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National Geographic Releases Alarming Climate Change Movie 'Before the Flood' On YouTube (youtube.com)
dryriver writes: National Geographic's Climate Change movie "Before The Flood," featuring actor-activist Leonardo DiCaprio, can now be viewed freely on Youtube. One of the most interesting points in the movie comes at around the 23 minute mark. At 23 minutes, scientist Michael E. Mann, famous for co-discovering the "hockey stick graph" via eigenvector based climate field reconstruction (CFR), recounts how media like the Wall Street Journal demonized him for his research, how he received death threats from unknown sources, how Congress grilled him about whether his scientific methods are credible, and how he even received an envelope in the mail with strange white powder in it. The movie is worth watching because it shows very clearly that a) man-made climate change is happening and that b) the negative effects of climate change are already impacting many areas of the world.
changes. If I wanted always summer I'd go to the Venezula, or if I wanted always winter I'd go to Canada. I like - I WANT - the climate to change! If God had wanted it any other way it would not happen!
You want the weather to change.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
It depends on how (dis)honest you use the term "the science is settled". There is an overwhelming, if not almost universal, agreement that climate change is real. That has not been disputing in any proper and significant way for a long time. What the relevant parts of the scientific community are still haggling about is:
(1) How bad is it going to be if the current trend continues?
(2) Can the effects be reasonably limited or reversed?
(3) What is the least/cheapest amount of work to keep humanity alive?
A lot of those predictions have a high degree of uncertainty, simply because the underlying physical processes are extremely complex. Many factors are not fully understood, i.e. the impact of global warming on permafrost and the associated feedback cycle, the impact on flora and fauna etc.
In short, the point is not whether the science is settled on every aspect. The problem is real, it is undisputed and aggressive actions are needed now, if not better yesterday. It is far easier to determine when enough has been done compared to predicting that in advance. The car analogy is running full speed into a traffic jam. When do you start to brace -- at the latest point feasible or by reducing your speed to a decent level first?
Oh do fuck off you silly twit. This isn't "science", it's environmental activism masquerading as science. What is it about p-hacking and "modelling" that doesn't raise your sceptic eyebrows?
What is it about settled physics that you don't like?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's amazing how many self-proclaimed "nerds" are willing to discard evidence and disregard science when the conclusions challenge their worldview or their bank accounts. The whole lot of them are selfish, self-deluding children. These aren't the nerds I grew up with.
The world isn't here to cater to you. We've thrived by reshaping it and now have to deal with some unintended consequences. Only a fool fails to change course when they are approaching a cliff. We've seen the approaching disaster and would like to try to avert it or minimize the harm. If we're wrong, then people -- including ourselves -- suffer short-term economic damage. If we're right, we save the world for humanity.
> I keep seeing zealots on this side calling for everything incredibly invasive (in terms of liberties) public policy, to criminal prosecution of "climate change deniers."
Relevant examples, please?
> what happens if you are wrong?
You propose "don't do nuffink, cause we might be wrong"? You serious?
You are greatly underestimating the power of idiots to dispute reality.
I keep seeing zealots on this side calling for everything incredibly invasive (in terms of liberties) public policy, to criminal prosecution of "climate change deniers."
Oh, please. Show me one person who has called for criminal prosecution of climate change deniers.
And what "liberties" infringed, for example, by a carbon tax, or a cap-and-trade energy market? If your conception of liberty includes unrestricted license to foul other people's air, then I would suggest that the word "liberty" doesn't mean what you think it means.
Many people do not trust any science with a political agenda, and when they see all of the usual suspects lining up behind it, they rightly assume it is a scam like the rest of the things these people do.
If climate science is true -- a big if -- and if it fails, it will be because of (1) who promoted it (2) how they promoted it and (3) how they did similar things in the past that ended up being corrupt, and therefore instructed their audience to avoid such things in the future.
And what is this celebrity worship? These people are good at acting, not verifying truth. They are not our leaders or moral guardians, but rather, the opposite.
I think you need to go farther. Until people are willing to face jail time and restitution in the case that they are wrong, they are running your future on your dime.
Alternative Right.
This is my favourite cartoon concerning this subject: http://scienceblogs.com/starts... concerning a game-theoretic (if one wants to be pompous, and one does) aspect of this. That is, a low carbon, breathable air, greener world is a better world anyway, so we are right to start down this road, with or without AGW.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Climate change denial seems to be a generational thing.
When I was growing up, environmentalism meant conservationism. Mowing your lawn and not littering were ways to particpate.
Then people started talking about acid rain, eutrophication of the great lakes and the ozone layer. It was counter-culture, clearly against the industry establishment. Youth supported these initiatives for awareness and change. Those that didn't, weren't an organized opposition. Industries reduced sulpherous emisions, successfully addressing the dead lakes and dead trees from acid rain. Sulphates in soaps were controlled, bringing back Lake Erie from being a stew of algae. Chloroflorcarbons were controlled to address the ozone layer.
Then came the next generation. Global warming became a more serious issue, atmospheric carbon dioxide being observed as the cause. It wasn't as localized as the other issues, and not as easy to address as the ozone issues. Environmentalism was mainstream. Suddenly being anti-environmentalist was the "alternative". "open your eyes" was the call to action "big environment money" was the real cause. Supporting environmentalism was supporting the mainstream government.
The environmental movement was successful because it achieved results on a global scale. Not because it's part of a big moneyed establishment conspiracy. It's embarrassing to be on a site with so many of these anti-environmental twits.
Sometimes I think the only way to get them on-board is to make environmentalism look like some alternative viewpoint being suppressed by a self-serving government conspiracy. Like starting stories that the government is taxing hard-working people, subsidizing oil and gas to increase atmospheric carbon so that real-estate speculators can get a windfall return on investments in the Ozarks.
Beating these people over the head with mainstream movies? it only supports the "big environment" theory.
Also, another thing that I'm unable to understand. Even if it Climate Change wasn't true, the technologies that we're implementing are very good.
Yes, this is the "what if climate change is a trick and we built a better world for nothing" argument, and I am right there with you. Worst-case, we realize improvements in efficiency and extend our natural resources. Gee, that would be terrible! Wait. Not terrible. Wonderful. That would be wonderful.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Show me one person who has called for criminal prosecution of climate change deniers
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
Congratulations, you just failed. I am Jack's complete and total lack of surprise. FTFA:
This is not about suing people who say that climate change is not happening. This is about suing corporations that know that AGW is happening, but are saying that it is not. Perhaps the best example because they are actually the most scrupulous example is ExxonMobil. They have outright admitted that AGW is real and that they have long known it to be true — immediately after saying that it was not real. You might also note that one of the last public statements from the last Bush administration was that AGW was real — of course, they retained the belief that it was not serious, but they acknowledged that it was a thing.
Now, show one person who has called for criminal prosecution of climate change deniers, as opposed to frauds. So far, you have failed to do so. This is Slashdot, so you may try again. But this is you on Slashdot, so there is little to no point.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Even when an existential threat stares them in the face, they deny it if it is just a few years away and not too immediate. (Just look at all the deniers posting here.) The human race is incapable of dealing with an existential threat that is a few decades away.
That said, maybe Trump will nuke the planet, thereby reducing the problem as nobody will be around to suffer the consequences...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You lie.
This language is designed to be vague so that anyone who "denies" climate change can be prosecuted. This is not private lawsuits; these are prosecutor-initiated government lawsuits. That is a criminal prosecution, since we are talking about corporations and not individuals.
Also of note:
http://www.overlawyered.com/20...
Alternative Right.
No one (except the really silly) deny climate change. They are skeptical of the MAN MADE portion of that. The Earth is not a static entity that has existed as you see it now for billions of years. Billions of years before mankind, there were cataclysmic events that reshaped entire continents and wiped out entire species, all before the "acid rain" and "environmentalist movement" came onto the scene and want to punish scientific and social progress.
We ARE moving towards a future without fossil fuels. We have evolved and made scientific breakthroughs that help in this matter. What we, at least those of us who value human dignity and liberty, do NOT want the extremists like Al Gore and his ilk to ruin progress over a fallacious and unscientific idea that man is solely responsible for climate change. Or that we have anything to do with it in our BLIP of existence on our planet. If you were to take the last 50,000 years of the Earth, you would see spikes of cold and warm periods throughout. Long before we discovered fire and the internal combustion engine.
What really makes me sad to see what Slashdot has become are people with IDs as low as yours sounding like the morons who blame society for all of man's ills. And how modern, technologically advanced society needs to be robbed of its liberty and progress to stop a phenomenon that HAPPENS ALL THROUGHOUT TIME.
I thought you would be smarter than that. I was wrong.
No one (except the really silly) deny climate change. They are skeptical of the MAN MADE portion of that.
That's because they're stupid. We emit orders of magnitude more CO2 than volcanism and nobody questions whether volcanism influences the climate. The other way they are stupid is that it doesn't actually matter if we produce more or less of anything than does nature, only if we produce enough to take the system past some kind of tipping point.
If you want to be taken for anything but a troll, your trolls are going to have to address these points directly, and not just go on a rant about Al Gore. That shit is old.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So, you are saying you can't be an environmentalist or, in your words, you are anti-environment if you are skeptical of various AGW claims?
Maybe the best way to get certain folks on board is to present information with a sense of self-skepticism and talk about the uncertainties rather than having movie starts tell us disaster is upon us and not even acknowledge those uncertainties.
That is so true, and it occurs on all political sides. Regarding climate change, the "right wing" people currently ignore reality. But I also get see the other side. I'm working in the humanities at a university and you wouldn't believe the kind of shit I have to listen to by (usually) left-wing liberal morons about social constructivism and that there is no objective reality, blablabla. These "theories" are completely beyond good and evil or true and false, and are practically always based on a huge slippery slope argument in combination with a blatant misunderstanding of what makes a good theory. Sometimes the people who defend them are even relatively smart, it's just that the good old audio engineering principle also holds for the choice of literature/information sources: Garbage in, garbage out.
It makes me so sad. :(
The problem is real, it is undisputed and aggressive actions are needed now, if not better yesterday.
How can you argue to act now when we do not have answers to these questions:
Because the partial answers we already have are clear enough. Again, we are already seeing enough of the impact that it is evidently going to be back. It doesn't matter if the bad means "half of the world will no longer be able to grow food" or `just' "a sea level will eat a good chunk of all ocean nations.
You do not even know whether trying to prevent climate change is cheaper then just live with it. And realize that any country which drastically limits the use of the cheapest energy (the one which emits most CO) will disadvantage itself compared to the countries which do not care. It will have less money on military a because of that it may find itself to be liberated from its climate saving government. The government will impose drastic policies on it's voters only when voters support it. Otherwise it is just too risky. And good luck, telling people their energy will be 2-3 times more expensive (and housing more expensive because of stronger insulation requirements) when many of the voters have hard time to pay their bills.
Yes, we do know that living with it is significantly more costly. Look at the raising costs for tropical storms and other freak events alone. It is also wrong that burning fossil fuel is cheaper. If you compare a modern black coal plant with state-of-the-art pollution filtering, it is not cheaper wind energy in large parts of the world. There is a reason why wind turbine are growing a lot even in the USA. Arguing that energy prices will grow by a factor of 2 or 3 is just dishonest.
There is a lot of black and white painting in the discussion about climate change. Noone (wanting to be taken serious) says we should drop all fossil fuels today. That's simply not feasible because there are no alternatives. What should be done is starting to deploy the technology we already have on a wide scale. The USA are a prime example of where large scale deployment of renewable energy would be easy. It is a single national body and has low population density in most parts. It would be easy to have wind turbines enough to consistently produce all the necessary energy and a grid that can actually distribute it. It wouldn't even be that costly to deploy something like that. The problem here in Germany is that a lot of people especially in the south follow the classic NIMBY pattern. Building 100kV+ power lines underground is just ridiculous. *That* is a problem when dealing with voters.
So can I just patiently wait for an affordable electric car an buy one when its ready?
Can I support politicians who support nuclear power? No wait that one's not acceptable.
Theres already more wind power in my county than in yours....
So I'll just go on living my life and waiting for technology to solve this.
I'm fully in agreement there. What I don't like is climate change being used to implement other government controls to run my life.
(1) How bad is it going to be if the current trend continues?
(2) Can the effects be reasonably limited or reversed?
(3) What is the least/cheapest amount of work to keep humanity alive?
You do not even know whether trying to prevent climate change is cheaper then just live with it.
I would say that question is covered by the answering the first three. Before you can address the question of whether it's "cheaper to just live with it", first you need to know "how bad is it going to be if the current trend continues."
And realize that any country which drastically limits the use of the cheapest energy (the one which emits most CO) will disadvantage itself compared to the countries which do not care.
That's an assertion. It is not at all clear if it's true. Burning coal is 18th century technology. Moving on to more efficient 21st century technologies may well be an advantage, not a disadvantage, and being early in adopting technologies that the rest of the world will move to could have significant advantages.
Reducing carbon usage required more technology, not less. In general, developing and improving technologies-- for almost anything-- seems, in the past, to be something that has had benefits.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
No, I'm only commenting on the counter-culture draw to anti-environmentalism.
I agree, scepticism is important for science. If you deny AGW claims and you're a scientist, you're in a very small minority. That doesn't mean you're not a good scientist. You will be scrutinized more carefully, but that's not a bad thing.
There's decades of more nuanced materials on AGW. These documentaries or docudramas are not scientific papers, and they're not where most geeks get their info.
The problem we have in our modern world is that people believe what they want to believe. For the first time in history, nearly every person has the whole of human knowledge at their fingertips - you can find the answer to any question with 30 seconds of googling/wikipedia-ing.
This video tells "believers" what they already know - and will be completely ignored by those who don't.
"An Inconvenient Truth" set the stage - it may have swayed a few minds - but essentially, everyone who already knew and understood had their deepest fears confirmed - and the people who didn't want to believe simply dismissed it out of hand...possibly never even watched it.
This is everywhere these days. Donald Trump can say any lies he wants - people who support him will believe absolutely anything he says, no matter the evidence to the contrary. The people who were convinced to vote for "Brexit" in the UK were similarly immune to fact when the facts didn't fit their world view.
So what we need as a civilization is NOT more videos like this. What we need is to somehow awaken people's minds to the idea of seeking TRUTH. To think for themselves. To look up the fact - and if they doubt the fact, to follow the little blue numbers on the Wikipedia pages. To think for themselves. To believe what is actually true, and not what they want to be true.
For me - global climate change is very real. What's wrong is that we're trying to fix it by switching to LED lamps, recycling coke cans and driving hybrid SUV's. We need to look for changes that'll work...stop farming cows, for example. We can all, quite easily, give up beef and cow-milk. That alone would have more impact than replacing every incandescent bulb, replacing every car with a Nissan Leaf, and recycling every scrap of recyclable material to perfection. The second thing we need to do is to cut our population to maybe a quarter of what it currently is. This is REALLY hard to do. But that's the thing that'll ultimately do.
So even the promoters of fixing things need to step back from their current recommendations and check the facts. It's actually not that hard to figure out what's required.
www.sjbaker.org
What is disputable is the reason for the changes. Is it man-made or cyclical? The planet has seen both global warming and cooling over multiple eons. The cycle will be seen again, with or without man.
We are stewards on this planet to protect the resources we're given. However, it's also important to stop panicking as Leo and Al seem to be. The logical steps I see coming from Elon Musk and other innovators will have an impact on conserving resources.
Just because we're not riding in the same bandwagon, doesn't mean we're living in a "fact-free" zone. There is some degree of uncertainty in all of this.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
No, mathematics are an art, not a science.
Big difference. Science looks at reality and tries to make predictions about it. Mathematics doesn't give a damn about reality. It just produces logical conclusions based on axioms which may or may not be in any way related to reality. A true mathematician doesn't care.
In fact, there's a professor in mathematics at a Belgian university (I think it's in Gent) who likes to say things like "every now and then somebody calls me up to tell me they've found a practical application for my work. I always feel that's a bit of a pity."
I'd like to emphasis that just about in every 1st world country on the planet the general populace agrees and acknowledges the science that man-made climate change is real and happening. It is only in the US that anti-eco idiots appear in such numbers have such a widespread platform and that they are actually listened to. These crackpots would be laughed out of the room in just about any european country, by any party, left or right.
This all fits snuggly into the type of political debate taking place in the US right now, that has everybody outside the US shake their head in disbelief.
Just wanted to get that out.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
To run your car analogy off the cliff...
Science is predicting a traffic jam on the highway, but it's over the horizon, so we can't see how bad it really is yet. We are in our car accelerating at the moment and we are debating whether to let off the gas or hit the brakes. Except the scientists haven't said anything about the fact that we might have converted to a flying car by the time we get to the jam and would be able to fly right over it. There is also the potential that we could get off on a side road and take a slightly longer route that ultimately saves the trip. We could theoretically also just leave the road and drive through the grass to avoid the jam even though it would be very hard on the car and be very uncomfortable.
The people demanding we slam on the brakes don't see anything other than the traffic jam. Those are the kinds of people that end up causing accidents by over braking way early and catching people by surprise.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I see comments like yours and think that you're a pretty informed person. You seem to know a lot about the history of the earth's climate. You also seem to think that if you point out that the climate has changed in the past due to non-man made causes, then that's the proof that will convince climate change supporters to stop being so worried.
Everyone knows what you're saying already, so why are they still worried? Here's what you're missing...
It's not the fact that the climate is changing that people are worried about. It's the fact that it's changing exponentially faster than it ever has in earth's known history. It's this rate of change that's the problem, not the change itself. And in case you haven't heard this already, the problem with it changing so fast is that it outpaces the speed at which adaptation through evolution can occur in all but the short life-spanned bacteria. So, if any plants/animals aren't already able to adapt with their current biology and features (without adapting through evolution), they will go extinct. And since we as humans rely on the environment to live, having a mass extinction of plants and animals is going to be a problem for us.
Hurting people without "criminal prosecution" is always ok? Or is it only ok to hurt people when they have bad politics?
Like so many other things, people slap a magnet on the back of their minivan to Raise Awareness, and then pretend they've done something. You being all alarmed or convinced or otherwise aware of the problem after seeing the movie, doesn't actually accomplish anything. DO SOMETHING. Plant a tree. Plant a thousand trees. Install solar panels. Change your light bulbs over to LED. Turn down the thermostat. Properly inflate your tires. Get a job closer to home. DO SOMETHING.
I've planted around 10,000 trees, and installed around 10KW of solar panels. The solar panels are on a 4-5 year schedule to pay back the money spent on them, after which it's pure profit. AND, all the CO2 emissions that have been avoided by having them producing energy. I changed jobs to reduce my drive by an hour a day. We even gave tree seedlings to our wedding reception guests. Maybe I don't have a magnet on the back of my car, but, to me, actually doing something about it is more important than "raising awareness".
Solar is a great way to do something, and, have a great investment. Where else can you put your money and get a ~5 year ROI?
The science says that doubling the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere results in 3.7 W/m^2 of additional atmospheric forcing. This is generally held to equate to a 1 degree difference in global temperature. Water vapor is known to be an excellent greenhouse gas, and warmer air can hold an exponentially larger amount of water. There are vast reservoirs of liquid water on this planet. The feedback cycle is complicated but strongly positive. There are a number of other obvious feedbacks connected with melting ice.
You can talk about models and trust all day. People argued about Einstein too. His theories were even more controversial and less well-supported. You don't need rhetoric, you need facts. We've been looking for facts that would disprove AGW for about a century, and we haven't found them because they don't exist. Disputing global warming is very much like disputing gravity; you're inherently proposing wholesale violation of known physical laws.
Now, there is some room to argue about severity, but not much. Arrhenius calculated about a six degree increase per doubling of CO2, and a significant part of work of the last hundred years has been improving on that estimate. We know that the sensitivity cannot be less than 1 degree, and there are a bunch of really obvious reasons why H2O would magnify the effect. So now we've blown past 400ppm and show no signs of stopping. We don't need a model to figure out what's going to happen here. The model is to figure out how quickly this is going to happen. We're already seeing lots of melting glaciers. I grew up in Alaska, and even in the span of my life the change has been dramatic. When you're standing on the spot where several cubic miles of ice has been for the last few millennia, and that ice has completely vanished to the point where the glacier is no longer even visible, and that change happened in ten years, it becomes very hard to dispute that the world is changing dramatically. The entire state of Alaska is melting, particularly on the tidewater and low alpine glaciers which are more accessible and noticeable. The same thing is happening with damn near every glaciated area in the world.
It is not enough to suggest the models are inaccurate. You are in need of some fact which shows they are wrong. Then you can start trying to reconcile the observed warming with your theory. Alternately you could examine the published research to find out whether improvements could be made to the models. You know, like all the rest of those climate scientists. Your trust issues are the result of your choices. You have chosen to elevate your own doubt over empirical fact. So now you have put yourself in the position of picking and choosing what parts of the world to believe in. Personally I try not to get into arguments with reality, but if you do then being labeled a "denier" is probably the least of your problems.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Your logical fallacy is: Genetic
"You judged something as either good or bad on the basis of where it comes from, or from whom it came. This fallacy avoids the argument by shifting focus onto something's or someone's origins. It's similar to an ad hominem fallacy in that it leverages existing negative perceptions to make someone's argument look bad, without actually presenting a case for why the argument itself lacks merit."
Behavior modification is necessary
... for everyone that is not a member of the globalist elite club, who will be enforcing the desired behavior of the serfs.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia