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Bill Nye: Climate Change Denial Is 'Running Out of Steam,' Thanks To Millennials (mic.com)
An anonymous reader shares with us an article on Mic: Famed science educator Bill Nye has long been an outspoken critic of people who continue to doubt climate change, the main driver of freaky weather patterns, rising global temperatures and sea level rise around the globe. In an interview with Mic, Nye said that despite lingering skepticisms, there is nearly 100% scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is here to stay -- and people are becoming increasingly anxious about its effects on the planet, particularly younger generations. "Almost every person in denial about climate change is older," Nye said. "It's very hard to find a millennial-aged person that is not concerned about climate change. I think the climate denial movement is running out of steam, I guess that's a pun."
... explained this as "Science advances one funeral at a time." The longer version is more like, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
All of these things happen, and it's easy to find them all over the Internet:
- People saying the climate didn't change.
- People saying the climate does change, but it doesn't matter.
- People saying the climate does change, and it does matter, but it's not human's fault.
- People saying the climate does change, and it does matter, and it's (at least in part) human's fault, but we can't fix it.
- People saying the climate does change, and it does matter, and it's (at least in part) human's fault, and maybe we can fix it, but it's not worth it to try.
- People saying the climate does change, and it does matter, and it's (at least in part) human's fault, and maybe we can fix it, but it's actually a good thing.
I don't think anyone doubts climate change.
Ted Cruz does. He's arguing that the global temperature hasn't gone up in the last 2 decades, for example.
I know just being picky, but no one doubts that climate change is behind changes in climate. I don't think anyone doubts climate change. Now perhaps some doubt anthropogenic climate change, technically this summary doesn't mention that.
Well... As recently as Feb 2015, Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican from Oklahoma, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, with jurisdiction over climate issues, brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to offer persuasive evidence climate change was a hoax. This would just be funny, if he weren't (a) a US Senator, (b) chairman of an Environment committee.
Links: Google (About 198,000 results)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
At the same time there's an article in Nature indicating that the climate has varied a lot more than what we see in the reference model: http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
(OK, I haven't read the full article)
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Bill Nye (along with Al Gore) got caught faking a experiment to "prove" climate change - the results were totally not reproducible in any way and the footage he had was cut to make it look like it proved his claim (google "bill nye fake experiment" to see it exposed). Since then, I don't see why anyone listens to the guy. He's Bill Nye The Propaganda Guy
It seems every time there's 'proof' of man made global warming, the data is cooked, the experiments are not reproducible, the predictions don't materialize. Not sure how that state of affairs became the standard of "science".
There is a difference between "weather" and "climate."
Yes, weather changes all the time. The climate tells you what the expected variations of weather should be. If you are seeing weather consistently outside of those patterns, then either your understanding of the climate is wrong (i.e. its based on 100 years of weather, but there is a 200 year cycle of weather patterns) or the climate is changing.
The satellite record pretty much agrees with Cruz, hasn't been any statistically significant warming (as in temperature) for over 18 years in the satellite data. USCRN hasn't shown any significant warming either; HADCRUT, GISTEMP, BEST and USHCN show some warming.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
computer models that rely on dat athat stops prior to 1976 isn't evidence. That's a broken model.
Well, I guess it's a good thing that there are also people running models with modern data. But that wasn't even my point. The point is that all the tools and data are there to show how the consensus is wrong. And yet, nobody's doing that. If you think the model is broken, please fix it, and show your results. You'll be famous.
There is a middle ground between the consensus being wrong and the models being right.
We KNOW the last century has been warming.
We KNOW that CO2 concentration has been increasing.
We KNOW that CO2 is coming from our activities.
We KNOW that increased greenhouse gases will trap more energy and cause warming.
That's the consensus. Things like how bad things get by 2100 and what impact our changes in emissions will have are NOT well understood. It's the IPCC that says so too, so again that's also the consensus.
The models do NOT have strong evidence to help us predict the impacts of climate change. This is because the models CAN NOT realistically hind cast the global energy imbalance, let alone predict it. The IPCC states as much in the fifth AR: ...maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system
It's fundamental that the entirety of the physics beneath global warming is more energy being trapped leading to higher temperatures. When the models can NOT accurately hind cast this without being hand tuned, they are NOT able to predict the future impacts either.
That isn't saying models are worthless. Models are terrifically valuable in furthering our understanding of climate functions, and iterative improvements to this will get us to the point where they CAN hind cast energy imbalance on their own. Until they reach that benchmark though, we do not have a strong understanding of what impact future emission and change scenarios look like. We are vastly over stating our understanding to suggest otherwise.
Instead of pointing out the problem I suggest we start pointing out solutions.
Why are coal miners even in business? I mean if global warming is a problem, and burning coal makes it worse, then shouldn't we see coal miners find something else to do? We see coal miners in business because people want cheap electricity. Without something that can provide electricity as cheap as coal we will burn coal.
We don't burn coal because we want global warming. We burn coal because we like hot pizza in the winter, ice cream in the summer, air conditioned movie theaters, computers, cell phones, and all the other things that cheap electricity can bring us. What alternatives do we have? Wind is cheap but we can't rely on the wind to blow. Solar power costs double or quadruple what coal power costs. If we burned wood for electricity then we'd have made the land barren long ago.
Bill Nye is an engineer, he's studied this stuff in school and for his job. For a product to sell it must be on time, on budget, meet fit/form/function, and be better than the other guys' products. Do we have anything that can do that? Yes, nuclear fission.
Instead of saying the same thing over and over again about how climate change is "undeniable" I say we start talking about how to fix this. Barring some leap in technology the only solution we have is nuclear fission. So I say we need to talk about how we are going to build nuclear power plants at a rate sufficient to replace coal and meet future demand.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
If you were discussing the science and offering materials to forward your argument rather than making personal attacks you would make much more progress in convincing people to consider your point of view.
I'm not engaged in an attempt to convince people to consider my point of view because (as Bill Nye has helpfully pointed out) the number of people who matter and who are not convinced by the science is vanishingly small, and getting smaller, and their view is their problem, not mine. There are already mechanisms in place to ensure that they will pay their due along with some extra for delaying the process, when the time comes. It's a solved problem,
Rather, this conversation is about your assertion that the science says something other than our greenhouse gases is causing the current climate anomaly.
Saying I am right and you are wrong and that makes you ( fill in the blank ) for not accepting whatever ( name of the latest marinate ) has said on the subject.
I'm not saying I'm right. Your argument is with the science. You said the science was wrong. I have no reason to accept that the science is wrong from someone who doesn't even know what the science says or where it comes from.