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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?
I didn't believe in climate change before, but now that I see it on Youtube with Leonardo it makes it a) really real and b) happening as we speak.
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.
Just dropping three points here:
* Sea levels *are* rising, and its negatively impacting the lives of people already, today: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/...
* greenland ice is melting http://www.independent.co.uk/e...
* glaciers are melting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
All three of these things are hopefully undisputable.
Yes, science isn't sure about everything, but it is quite sure about this, sure enough that it should be trusted. And please do base your political decision on what the scientific consensus provides, everything else would be totally irresponsible.
Well said. I'd just like to add:
Disputes over the key scientific facts of global warming are more prevalent in the popular media than in the scientific literature, where such issues are treated as resolved, and more prevalent in the United States than globally.
source
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
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.
The problem conservatives have is that they've let the liberals own the issue. So of course liberals will come up with some giant government solution. Rather than come up with some small government solutions, conservatives chose science denial. Once the science got to be more certain, they doubled down. It's beyond debate that it is a thing that is happening and we're the root cause, but they've tripled down. There's no way for them to back down now without losing face and pissing off donors.
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!
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
Alternative Right.
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.
There are literally 303 references to back up the information in the article linked by GP. I'd say there's a lot more credibility there than there is in your random internet comment.
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.'"
My car has "climate" controls; not "weather" controls.
Your car has "Automatic HVAC" which your vendor has chosen to market to you under the name "climate control" — I am in the same situation, but I do not mistake this for having some relevance when discussing climate change.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So if you are going to intertwine science and politics like that, in ways that will invariably lead to the needless suffering of many millions of people if you are wrong, what happens if you are wrong?
Indeed. You've got two areas here. People claim the problem is so huge that all means become justified. So there's a tendency towards eco-fascism. But to be clear, a tendency as most environmentalists are genuinely nice people. However, one has to be careful how these things get hijacked, just like, I'm sure it is fine for a good government to spy on people in order to catch terrorists with dirty bombs, as the threat is just too big, but those spying powers can be hijacked. So that's the political side of it. Back in 1970 you already had Ecologist magazine talking about the population bomb, and back then you also had films like Zero Population Growth (ZPG) doing a narrative on the totalitarian dystopia, which the population bomb view, could imply. And besides, in climate change, there's been a tendency to polarise the issues, often as "big oil" versus the "little eco-friendly guy". But how much do wind farms cost to build? Billions. And who benefits from building them? All sorts of people, including big gas. Because you need gas to backup the wind. So is it really big oil v. little guy? No. There's lots of vested interests all round. And that's fine, because big infrastructure means big money. So there is a lot at stake.
The other area then is the science itself. Here they invented the term "denialist" simply to mask the basic truth that the science cannot know the future climate of the planet. It is unknowable. Science has some wonderful methods. And often they can't be used because the thing you are studying doesn't allow them to be used. For example, if I was studying nutrition, I would lock people in a cage and feed different groups different things all their lives, and see the outcomes. Oh wait, that's against human rights. Can't use that method. So the kinds of rigorous methods you can use to smash atoms and crush concrete, you can't use to study humans. So we use other softer methods which require more inference and guess-work with poor quality data. Likewise, we can't study the climate in a "let's bombard a few Earths with different gasses and rays" way. So we use a lot of modelling. Climate science is one of the biggest for use of computer simulations, I gather. But because this natural vagueness runs counter to the "it is settled" claim, they have to call people "denialists". That's like someone calling me a "dog-hater" when I complain to the owner that their dog ran straight across a park and chased me and bit me. It masks the fact that they were not in control of their dog. So I'm the "dog hater".
The real issue here is trust. We naturally trust the organisations which are supposed to be the sources of knowledge, and socially, if you're a scientist, you have to trust your profession and trust your colleagues and a lot of this goes by reputation and power-structures. They are funding you, deciding if you get funding, and y'all have to work together. And the point is to uphold standards. But there are issues around the basic vagueness of some kinds of data and the way certain views become established and accepted simply in an evolutionary way, that ideas compete and by accident some become more prominent, and sure, science's validity is that it is self correcting, however, the big point here is that self correction takes time.
There are cases where we know that self-correction took 50 or 60 years. It is related to human lifespan. So that is the risk. Yeah, we have to act, given the current knowledge, and, you can't magic away the risk that in 50 years the knowledge will be quite different. So sure, you "can't wait", but just be honest and admit that in 50 years, the view can be wrong. So don't stand in the way of self-correction. Stop calling people "denialists".
Calling anyone who voices criticism a "denialist" is a sure way to interfere with science's ability to self correct. Once you go down that route, it stops being science.
Now, does anyone have a link to those charts which show the models continue to run much hotter than the real climate?
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.
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.'"
My car has "climate" controls; not "weather" controls.
Your car has "Automatic HVAC" which your vendor has chosen to market to you under the name "climate control" — I am in the same situation, but I do not mistake this for having some relevance when discussing climate change.
No, no, the button in my car says it controls the climate: when I set it, the whole planet changes temperature to suit my comfort level. I saw it on TV./
Yes, there are lot of of morons expressing their beliefs on IMDB for some reason.
This was especially funny:
"In reality 66% of scientists have no opinion about AGW"
...In reality 95% of scientists have no opinion about gravity. So?
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.
My biggest argument thus far is that so far I've seen absolutely NOTHING on the policy side which has a reasonable chance at doing anything other than marginally at the edges. The solution to this problem is not going to come from attempting to modify human behavior by carrot and stick. Sure, it can help but it's not going to solve the problem. The solution is going to come from some technical advancement that is cost effective for people to use vs what they already do now.
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.
or if I wanted always winter I'd go to Canada.
If you want always winter, we don't want you up here. We hate winter. It's why we're so nice - we use up all our hatred on the weather.
walked the dinosaur....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83nFiPoSuzU
I've waited 30 years for this to happen.
>So if you are going to intertwine science and politics like that, in ways that will invariably lead to the needless suffering of many millions of people if you are wrong, what happens if you are wrong?
I keep seeing zealots on the other side shielding coal mines from responsibility for the millions of people they kill every year (it's totally coincidental that the highest rates of respiratory illness in the world always happen in towns with coal mines - and the highest worker death-toll of any energy source in the world is pure happenstance). I keep seeing them complain about Native Americans in North Dakota who don't want a pipeline built over their land.
You want to know what will happen if we're wrong ? Nothing of value will have been lost- there is literally not a single change being advocated that would harm your liberty in any way, all we're proposing is to replace archaic 19th century technology with the best 21st century technologies available. And what if we are wrong and did nothing ? You act like that's a non-effect situation. But we could end the suffering of billions of people around the world with the SAME actions that we need to fight climate change - and you would rather have their suffering persist.
You think you're the one defending liberty ? The Jackbooted Thugs are not shooting at the people wanting to build the pipelines, they are shooting at the people whose land is being ruined to build the pipeline against their wishes. The government overreach isn't acting against fossil fuels -it's defending them. If liberty/politics is a factor then it is, at the very least, a zero-effect change considering the actions of governments FOR fossil fuels are ALREADY as bad as they come, it will only be more of the same in this regard.
But everything else ? Clean air to breath, clean water to drink - those things are hugely beneficial for everybody, even if we were wrong about climate change then so fucking what ? Would you turn down a guaranteed million dollars with a chance at a billion dollars because you may not get the billion ?
Why turn down clean air, clean water, safer vehicles, safer cities, reduced exploitation - because you fear something that is no better under the systems you defend ?
If anything - renewable energy which naturally favours lots and lots of small businesses competing in an open market is a much better deal for consumers than fossil fuels which tend to require massive infrastructure investments that turn them into natural monopolies where no real competition has ever existed.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
(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
Why is he letting National Geographic spread these unpatriotic facts?!!!
He should be more like Florida Governor Rick Scott, who banned state employees from using the term "global warming".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
None of the things you list as things that were predicted but have not happened were predicted to have happened by 2016.
Some of them weren't predicted at all, and some were predicted as things that would happen by 2050, and quite a few were predictions for "by the end of the century."
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.
Yes, and those are entirely reasonable things to do when people come up with "new statistical methods" and demand immediate action.
I'm sorry, but no.
Death threats are never an appropriate response.
If your side thinks that they need to issue death threats to rebut a scientific argument, this is basically evidence that they are not arguing with the science.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
How many billions of people should shiver in the dark this winter to prevent a few thousand tropical islanders from having to worry about the water? What's the scientific consensus on that?
Let's just say the one side is completely correct. So what? Do you think everyone will say "I want to help -- please let me shiver in the dark every winter and bake in the heat every summer until I die"?
You want to take "agressive action" to "fight climate change". Ok. What if people refuse to be subjected to your aggression and decide to defend themselves and their way of life? What's your plan for that?
And wake me when there are penalties (fines/taxes/etc.) for having "too many" offspring
If you ever did that they'd call it racist. It's not whitey popping out 8 kids.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Correction: excepting Mormons.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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
No one (except the really silly) deny climate change. They are skeptical of the MAN MADE portion of that.
If they were in fact skeptical, that would be fine. But there are far too many people who have one-sided skepticism: they are not merely skeptical but completely unwilling to listen to one side-- the actual science--but completely credulous to claims by people with no actual expertise at all saying that they science is wrong.
In fact, there are good reasons to think that human-produced carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gasses emitted into the atmosphere, has an effect on climate. The current measurements of about 1C increase in average global temperature is well in line with what you'd expect from the basic physics. So far, there really isn't a credible alternate model.
...We emit orders of magnitude more CO2 than volcanism and nobody questions whether volcanism influences the climate.
Well, yes... but primarily volcanoes affect climate by emitting volcanic aerosols, which reduce sunlight and cause temporary cooling. It's not due to their carbon dioxide emissions, which are (as you point out) very small compared to human emissions. The aerosols are, actually, an excellent natural experiment that allows us to see the effects of a reduction in solar input.
[snip] ... 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.
I will agree with that! Al Gore isn't a climate scientist, he isn't cited by climate scientists, he isn't even talked about by climate scientists. He's a politician who held the vice presidency, a not-very-important office, two decades ago. Really, if somebody's only contribution to talking about climate is to bring up Al Gore, about all I can think is that they don't know anything and don't have anything substantive to say about the subject.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
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.
Science is never settled. It's always open to re-evaluation upon presentation of new evidence.
You don't seem to understand what "settled" means. "Settled" doesn't mean that new evidence is rejected; it means we've reached the point where the burden of proof is clearly on one side of a question.
If you invent a perpetual motion machine, a physicist isn't obliged to consider your position carefully. He just says, "That violates conservation of energy." and he's done. This is useful, and indeed necessary feature of the way science works; otherwise scientists would spend all their time re-litigating well-established results because some crackpot had a brainstorm.
Nonetheless it is possible to mount a credible attack on settled science. Retroviruses turned the whole "central dogma of molecular biology" on its head. Yes, they actually called it that. And there are serious attempts at overturning conservation of momentum using quantum theory. An attack on a well-established theory has to be narrow in its specific claims and impeccably supported. If it succeeds, then the burden of proof is subsequently altered.
We've reached the point where it's unreasonable to demand scientists spend their disproving your beliefs about what is happening to climate and why. It doesn't mean you can't attack the theory of anthropogenic climate change, you just do it from a point where the burden of proof is on you.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Right there you're showing that you're not familar with the actual science. If you would read, for example, the IPCC Working Group 1 report, there is exhaustive discussion of the uncertainties-- the whole report repeatedly addresses how well do we know what we know, what are the sources of uncertainty, how much uncertainty is there, and what do we need to do to reduce our uncertainty.
If you want "talk about uncertainties", look at the actual science, where uncertainties are laid out in detail, not at the popular media (and certainly not at the blogger commentary.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
http://leonardodicaprio.org/
What's your contribution?
Well it does when a pebble strikes your condensor and leaks POISONOUS REFRIGERANT into the atmosphere.
You realize you can purge any R134A AC system and fill it with propane who no loss in performance or seal integrity??
You realize that R134A is used in asthma inhalers? At least, the good ones? I've got one right here and It hasn't hurt me in the sli
No, but seriously, we don't use propane in automotive AC because it's a fire risk. It's used less and less commonly in general, and only in cases where if there's a leak it's not going to cause a fire.
ASE certified AC tech here
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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?
That is spot on. And there was no need, incidentally. McKinsey has produced a bunch of cost-curves for various types of actions to reduce carbon intensity. There was plenty in there for conservative politicians to promote, had they so wished.
http://www.mckinsey.com/busine...
No need. Birth rates are dropping fast in almost all countries, as rates of female participation in education increase. See Hans Rosling on this
You lie.
I'm citing your source. If you do not want a source cited, don't fucking cite it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"The planet is fine, the people are fucked." - George Carlin
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Does Google not work in your country? I can't be bothered to copy and paste the results for you here, but just do a search for your own phrase "criminal prosecution of climate change deniers" (without the quotes). I am pretty sure you will find more than one.
Oh, ok... here is one to get you started: http://www.washingtontimes.com...
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.
He's mentioned in the credits: Alexei Berteig. He does lots of commercial, documentary, and now entertainment video work. He recently moved to Vancouver from Beijing. You can check his stuff out at Fashioner Films.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
What is it about settled physics that you don't like?
Totally off-topic, but the lack of FTL travel and also the lack of flying cars are quite annoying. The lack of anti-gravity is frustrating. The fact that physics says we will probably never get those is what hurts the most.
Oh, and entropy. Fuck entropy, man.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Perhaps an example would help.
Suppose you write a scientific paper which states, offhand, that T-Rex was a cold-blooded theropod dinosaur of the late Cretaceous period, about 70 million years ago. Since the thermoregulation of dinosaurs is currently still an open question, you have to support any definite an unqualified claim of cold-bloodlessness with evidence. However you don't have a burden of proof on the taxonomic classification or geological period because those questions are currently settled and everyone knows the evidence supporting those conclusions.
Now suppose I write a paper that says T-Rex was a warm-blooded theropod dinosaur which went extinct 4000 years ago because it wouldn't fit on Noah's ark. I could actually do that. I wouldn't have to justify saying T-Rex was a theropod dinosaur, but if I wanted people to take me seriously (i.e., publish me in an actual scientific journal), I'd have to supply proof for every other claim in that sentence. I'd have a burden of proof to show that dinosaurs are warm-blooded (because that's an open question), that they lived 4000 years ago (because that contradicts settled science) and that the Noah's ark story is factually true (because that contradicts settled science).
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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."
Look at the raising costs for tropical storms and other freak events alone.
I still have not seen any convincing evidence that climate change is making tropical storms worse or more frequent, or causing any additional "freak events". "Because Bill Nye said so" is not convincing evidence. The "rising costs" of damage is completely explained by the rising cost of development in areas affected by tropical storms.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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
"You judged something as either good or bad on the basis of where it comes from, or from whom it came.
I'm not sure that is a logical fallacy. Breitbart has very little credibility. I've encountered tried fact checking a few articles in the past and every time they seem to boil down to unsourced facts or experts who appear to have little expertise. Sometimes you get blog posts with no backing too.
Once you've debunked the first 5 Breitbart articles and not had a single one which comes up as vaguely sound, one can entirely reasonably conclude that the source is unsound and so anything pointing to Breitbart as a source has no credibility.
That doesn't of course prove the claim it false, it just means the claim has no veracity, much as if there was no corroborating source.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The current trend is no statisically significant warming for about 18 years,
No, it's not. You're quoting denier talking points from several years ago. The purported "pause"-- which never reached the level of statistical significance-- went back to a rising trend years ago. http://blogs.discovermagazine.... Get some up-to-date talking points, why not?
and considering how few sunspots there have been lately, it's likely to cool down a bit as well.
Considering that meteorologists and climate scientists have been looking for a link between sunspots and temperature for over a hundred years now, and have still failed to find any link, this is a speculation that doesn't seem to have any evidence. The latest solar cycle (24) was lower than the previous one... but the temperature rise during this cycle was more than during the previous one. So, if anything, the most recent solar cycles show the opposite from what you suggest.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"... people who support [Trump] 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 I take it that your particular world view is the only "correct" one? Your beliefs are entirely based on "TRUTH", evidence and verifiable facts and are in no way biased toward what you want to believe?
Nonsense. It is both arrogant and naive to think that you are immune to the same underlying thought processes that are at work in the people you are attempting to ridicule. All human beings, yourself included, have their own unique reality tunnel through which they observe the world and are strongly inclined to seek out evidence to confirm their existing beliefs while dismissing evidence to the contrary. All of the "true" material you've gathered through web searches and Wikipedia footnotes doesn't make your reality tunnel unique and special. Nor does it make you invulnerable to the same sorts of confirmation bias which exists in Trump/Clinton supporters, people who think alien spacecraft have landed on earth or those who believe in the paranormal.
There are billions of devout monotheists in the world. Ask any of them to produce "evidence" to support their beliefs and they'll have plenty of it. Will you exhaustively study the bible and koran to evaluate their "evidence" for a deity, or will you dismiss it out-of-hand because it doesn't conform with your existing beliefs?
I'm not saying your evidence is right or wrong or that your "truth" is true or false, but the psychological activity involved in interpreting evidence to confirm our existing beliefs is very easy to see in others, but extremely difficult to notice in ourselves.
It will eventually. Try building something out of steel on Venus!
Canadians are known for being polite, not nice. There's a difference. Personally, I think it's because if you weren't polite, you'd all kill each other before the first thaw of spring.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
The problem with deniers is that all they need is one source for them to declare hundreds of other sources wrong. Go to the bottom of the Wikipedia article and look at the sources cited there. If that's not good enough, there are literally thousands of reputable sources to choose from. Well over 95% of which support the general conclusion that man-made global warming is real, and is really dangerous. Besides, just throwing up your hands and saying somebody else's sources are shitty doesn't make your argument for you. Where are your sources, and what yardstick do you measure shittiness by?
Then present some new evidence.
Oh there is NO evidence against the theory ? Then until that changes - the science is settled, and that's the meaning of the word in this context.
The "new evidence" is not "new". It's "old". There are thousands of videos, television shows, documentaries, heck go out in your back yard or to the nearest area of the most exposed rock and hack into it a bit. The evidence of global warming and cooling is already there. It happened long before Humans existed. It occured as Humans came into the picture. There are blips upward and downward based on things like meteor impacts and volcanic eruptions, but they are difficult to present as part of the big picture because the rock record doesn't collect natural data from a 100 year time frame and leave it at the same proportional thickness and "straightness", if you will. The more time passes, the more the rocks compress and the blips (like the World War 2, 4 year climate change period) become less visible. You can see it now, but 10,000 years from now, you're pushing it. Add another 0 to the end of that number and it's almost undetectable but it IS still detectable. Expensive equipment has to be used to analyze it and no one wants to pay for that because there's no net gain from a final statement of "things are progressing normally".
People with money only put it in to something they get a return from, unless they are attempting to educate the world. Now, think about it, who will be taken seriously? The oil companies funneling funds into information that is alarming where they have an interest in the "new products" that will be designed to overcome it, or the scientist with a Masters and Ph.D who says "the average processes found to occur since 3,000,000,000 years ago and today are leading to a conclusion that there is nothing going on to be alarmed about. Who is going to pay that scientist? If there isn't money, there isn't data to counterbalance data from other sources that are paid for and even encouraged. The common statement of the person who has memorized phrases and numbers (God, "Show me the peer-reviewed data" is the least realistic and educated I have read yet) as a final point in a sentence to think through everything again is absurd. Peer-reviewed data is EXCELLENT and should always be a factor. When you have money being funneled in to a biased idea with the outcome expected to support the hypothesis, and money being funneled in to another entity with the same hypothesis, ummm... Gee.. I wonder if the data will show as "scientifically absolutely true"...? Of course it will. There's money on the line and every Human being is concerned about themselves first, sometimes their offspring next, and the rest is a haze. You only have one side fighting a point with loads of money as encouragement. The other side looks at the data with all they have and shows that there's a trend of compression in ice and rock data over time, so logically, of course, you see more "change" and more of a delta from now to a short period backward. You see huge events from the past in compressed matter, but not the tiny ones. By tiny, I mean less than a century.
It's not "settled". It's "incomplete". The ones who say it's "settled" are akin to a parent saying, "...because I said so."
Mathematics is not an art. It's a way of proving truth and actualities. The solving of problems might take on an "art form" or people that solve at high levels might be considered "an artist" in mathematics, but that doesn't make it art. Mathematics can prove or disprove the science. You seem to be confusing "pure mathematics" with actual mathematics. Big difference.
.02C then later said the tolerance for correctness of that claim was ± .1C. That means that there is absolutely no chance that the number they claimed is accurate. That's mathematics and there is no evolving model of it that would change to make that number being any where close to being correct. So when someone shouts that from the mountain top and then ignores the questioning of how their math doesn't add up, I am going to believe that person is full of shit, mathematically speaking.
That's why I believe the group that pushes AGW ignores math because it disproves many of their claims. In 2014, I believe, Nasa and Noaa claimed it was the warmest year ever by
No one (except the really silly) deny climate change.
I wish that were true, but it is not. I know several very smart people, who have bought Mr. Trump's assertions that climate change is a Chinese hoax. Of course before that, they were blaming it on the "liberal media" or the "left-wing academics." My question was always, "why would anybody be making this up?" The answers were all over the map, but they were all equally insane. These are normally the guys that say "follow the money." The problem for them is that when you follow the money on climate science, the picture is pretty clear. There is not a big industry supporting global warming research, and the denier crowd is funded almost exclusively by multi-national oil companies.
In your case you say society is being "robbed of its liberty." Who is robbing us? To what end? Who could possibly benefit from this really bad news? Does somebody benefit if I turn my thermostat up a couple of degrees or drive a little more conservatively? What is more likely, is that my grandchildren are being robbed of their future, by some billionaire businessmen in Houston, The Haugue, and Dhahran.
Look again at those historical "spikes." They are more like bulges. What we are facing now is a precipice. You are right that humanity is a blip on geologic timescales. That should make this more alarming, not less.
The very nature of climate and the history of this planet is not enough evidence to prove that climate changes, sometimes DRASTICALLY without humans even existing?
OK, I'll handle just one of your points; the rest I'll leave to you to work out for yourself.
Yes, climate scientists have known about the solar cycles you speak about -- the Milankovitch cycles -- and have known about them since the 1920s. This in fact was the basis for the 1950s consensus that the Earth was heading in a cooling phase. The changes were are experiencing are going in the opposite direction than what the orbital factors that drive ice ages would predict. As for other changes in solar output -- those are measurable with instruments, particularly orbital instruments, which we have had in place since the 1970s. These show very minor fluctuations in luminosity -- on the order of fifteen hundreths of a percent.
Climate change is real. It's always BEEN real. The part about us "breaking" the world is what we need to put on the shelf and talk about CLIMATE change, rather than it being "our fault." You attract more bees with honey than with vinegar.
What people would like to be true (honey) and prefer not to be true (vinegar) is irrelevant. It's not a case of "breaking" the world, it's a case of changing the world faster than we can adapt to it. I refer you to the obligatory xkcd explanation.
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You know, people who think that scientists don't like controversy probably don't know many of them. Shifting consensus is how reputations and careers are made. And if there were some credible line of inquiry that promised we could burn as much fossil fuel as we wanted, it wouldn't be hard at all to find funding for it.
For that matter, I'd personally like it if we could burn as much fossil fuel as we wanted -- with local pollution controls of course. But that's wishful thinking.
If you want to create some kind of grand social dynamics theory of climate change science, you should at least take time to familiarize yourself with the literature on AGW. If you go into Google Scholar you'll see that the consensus in the 1950s was that the Earth was entering a cooling period. It took fifty years to shift that consensus and the substance of how it shifted is worth studying before engaging in armchair sociology.
We're in a warming trend (actually overdue, given the rock and ice records).
Actually we should be in a cooling period. You can't just plot out the cycles and infer a period, the main driver of the cycles is the interaction of the Earth's orbital and rotational precession, which is why scientists used to think we were heading into a cooling period that should last for about the next twenty-thousand years.
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