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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'"
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.'"
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?
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./
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.
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.
walked the dinosaur....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83nFiPoSuzU
I've waited 30 years for this to happen.
(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.
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
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?
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.
http://leonardodicaprio.org/
What's your contribution?
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?
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.'"
Or maybe the doomsday predictions are just wrong (or greatly exaggerated) this time, like every other time ever.
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.
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."
"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.
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