divide the dollars by the lives to get the cost per person saved.
I'd bet that requiring seatbelts cost a lot less than $10,000 per life saved. Airbags have probably been pretty cost effective too. AIDs treatments have really helped people live longer, better lives, while safe sex initiatives have saved many lives. I bet the whole safe sex initiative cost a few billion, while saving few million people, so it might be an interesting one to find numbers on.
That was a very rough estimate, just to get a general idea of about what a good public safety program might achieve per dollar. You might want to calculate a few more, it's just division. Look up the cost of some program - a safety program such as requiring seatbelts perhaps, or vaccine research, or whatever. Then look up the number of lived saved and divide the dollars by the lives to get the cost per person saved.
I'd bet that requiring seatbelts cost a lot less than $10,000 per life saved. Airbags have probably been pretty cost effective too. Air bags and seat belts were not required one day, then were required the next day, so the difference should be clear.
In calculating the cost of Iraq, be sure to include the facts that a) Saddam was going around invading neighboring countries, gassing the Kurds etc, so going in did save some people and b) to be intellectually honest you have to account for the deterrent effect - what would dictators have done if the the US minded their own business. I would bet that you'll still have a strong argument, and a more balanced one.
beginning to wonder what happened to slashdot, used to be libertarian now liberal..sad
They have:
A poor appreciation of what's actually happening.
A poor appreciation of what's at stake.
A poor appreciation of the cognitive abilities of the average politician in understanding any science.
A poor track record of taking any _personal_ action to address issues.
Put it all together and most are likely stating support because they know that that's the right answer to give in the current political space of climate change.
Individually, some of the most brilliant people on the planet.
As a group? Idiots.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
If you look at the poll, people strongly oppose all the programs that explicitly increase taxes.
What they support is programs they presume to be of no cost to them. If you phrase those programs to reflect what they actually mean, I doubt you'd get much support for them:
As you may have heard, greenhouse gases are thought to cause global warming. Should the federal government pass laws that substantially increase the prices of rent, homes, cars, gasoline, electricity, and other goods and services in order to limit greenhouse gas emissions?
Do you support raising the income tax so that the government can subsidize selected energy companies?
Do you support raising the income tax so that the government can subsidize companies that burn coal if they reduce air pollution?
It's probably that Europeans have come on-line and started participating in larger numbers. They want government action on everything, and the want us to wreck our country in the same way they have wrecked theirs. I bet if you took the American subset of Slashdot users, attitudes probably wouldn't have changed that much; younger Americans tend to be more libertarian.
(Since "liberal" is somewhat ambiguous, I'd just refer to them as "progressive".)
Ancient predictions made in CE years? STFU, moron.
We need to encourage energy efficiency to increase National Security. That's the way to sell it to red-blooded 'Merican patriots. Bonus: less wars to fight.
" Putting $100,000,000,000 toward the wrong program means a lot of people die needlessly, because that $100,000,000,000 spent wisely could save a lot of people."
For instance, for only ten times that we were able to kill half a million Iraqis. Who would want to detract from that to deal with something that only 97% of people who know what they're talking about consider a looming threat?
We've got plenty of threats, domestic and foreign, that require us to kill lots of people; we haven't got the luxury of addressing threats which do not involve killing anybody.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
http://www.scientificamerican....
Don't be dumb.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
Thanks for the research. I do appreciate it. I'll strike that one from my list of ridiculous claims because it is at least debatable whether it's completely ridiculous or not. At least for now.
>. Highway not elevated
As you know, there was the old West Side Highway , and there is the new one that is sometimes called by that name. Hansen was speaking in 1988. Here's a picture from the highway in 1985:
http://weber-street-photograph...
Sure looks elevated. If you go back about two pictures on the same site and read the caption you'll find a photo taken in 1988 - the same year that Hansen said that. The caption of the photo says "the elevated West Side Highway".
It takes human output a few hours to match the amount of CO2 emitted from volcanoes in an entire year.
An overwhelming majority of the American public doesn't give two shits about anything more complicated than who's going to win the next Super Bowl and what to order at McDonald's for dinner tonight.
Get real.
Did you honestly just claim that 742.5 million people all think the same way about government action? Brilliant work, sparky! You're an absolute genius, surely!
You appear to be confusing "increasing not as much as expected" with "decreasing".
No, I didn't. Do you have trouble understanding basic English?
Ah yes, example of fine liberal debate tactics. Touche'
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
http://www.scientificamerican....
Don't be dumb.
Don't be a tool,
If you don't like satellite data,
and as far as the 18 years without warming,
even the IPCC AR5 agrees.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
That link (from a super-conservative news site) contradicts itself multiple times. It first says that 2014 was 'nowhere near' the hottest year on record, then it says that the 0.02 difference is not 'statistically significant'. Wtf?
About the second link, it says that 2010 and 2014 are tied for warmest year. Alright, the difference between the two years isn't that high. So at any rate the warmest year happened in the past 5 years. I... don't see how this invalidates my point at all?
And about the third link, it's a gross misrepresentation (basically an outright lie) about the IPCC's results. In fact IPCC AR5 makes an even stronger claim for anthropogenic warming than AR4.
I told you to stop being dumb. I realize that's impossible. Now I must tell you to at least stop being a retarded shit-flinging monkey with fetal alcohol syndrome.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.