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World Is Finally Waking Up To Climate Change, Says 'Hothouse Earth' Author (theguardian.com)

The scorching temperatures and forest fires of this summer's heatwave have finally stirred the world to face the onrushing threat of global warming, claims the climate scientist behind the recent "hothouse Earth" report. Following an unprecedented 270,000 downloads of his study, Johan Rockstrom, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said he had not seen such a surge of interest since 2007, the year the Nobel prize was awarded to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Guardian: "I think that in future people will look back on 2018 as the year when climate reality hit," said the veteran scientist. "This is the moment when people start to realize that global warming is not a problem for future generations, but for us now." The heatwave has dominated headlines across the northern hemisphere this summer. New temperature records have been set in Africa and cities in Australia, Taiwan, Georgia and the west coast of US. Heat stroke or forest fires have killed at least 119 in Japan, 29 in South Korea, 91 in Greece and nine in California. There have even been freak blazes in Lapland and elsewhere in the Arctic circle, while holidaymakers and locals alike have sweltered in unusually hot weather in southern Europe. Coming amid this climate chaos, the "hothouse Earth" paper by Rockstrom and his co-authors struck a chord with the public by spelling out the huge and growing risk that emissions are pushing the planet's climate off the path it has been on for 2.5m years.

354 comments

  1. Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm a climate change believer but intensity of forest fires are the result of decades of misguided policy of preventing all forest fires.

    1. Re:Really forest fires? by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The increase of forest fires is due to humans moving into forested areas and starting fires (inadvertently or on purpose). Yes, it really is THAT simple. If you start building in forested areas and bring more humans into forested areas then the number of forest fires will increase. This is another example how LOCAL environmental destruction has a huge impact. The same goes with flooding: the reason flooding seems to be getting worse is due to the destruction of marshlands and buffer areas and building hardscape surfaces on coastal areas. It has nothing to do with "rising sea levels" or anything else. You can't destroy the local environment and expect things to remain the same.

    2. Re:Really forest fires? by famebait · · Score: 3, Informative

      intensity of forest fires are the result of decades of misguided policy of preventing all forest fires

      Locally, yes, it certainly doesn't help. When fires are up in isolated arctic wildernesses, that's something else.

      --
      sudo ergo sum
    3. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not quite true. Climate is changing weather patterns, such that summers are hotter and drier than they used to be. The problem is that areas that were once too damp to burn are now tinder-dry by August. In the past, it did not matter so much if somebody tossed a cigarette butt into some weeds because the area was sufficiently moist to not start up. That is no longer the case. Fires that would not have happened 50 years ago are happening now. Some is due to lightning, others are due to people.

    4. Re:Really forest fires? by Train0987 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually its the opposite. California stopped most logging and forest management activities decades ago at he behest of environmentalists. These fires are a result of that lack of management.

    5. Re:Really forest fires? by oogoliegoogolie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Throw in entire forested areas where the mature trees have been killed by invasive beetles & turned into bone-dry kindling, a century of forest-fire prevention policy of fighting every forest fire, thus stopping nature from doing it's own 'controlled burns' to burn up small areas of old dry growth, and large-scale clear-cutting that dries out nearby forested areas, well of course forest fires will become more common.

    6. Re:Really forest fires? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The same goes with flooding: the reason flooding seems to be getting worse is due to the destruction of marshlands and buffer areas and building hardscape surfaces on coastal areas. It has nothing to do with "rising sea levels" or anything else. You can't destroy the local environment and expect things to remain the same.

      Whereas flooding IS made much worse nowadays compared to the past by the reasons you state above there is no reason to put "rising sea levels" in quotes. This is a known phenomenon. Even if you don't believe in global warming for whatever reason, sea levels are very accurately measured by satellites and unless all the global space agencies are conspiring to lie about sea levels*; sea level rising is a fact.

      Coupled with sea level rising though, and perhaps a much bigger problem in most places is the fact that many coastal cities are sinking. With ground water being pumped out it causes subsidence- many cities are sinking at a much faster rate than sea level is rising.

      * Which probably is more believable than believing global warming is fake- but still absurd.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    7. Re:Really forest fires? by XXongo · · Score: 1

      Both.

      There are many factors involved. One is increased summer temperature (and concommitant drier forests) due to climate change.

      Not the only factor. But one factor.

      Yes, it really is THAT simple.

      Few things are simple.

    8. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sea level rise has been extremely steady, around 3mm per year for a LONG time, with no acceleration.
      Check the tide gauge data as well and post your data.
      Cities sinking has nothing to do with climate.
      https://wattsupwiththat.com/page/2/?s=sea+level https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/02/errorless-global-mean-sea-level-rise/

    9. Re:Really forest fires? by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Rising sea levels is a fact, but it isn't causing massive flooding. That doesn't make any sense. The seas are not "rising" 30 meters above flood barriers because of climate change. The flooding is caused by runoff from hardscapes and no where for the water to go. It is ridiculous to think that rising sea levels measured in millimeters can cause massive flooding. But if you get rid of all the swampland and marshes where do you think the water is going to go???

    10. Re:Really forest fires? by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

      No, it really IS that simple. Local environmental destruction is causing forest fires and flooding. But you can't write a paper about that, and no one is going to address it, so it is ignored. What do you think happens to water if you have no buffer lands to keep it contained?

    11. Re:Really forest fires? by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

      California forest fires are mostly caused by idiots going into forested areas and setting fires (arson) or other idiots moving further out into what used to be wilderness and inadvertently setting them. Management only helps with the spread of the fires.

    12. Re:Really forest fires? by XXongo · · Score: 2

      That is total BS. If you look at where forest fires start it is in areas populated by humans.

      Seem to be all over the place: https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/google...

    13. Re:Really forest fires? by Nidi62 · · Score: 2

      The increase of forest fires is due to humans moving into forested areas and starting fires (inadvertently or on purpose). Yes, it really is THAT simple.

      Well, you know, there's also climate change disrupting weather patterns causing warmer, drier air that both increases the likelihood of fire starting but also helps spread them. This is why fires in places that normally get fires are getting worse, and places that don't normally get fires are starting to see them.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    14. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sorry, not BS. About 50% are caused by people, the other half by lightning. The difference now is that fires take longer to extinguish because the climate is getting hotter and drier. We have seen record temperatures set in BC and are experiencing longer summers with little precipitation. Hot and dry conditions mean the fires do not go out until they run out of fuel.

    15. Re:Really forest fires? by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually its the opposite. California stopped most logging and forest management activities decades ago at he behest of environmentalists. These fires are a result of that lack of management.

      I understand that black and white/0-1 answers are easier to deal with. However I would encourage you to try to have a more nuanced and well researched view of the situation.

      I agree that part of the issue is the lack of management, another important factor is that fires haven't been allowed to burn in many of these areas because there are now lots of people, and lots of homes in those forests.

      Another major factor is that in the western US the climate is heating up and drying up. This negatively impacts the health of the forests, and when fires do start, they are worse, and the forests are primed for burning.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    16. Re:Really forest fires? by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      No, it really IS that simple. Local environmental destruction is causing forest fires and flooding. But you can't write a paper about that, and no one is going to address it, so it is ignored. What do you think happens to water if you have no buffer lands to keep it contained?

      Actually it isn't that simple.
      In a perfect world, answers to big problems are simple.
      We don't live in that world.

      Do yourself a favor and research and read about how the heating and drying of the climate in the western US are impacting forests. Read about the damage beetles have done to western forests, and why those beetle infestations are happening.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    17. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, obviously climate change causes idiocy.

    18. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure of the situation in California, but where I live in the Pacific Northwest we have tons of wildfires and most of the are sparked by lightning. I can't imagine that California is somehow immune to lightning.

    19. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have apparently never burned wood for heat; wet wood will burn, it just needs to be a little bit hotter. Now take a look at some of the pictures of the destruction and you will see it melts metal, so wet wood is nothing. Just ask the fire department about people who leave their sprinklers on to prevent their house from catching fire and how well that helps (hint, it doesn't, it just wastes water).

      The Carr fire was started by sparks from a blown tire (ie the rim scraping on the asphalt). The reason it spread so fast was all the dry brush off the side of the road. This dry brush use to be cleared and burned but that is no longer allowed. So now we are just adding dry kindling next to a ample supply of wood.

    20. Re:Really forest fires? by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Yes. Humans are now "all over the place".

    21. Re:Really forest fires? by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      That isn't true. 90% of all forest fires are by humans. You can look it up yourself.

    22. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      California forest fires are caused by the fact its chaparral and that biome naturally catches fire all the time. Its a pretty natural thing. If it wasn't an idiot at a campsite it would be a bolt of lightning or something else. Chaparral burns regularly, its how that ecosystem works. The problem is a bunch of morons deciding to live in annual fire land and then watching all of their lives get ruined when their houses burn down. Houses also provide a lot more fuel than the low shrubs that are common in the area. All of the developments likely make the situation worse than it would be on its own.

    23. Re:Really forest fires? by Raenex · · Score: 1

      Another major factor is that in the western US the climate is heating up and drying up. This negatively impacts the health of the forests

      And yet climate scientists think it's valid to use increased tree ring growth as a proxy for rising temperatures.

    24. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How did this idiot get modded +5 Insightful? Sock puppets? This is so easily disproven it's hilarious. Not to mention that Trump supporters have admitted to starting a few forest fires just to wreak havoc.

    25. Re:Really forest fires? by DRJlaw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually its the opposite. California stopped most logging and forest management activities decades ago at he behest of environmentalists. These fires are a result of that lack of management.

      You're welcome to hire commercial loggers to come in and clear out the underbrush and small trees. You won't get anyone to do it, because they want to haul out the tallest, largest diameter wood that they can get their hands on, and leave that nuisance non-commercial crap behind, but you're welcome to try.

      Of course, just like the wood that you throw in your fireplace, the big stuff doesn't burn without a lot of kindling around it. The small stuff burns like gangbusters. So there's no reason to take out the tallest, largest diameter wood absent the nuisance non-commercial crap, and there's nobody who wants to deal with the nuisance non-commercial crap to begin with, much less without the big stuff.

      "Lack of management" my ass.

    26. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You seem to discount the fact that a lot of the California fires are consuming the dry grass and shrub lands. I know it sounds hip to think it is trees catching fire especially when thats the Trump cult line but please understand it is more complex than that.

    27. Re:Really forest fires? by MoralCharacter · · Score: 1

      That explains the west portion of the US, and Canada, atleast in areas where the right kind of trees grow for said beetles to kill. But those beetles are becoming a problem mostly because of how mild winters have become -> allowing for longer breeding seasons -> allowing their population to explode -> spreading out as more trees are needed to support the growing population of beetles. These beetles aren't an invasive species. They've been here all along, with their native habitat ranging from Mexico to Canada.

      What we're seeing now was predicted as far back as 2009. This was hardly unexpected - experts had told us growing beetle populations were going to increase the number of wildfires we would see.

      Now as far as the fires breaking out in Europe and Asia... I know less about. But the beetle issue is probably just a North American thing.

    28. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How?
      Remember where you are - Slashdot 2018.
      Simplistic statements, hasty generalizations, false dichotomies, false equivalence, strawmen, and tu quoque are cruise control for +5 Insightful/Informative

    29. Re:Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      just did. Where I live, it is 50%.

      https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/almost-half-of-fires-burning-across-bc-caused-by-humans-province/article35652545/

    30. Re:Really forest fires? by reg · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually, most forest management is driven by logging interests, even in California, because these are National Forest Service lands. Also, the areas that are burning are not logging forests, they are mostly Chaparral and Oak: https://www.researchgate.net/p...

    31. Re:Really forest fires? by Sir+Holo · · Score: 1

      Rising sea levels is a fact, but it isn't causing massive flooding.

      Ahem. Have you read the news today? Or last week? Or last year? Or 10 years ago?

      "Massive flooding" is far more frequent in monsoons, hurricanes, and regular-old thunderstorms.

      You are wrong.

    32. Re:Really forest fires? by willy_me · · Score: 2

      The increase of forest fires is due to humans moving into forested areas and starting fires (inadvertently or on purpose). Yes, it really is THAT simple.

      Incorrect... The cause of forest fires changes depending on location. In North-West Canada, the current forest fires are almost all caused by lightning. Where climate change comes into play is that in the previous decade, temperatures never really dropped in the winter. Because of this, the population of pine beetles exploded and killed all the trees. Entire forests turned red / brown in the course of a few years. Now 10 years later, those trees have dried out and are the perfect fuel for lightning strikes.

      It is the change in the climate that generated the conditions required for the fires. How they were started is irrelevant - the starting of a fire is impossible to avoid. If it is not lightning it will be a spark from a tire. What we must avoid are the underlying conditions that allow the fire to be destructive. Climate change plays a big part in these conditions.

    33. Re:Really forest fires? by sexconker · · Score: 1

      That isn't true. Binary asshole over there said is was 90%, so it's 90%.

    34. Re:Really forest fires? by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Wrong, jackass. The fires in CA are an issue because we no longer properly manage the land. Everything is protected bullshit full of nothing but dead, dry plants ready to burst into flame. Even if you want to assume they're all caused by humans, the fact is our policy of INACTION is what turns a small fire into hundreds of thousands of acres of hell.

    35. Re:Really forest fires? by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Most of the fires here in BC are being started by lightning and many of them are in places where there are very few people and in the north, there hasn't been much forestry to change things. Not everywhere is highly populated like the USA.
      Two things have been happening, moist springs causing lots of undergrowth and dry summers turning all that undergrowth into tinder.
      Now whether it is weather or climate, only time will tell.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    36. Re:Really forest fires? by dryeo · · Score: 1

      What about in the extreme north where people haven't been doing anything? Not sure about this year but the last few have seen quite a few fires in the North West Territories and the radio reports that a lot of the smoke around here is blowing in from Siberia.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    37. Re:Really forest fires? by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Trees do most of their growth in the spring. Lately, at least where I live, the springs have been pretty warm and wet. It's one of the causes of all the fires, lots of undergrowth in the spring then hot summer turns it into dry tinder just waiting for a lightning stroke or cigarette butt to ignite it.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    38. Re: Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The count of forest fires may, as you say, be increasing due to human activity.

      Regardless of that, however, the size and duration of them, on the other hand, as well as the difficulty of putting them out, is definitely affected by the overall temperature of the area in which the fire is burning. Put simply, fire requires energy to burn and spread (âoeactivation energyâ, for those who took a chemistry class) and if some of that energy is supplied by the air temperature of the surrounding hotter climate, the fire will be able to spread more quickly and easily since it has to invest less energy into a given combustible substance in order to raise it to a temperature at which combustion can take place. Likewise, prolonged exposure to hotter temperatures can dry out plant materials and make it easier for them to burn. Climate change very definitely affects forest fire spreading and duration.

    39. Re: Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think I'd rather have a binary asshole than the other kind.

    40. Re: Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He just told you in plain English; destruction of swampand and more cement.

      Floods are locall issues, not global and certainly not due to dramatically rising sea levels which is not happening.

      Learn to read.

    41. Re: Really forest fires? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, itâ(TM)s eco-terrorism that is causing the fired.

    42. Re:Really forest fires? by strikethree · · Score: 1

      But if you get rid of all the swampland and marshes where do you think the water is going to go???

      To a lake or ocean, through a river? Was that a trick question? ;)

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  2. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Jfetjunky · · Score: 5, Insightful

    https://xkcd.com/1732/

    Yes, it has been changing. But if you can look at that and aren't the least bit alarmed, I'm not sure anything is going to ever get through.

  3. Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Climate != weather.

    It's raining outside my house. Quick! everybody send 2 animals so I can load them on my boat for the impending global flood!

    1. Re:Here we go again by famebait · · Score: 2

      Here we go again with the lazy dismissals.

      Global weather is very much climate.

      --
      sudo ergo sum
    2. Re: Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey I'm not betting against it. You can if you want to. Besides it's what every kid is being taught in school now so you're going to be a minority soon enough. Then we'll finally be able to fully admit there's a problem.

    3. Re:Here we go again by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      Only when integrated over a suitable timeframe...

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    4. Re:Here we go again by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Yeah, you get rich by telling people that they're doomed if they continue to fuck up.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    5. Re:Here we go again by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Let's be honest here, it's not like anything is gonna change with the discussion here. You'll have two sides yell at each other and the ones they're trying to convince stopped caring either way a long time ago.

      It's a bit like US politics, now that I think about it.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    6. Re:Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bitch, you're probably one of the vast majority of climate change assholes that cry about climate change but haven't changed a fucking thing in your life to fix it. You think some asshole in the whitehouse can sign some paper and make it all better and your life will go on as normal. Maybe someday you'll wake up and actually do something about how you live to lower your carbon footprint. Until that happens you're just a bag of hot air.

    7. Re:Here we go again by DogDude · · Score: 1

      I disagree. It's important in the vein of public discourse, to make it clear that these conspiracy theorists are in the minority, and their wackjob ideas are not mainstream.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    8. Re:Here we go again by DogDude · · Score: 2

      I don't have things shipped to my house.
      I don't buy food in plastic, whenever possible.
      I don't use plastic bags.
      I ride my bike or walk, when possible. When not possible, I drive a high MPG small car.
      I recycle aggressively.
      I keep my house thermostat at 80 degrees, when AC is necessary.
      I fix things instead of buying new things, whenever possible.
      Go fuck yourself, troll.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    9. Re:Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shorter post: "Revere me for my piety, ye unwashed heretics."

    10. Re:Here we go again by DogDude · · Score: 1

      You AC trolls are really sucking wind today. Try again.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    11. Re:Here we go again by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      I keep my house thermostat at 80 degrees, when AC is necessary.

      Ceiling fans work wonders.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    12. Re:Here we go again by DogDude · · Score: 1

      Ceiling fans work wonders.

      Absolutely, they do. Along with some strategically opened windows, too, when possible.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    13. Re:Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How's it feel to know that his vote counts as much as yours?

    14. Re:Here we go again by Lije+Baley · · Score: 1

      Why is this not modded up? Why is it so hard for people to understand that belief in AGW is compatible with dismissal of hysteria over weather and relatively short term climate changes? Too many "sciency" techies that really don't have perspective on the science.

      Perspective, by the way, means here to step back, out of your bubble, and see the bigger picture -- what the science of climatology is really like, and most importantly, the larger time scales involved in measuring this effect.

      This whole issue is getting so warped by politics, lazy journalism, and semi-religious fervor. The news people could just go ask a decent climatologist, "Hey, is this hot summer due to AGW?", but the answer is too complicated for a news bite, so they re-ask "Well could it be related to AGW?", and the answer is "well, sort of...", and then that becomes "Climate Boffin Blames Humans for Summer Swelter".

      --
      Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
    15. Re:Here we go again by Lije+Baley · · Score: 1

      I can't believe you got modded up for such a lazy answer. Meta-moderation badly needed.

      --
      Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
    16. Re:Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope. You become rich by frightening politicians into funding your career. The more you frighten politicians and then the general population, the more funding you may potentially gain.
      I may be older than a lot of the posters on here.
      I have read in old Reader's Digest mags about the long long list of impending global catastrophes that needed government funding to study and mitigate the effects of for forty years, articles going back to 1954. I dug through Time magazine and news articles going back to the 1960s.
      The topics have shifted from global starvation to disease epidemics caused by airplanes to Nuclear Winter and China Syndrome to overpopulation (repeatedly, about every seven years) to asteroid impacts to EMP effects to 'global warming' to 'climate change' to whatever the next crises will be determined to be by people who are asking for money to fix them.
      Global starvation due to overpopulation has been a recurring crisis since about 1954 (basically about every 500 million person increase in worldwide population) and you can dig through Time magazine to see the wave of articles about it approximately every seven years until about fifteen years ago when weather became the new crisis that was determined to be the end of humanity.
      I think the predatory tort actions by Monsanto and other big AG producers have put the kibosh on new themes of global starvation being the big killer of humanity. Monsanto and the other big multi-nationals have been aggressively maintaining a semi-monopoly on scientific advancement in agriculture for decades. If you can't compete with the big boys without being sued out of business you move on to the next business model or you work for/with them.
      Our sun is a big driver of our weather. Scientific analysis of said celestial body indicates that patterns of sun spot and other activity seem to coincide with periods of glaciation and other climate change.
      You have a huge celestial body that puts out massive and immense amounts of energy continuously, and which has been proven to be linked to if not proven to actually cause periods of glaciation and climate change versus changes in the atmospheric makeup that are in fact mostly caused by industry in China and other countries that don't care to listen to the harping on the correlation between climate change and the atmosphere.
      Show me data that the US is the major CO2 and/or pollution producer worldwide compared to China and other countries and then show me data that proves the sun is not undergoing changes that are correlated with these types of climate change in the past and then you can put a stranglehold on industry and technology development in the US.
      The biggest problem I have with the current climate change 'crisis' is that the data being used to determine there is some form of problem uses specific and very carefully selected data and does not take into account other factors, like the behavior of the sun.
      Even the XKCD image only shows a very brief slice of the history of the earth.
      Given that the earth has been around for millions of times longer than the entire period indicated in the XKCD comic a person may be justified in claiming cherry picking is a factor in the calculations.

    17. Re: Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean all that stuff about how oil companies are intentionally warming the planet to KILL US ALLLLLLLL!?

      That conspiracy theory?

      Or the one where anyone who disagrees with you on anything after they have read about data manipulation is OBVIOUSLY A SHEEP TOOL OF THE OIL COMPANIES WHO ARE OUT TO KILL US ALLLLLLLL!?

    18. Re: Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait, you have a house? Do you put at least one family per room?

      Why do you find it is ever necessary to drive a car? What is somgod damned important you have personally taken it upon yourself to burn oil, contribute to global warming and do your part to kill us all? So selfish.

      And you have ac? Seriously? What is your bike made of? When you donâ(TM)t have things shipped, which is tremendously efficient, you do what? Take your oil burning car to the store? To pick up only a few things because your car is tiny and inefficient at carrying stuff?

      You are both a hypocrite and a moron.

    19. Re: Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget that some of the concerns have been valid. I would claim that the global community has succeeded in mitigating the acid rain problem of the 70's/80's, the ozone hole of 90's and has banned leaded fuel having big impact both on general and mental health of population.

    20. Re: Here we go again by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Intentional? Nah. Oil companies are not run by mustache-twirling evil overlords hellbent on destroying earth. They're just run by people who care about profit. If it was profitable to protect the environment, they'd do that, unfortunately it's profitable to turn the planet into an uninhabitable hellhole. That's basically all there is to it.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    21. Re:Here we go again by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      The XKCD image shows the time that I care about: The time humans populate the planet. Ya know, in the Hadean period the earth was mostly still made of molten lava, and certainly hotter than today, with LOTS more CO2 and practically no O2 in the atmosphere. But guess what: No humans tried to survive on that planet.

      Aside of that, I don't care. I'm on my way out and I don't have kids. If you do, well, I'd prepare some sort of good excuse if I was you. You'll need it.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Its about economics by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Many businesses don't care about the environment, unless there is a direct cost. They are either to busy trying to survive or serve the demands of the shareholders. Add to that, when a business is not looking beyond a 5 year schedule, then the impact of climate is also not a direct impact.

    Now, tell them their customers are going elsewhere because the environmental image of a company is important, then they will wake up. Of course this only works when said corporation is not in a monopoly position.

    In the US a number of companies have been pushing back amount trying to play nice in terms of the environment, which in the end will give the benefit to foreign corporations that have already adapted to the reality that being energy efficient for the customer is important. Short term US companies don't have to play nice, because the government has been helping keeping energy artificially cheap, so the end-user has no interest to buy appliances that consumer less resources. In most of the world people are paying the real cost for resources, so they have had to adapt.

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    1. Re:Its about economics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another post stated with no evidence. You really work hard at being obtuse. And the typical slashdot crowd response is to vote you up. Because evidence does not matter, or how you feel about it.

    2. Re:Its about economics by oogoliegoogolie · · Score: 2

      We always blame businesses & corporations for all of our problems, but their products and services are only a result of our consumption tastes.

      We happily and eagerly spend money on their shiny-object crap which we don't really need, without thinking about all of the pollution created from obtaining, & refining natural resources, pollution from the factory, toxic chemicals used during manufacturing and cleaning of the final product that get dumped into lakes, rivers, oceans, then all of the packaging put around the product to make it look nice and something we just have to have. Then all the pollution that is created by a thousands of individual delivery vehicles on the road because we just have to have that little widget thingy tomorrow instead of waiting three days and picking it up on Saturday at the store you were planning on going to anyways.

      We always blame the corporations but in the end it's only the people that can make any significant change by changing our consumption, and it has to be serious consumption change, not BS lip-service like banning plastic straws that I see in the news lately.

    3. Re:Its about economics by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

      I'll admit my arguments were based on observation and personal experience, but at the same time you didn't offer any counter evidence.

      I'll provide a link to one study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/...

      In terms of economics of consumption we can see how the drop in price of sugar helped drive the increase in the amount of sugar we eat: http://www.divineeatingout.com... . I mention this, because any time something is cheap we tend to consume more of it.

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    4. Re:Its about economics by quantaman · · Score: 1

      Now, tell them their customers are going elsewhere because the environmental image of a company is important, then they will wake up.

      Sure, they'll hire an ad agency.

      I remember Weyerhaeuser being in the news for an atrocious environmental record. And then I remember a bunch of Weyerhaeuser commercials with streams and green forests talking about how much they cared about the environment.

      I'm guessing that was a lot cheaper than modifying their business practises.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    5. Re:Its about economics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the phone app lies about how hit it really is, make your own measurement and compare to the phone, the phone will show higher temperature, this is how the globalists push their taxation aganda, by lying anout the temperature.

    6. Re:Its about economics by electroniceric · · Score: 2

      Well said.

      Even more broadly, in the US we hear way more about the burden of new regulations rather than the benefits. Electric vehicles are a pretty good example of this - right now they're considered luxe and more expensive. But car manufacturers are actually worried that they'll be much less profitable (because it's fundamentally simpler to create and direct motion from electricity than combustion) and the operating and maintenance costs are much lower. By rights the public should be clamoring for electrification of vehicles, but mostly we just watch stupid debates over whether Elon Musk is a god or a monster.

    7. Re: Its about economics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh yeah the car manufacturers obviously benefit when their product is more expensive to build, because uh, global warming!

      Fuck! You have just failed at the Internet with your gross, negligent, and intentional stupidity. Please leave imemediately.

  5. How many of the 270000 by houghi · · Score: 1

    printed out the papers, so they can look through it one and then throw it away?

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    1. Re:How many of the 270000 by blindseer · · Score: 2

      printed out the papers, so they can look through it one and then throw it away?

      They are sequestering carbon. If everyone prints out enough papers and tosses them in a landfill then we are removing carbon from the atmosphere.

      I'm only half joking. The use of trees as carbon sinks, and then removing that carbon by burial, has been proposed by prominent climate scientists. The problem is the tree huggers that studied "international gender studies" in college instead of any real science. We could sequester a lot of carbon with proper management of forests. I don't mean by burying reams upon reams of once read papers but by using the trees for building material, or whatever else we could use that plant fiber for. When the material has served it's purpose as housing or whatever else then we make sure this carbon based material continues as a carbon sink by putting it in a landfill. The houses are a carbon sink while standing, and continue as one when torn down and another built in it's place.

      Forest fires are in the news again. Maybe we could both fight the fires and create a carbon sink by cutting down fire breaks in the forest. Just cut a wide swath in the forest to remove the fuel. Take those trees and turn them into lumber, or just bury them all right now, either way we'd stop the fire and make room for more trees to grow.

      Instead of complaining on how the problem continues I suggest we work on solutions. If the solutions make a good business case, such as creating cheap building material, then it will be economically beneficial as well as environmentally beneficial.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    2. Re: How many of the 270000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For any problem that involves per capita figures, murdering the poor is the easiest way to improve the per capita metrics. The problem is that there is no end to the poor at least not until well after everyone reading this site has been classified as such and executed.

  6. The link between science and the fires is money. by will_die · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Plenty of scientists are saying there is not a scientific link between the fires and climate change, even Vox ran a story with that.
    However there are plenty of government officials who want to throw money at it for that way, since of doing the actual work and allowing controlled fires, that it is suddenly a climate change issue and money is available if you say the fire are primarily caused by that.

  7. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...I'm not sure anything is going to ever get through.

    I'm damn sure nothing is going to get through in the 'alternative fact" era.

  8. No science here by Kohath · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "Waking up" is not science.
    "Headlines" are not science.
    "An unprecedented 270,000 downloads" is not science.
    "A surge of interest" is not science.

    1. Re:No science here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And assuming the conclusion (that "climate change is real") when writing about the above is most certainly not science.

    2. Re: No science here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It is not science, the science is mostly done. This is awareness and policy.

    3. Re: No science here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is not science, the science is mostly done. This is awareness and policy.

      This should be next to the definition of "begging the question" in the dictionary.

  9. Here we go again by Train0987 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Slashdot gotta get those clicks!

  10. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Plenty of scientists are saying there is not a scientific link between the fires and climate change, even Vox ran a story with that.

    Maybe they should go talk to the experienced firefighters that say that fire is behaving in ways they have never seen before. Things are changing and barring ALIENS! the only reasonable explanation is climate change, which we know to be occurring.

    Denialists have now shifted from "there is no climate change" to "it's not our fault and anyway it's not causing any problems", and are now moving into "well even if it is our fault there's nothing we can do about it". You are behind even for a denialist.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  11. it's been cold today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's all a hoax

    1. Re:it's been cold today by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Shut up, Kiwi, Europe is about to cook off.

      Let's talk in February, ok?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  12. Of course they are by ilsaloving · · Score: 0

    Now that it's too late, we're starting to witness the results first hand, and there's no way to mitigate it without 100x the effort than it would have taken before (assuming it even CAN be mitigated...), what better time to accept that it's actually happening?

    9.9

    1. Re:Of course they are by XXongo · · Score: 2

      Now that it's too late, we're starting to witness the results first hand, and there's no way to mitigate it without 100x the effort than it would have taken before (assuming it even CAN be mitigated...), what better time to accept that it's actually happening?

      Climate change due to anthropogenic global warming is a long term problem. It does not happen overnight. It will require a long term solution. It will not be solved overnight.

    2. Re:Of course they are by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What's happening? Jack shit is happening. A bunch of people finally woke up and noticed that we're fucked. But hey, since we're fucked, why bother trying to do anything? It's just so simple, no matter where you are in the realization chain, you can simply continue as usual with no reason to change your behaviour.

      At first it's "there is no climate change" so there is no reason to do anything.
      Then, when it's no longer possible to deny it, it's "well, climate has always changed", and since that's still nothing that I could possibly be blamed for, no reason to change anything.
      Then we get to "well, we do affect it, but it's not gonna have any impact" which again gives you no reason to change anything,
      only to finally arrive at "well, we did fuck up, but now it's too late anyway", which again is no reason to do anything since you can't do anything anyway anymore.

      Ain't it great? No matter where we are in the climate change timeline, we have no reason to stop fucking the planet.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Of course they are by DogDude · · Score: 1

      Speak for yourself. Me and my family are doing everything we can to lower our energy and plastic consumption.

      You could get off your ass and do something, too, if you really wanted to. It sounds like you're just making excuses for yourself.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    4. Re:Of course they are by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 2

      Speak for yourself. Me and my family are doing everything we can to lower our energy and plastic consumption. You could get off your ass and do something, too, if you really wanted to. It sounds like you're just making excuses for yourself.

      I agree, though with the recent revelations about recycling, it seems to be a losing battle, and that we need a different method of dealing with waste products. I remember years ago hearing about a guy who invented a "refinery" of sorts to recycle ALL refuse in garbage dumps. So instead of all this extra work we do to recycle, it all goes into the dump, then gets ground up and "recycled" on an industrial scale at one location.

      No extra recycle truck pickups, no extra recycle facilities with people sorting by hand, no massive container ships taking trash to China.
      Why aren't we doing this now?

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    5. Re:Of course they are by DogDude · · Score: 1

      The best thing to do is to created less waste, to begin with. We, for example, take reusable containers for carry-out, whenever possible. We do our best not to buy food that comes in single-use plastic containers. I agree 100% that it's better to make less waste in the first place, than to try to recycle it afterwards.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    6. Re:Of course they are by DogDude · · Score: 1

      ... and do you have any info on that single point dump recycling idea/inventor? I think that's super interesting. I would imagine that at some point in the future, when some resources start to get more scarce, that we might see people mining garbage dumps for materials, too.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    7. Re:Of course they are by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      I just tried googling it and didn't find it. It seems like I read about this probably around 2006-2008.

      I remember that the process ended up with three categories:
      1. metals 2. compost like materials from the paper and food waste 3. various refined carbon fuels, which is where the "refinery" part of the facility happens. All the plastics are essentially refined/recycled back to another form of usable fuels of some kind.

      I remember the proof of concept plant they built to test this was in Missouri.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    8. Re:Of course they are by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

      I think you missed the entire point of Opportunist's post. We need to find a way to get more people to act. You determined it was worth the effort. Unfortunately, there seem to be human-nature level arguments against actually effecting change. That was the point of the post. It is so much easier to just rationalize your way into the status quo. I try to drive less, and use less plastic. Nevertheless, I can't convince my wife to turn the AC up, nor do I ever remember to bring reusable leftover containers to restaurants, so I end up with their single-use polystyrene. These are easy. I want to do them. But I'm a lazy, forgetful, conflict-averse human just like everybody else.

    9. Re:Of course they are by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      I agree, though with the recent revelations about recycling, it seems to be a losing battle, and that we need a different method of dealing with waste products. I remember years ago hearing about a guy who invented a "refinery" of sorts to recycle ALL refuse in garbage dumps. So instead of all this extra work we do to recycle, it all goes into the dump, then gets ground up and "recycled" on an industrial scale at one location.

      I suspect the problem was he didn't actually invent it, IOW it didn't work.

      In Southwark, we have the waste management facility (fun visit for a nerd on an open day). It takes in the mixed recycling collected in the borough (residents need to separate waste into compostable, recyclable and rubbish with no finer gradation) and sorts it into glass, paper, plastic, aluminium, steel and rubbish mostly automatically.

      The machines get it to abut 97%, then a relatively small number of hand sorters pick out the rest getting it to about 99.5%.

      These sorting machines exist now and are operational on a city scale. I'm sure if someone had something better, they'd switch over.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  13. Agreed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Money drives everything. In particular, I believe the crash in oil prices came at about the worst time possible. I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed, but the crash gave rise to a huge buying spree in large gas-guzzling vechicles, particularly diesel trucks. We now have white collar office workers driving to work in 6-wheel diesel trucks. People going grocery shopping in diesel trucks. People driving their kids to daycare in diesel trucks. None of them actually tow anything, so it's all merely for show, but at the expense of the environment and other people's health. The people driving the things don't give a damn of course, and the only thing that will stop it is if -- god willing -- the price of oil skyrockets.

    To hell with the economy. To hell with cheap transportation. We need the price of oil to skyrocket NOW and usher us into the next technological age before it's too late.

    1. Re:Agreed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      libtard

  14. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    "It’s hard to quarrel with that ancient justification of the free press: “America’s right to know.” It seems almost cruel to ask, ingenuously, ”America’s right to know what, please? Science? Mathematics? Economics? Foreign languages?”

    None of those things, of course. In fact, one might well suppose that the popular feeling is that Americans are a lot better off without any of that tripe.

    There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” - Issac Asimov

    The full article can be found at https://media.aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf

  15. Fuck you by DogDude · · Score: 0

    Fuck you, troll. There'a a lot more money riding on continuing to consume oil and gas.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:Fuck you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hundreds of billions profit per year at least.

    2. Re:Fuck you by lenski · · Score: 1

      Oil, gas and to a decreasing extent, coal companies have a sweet deal: Ongoing revenue from drilling, fracking, digging and processing to convert raw material into convenient packaged products (gas, gasoline, electricity, etc.). All that increasingly automated "work" is crazy profitable.

      Renewable sources do not have that benefit. Other than equipment maintenance and fees charged for managing storage, there is no charge for the inbound energy. All those watts are streaming into the the PV cells or through the turbines without digging or processing.

      The incumbent energy "providers" understand this economic reality and will kill to preserve their hold on it.

    3. Re: Fuck you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lots of money in green energy. Too bad its not green. Windmills cost more in co2 to make than they mitigate also it costs millions to dispose of them. They barely last 40 years and you can't recycle the blades. Recycling metal is barely co2 saving or it just plane isn't. Lithium batteries are a co2 nightmare. Turns out when fuel is already made (oil) you end up polluting less by using it over fuel that needs to be synthesized in some complex way.

    4. Re: Fuck you by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      Mod correct

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  16. Re:Any solution will be technological by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I suggest we force you to live like in the stone age for the rest of your life. After giving you a solid whipping for being an absolute idiot.

  17. Another Factor... by Tulsa_Time · · Score: 4, Informative
    --
    5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
  18. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How can it be taken seriously when they are constantly changing the historical temperature data to match their hypothesis? In science you're supposed to change the hypothesis to match the data, not the other way around. What they're doing is religion.

    Manipulating the numbers is obviously not the problem to solve. Getting the stupid ignorant masses to not fall for it every damn time IS the problem to solve. Apparently fact-checking is secondary to viral hype. Science has been able to morph into a religion because people are stupid and gullible enough to believe it.

    Solve for Stupidity.

  19. no its not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    270,000 downloads out of how many people with access to the Internet?

    The world will have woken up when the politicians actually do something about it until then this is just marketing hype to try and get more people to read his paper. This will be forgotten about once the next human tragedy happens, and hey look school is about to start. The only reason that he got so many views is that his paper came out in the summer when the "news" can sensationalize it and even then they only managed to get 270,000 downloads (not necessarily the number of people who have read and actually comprehend the paper)

    according to:
    https://www.statista.com/stati...
    in 2017 there were 3.58 billion, and if we make the assumption that each of the downloads was a unique person who read the entire report and understood it (so a best case scenario) we can see that only 0.007541899 % of the people on the Internet have read the paper, i would hardly consider that to be "waking up"

  20. Re:Any solution will be technological by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This, for me the classic is how all the elites jet over (private jets mind you, can't fly with the cattle) to the climate change conferences in super luxo areas. If they really wanted to make a point, do a tele conference. Or fly with the cattle to some destination like cleveland or indianapolis.

  21. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's a nice try at sanity, but the deniers have insulated themselves from anyone that disagrees with their viewpoint that facts don't matter. In their view everyone that says the planet is warming because of human activities is just deluded, and all the scientists are on the take. Facts don't matter since the only "facts" that count are the ones that agree with what they already believe. It's very similar to a religion.

  22. You don't need a weather man... by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even though I work with scientists, and one of my co-workers is an actual climate scientist(we discuss weather and climate a lot) I don't need scientists or science or empirical evidence. I've seen first hand how quickly the climate has changed.

    A small town in the mountain west I grew up in was known for having very cold winters. Starting about 10-15 years ago, when I would visit in the winter I noticed it wasn't as cold. Anytime I mentioned this to my friends and relatives that lived there, they would say, "yea, isn't it great!". A few times I was there in January it rained, and not a little. Raining in January in a town that historically had brutally cold winters(avg high temp would be below 32 F, avg low temps between 0 and 10 F). This town used to have avg summer temps of around 85 F, now the last few years the avg summer temps in the 90s.

    I've seen all kinds of new plants showing up, new weeds, just in the past few years. I've been landscaping and gardening for a long time and I take note of the weeds I have to deal with. I've noticed how bird migrations are changing, and different birds are showing up in my town.

    If you live in the western US you've noticed that in the last 10-15 years the climate has markedly heated up and dried up. What used to be arid or semi-arid is now turning into full on desert.

    --
    We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    1. Re: You don't need a weather man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Its worth remembering that most of Russias territory is cold and unproductive. A degree or two of warming and it becomes a potential breadbasket whilst the USA turns into a desert.

    2. Re: You don't need a weather man... by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      Its worth remembering that most of Russias territory is cold and unproductive. A degree or two of warming and it becomes a potential breadbasket whilst the USA turns into a desert.

      That would be great if it was true. However, the soil conditions won't allow for intensive agriculture.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    3. Re:You don't need a weather man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? I've lived int he Western US for 5 decades and it's getting cooler and milder. It's getting more urban, in and near the cities I can imagine it's hotter... at least, the temperature sensors are getting hotter. Sorry, I just don't buy it. Not at all what I've experienced.

    4. Re:You don't need a weather man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, we don't need any science. Just your anecdote is enough. Ok.

    5. Re:You don't need a weather man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      a town that historically had brutally cold winters(avg high temp would be below 32 F, avg low temps between 0 and 10 F)

      Didn't realize that literally all of the upper midwest has a more "brutal" climate than mountains.

    6. Re:You don't need a weather man... by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      My reply would be that you live in a fantasy.

      I'm in the intermountain west, and I grew up here.
      I have friends/relatives in Arizona, Oregon, Colorado and California that I regularly communicate with.
      There is total consensus about how the climate is going.
      And then there is the science.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    7. Re:You don't need a weather man... by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      a town that historically had brutally cold winters(avg high temp would be below 32 F, avg low temps between 0 and 10 F)

      Didn't realize that literally all of the upper midwest has a more "brutal" climate than mountains.

      Fair enough, and I was expecting a response like that.
      Though when I was a kid, it routinely was in the -10 to -20 range.
      Another thing you need to take into account is that the upper midwest gets the cold air from Canada coming down, whereas in the intermountain west, that isn't as much of a factor like somewhere such as Minnesota.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    8. Re:You don't need a weather man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AC has just been cranking the AC up, that's all.

    9. Re:You don't need a weather man... by dasunt · · Score: 1

      Didn't realize that literally all of the upper midwest has a more "brutal" climate than mountains.

      Average high in Minneapolis-St. Paul area is below 32F for the months of December, January, and February.

    10. Re:You don't need a weather man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are a bullshit artist. H20 (steam) is the most impactful greenhouse gas: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/vapor_warming.html
      We pump tons of steam into the air every hour: wet surface air coolers coordinated steam release This is how we've been modifying the weather, along with aresol based modification, such as done by your local weather modification agency: http://southtexasweathermodification.com/

      https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/

      No "climate study" mentions the 100 years of weather modification we've been doing (early 1900's used tower based aresol distribution because planes weren't reliable). Since no "Climate Scientist" mentions the history of weather modification, they're all frauds, liars, or so stupid you shouldn't listen to them.

    11. Re:You don't need a weather man... by argStyopa · · Score: 0

      The fact that climate is changing (I believe this is irrefutable, basically) doesn't ipso facto mean that humans are changing it.

      To me that's where the Cult of Climate Change fails in their argument. And just screaming ever louder "well duh, it HAS to be humans!" isn't convincing anyone. That and immediately demonizing anyone who has doubts.

      --
      -Styopa
    12. Re:You don't need a weather man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think a major issue with mountainous areas will be rain instead of snow. The mountains can't handle rain. They can barely handle a fast snowmelt right now--it's where eroision has been set for several thousand years.

      That flooding in Maryland was just a precursor. Colorado and Montana might have to abandon many towns that were built along the rivers. In the warm winters, there will be huge devastating floods and in the summer, there won't be any river.

    13. Re: You don't need a weather man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In case its of interest:

      https://blog.ted.com/fighting-the-growing-deserts-with-livestock-allan-savory-at-ted2013/

      captcha: agitator

  23. Re:Any solution will be technological by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or economic. For example, the price of oil skyrocketing would be very positive for the earth, and ultimately, human beings as well.

  24. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by postbigbang · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ummm, no.

    We can measure with modern tools, the changes. The "fluctuations" as you term them, are data. With data, you can predict with reasonable certainty.

    Over 100,000 scientists, WITH THAT DATA, have agreed on the outcome, given long history, and your "fluctuations".

    If you're not alarmed, you're either ignoring the data, or your stupid.

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  25. Re:Any solution will be technological by DogDude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Stone age living"? What the fuck are you talking about? You mean driving a Civic instead of a Land Rover? You mean like using glass instead of plastic? What, exactly, are you talking about?

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  26. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 2

    There are multiple reasons for the fires, and climate change is undeniably one of them.

    These forested areas are now developed with larger numbers of residences, there has been concerted effort to keep fires, which normally would have happened anyway, from happening.

    The persistent drought conditions in the west and the heating up of the atmosphere have led to many forested areas being dried out, and the health of the forests lessened. The bark beetle infestation has taken its toll, due to warmer winters.

    --
    We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
  27. We know that by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Everyone knows that. Question is, who really cares among the powerful? Does a 72 year old business man, mired in scandals and in lobbies commitments, eager to succeed politically at all costs, having a single (short-term) objective in mind to that end: 'improve his economy'... don't expect this man to care about something likely happening in the future to the planet, even if the proof was as clear as 1+1 = 2.

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    1. Re:We know that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You've just explained perfectly why the human species is an evolutionary dead-end.

      Just like a cancer, it seems like every single gene in our chromosomes is hell-bent on self-destruction.

      A species where only a handful of people continually have to move heaven and earth just to barely prevent the dumb masses from jumping off the proverbial cliff cannot possibly have a future.

    2. Re:We know that by blindseer · · Score: 2

      Everyone knows that. Question is, who really cares among the powerful? Does a 72 year old business man, mired in scandals and in lobbies commitments, eager to succeed politically at all costs, having a single (short-term) objective in mind to that end: 'improve his economy'... don't expect this man to care about something likely happening in the future to the planet, even if the proof was as clear as 1+1 = 2.

      Does this 72 year old man have grandchildren? If so then I suspect that this man does in fact care how "his" economy performs in the future.

      I remember someone pointing out how many childless politicians there are around the world, all of them running up the national debt and living high on big government spending. They don't much care what happens after they are gone. Consider this the next time you have a chance to vote, does this candidate have grandchildren? Having children may not be enough because unless their children have children of their own they may see the next generation as the end of the line. With grandchildren there is going to be a concern on how well things go for the next century.

      For politicians to live it up until they die they could set the economy on a slow dive that could last decades before it collapses. For people that have to plan for the next century they will plant seeds for trees that they will never taste the fruit. It's the thinking of the next century that brought us the Hoover Dam and Empire State Building. I want politicians with a plan for the next century. Of course no one can make definitive plans that far out, as a lot can change in 100 years, but they can set us on a path to where we have something to build upon in the future.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    3. Re:We know that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are applying how you (and most people) feel about their progeny to a particular individual. Don't expect this to work out they way you want. In "advanced" countries people have slackened in their drive to obtain or maintain relationships, and even if they do they have an increasing tendency to not burden themselves with children. This is reflected in the slowing (and reversing) population growth. For example, without immigration the US would have negative population growth.

      Now consider someone who is power/attention hungry (that is, they became a politician) and consider how unlikely it is for them to care about anything beyond their immediate self interest.

    4. Re:We know that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Empire State building was built in a single year.

    5. Re:We know that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      even if the proof was as clear as 1+1 = 2.

      Wrong. This is America. As a result of outcome based education, common core, and a myriad of other crackpot ideas that have flooded the education realm in the last 50 years, 1+1 equals whatever the hell the answerer wants.

  28. Many different groups analyzing the data by XXongo · · Score: 5, Informative

    How can it be taken seriously when they are constantly changing the historical temperature data to match their hypothesis?

    "They" are not "changing the historical temperature data to match their hypothesis". That is a made-up alternate-fact being promulgated by the deniers.

    You are referring, I assume to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies historical temperature record. The analysis of the data is exhaustively documented , including a FAQ giving an overview for popular audiences that are too bored to read the actual documentation. And the original data set, and all of previous historical analyses, are available on the web, showing that the changes in analysis technique don't alter the conclusion that the climate is warming. Here, for example, are the graphs showing the results of every different correction to the analysis, dating back to 1981.

    In any case, you do know that several other groups, such at BEST, also analyze historical climate data, and come out with rates of warming that are essentially the same. So your conspiracy theory that scientists are altering their data in order to hoax the public is going to be a conspiracy of hundreds, and probably thousands, of scientists in independent groups on three different continents.

    1. Re:Many different groups analyzing the data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How can it be taken seriously when they are constantly changing the historical temperature data to match their hypothesis?

      "They" are not "changing the historical temperature data to match their hypothesis". That is a made-up alternate-fact being promulgated by the deniers.

      You are referring, I assume to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies historical temperature record. The analysis of the data is exhaustively documented , including a FAQ giving an overview for popular audiences that are too bored to read the actual documentation. And the original data set, and all of previous historical analyses, are available on the web, showing that the changes in analysis technique don't alter the conclusion that the climate is warming. Here, for example, are the graphs showing the results of every different correction to the analysis, dating back to 1981.

      In any case, you do know that several other groups, such at BEST, also analyze historical climate data, and come out with rates of warming that are essentially the same. So your conspiracy theory that scientists are altering their data in order to hoax the public is going to be a conspiracy of hundreds, and probably thousands, of scientists in independent groups on three different continents.

      What about the climate gate emails, what do you think of those?

    2. Re:Many different groups analyzing the data by nickrao · · Score: 1

      First I will state that I have not looked at the data. I caution others to make sure that they reference peer-reviewed studies before making claims. It is very difficult to hypothesis climate change since the earth continuously goes through climatic cycles. So 1 or 2 seasons of fires in California do not represent an irreversible trend. There are other factors affecting the fires in California that will be identified once a root cause forensic review has been completed.

  29. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    The question is, which one is the alternative fact? Is it their's or your's?

  30. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, if you have enough scientists saying something, well, that is science now. No.

  31. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Ah, so we have arrived at step 3 already? Wow, didn't take long.

    I'd guess step 4 is due in about 2-3 years, then?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  32. Re:Any solution will be technological by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Stone age living? Yeah, it's horrible that you might have to drive in a car instead of a land cruiser when you go pick up your mail, teh horrorz of stone age transportation!

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  33. Re:Any solution will be technological by PPH · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nuclear instead of coal.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  34. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    (1) without CO2's greenhouse effect, the earth's surface temp would be well below 0C on average. (2) We humans have seriously increased the amount of CO2. Both statements can be shown to be true. (1) can be shown through experimentation. If you have different results, show us. (2) amount of oil/coal/natural gas/wood burned can be estimated pretty accurately, and so the amount of O2 changed into CO2. (3) more CO2 does somehow not generate more heating?

  35. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by gtall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, you're right!! Pumping enormous quantities of green house gases into the atmosphere couldn't possible cause any climate changes. I don't know why they call them green house gases in the first place...might have something to with causing extra warming. Please ignore the Arctic melting, the fire in Norway, the heat wave in Europe, the Sahara marching south, etc. Nothing to see here, move along.

  36. The world has long ago woken up to climate change by GameboyRMH · · Score: 0

    It's just a minority of jackass Americans and a few Brits who are asleep at the switch for conveniently (short term) self-serving reasons.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  37. Re:Any solution will be technological by XXongo · · Score: 1

    Any solution will be technological;

    Wow, at least the deniers finally acknowledge that it's actually real, and might be a problem. It's a start.

    it will not be ham fisted attempts to force stone age living on the hoi polloi. (Notice that the elites like Al Gore never do the stone age living thing anyway. That's for you plebes.)

    I don't have any idea why the deniers continue to shout over and over again that anybody who says that this is a problem are trying to "force stone-age living on the hoi polloi". I've never actually heard any climate scientists-- you know, the people who noticed that this was a problem that might need solution fifty fucking years ago-- say that, or anything like that.

    Yes, I do think solutions will be technological, primarily improved energy supplies that don't produce large amounts of carbon dioxide.

  38. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yawn -- everyone who died-by-heat was a progressive skank. No loss.

  39. Dat headline... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > "World Is Finally Waking Up To Climate Change, Says 'Hothouse Earth' Author"

    Ummm...the author saying so doesn't make it so.

    Wake me up when Trump agrees and reverses course.

  40. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1, Insightful

    History has shown constant changes over time, often moving in cycles. We are currently in an interglacial. I know there are a lot of research funds and grant dollars riding on getting people to panic over this stuff, but please just stop.

    I love how blatantly stupid, biased bullshit gets modded as "informative", presumably because it matches peoples "worldview".

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  41. Re:Any solution will be technological by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The threat of stone-age living is a common strawman employed by climate denialists and climate policy obstructionists. The idea is that stone-age living would be less carbon-intensive than modern living, therefore it could be a solution to climate change, therefore it's what imaginary environmentalists are proposing.

    Of course the actual solutions to climate change involve greater technology and greater access to the products of energy use through better efficiency.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  42. Science has a pretty good record by XXongo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The question is, which one is the alternative fact? Is it their's or your's?

    I'd go with the scientists, the ones with massive amounts of data and observations and well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed and compared to observations for over fifty years, as the ones likely to be correct, rather than the ones that say "I don't trust science, I'm sure they're wrong, and we don't need any actual data or analysis or alternate hypotheses."

    Science has a pretty good record that way.

    1. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Zero people are saying they don't trust science.

      Plenty of people are saying they don't trust vested interests, eugenics-loving globalists who want us all to stop reproducing and consuming.

      So, nice try.

    2. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They're not saying it because it would be fucking stupid to say it. They are, however, choosing to behave in a way that's consistent with not trusting science though. They don't believe that climate change is a serious problem and caused by humans requiring humans to address what we're doing. And they don't trust vaccinations.

    3. Re:Science has a pretty good record by omnichad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Plenty of people are saying they don't trust vested interests, eugenics-loving globalists who want us all to stop reproducing and consuming.

      Yeah, I'm sure it's those vested interests and not the global energy and manufacturing industries.

    4. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There was an article on Drudge a week ago that listed 110 of AGW predictions, that could be proven/disproven. Every one failed to come true.
      100% failure of scientific predictions, and yet here you are believing them and telling us about scientific predictions and how we need to believe them.

      Not sure debating your kind is even possible anymore.

    5. Re:Science has a pretty good record by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why are you using two different sources for comparison of terminology?

      I mean you are just mixing units here and making you look like an idiot.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    6. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Sique · · Score: 4, Insightful
      What type of predictions? Were they given as ranges (scientific predictions mostly are), and the results did not came out right in the middle of the range? Were the ranges given with probabilities, and the probabilities just ignored? Where were the predictions published? Were they really predictions from scientific papers, or were they just expolations by reporters telling about the papers? Or were they just made up to fill an article how wrong the scientists are?

      And more so: How many predictions were actually coming true and not being reported by the Drudge report? If you dig into ten thousands of papers, you might get 100,000 predictions, and of them, just 110 didn't come true the way the authors of Drudge Report would like to have them being true. This would give a success rate close to 99 percent. Yeah for Science!

      And finally: Does the article even exist?

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    7. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Two leading AGW cheerleaders.

      What do you want, the very same fucking authors?

      This is common practice in the AGW community. Dismiss cold weather records as Weather and hype warm weather records as Climate.

      Holy fuck.

    8. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Raenex · · Score: 1, Informative

      massive amounts of data

      That they cherry pick for their foregone conclusions? You realize Climategate's "hide the decline" was about truncating decades worth of tree data that diverged from real temperatures, right?

      well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed

      The models have consistently over-predicted temperatures.

    9. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not sure where you get the cold weather from. Every year for the past 20 years has been the hottest on record until that time. That isn't fiction. The hockey stick graph does hold true, no matter how people deny it.

      Problem is, nobody gives a rat's ass about climate change. Most people, if they could be rich, but the planet would be uninhabitable in 20-30 years, would gladly take the cash now, to hell with what is up ahead.

      I will state two points about AGW: If you look at peer reviewed journals, there are thousands of abstracts about proofs of climate change. There has yet to be a single article posted about refuting it. Also, if you, as a scientist, are being paid so much money to refute climate change, and know it will damage your career to mention it... then why the hell do scientists keep mentioning it unless it is coming like a freight train? Scientists don't make any cash from warning people about this, and it is in their best interest they refute it.

    10. Re: Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Drudge is a relIable source????

    11. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They were ranges of predictions, all were well out of any possible prediction.
      People on /. posted links to it back then. 110 of them, all false.

      Don't care to debate science with anti-science AGW alarmists anymore.

    12. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Is Drudge or whoever wrote the article an acclaimed scientist?

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    13. Re:Science has a pretty good record by greythax · · Score: 3, Funny

      That's right, there is a huge multinational conspiracy of life long academics with tenure all hell bent on oppressing you by forcing more fuel efficient vehicles on you! And you saw through it all! Keep it up QAnon, you are doing God's work!

      Also, know how I know you watch fox news? Climategate.

    14. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      List from 2014, looks like list that was on Drudge.

      Doesn't matter, you all will look at list and decide failed predictions listed don't matter and keep on screaming to believe liars.

      Not worth debating anti-science AGW alarmists anymore, they are morons and everyone including themselves knows it.

    15. Re: Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Honda CBR 250 is the optimal vehicle for all human use.
      It has better fuel efficiency than the space shuttle, and more power than a Vespa.

      It is easier to park and handle than an ocean freighter, and more stable than a pogo stick.

      It weights less than a dump truck, and carries more than a thimble.

      Clearly, by these examples, the CBR 250 is the most sensible vehicle.

      That's the GP's logic.

    16. Re:Science has a pretty good record by dpilot · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Interesting that for many of those "failed" predictions, the evaluation date for the prediction is still well in the future. You cannot make a pass/fail judgement in 2014 for a prediction of what is going to happen by 2050. Others look as if they take sensationalist press and consider that to be a prediction.

      Drudge Report has a vested interest in calling this all bunk, and their list reflects that. If you really want to validate predictions, science is generally pretty good at that - take a look at the methods used by real scientists.

      But this is Slashdot. I expected no less than rampant denialism here.

      Let's look at this from a risk point of view. If Climate Change is real, people are going to die - lots of them. Not because the heat is going to kill them, but because our society is not responding well, there will be famines, wars, refugees, and all of that stuff that doesn't help longevity. If Climate Change is a complete fake, but we take preventive actions, a few very wealthy people are slightly less wealthy, but there won't be extra quantities of people dying. Come to think of it, as for heat, there are now places in the Persian Gulf that are technically uninhabitable. It's so hot and humid that you can't cool yourself enough by sweating. Without air conditioning, you will die if outdoors for too long. But we really can't assign blame to that one - yet.

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    17. Re:Science has a pretty good record by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

      Is Drudge or whoever wrote the article an acclaimed scientist?

      Who cares if it was a typing Corgi FFS!? Is what was reported accurate and factual?

      If a report is accurate and factual, then attempting to claim otherwise based solely on the identity of the source is simply the intellectually lazy person's means of dismissing inconvenient facts & arguments without requiring refutation, nothing more.

      Don't be that guy.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    18. Re:Science has a pretty good record by sexconker · · Score: 0

      That's right, there is a huge multinational conspiracy of life long academics with tenure all hell bent on oppressing you by forcing more fuel efficient vehicles on you! And you saw through it all! Keep it up QAnon, you are doing God's work!

      Also, know how I know you watch fox news? Climategate.

      Uh, lifelong academics with tenure are a real thing and a real problem, and consistently manifest as a conspiratorial force. If you're in a tenure track position, you fall in line to make tenure or your appointment times out and you lose your job.

      Further, current vehicles aren't more fuel efficient than old vehicles. They burn more cleanly, and that's good, but let's not pretend that came freely by the magic mandate of the benevolent and wise Governmento, and let's not ignore all the bullshit they've subjected us to.

    19. Re:Science has a pretty good record by morethanapapercert · · Score: 3, Interesting

      climate=average conditions over years or even decades. Weather=actual conditions over hourly, daily and weekly periods. And the whole point of TFA is that we are seeing large scale changes in the weather we experience BECAUSE of the massive changes in the underlying climate.

      --
      I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
    20. Re: Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whooooooaaaa, hold your horses man. Contemporary vehicles burn cleaner than older ones ONLY because it's required by law. Private companies have no interest in making vehicles with lower emissions unless there are penalties involved for not doing so, since it takes money and time to figure out how to make that happen.

    21. Re: Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Science has a record of always being wrong. Thats why it works. Geocentrism? Wrong. Flat earth? Wrong. Newtonian physics? Wrong. Impending ice age circa 1970s? Wrong.... But now since a lot of people think something we can stop all the sciencing and solidify the dogma. A good scientist is a sceptic, a "denier". A good dogmatisist goes along with whatever consensus is in vouge

    22. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stop! If you don’t know the difference between climate and weather, then watch this.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TQlHaGhYoF0

    23. Re:Science has a pretty good record by dpilot · · Score: 1

      I don't consider most of those "failures" to have been valid evaluations of predictions in the first place.

      Second, I wasn't going after "think of the children" emotional arguments. I'll place it this way:

      If AGW is real, and we don't take preventive measures, people will die, in large numbers.

      If AGW is fake, and we do take preventive measures, some people will be slightly less wealthy than they would have, had we not taken those measures.

      Life is on one side of the balance, money is on the other. I realize of course that we're probably betting with other peoples' lives, not our own. But you never know. Do you feel lucky?

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    24. Re: Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, a good scientist is not a "denier". Again, you conveniently confuse skepticism ("I don't know whether something is true or false") with incredulity ("that must be false!" aka denialism).

    25. Re:Science has a pretty good record by dpilot · · Score: 1

      By the way, even if you're going to insist that this is all "natural" and has nothing to do with man's activities, it still means that we need to figure out how to adapt to it. We also need to measure it, so we can understand what's happening. In the name of AGW denial, both of those things, sensible whether or not AGW is real, are being cut back.

      You can get hit by a truck or by a charging bear. The latter is "natural", the former not. You're dead in either case.

      https://www.theguardian.com/ci...

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    26. Re: Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look ma, an unsubstantiated claim! Can I dismiss it? Feel free to provide links to you made up bullshit any time now.... any time...

    27. Re:Science has a pretty good record by Raenex · · Score: 1

      That's right, there is a huge multinational conspiracy

      Climategate really happened. Political bias in science happens. It's happened before, it happened in climate science, and it will happen again.

      Also, know how I know you watch fox news? Climategate.

      This is what politicized denialism looks like. I give you facts on Climategate, you talk about Fox News.

    28. Re: Science has a pretty good record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The same logic for being religious and believing in heavan.

      heaven real = you died and went there
      heavan fake = costed you money and time, but was worth the risk

      Are you a religious man?

  43. One factor by XXongo · · Score: 1
    You are repeating that there is one factor, local environmental destruction increasing forest fires and flooding. You're right.

    It is, however, not the only factor.

  44. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Adding extra commas does not improve your argument.

  45. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The rate of change is important, and it can be seen that since industrial age the rate is increasing. Of course, population is a factor as well, because more people consume more ruminant products (meat, cowmilk, ...), and the animals produce methane which is a factor for global warming. We better use the handbrake now, after living in ignorance for so long. It is not really important if humans are guilty for global warming, we have to to ehatever we can to stop it. This is possible without living in caves. For example, one can use a bike instead of a car, or stop eating meat. We need incentives for that, for example a carbon tax. Most people only look at money, so they need to feel an expense for inappropriate behavior. We only have this earth, it is too much to ask for care of our living space?

  46. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why not put your money where your mouth is and go jump in an active volcano? Or take a nap in a sealed, oxygen-less room? Because by your logic, you should have nothing to fear from either since they both represent historic states of the Earth.

  47. history is here by XXongo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The GISS temperature history, with the graphs showing the results of every to their analysis dating back to 1981, is here.

    1. Re:history is here by nickrao · · Score: 1

      As I said in a previous post, I only accept data presented in peer-reviewed papers. Even some NASA data has not been reviewed. I wonder also how many of these scientists are climatologists and of the climatologists what percentage are dependant on government grants.

  48. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Depends on how quickly the socialism/communism virus spreads this time, but yes.

  49. Um... has this guy paid any attention to America? by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    the party in complete power of all branches of Government has called global warming a hoax. Is he from a different timeline than I am? I can go there?

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  50. Re:Any solution will be technological by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

    Any solution will be technological; it will not be ham fisted attempts to force stone age living on the hoi polloi.

    (Notice that the elites like Al Gore never do the stone age living thing anyway. That's for you plebes.)

    Perhaps you should do some research on the technologies that have emerged in the last few years.
    New developments in solar, geo-thermal and wind energy.
    New insulation techniques and technologies.
    New transportation technologies.

    As some leaders(and many people) have been saying for the last 20 years, this is a huge business opportunity.
    However the entrenched carbon extraction lobby has fought the change to the bloody end, to the detriment of all.

    --
    We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
  51. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Climate has always changed since the planet formed.

    Indeed it has. So why haven't you jumped into an active volcano yet? Since your logic hinges entirely on "climate has always changed, therefore we have nothing to fear", you should have nothing to fear from leaping into an environment that represents a historic state of the Earth.

    or think that there's anything we humans can do to prevent it

    We can put a man on the moon.
    We can put robots on other planets.
    We can send computers outside of our solar system.
    We can look inside the atom. Hell, we can look inside the things that are inside the atom.
    But impact the climate? Nah bro, that's way too difficult for us to do.

  52. not quite yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When most people have personally lost something due to climate change is when it will hit. Those that say this is the new normal don't yet get it. This is just a transition period.

  53. So what can you do to help? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Informative
    So, what can you do to help out? There are three major categories of how you can help, personal, political and charitable.

    In terms of personal change, you can do a lot. You can eat less meat; meat consumption is a major driver of CO2 production and methane in the atmosphere https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm. You can also drive less, walk places or use public transit. If you need to buy a new car, try to buy a hybrid or an electric car. If you own a house, make sure it is well insulated; don't put the air conditioner on to any colder than you need to in the hot months, and don't heat it more than you need to during the winter. Consider buying solar panels for your house. All of these are things which not only help the environment, they save you money.

    Politically, the primary thing you can do is either donate to or vote for candidates who support dealing with climate change. Much of Europe is doing the right things already regarding this (with the exception of Germany's really bad decision to turn off their nuclear plants). But both the US and Australia currently have governments who are substantially not helping matters. In the US, this means generally one should be voting for Democrats. While there are some Republicans who take climate change seriously like Christie Todd Whitman and Arnold Schwarzenegger they are a functional minority which has been pushed out of the party to a large extent.

    The third thing you can do is directly donate to charitable causes which help with renewable energy or otherwise help with climate issues. Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ buys solar panels for non-profits like homeless shelters and science museums. The Solar Electric Light Fund https://www.self.org/ gets solar panels for parts of the developing world; this not only helps the very poorest in the world, it also helps make sure that when Africa's economy comes more online they do so in a way that doesn't immediately involve massive CO2 production. For wind power, I recommend the New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund which builds wind in the North East of the US (which currently has very little wind power and can definitely use more). Finally, in terms of immediate effects of CO2 offset per a dollar spent, Cool Earth is by many measures the most efficient way to do so https://www.coolearth.org/. Remember, every little bit helps.

    1. Re:So what can you do to help? by DogDude · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I would. But they are all preoccupied with taking my guns.

      I doubt that. It sounds like you're too self-centered to care about anybody but yourself (and your precious guns).

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    2. Re:So what can you do to help? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 1

      And how many of those guns did Obama take? And how much are your guns going to help you if the temperature goes up 5 C and the coasts are all flooding? But let's put this aside and note that there's a lot on that list that you can do that isn't political.

    3. Re:So what can you do to help? by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      Politically, the primary thing you can do is either donate to or vote for candidates who support dealing with climate change.

      I would. But they are all preoccupied with taking my guns.

      There are more guns in the US now, and it is easier to get guns than it ever was.
      That is a ridiculous argument.
      There are gun shows in my town all the time.
      Everyone in town is armed...
      Your guns aren't going to do much good when climate change has created food and water scarcity affecting billions of people.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    4. Re:So what can you do to help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's easy, when all you low lander city slickers get flooded and run out to the countryside, get hungry and try to steal my crops, cattle or assault my family, I'll be forced to defend them.

    5. Re:So what can you do to help? by PPH · · Score: 1

      It sounds like you're too self-centered

      No. There's the agenda that the left wing uses to get itself re-elected. And then there's the one that they really pursue once they get into office. They are nowhere near the same.

      If you want wind power, you'd better not try to put some up in the view of wealthy Democrats. Wealthy and heavily armed. Because when society collapses, you aren't going to camp on their view property either.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    6. Re:So what can you do to help? by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

      It sounds like you're too self-centered to care about anybody but yourself (and your precious guns).

      People can care about more than one thing, you know.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    7. Re:So what can you do to help? by eaglesrule · · Score: 1

      Your guns aren't going to do much good when climate change has created food and water scarcity affecting billions of people.

      Nothing inspires confidence more than an agenda to disarm and criminalize lawful citizens, while the world continuously serves up examples of what happens within failed states.

    8. Re:So what can you do to help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And how many of those guns did Obama take?

      Because people politically fought against it. Constant vigilance is needed or your rights are taken.

      And how much are your guns going to help you if the temperature goes up 5 C and the coasts are all flooding?

      I don't live on the coast, so quite a bit. When things turn bad, all those living in larger houses, driving more, going on jetset vacations, and living in cities that outsource their pollution will have to lie in the bed they made- but only if the rest of us have the weapons to ensure they do not take more than they deserve from other people yet again.

      But let's put this aside and note that there's a lot on that list that you can do that isn't political.

      Which just so happens to benefit wealthy elite on the coasts and conveniently infers blame on poorer people living more inland. How convenient for you.

      Take personal responsibility for yourself. Don't go to restaurants, don't go on vacation anywhere but local, don't have a large house, don't have air conditioning, don't use so may computers, smartphones, tablets, and all the other things that burn electricity which make you feel good but you don't really need. Grow some of your own food! Take care of the people in your community first before spending resources on people halfway across the globe that would rather see you rot than reciprocate your efforts. I know taking personal responsibility for yourself and sacrificing your own feel-good luxuries is opposite of modern liberalism these days, but please try.

    9. Re:So what can you do to help? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      Politically, the primary thing you can do is either donate to or vote for candidates who support dealing with climate change. Much of Europe is doing the right things already regarding this (with the exception of Germany's really bad decision to turn off their nuclear plants). But both the US and Australia currently have governments who are substantially not helping matters. In the US, this means generally one should be voting for Democrats.

      Um, what? To ramp up the nuclear plants, you should vote Democrat?

    10. Re:So what can you do to help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And how many of those guns did Obama take?

      Because people politically fought against it. Constant vigilance is needed or your rights are taken.

      And how much are your guns going to help you if the temperature goes up 5 C and the coasts are all flooding?

      I don't live on the coast, so quite a bit. When things turn bad, all those living in larger houses, driving more, going on jetset vacations, and living in cities that outsource their pollution will have to lie in the bed they made- but only if the rest of us have the weapons to ensure they do not take more than they deserve from other people yet again.

      But let's put this aside and note that there's a lot on that list that you can do that isn't political.

      Which just so happens to benefit wealthy elite on the coasts and conveniently infers blame on poorer people living more inland. How convenient for you.

      Take personal responsibility for yourself. Don't go to restaurants, don't go on vacation anywhere but local, don't have a large house, don't have air conditioning, don't use so may computers, smartphones, tablets, and all the other things that burn electricity which make you feel good but you don't really need. Grow some of your own food! Take care of the people in your community first before spending resources on people halfway across the globe that would rather see you rot than reciprocate your efforts. I know taking personal responsibility for yourself and sacrificing your own feel-good luxuries is opposite of modern liberalism these days, but please try.

      You sound like Jason Kessler. Who's ironically living at home and getting handouts from his parents.

    11. Re:So what can you do to help? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 1

      No. There are some Democrats who aren't good about nuclear power certainly but most of the major Democrats are in favor of nuclear power. Hillary Clinton was explicitly in favor, as was Obama, Kerry and Gore. There is an anti-nuclear end of the Dems but it isn't that powerful, and where the Dems shine is being in favor of solar and wind power and general efficiency issues. Moreover, the Republicans "bring-back-coal" attitude isn't in practice any better for nuclear power either.

    12. Re:So what can you do to help? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 1

      But let's put this aside and note that there's a lot on that list that you can do that isn't political.

      Which just so happens to benefit wealthy elite on the coasts and conveniently infers blame on poorer people living more inland. How convenient for you.

      I live in Iowa, so I'm not completely sure how you think things which benefit the "wealthy elite on the coasts" is convenient for me. Moreover, pretty much nothing on my list was coastal specific except for the New England Wind Fund. Everybody Solar for example is currently funding programs in the Dakotas and Idaho. The Solar Electric Light Fund doesn't put things in the US at all. And the only reason I mentioned the New England Wind Fund is because it is genuinely the best wind charity out there.

      I know taking personal responsibility for yourself and sacrificing your own feel-good luxuries is opposite of modern liberalism these days, but please try.

      This is strange for you to assert given that the first of the three categories I listed was explicitly matters of personal responsibility, and we follow the vast majority of them. My wife and I don't own a car at all, and the only times we eat meat are when we're visiting relatives who are highly carnivorous. That said, the scale of things matters: for example, you talk about not using electronics, but the CO2 levels of using most modern devices are pretty low. Similarly, eating at restaurants doesn't involve substantially more CO2 production than anything else (we don't go to restaurants often, but it has little to do with CO2). Personal responsibility is for such issues is much more common among people concern about climate change than you seem to realize.

    13. Re:So what can you do to help? by PPH · · Score: 1

      Your guns aren't going to do much good when climate change has created food and water scarcity affecting billions of people.

      Look up 'Roof Koreans'.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    14. Re:So what can you do to help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If I'm not mistaken the major source is Portland cement. You basically roast the limestone and clay until it releases the CO2 out of it ( calcination ).

      Throwing money at the problem will not help ( emission taxes, etc. ) this is just trowing money in the air. Where does the money go? Who steals it?! I don't see anything changing since we started taxing emissions, was it a decade ago?

      Taxing works for educated and well behaved people, not in the general case we have at hand.

    15. Re:So what can you do to help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nuclear was no more than a (brief) talking point for Obama, and it languished under his administration. Many of the closures since can be traced to nuclear being excluded from consideration as a clean energy source, and "renewable" sources not only being heavily incentivized, but often mandated.

      Clean energy policy has actually improved under the current administration, which is kind of funny. (To be clear, I'm not an advocate of coal, but the encouragement of nuclear is worth more than any amount of production subsidies for renewable projects. Even so, people should be more appreciative of the reliable energy that coal provides, and which can't be replaced by intermittent renewables.)

    16. Re:So what can you do to help? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 1

      Portland cement and related processes are certainly a major source of CO2, but they aren't "the major source." See https://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/10/195/2018/essd-10-195-2018.pdf and https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/05/09/emissions-from-the-cement-industry/. About 5% of total CO2 production is due to cement and related materials.

    17. Re:So what can you do to help? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 1

      There's no substantial danger that Dems are going to deliberately stop nuclear power the way Germany did. But more to the point, the idea that nuclear power is somehow better than solar and wind is not true. While nuclear power for baseline power is really useful, the cost solar and wind is generally lower. More to the point, it takes a very long time to set up new nuclear plants. In contrast, the amount of time it takes to make a similar amount of solar or wind power is much lower. In the long run we'll likely transition to a nuclear heavy grid, but it isn't useful to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

    18. Re:So what can you do to help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are even more things you can do personally that will have a large and lasting effect. The most important is: don't have children! Children are a lasting carbon footprint that goes on forever as long as everyone keeps reproducing. If you already have children, send them texts when they are driving. Finally, consider committing suicide, which is legal in some states. Once you finish decomposing your carbon footprint will be zero.

  54. Re:Weather or Climate Change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But, we've had the hottest years on record just about every year the last decade or so. I think this year is going to be somewhat cooler and just the 4th hottest year on record.

    Weather is what we see, but it's those changes over time that are ultimately critical. One year of extreme weather in either direction wouldn't be climate change, but the fact that we're seeing this all over the world and year after year ought to be something of great concern to anybody not planning on dying in the next few years.

  55. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Conveniently ignores the majority of the planets historical temperature just so it looks "fine".
    Go look back to dinosaur days and don't bother posting a reply, it's a waste of time.
    Alarmist bullshit solves nothing.

    This 270k downloads is literally meaningless in the most accurate sense.
    Given any links any of these people have to anyone else, or any influential power, basically nothing will happen. It'll be some whining for the 7 months and everyone will forget, until next summer where it starts again.
    Most of that 270k wouldn't be willing to do the drastic changes required to "stop Earth boiling" or whatever nonsense they'll come out with next.
    I do. For the most part. I ain't perfect. I only do it out of saving money and light exercise through the day, which is great.
    Everyone I know wouldn't even consider it. Everyone they know wouldn't. They are too lazy to do something that requires even the SLIGHTEST bit of effort because "I'm too exhausted" or some other bullshit.
    And the reason they are too exhausted is because of eating shitty junk food which does nothing for them but feed objectively bad bacteria in the gut usually, or crashing their bodies survival instincts leading to severe weight gain because the body thinks it's permanently approaching winter.
    Or, and this is one overlooked by almost all dieticians globally, never mind the terrible western Americanized dieticians: simply eating too much. The whole standard 3 meals a day is too much and not how our bodies work. Hell, 2 is stretching it.
    Humans don't each much in the wild. All you need to do is go look at any tribal groups around the world to see this. Humans have convinced themselves that being hungry is a bad thing. It isn't. STARVING is a bad thing maybe, really bad starving that is. Being hungry isn't. Hunger != starving. It's actually a functional component to the body. Being hungry forces your body to recycle senescent cells and other gunk stuck between the flesh.
    Over-eating - which is MOST of the modern human race, even the objectively healthiest countries like Iceland and such - is the biggest damaging factor when it comes to rapid ageing. It makes the difference between someone being healthy at 110 and something feeling 110 at 60.
    The damage starts to become cumulative.
    Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, still related admittedly.

    Humans won't change. A world war is the the only thing that would make us change. Or asteroid. Maybe. Or aliens.

  56. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    CO2 levels are rising. As ice glaciers melt they release even more trapped CO2. We may enter a period where warming will accelerate. We need to reduce fossil fuel use and start limiting population growth. The planet doesnt care if we live or die. Its up to us to be smart and protect our environment and our families. Its interesting that a liberal is more likely to agree we need to be more conservative with our resources and a conservative wants to have lots of kids and burn coal.

  57. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "alternative facts" = "Not my facts".

    Global Warming in the Phrenology of the 21st Century

  58. Lol. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    dipshits.

  59. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by chill · · Score: 1
    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  60. Re:Any solution will be technological by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One stone or another.

  61. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What is science then?

  62. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by shilly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's certainly more likely to be science than the bletherings of 100,000 non-scientist fuckwits with financial and psychological interests in the status quo.

  63. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You've been duped too. You like most everyone has been fooled into thinking all this resistance is really about whether it is a problem and not how do we fix it. Meanwhile your politicians have been working their asses off to make sure that the costs of this fall inequitably on conservatives and conservative politicians have been working building the counter-narrative. By the time you have won this fight and the real fight, either capitalistic invention will save us or it will be too late to screw over the conservatives anyway.

  64. Great, but: Too little too late? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I want to believe this headline and I'll go ahead and accept it for sake of argument -- but is it too little too late? Or are we going to become a living (dying?) example of why we haven't been able to detect signs of alien civilizations out there among the stars?

    1. Re:Great, but: Too little too late? by jemmyw · · Score: 1

      If I understand correctly yes its too little too late. If we completely stopped our emissions today due to the lag between CO2 levels and temperature increase we'll still get at least 0.7C of additional warming, and probably more because the CO2 emitted per year has been going up until last year. And we're not going to stop any time soon. Then there's the feedback effects which I don't think we're completely clear on until they happen - but once we get into the state where those predicted feedback mechanisms are in play then we no longer have control anyway.

      It might not wipe us out, but I think it puts a limit on our current civilization, lifestyle and population. Personally I think it will wipe us out. (Other) life will carry on though as it has always seemed to manage to do.

  65. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by shilly · · Score: 2

    Let me think about why I might not give a shit about the climate changing 100m years ago and the climate changing today. Oh yes! I'm alive today, and dependent on a complex and fragile civilisation, along with the rest of humanity.

    Christ but you people are stupid

  66. Re:Any solution will be technological by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cavemen had it right.

  67. Re:Um... has this guy paid any attention to Americ by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

    ... and sadly, the 'other partys' plan to "fix climate change" was to sell "carbon credits" to big polluters, so they could pollute even more, but pay for the privilege.

    I, too, would like to visit this alternate Earth.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  68. Re:Any solution will be technological by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We can't replace rural transportation economically in time to fix anything. Not that there is any political motivation to not have Republicans bear the highest cost for climate change. Technology can't save us unless it is the Republican believers who think we will invent efficient scrubbers before we destroy the planet.

  69. Concatenation goes to 11 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (irrelevant babble removed) ... even if the proof was as clear as 1+1 = 2.

    1+1 = 11

    My economy goes to 11, bitch.

  70. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by BCGlorfindel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Plenty of scientists are saying there is not a scientific link between the fires and climate change, even Vox ran a story with that.

    Maybe they should go talk to the experienced firefighters that say that fire is behaving in ways they have never seen before. Things are changing and barring ALIENS! the only reasonable explanation is climate change...

    Surprisingly, Aliens or climate change aren't the only possible explanations. I know, hard to believe but hear me out.

    It's beginning to be widely accepted that fighting forest fires has contributed to making the big ones worse. When we stop small forest fires, that means dead fall and dried planet matter continue to accumulate. It turns out, larger trees used to survive small forest fires, and the smaller fires cleared out the dead fall and dried material. With us stopping those fires though, enough tinder is accumulating that when a fire does hit, it's bigger, stronger and worse than ever before.

    I know, citation please, so here's a fire forest researcher from UBC from a region of Canada where we fight multiple forest fires every year saying the same thing.

    Before you get too sad though, there is a silver lining. The faculty member mentions that changing forest fire management might be opposed by standard logging industry practices, so we can still hate on corporate/industrial causes for the problem, hurray!

  71. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    We all know it rains from time to time. But if I were to hose you down with a fire hose. You are not going to just sit there and say it is just the weather, when there was someone actually causing the problem of getting wet.

    The climate does change. But not at this rate, The reasons for the change are pointing to human activity.

    What would be the benefit of people panicking over climate change? For politicians on both sides not worrying about climate change would make their jobs easier, want to subdue a population, giving the big Trucks and SUV's and make them feel like a tough rouged individual. Having factories that pump out exhort without having to worry about the peoples health, dealing with lawsuits with the state and companies over problems.

    If government wants tight control of peoples lives, then they are easier ways then bring up a climate change conspiracy. Heck throwing a dart at a world map and going to war with them is much easier, as it is easy to explain why someone else culture is full of inhuman monsters. Using Climate Change as an excuse to control peoples lives, as for some grand conspiracy would be extremely hard to pull off. Because environmental control and regulations are complex and requires a balancing act.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  72. Re:Any solution will be technological by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > fifty fucking years ago

    Thanks for bolding that. A lot of things have been said in the last 50 years. By bolding that, you've made it clear that even though many things have been said, this is the one thing we all should have and should now pay attention to. Because it is in bold.

  73. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Over a million people believed in Hitler. Did that make him right?

  74. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by mSparks43 · · Score: 1

    Except those last ten years have been completely and utterly debunked.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  75. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What part of the above to you believe is untrue?
    and please "use your words". Language counts.

    Don't replace "anthropic global warming" with "Climate Change" because it's convenient for you for confuse the argument.
    No more "Group Think", use facts or we will continue to ignore you. We being the people who make rational decisions based on facts.

    Here are definitions and links for study for you to get you started.
    anthropic global warming - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1367578816300931
    Climate - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate
    Change - Not Static
    interglacial - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial
    Group Think - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

  76. I'll believe people are "waking up" when we get... by blindseer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nuclear power.

    When I see new nuclear power plants getting built then I will believe that politicians and the public are taking global warming seriously. I have read some encouraging news recently that US federal regulators are making real investments in the future of nuclear power. There's already been a shift in how nuclear power is viewed, and people are starting to embrace it again. One real reason people are embracing it is very self serving, a lot of nuclear power plants are reaching end of life and will be shut down soon and without a new reactor in its place a lot of jobs will be lost as well as a large source of electrical generation capacity in that region.

    I don't much care why people are embracing nuclear power, only that people embrace it. Nuclear power is safe, low carbon, domestically sourced, and inexpensive.

    Say what you will about past accidents with nuclear power, like Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, all of them are irrelevant to embracing third and fourth generation nuclear power. All of those past accidents were with second generation nuclear, and as safe as second generation nuclear power has been on the aggregate we will see even safer power with third generation nuclear that is being built now. Fourth generation nuclear, such as molten salt reactors, will be safer still.

    I've seen the numbers and models on a national grid based on wind, water, and sun. This is not a future with inexpensive, reliable, and safe electricity. It's quite likely not low in CO2 either. There is no future with inexpensive, plentiful, safe, clean, and "green", electricity that does not include nuclear power.

    Here's a couple websites that do the numbers:
    http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...
    http://withouthotair.com/

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  77. After 99 percent of the damage is caused by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 0

    The problem is that the effects you're seeing are about 90 percent caused by emissions up to 2000.

    It's going to take a lot of work to get it back to reasonable, and many of the old people who caused and are causing it won't live to see a world where they suffer from it's consequences.

    We've known about this for centuries, and still waste money on fake solutions like overpriced nuclear power (which doesn't work well when the water heats up a lot), when the solutions even Edison knew about, wind and solar, are far far cheaper than any of the fossil fuels that are creating the problem.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:After 99 percent of the damage is caused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We've known about this for centuries, and still waste money on fake solutions like overpriced nuclear power (which doesn't work well when the water heats up a lot), when the solutions even Edison knew about, wind and solar, are far far cheaper than any of the fossil fuels that are creating the problem.

      Right, we should bring back cheap nuclear power, as it was before the anti-nuclear lunacy took hold. If not for their efforts to drive up prices using lawsuits, excessive regulations, and any other dirty tactics available, fossil fuels would be history by now. Thanks for that. It's ironic that the anti-nuclear "greens" are now using the problem that they caused as justification for a completely unworkable "solution". Advocating an ideology that excludes the largest reliable zero-carbon energy source exposes their fraud.

      Here are your "cheap" renewables. Even if they actually were economical, they only provide for electricity, not heating, industry, and transportation, which are a much larger part of the problem.

    2. Re:After 99 percent of the damage is caused by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      There is no "cheap" nuclear power. Fission is a disaster from mining start to disposal four million years end.

      Now, fusion, and we developed working fusion reactors, which you're not supposed to know about, is actually fairly reasonable, other than the radioactive reactor shell and some of the salts.

      Stop pretending otherwise, n00b

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    3. Re:After 99 percent of the damage is caused by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      nuclear power (which doesn't work well when the water heats up a lot)

      This is true of any thermal power plant. But when it happens to a nuclear one, people panic and run aronud in circles with their hair on fire.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    4. Re:After 99 percent of the damage is caused by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      As was evidenced by the recent heatwaves in Europe, this is far more critical than those not in the energy industry realize.

      They literally had to shut down a few in multiple countries.

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    5. Re:After 99 percent of the damage is caused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are making stuff up, or repeating made up stuff. To be fair, "cheap" is subjective, but if nuclear wasn't affordable, there wouldn't be so many reactors under construction and planned. From wiki's list of reactors:

      Additionally, there are 58 reactors under construction and 154 reactors planned, with a combined capacity of 63 GW and 157 GW, respectively. Over 300 more reactors are proposed.

      Except for a few outliers for first of a kind builds, costs are reasonable and falling. (in sane places) Only in a heavily biased comparison do renewables appear favorable, even comparing their best case to nuclear's worst. Once you factor in the need for storage and backup with intermittent sources, and that nuclear plants have at least twice the lifetime, the picture changes drastically.

      As the "cheap" link points out, investments in renewables are going flat around the world, which naturally happens when states pull the subsidies which they can no longer afford. China is also getting very serious about nuclear; see SINAP T-MSR Promotional Video. It is in Chinese, but it should give you an idea.

  78. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by postbigbang · · Score: 1

    A common mistake is comparing destitute sheep (post WW1) with people that are trained to think for a living. Hitler was able to rally people (bad shepherd problem) and convince them of false rubrics. The sheep followed the false rubrics, believing they were empowered.

    Does this sound a lot like modern politics?

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  79. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You voted for Trump. Conned by a lifelong conman. A well-known conman, and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

    Let's just say your reasoning skills aren't the sharpest and leave it at that.

  80. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People who are "trained to think for a living" should be aware that believing all those with alternate views are "destitute sheep" is not logical thinking.

  81. They've known, they weaponized it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not believing in it is just something they say because it's not PC to say that they think it will work out for them. Massive population die off, less use of resources, to the rich, it's a win-win.

  82. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Barsteward · · Score: 1

    aha... an alternative facts fan

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
  83. Data matches observations by XXongo · · Score: 5, Informative

    well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed

    The models have consistently over-predicted temperatures.

    to the contrary, the models have fit the data to well within confidence limits, and continue to do so.

    Here's an article from Forbes about the very first Global Climate Model, Manabe and Wetherald 1967, looking back at how well their predictions from fifty years ago compared to data: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/03/15/the-first-climate-model-turns-50-and-predicted-global-warming-almost-perfectly/

    And here are graphs, showing that the prediction from fifty years ago (red line) fits the data (blue line) almost exactly. https://climategraphs.wordpres...

    Later models have refined Manabe and Wetherald 1967, incorporating other effects than simply carbon dioxide and water vapor, but haven't changed the answer. Here is the Berkeley Earth page comparing climate models used in the IPCC report against data: http://berkeleyearth.org/graph...

    The problem with the deniers, on the other hand, is that they don't have a prediction. They don't have an alternative model, they don't have anything.

    1. Re:Data matches observations by sexconker · · Score: 1

      well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed

      The models have consistently over-predicted temperatures.

      to the contrary, the models have fit the data to well within confidence limits, and continue to do so.

      False. They don't even fit the "adjusted" data very well.

    2. Re:Data matches observations by XXongo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed

      The models have consistently over-predicted temperatures.

      to the contrary, the models have fit the data to well within confidence limits, and continue to do so.
      (links [1] [2] [3] [4])

      False. They don't even fit the "adjusted" data very well.

      This is the typical way deniers argue: I post a links to data, and the deniers simply deny. That's it, no data, no nothing. Whatever it is, just deny it.

      That's why they're called deniers. If they had any actual information, they'd be skeptics, but the deniers don't even care about actual information. Whatever it is, they'll just deny it.

    3. Re:Data matches observations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm surprised how few people seem to know of this research.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t5R5Bp_RXE

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9gjU1T4XL4

  84. Re:People will accept nuclear power when... by blindseer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    People will accept nuclear power when everyone advocating it move to within a few kilometers of a nuclear reactor and settle there, along with their entire family.

    And yes, that includes you.

    I do in fact live near a nuclear power plant. Like many across the USA it is scheduled for being shutdown in the next 10 years or so. Given how long it takes for the federal government to issue a license for building a new reactor we'll need to start planning for a replacement now.

    I remember growing up during the Cold War and hearing people talk about how the local nuclear power plant was supposedly a secondary target for the Soviet nuclear missiles. Also nearby are vital dams for navigation and hydroelectric power, these were also secondary targets if not primary targets. In the local phone directories are evacuation plans in case of a meltdown at the power plant, and how the public would be notified of an emergency.

    After growing up in the shadow of a nuclear power plant I do not fear nuclear power. What I fear more is a future without nuclear power.

    Don't give me shit about "not in my backyard". I'd be quite pleased with a nuclear power plant in my back yard. Here's the problem I have, it's not the NIMBY crowd that bother me, it's the BANANA crowd. (That's "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything" for the acronym impaired.) Every state in the USA has a nuclear energy commission of their own, let's put the states in charge of nuclear power instead of the federal government dictating this from afar. I don't want some "left coast" politician tell me that I can't have nuclear power in my backyard.

    I suspect that given enough feet dragging by federal regulators that the states will in fact start to issue nuclear power licenses on their own. Some DC politician from some other state doesn't like this? Well, it's not in their backyard, why should they care?

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  85. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    total straw man argument...

  86. Anonymous coward by XXongo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Anonymous coward posts a claim that there's a blog post somewhere that says predictions are wrong, but can't say when or where or post a link.

    I'm not sure why you bothered to respond. However, for predictions, I posted this to a different subthread:

    Here's an article from Forbes about the very first Global Climate Model, Manabe and Wetherald 1967, looking back at how well their predictions from fifty years ago compared to data: https://www.forbes.com/sites/s...

  87. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by postbigbang · · Score: 1

    Consider that there is a class of people who are believers, believing what they're told, as a matter of their circumstances. There are many people who are destitute, perhaps poor, and they struggle. I won't correlate this to IQ or ego, just cite it as an observation.

    They believe in magical things. They do it in groups, even mobs. There are those that will lead those tribes, finding boogeymen to blame for their apparent woes. These leaders find themselves liking their power to be believed, and add more magical thinking to their repetoire.

    After WW1, the Germans were looking for solutions to their rotten state: horrific economy, worthless currency, and very wounded pride after the failure of Bismarkism. The barely unified Germany needed ego, and someone to blame. Taking notes from other successful recent "revolutions", Nazism rose to power. Books were burned. Jews, Roma, and homos were blamed for the ills of the German people, who should be Aryan, etc.

    Today in America and other parts of the world, there are again woes. 1% of the population controls about 99% of the wealth. Once again, strong leaders promise to rise them from their poor state and misery, eager to cite immigration problems, and (take your choice) Jews, Muslims, Africans, Mexicans, etc. as the source of their misery. Oh, and I forgot trans people. OMG.

    As knowledge advances, and learned people come to concurrence that climate change is a reality, and it's anchored on the effects of many man-made evils, those profiting from continuing bad practices continue to fight the science, bribe the legislatures and candidates, create their own mythos defending their poor practices, and the planet starts to burn.

    A choir of believers (the sheep), identify with those amazing rich folks, the 1%ers. Wannabe sheep, led by wolves, become supper, eventually. History is full of repetition, and those unable to shed their bias and accept realities.

    When I was a kid, long ago, I believed adults. I trusted them. Understanding science and skepticism and excepting real data was a stretched, but I stretched. Others are unable or unwilling or don't have the circumstances to stretch. They are sheep. There is a responsibility to help them. Read the evidence. A staggering amount of it is available to you.
     

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  88. Re:Any solution will be technological by XXongo · · Score: 1

    > fifty fucking years ago

    Thanks for bolding that.

    It emphasizes the point that the understanding of the effects of carbon dioxide on the climate is not something new, it's been understood for over half a century.

    You're welcome.

  89. Re:I'll believe people are "waking up" when we get by skullandbones99 · · Score: 1

    When you consider that the number of people directly killed in Nuclear power station accidents is less than 500, it does seem strange that people are so scared of it. Indirectly, perhaps 10,000 people were killed. To replace 10,000 people takes 10,000/(250 babies born per minute) = 40 minutes. Therefore, it takes less than 1 hour to compensate for these deaths. In other words, Nuclear power is safe. I expect more people are killed world-wide per year on transport than in the whole history of Nuclear power.

    I would like to see Nuclear power, renewables and energy storage be the final solution. Lets hope Nuclear fusion power becomes a thing sooner rather than later.

    Note that Nuclear power stations require cooling water and this is one reason they are located near the coasts and rivers. However, the recent heatwave caused several European Nuclear power plants and coal fired power plants to be temporarily shutdown or run at reduced power because the outside water was too hot to be effective at cooling for the steam turbines. This means electricity generated using steam turbines is not immune from the effects of climate change.

  90. Frogs Finally Waking Up To Hot Water... by surfcow · · Score: 1

    ... says "Boiling Pot" Author.

  91. No, they are not by WindBourne · · Score: 2

    Still have idiots/trolls running around claiming that China and 3 Rd world nations should be able to add a bunch more coal. Likewise, Germany , Japan, etc adding coal. Most of Europe is shutting down their nukes, without anything solid to back it up. America , is moving off coal, but rather than doing nukes, Geothermal, and hydro, we are moving to wind, solar, and Nat gas. Like China with coal plants, we in America will run our Nat gas plant for the next 50 years. Gov lie constantly to force other nations to clean up, which is why we need OCO-3 to show absolute numbers.

    So no, we are not improving. We have a long ways to go.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    1. Re:No, they are not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      America per person still uses the most coal to this very day.
      We have a long way to go, but Americans have the farthest.

    2. Re:No, they are not by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      Well, Crimson Tsunami/Caffinated Bacon is back lying again.
      Here we see that China crossed America clear back in 2012.

      Here we see that China's per capitia consumption continues to grow to 2 tonnes / person in 2015, while America's continues to shrink to 1.63 tonnes / capitia .

      Then we see that China's coal consumption between 2013-2017, dropped 9%,
      while America's coal consumption dropped 22%.
      Basically, America continues to be below CHina in terms of per capita consumption and dropping, while at the same time, adding more AE per capita than does China.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    3. Re:No, they are not by CaffeinatedBacon · · Score: 1

      Why is an American entitled to use more coal than a Chinese person Windy?
      In all your ranting and raving about China and coal, you still haven't explained why Americans use more. And also why that's OK with you.
      China is over 4x bigger than America, but uses less than 4x the coal. Why are you so dirty? Whats the excuse this time?

    4. Re:No, they are not by CaffeinatedBacon · · Score: 1

      You are comparing apples and oranges Windy. We are talking about coal for electricity, where America is much higher still. It's obvious with what you showed, with industrial coal included the two countries are basically the same. So without those uses, electricity America must be far worse, and I've showed you numerous times.
      This was a funny quote from your link

      Americans who point to Chinese coal as a reason to not cut CO2 emissions are clearly engaged in little more than special pleading, a family pissing in a pool all the more because they have eyed up a bigger family that has entered that pool.

      Did you miss this bit too? China will be peaking at a much lower level than America reached.

      China’s coal consumption is still growing, but it is still 33% or so lower than it was when America’s per-capita coal consumption peaked in 2000. Likewise, America’s per-capita coal consumption was above current Chinese levels for the last 50 years.

      Here is where you prove all your other comments about China increasing coal consumption were lies. Here now you are telling us it dropped 9%, but you often lie and say it went up 5% here and here

      This last site you mention, you may want to look at the other tabs Windy.
      Renewables China 26% America 17.7%
      Nat gas America is about 13x as much per person
      Oil products America is about 5.5x as much per person.
      Electricity America is about 2.6x as much per person.
      Total energy America is about 2.8x as much per person.
      It's obvious why you are so fixated on coal and nothing else. It's the only thing even remotely comparable, so you rant about as much and as often as you can to distract from all the others.
      Not something someone who really cared about AGW would do. But it is something an anti- China coal troll would do.

    5. Re:No, they are not by CaffeinatedBacon · · Score: 1

      Pull you head of from your arse, wipe the coal dust from your eyes and look at the problem more broadly for a change. Surely it's best to look at total fuel combustion from your same link, and not just coal.
      You will notice two things
      US increased slightly from 2016-17, not the getting better you always claim.
      And America's 5,072 MtCO2 isn't a quarter of China's 9,297 even though they have less than 1 quarter of the people. Per person America is clearly over twice as bad, despite all China's coal.

    6. Re: No, they are not by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      The one who has to pull their head out of their ass is you. America is high but continues ( so far ) in the right direction. China is not. They claim one thing, but are lying and doing something else. E.g. Chinese communist gov signed treaty to stop producing CFC. However, so they can compete against the west, the gov allows Chinese citizens to use cfc-11 and looks the other way. They are dumping 1000s of tonnes into the atmosphere in spite of signing Montreal protocol. If America was doing this you ( and me ) would be screaming about it. China is replacing SOME old coal plants with new coal plants. I think it is questionable, but better than leaving old plants running. Here in America, new Nat gas plants are replacing old coal plants . Again, I find it questionable, but better than alternative. New fossil fuel plants will be ran another 40-50 years. Horrible mistake. BUT the real problem is that China continues to add new coal plants. These are not simply replacing the old, or else their Co2 emissions would drop independent of the economy. That is not the case. China's emissions were flat, even went down slightly, but they were hiding the fact their economy had plummeted. How did they hide that? They LIED.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    7. Re:No, they are not by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      Why do you keep lying about what I said. Americans, Like Germans, Australians, Canadians, etc are NOT entitled to use more. That is why we need to continue bringing ours down.
      BTW, Canadians and Australians use more per capita than does America. Yet, you scream about America, nothing else.
      You Chinese, like most westerners, are way too high. We ALL need to bring it down.
      What is important, is that nations are headed in the right direction.
      China is NOT. Germany is NOT. India is NOT.
      OTOH, UK IS. America IS. Canada IS.
      Sweden and Switzerland's levels are where we need to be. BUT the only way to get there is to be headed down not up like your nation is.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    8. Re:No, they are not by CaffeinatedBacon · · Score: 1

      Why do you keep lying about what I said.

      I don't. You constantly say America is doing better or well, It's not. It's amongst the worst/highest. Your nonsense about going in the right direction is meaningless handwaving to cover the fact you are more than twice the world average and won't be down to anywhere near that level for 50 or 100 years if ever.

      Americans, Like Germans, Australians, Canadians, etc are NOT entitled to use more. That is why we need to continue bringing ours down. BTW, Canadians and Australians use more per capita than does America. Yet, you scream about America, nothing else.

      The West, and you in particular act like you are entitled to use more. You keep raving and ranting about other countries doing what you already do. But not a peep about getting America, Canada and Australia to more than half their Emissions. Just patting yourself on the back for being slightly less horrible than the year before (wait until 2018 shows you increased).
      Why do you still lie about what I say. I talk about advanced countries, high consumption countries, western countries all the time, not just America. If America is singled out, it's because you already mentioned them and I'm pointing out your lies/entitlement. Would it make you feel better if I mention Australia and Canada every time as well? Will it help you to reduce your CO2?
      Or will it just add to your entitlement attitude, because, well, those other countries are also doing it.

      You Chinese, like most westerners, are way too high. We ALL need to bring it down.

      I'm not Chinese, but you are right (how did that happen?) they are like most westerners, about average, similar levels. Want to know who isn't like most westerners? America, Australia and Canada. They are much higher.

      What is important, is that nations are headed in the right direction.

      The direction is not enough by itself if it's too slow to make any difference. I can start walking to the north pole, I'm heading in the right direction, do you think I will ever get there?
      Getting to the target is the goal. If countries like China and India, plus all the other developing countries increase for a while then level off at I lower level than America reached and then decrease, they will likely get to the target before America does. No one credible thinks those countries will just keep going up and up and up to US levels.

      China is NOT. Germany is NOT. India is NOT. OTOH, UK IS. America IS. Canada IS.

      Apart from the fact direction is just a meaningless way for you to keep your entitled high levels for as long as you can, and stop other countries from developing. India is most certainly heading in the right direction according to you. At less than half your target of Sweden and Switzerland the right direction for them will be up. China is expected to level off in the next few years, if it hasn't already and start heading down, starting from a much lower level than you rose to, so they should easily remain below your levels.

      Sweden and Switzerland's levels are where we need to be. BUT the only way to get there is to be headed down not up like your nation is.

      If every country was at those levels it wouldn't solve AGW anyway, it would still need to be lower.

      You want to compare Sweden, Switzerland, China and the US, take a look. One of those countries is not like the others...
      If you like trends and directions, the last few years all look pretty flat, and America is about as much as the other 3 added together.

      Simple fact, you are unwilling to give up the luxuries that advanced economies have and revert to developing standards, no ac, no car, less meat, less consumption in general, etc, but you don't want those countries to develop and have what you have. Why aren't you asking all the developed countries to go backwards to their levels of consumption/lifestyle? Is it because you feel entitled to so much more than those people? If it's not entitlement, whats the reason?

  92. Re:Any solution will be technological by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How many times have you called or written your state and federal government representatives asserting your support for nuclear power?

  93. Many people don't care by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    I keep saying this, but somewhere between 60-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. That doesn't leave any room to worry about climate change. You're worried about paying rent that month, buying food and keeping your car running so you can make it to work one more day.

    If you want people to think and care long term you have to make sure their short term needs are taken care of. Otherwise they're vulnerable to being manipulated into doing terrible things that are perfectly rational when taken in the context of their completely messed up and irrational lives.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re: Many people don't care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly. The people have been convinced the only way up is to vote for more inefficient environmentally destructive government help.

      As you know, the cheaper something is, or appears to be, the more people will use of it. So if we give everyone free stuff they will just keep voting for more free stuff and destroy our world that much faster.

      I am glad to be in agreement with you. You are a smart fellow. I am an avid follower and share your newsletter with my friends at the shelter.

  94. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He's probably willfully stupid. A lot of people really, really, want to believe that mitigating the climate disaster we're heading into is a Marxist plot, because propagandists that tell them that idiots are the real smart people told them so.

    Far-right propaganda has made too many Americans too confused and entrenched in propaganda-based beliefs to help with any real problems. A lot of these morons actually believe that the god from their local myths will protect them.

  95. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by sexconker · · Score: 1

    But if you can look at that and aren't the least bit alarmed

    If you can look at XKCD and take it seriously, you're already done.

  96. Re:I'll believe people are "waking up" when we get by blindseer · · Score: 1

    Note that Nuclear power stations require cooling water and this is one reason they are located near the coasts and rivers. However, the recent heatwave caused several European Nuclear power plants and coal fired power plants to be temporarily shutdown or run at reduced power because the outside water was too hot to be effective at cooling for the steam turbines. This means electricity generated using steam turbines is not immune from the effects of climate change.

    Any steam based power plant will need access to water for cooling, this includes current second generation nuclear and most or all third generation nuclear. Many fourth generation nuclear reactor designs have the option for air cooling, the turbines don't run on steam but on hot air. By running at much higher temperatures, temperatures that water cooled plants can not safely attain, brings the option for cooling by forced air while producing power and unpowered convection cooling in a shutdown. Without water there's no reduction of power output because the water reservoir gets too hot. Without water there is no possibility of a flash boil explosion like at Chernobyl, or a hydrogen gas explosion like at Fukushima.

    Just because fourth generation nuclear promises so much does not mean we should not invest in third generation nuclear. In fact it is quite possible we will need the third generation nuclear reactors to breed the fuel for "jump starting" the fourth generation reactors. Solid fuel heavy water moderated reactors are very safe, and offer fuel breeding capability that in some cases outperform fourth generation molten salt reactors. These "gen 3+" or "gen 3.5" reactors is where we should be heading in the short term, while we prototype fourth generation reactors that free us from the need for water cooling.

    I would like to see Nuclear power, renewables and energy storage be the final solution.

    I have to wonder about the value of wind and solar power in an age with inexpensive energy storage. I keep hearing on how once we figure out how to build grid scale electrical batteries that wind and solar power will be able to replace base load power like coal and nuclear. I find the opposite to be true, once we have grid scale batteries then base load power will be able to displace wind and sun through lowered costs. I believe that wind will have a place on the future electrical grid as it is quite inexpensive. Solar on the other hand will likely be in the realm of off grid power, like satellites and pocket calculators.

    Lets hope Nuclear fusion power becomes a thing sooner rather than later.

    Fusion has been proven to be so elusive that I find little reason to consider this viable within the lifespan of anyone alive today. There is simply too much we must learn and in the mean time we have ample supply of cheap and clean fission power. I can see value in doing research in fusion for the sake of discovering how the universe works, just not much value as any kind of energy source. I have seen consideration of fusion as a source of neutrons to breed fuel for fission, and/or disposing of some of the more problematic fission products, so that alone might make it very valuable in energy. Getting fusion to be energy positive is likely to require a reactor so large that we simply cannot afford to build one, even with the financial backing from the government of a large nation.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  97. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by quantaman · · Score: 1

    Plenty of scientists are saying there is not a scientific link between the fires and climate change, even Vox ran a story with that.

    Maybe they should go talk to the experienced firefighters that say that fire is behaving in ways they have never seen before. Things are changing and barring ALIENS! the only reasonable explanation is climate change...

    Surprisingly, Aliens or climate change aren't the only possible explanations. I know, hard to believe but hear me out.

    It's beginning to be widely accepted that fighting forest fires has contributed to making the big ones worse. When we stop small forest fires, that means dead fall and dried planet matter continue to accumulate. It turns out, larger trees used to survive small forest fires, and the smaller fires cleared out the dead fall and dried material. With us stopping those fires though, enough tinder is accumulating that when a fire does hit, it's bigger, stronger and worse than ever before.

    I know, citation please, so here's a fire forest researcher from UBC from a region of Canada where we fight multiple forest fires every year saying the same thing.

    Before you get too sad though, there is a silver lining. The faculty member mentions that changing forest fire management might be opposed by standard logging industry practices, so we can still hate on corporate/industrial causes for the problem, hurray!

    The question isn't whether there are other contributing factors to the California wildfires, I'm pretty sure I've been hearing about the deadfall thing for the past 20 years.

    It's also not a question whether the recent hot and dry climate in California is a significant contributing factor, because the answer is obviously.

    The question is whether climate change is a significant contributing factor to the recent hot and dry climate in California, and that's a somewhat trickier question.

    First you need to decide whether climate change really does make events like that more likely, and if you've made that determination you need to decide how comfortable you are trying to justify it in a peer-reviewed paper. Not all climatologists are agreed that the science is quite at that point.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  98. Some by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some of the world is. Other places like Australia you have pathetic cowards in leadership positions who would rather drop emissions targets to please the coal mongers on his party in order to keep himself in power.

    "AMID rumours of a potential leadership challenge, it appears Malcolm Turnbull will drop the Paris target from his energy policy."

  99. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by sexconker · · Score: 1

    Stand back, I'm going to try SHOWING MY IGNORANCE WITH A SHITTY T-SHIRT.

    Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
    Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
    Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

  100. Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bullshit, the people how have a fucking clue about it are just getting more vocal and aggressive because the assholes who have been denying it are still denying it and getting shits like the Cheeto elected.

    Lets see now "But her emails!" vs "The whole fucking planet!"--talk about false equivalency.

  101. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by sexconker · · Score: 0

    Are you fucking kidding me?

    The scientific method involves:

    1 - Formulating a disprovable hypothesis
    2 - Developing a repeatable, controlled experiment with the goal of disproving the hypothesis
    3 - Running the experiment to collect data
    4 - Using the data to try to disprove the hypothesis
    5 - Having others evaluate the experiment and repeat it themselves to validate your conclusions

    The truth is "climate scientists" are flaky with step 1, skip steps 2 and 3, are total frauds with regards to step 4, and always want more grant money for step 5.

  102. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

    But if you can look at that and aren't the least bit alarmed

    If you can look at XKCD and take it seriously, you're already done.

    Randall Munroe, the author of XKCD, has scientific credentials. He majored and graduated in physics and worked for NASA before devoting himself full-time to his web comic.

    Munroe's style is whimsical and sometimes irreverent, but he does take considerable effort to get the science right. So yes, I can look at XKCD and take it seriously.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  103. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by sexconker · · Score: 1

    Maybe they should go talk to the experienced firefighters that say that fire is behaving in ways they have never seen before. Things are changing and barring ALIENS! the only reasonable explanation is climate change

    Please try to keep up. It's DEWs.

    The fires in CA are being set intentionally. They burn incredibly selectively, and much hotter than any natural fire or any of the fuel in its way.

  104. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The word is anthropogenic not anthropic. Those two words don't remotely mean the same thing. Stop linking stuff that you obviously haven't read. Does it hurt to be that stupid?

  105. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by DavidHumus · · Score: 1
    > I know there are a lot of research funds and grant dollars riding on getting people to panic...

    Question: which number is larger: the amount spent in the U.S. on all government-funded research in a month, or the amount spent on oil in the U.S. in a day?

    Trick question because these numbers are roughly comparable. In other words, the amount of money in oil dwarfs the amount in research, not even counting all the oil-related spending.

    So, who has the most incentive to lie?

  106. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Holy crap, how the hell does ice formed during lower concentration of co2 add to the concentration? Makes no sense. Typical alarmist bullshit

  107. Report predicting spiralling global temperatures h by mapkinase · · Score: 1

    That means literally nothing in terms of validity of the content.

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  108. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by mapkinase · · Score: 1

    Temperature of the planet 20K years ago:

    grain of salt.

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  109. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by stevelinton · · Score: 1

    Evidence please?

    Of course we don't have the luxury of taking 1000 Earths with slightly different conditions and measuring their climates over centuries. But there are established approaches that apply in this situation. As one very oversimplified idea among many, you can exclude part of the data you do have, use the rest to initialise your model and see how accurately it reproduces the missing data. You can repeat this by excluding a different part of the data and running the same process. Your hypothesis is that your model tracks reality within quantified limits. This can be disproved.

  110. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    mod +1M

  111. Re: The link between science and the fires is mone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Duped and now look at us. Economy is gr8

  112. Re:I'll believe people are "waking up" when we get by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How much coal would you like to burn mining the uranium and refining it? Solar/wind are *far* better options.

  113. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dude gets modded as troll and someone just thumbing up a parent gets modded as informative? Wow!

  114. Re:I'll believe people are "waking up" when we get by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Weirdly solar manages to have a higher direct death toll than nuclear juts because people are that bad at climbing ladders.

  115. Re:I'll believe people are "waking up" when we get by blindseer · · Score: 1

    How much coal would you like to burn mining the uranium and refining it? Solar/wind are *far* better options.

    Citation needed.

    Here's mine:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    The IPCC has shown that nuclear has a smaller footprint than any form of solar power. Nuclear is marginally worse than onshore wind, as soon as you run out of land to plant windmills the carbon footprint for wind grows considerably for the concrete and steel needed to anchor those windmills to the floor of the bay. Hydroelectric beats them all, which is great until you've dammed up all the rivers and are still needing more power.

    Seriously, this carbon footprint claim against nuclear power is really old and tired and easily proven false. Even the biggest advocates of solar and wind find it very hard to "prove" that nuclear has a larger CO2 footprint.

    I know that much of the CO2 output for nuclear comes from the concrete used to build it. This is also true for wind and solar thermal. If we can reduce the CO2 footprint of wind and solar through low carbon sources of concrete, such as mining basalt instead of limestone for making it, then those same processes can be applied to the concrete for nuclear. Mining the steel, aluminum, copper, silicon, or whatever for the windmills and solar panels has a CO2 cost. Same for mining the uranium for nuclear power. If there is a means to reduce the CO2 footprint for mining then this can be applied equally to nuclear, wind, and solar.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  116. Freeman Dyson by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Freeman Dyson says, "the polar bears will be fine."

    Prove him wrong.

    1. If you're really worried tell your patrons to stop flying chartered jets
    2. Plant trees.
    3. Paint all artificial sky-facing surfaces white.

    Good day.

  117. Please leave the planet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you believe in human caused climate change.

    Thank you.

    1. Re: Please leave the planet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is not much logic in that, except avoiding to hurt your feelings. It's like the people worried about abuse of children should just leave the house/church/olympic team.

  118. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Why? Whether it's caused by humans or not, it is still changing. Doesn't it make sense to try and adapt? At the very least, buying a beachfront house might be a bad idea.

  119. Re:Climate has never stayed constant by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    They're called democratic facts, we get to vote on them.

  120. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by datavirtue · · Score: 1

    I'll never get over AL Gore's $20,000 a month energy bill for his mansion. What a fucking douche. The Nobel prize is trash. In one swoop they award the peace prize to a war a president who oversaw the worst escalation of world strife, directly resulting from his policies and to another mainstream politician who rode the curtail of environmental fear mongering to gain control over people while he sucked down enough gas, coal, electricity to power 100 wasteful American families for a year.

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  121. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by datavirtue · · Score: 2

    Ocean turns out far more green house gases than we ever could hope to. Phase of natural warming causes and combines with methane release from the ocean and ice sequestered carbon. Your little tailpipe boogie man is not the problem. Leave people alone.

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  122. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by datavirtue · · Score: 0

    Scientists. They are desperate for money cause they produce fucking nothing. Industry is awash in money because they produce stuff people need.

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  123. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by datavirtue · · Score: 1

    Lost me at the beginning of your second stupid paragraph. You will never convince enough people to alter behavior in any appreciaable way. Switch gears.

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  124. I'm still waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    for someone to tell me what the correct temperature is supposed to be, what the correct amount of CO2 is supposed to be and then explain why those numbers were chosen.

    Who gets to decide what the exact temperature is supposed to be and then how do we stop the climate from changing after that?

    See I'm not a climate change denier as you like to label me as a way to shut me up. I know for certain the climate changes, always has, always will. I personally believe that generating CO2, the weakest of all possible GHG, has absolutely nothing to do with global warming, that is driven by the cycles of the Sun. Earth has been hotter, colder, wetter, drier with more CO2, less CO2, less Oxygen, on and on and on even before humans started their first campfire. And life existed and flourished.

    Could the world change in such a way as to make the Earth unsuitable for humans? Possibly but I doubt it. We have peoples that live in zones from the Arctic to the Australian Outback, humans are a very adaptable species.

    Do I think it would be a catastrophe if the ice sheets melted and water levels rose? Nope, coastlines would change, some islands might vanish but so what, Earth's geography is also always changing. The continents move over time, islands rise from volcanoes or sink in the waters. Just curious, but how many automobiles were in use back when Greenland was being farmed by the Vikings during the Medieval Warm Period?

    All this global warming crap is is another way of attacking the wealthy industrialized nations. See we don't push to require the 3rd world countries to reduce their use of carbon producing items. Oh no, that wouldn't be right. No, only the industrialized nations have to change how they live and they need to give their wealth to the poor nations because they have too much. Wouldn't matter anyway, CO2 is not causing any warming, unless someone can explain how one molecule out of 2500 with a black body infrared radiation absorption rate of less than 11% is capable of all that reflection supposedly causing the warm up.

    Notice how the nations that are supposed to allow unfettered immigration or all supposed refugees into their borders are the same nations that are supposed to carry the full burden for changing their life styles. Coincidence? Hell no, this is just another socialist attack vector trying to destroy capitalism. Go research sometime what where the communists in the west disappeared to after the USSR fell and you'll find the moved into the environmental movements. One approach fails, go for another.

    1. Re: I'm still waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are definitely tones in daily politics trying to package deal wealth distribution schemes with any proposed solution or mitigation of CC/AGW. But then again, socialism or "planned progression" is the preferred solution currently for everything. This alone doesn't invalidate the phenomenom.

      Capitalism is the de facto standard of solving the problem of production -- where as socialism is clearly not. Capitalism rests on the individual reason and the morality of the actors pursuiting happiness under the freedom to produce and trade. Capitalism requires adherence to facts, including recognizing imminent catastrophic scenarios -- to which the proper mitigations can also be capitalistic in nature.

      One has to understand, that a ban of a product or a practice harmful to the public (aka nonconsenting individual members) is an integral part of capitalism, even when some superficial proponents of individual freedom are mainly concerned about pot.

  125. What do we do now with the deniers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The deniers are directly responsible for a loss of momentum, in a time when we needed to act rapidly.

    They are also responsible for making certain countries lame with regard to doing their share of the task of avoiding the problem.

    And yet, we are to blame for our ineffective discussion systems. Those who took advantage of free expression to do social engineering and crack representative system certainly are in need of some punishment; but the systems themselves are to be blamed, because unable to facilitate a healthy debate.

    Don't misunderstand me, we sure do well in prizing freedom of expression, but there has to be some way of making sure an emergency is properly dealt with.

    And global warming is such an emergency -- we don't have the luxury of doing endless discussions.

  126. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by David+Gould · · Score: 1

    Yours. The one who glibly ignores all context and pretends the two sides are equivalent. That's the one who's dealing in "alternative facts". (Also, the one who can't use apostrophes -- that's usually a good clue.)

    --
    David Gould
    main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
  127. Re:Any solution will be technological by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Alvin Weinberg called it "burning the rocks"; see the first few minutes of "Th". That said, "burning" here refers to fission which releases no CO2 or other pollutants, not combustion as with coal.

    Interestingly enough, the very same thorium bearing ore is already the source of rare earths used in renewables, and global energy demand could be met with just those mine tailings. Mining could even be reduced if we instead used that thorium for energy, and we'd also vastly reduce the amount of concrete, steel, glass, land, etc. used as well. Renewables are a very resource intensive way to harvest energy.

  128. Re:Any solution will be technological by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    Of course the actual solutions to climate change

    Are a lovely mix. You don't need to be living in the stone age, but you don't need to go rolling coal down the street, leaving your A/C on 20C while you're out, and have the TV running in an empty room either.

    We can do with a lot more waste while we adopt our newer technology.

  129. Re:Any solution will be technological by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    *less waste. Fuck it's 3am and bedtime.

  130. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If xkcd is your go to for science and you find cartoons convincing enough to rip up the global economy and social order based on said cartoon then you are hopeless. There is no point trying to talk with you as I left my crayons and color by numbers books behind in 2nd grade.

  131. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That fill in data method might work if your scientists were honest. They are not. Even if 99,990 of your 100,000 scientists were honest, they are using data from criminals. See: Climategate.

    If you do not know everything that happened there then you cannot engage in honest debate or discussion of climate change.

  132. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You perfectly describe people who believe in AGW.

    You are sheep. It is religion. Despite getting busted hard core altering data and fucking flat out lying about it you still believe what your high priests say about the ver7 thing they have been caught lying about multiple times.

    You are the mindless sheep you rail against. I pity you and all other sheep who can look at what has been going on and are blind to it. Useful idiots, as Stalin reportedly called you.

  133. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ooooooh ok, yes he is clearly qualified to determine AGW is real based on his bachelor degree and sweeping floors at a government agency.

    I also have a bachelors and I worked for a nuclear weapons lab. That does not qualify me to draw cartoons advocating we change all of societys approach to nuclear power, weapons, or waste disposal. You are wildly desperate to turn a cartoonist webcomic into serious global policy. Why?

  134. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Itâ(TM)s not about getting through, most do believe that there is a problem. The solution space however is less defined. Short of killing off a lot of people there is not much of a permanent solution. Technology is helping us, although a lot of extremists want us to go back to 80% of the population farming (which would bring back the feudal systems).

    Other solutions are leftist âtake everything from everyone and let the government do its thingâ(TM) (aka communism/Marxism) which if you havenâ(TM)t figured it out yet is always going to end up worse except for the people killing parts, we cannot trust the government do to the right thing and do it efficiently.

    So is there an economically sound policy that would help? So far we havenâ(TM)t found it yet. It must be a solution that is cheaper (for it to be more energy efficient). Short of taking away regulations to make more and cheaper nuclear power there isnâ(TM)t much.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  135. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you saying that climate change is now changing the behavior of combustion?

  136. Re:Weather or Climate Change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But the record you are talking about is a picosecond of relative time over the history of the planet. Not too long ago ice was a mile high over much of the North American continent. And that was, euphimistically speaking, a moment ago in geologic time. The one thing that is constant in the geologic record is change over time. Geologic records indicate greenhouse gases have attained much higher levels in the atmosphere in the past and the world did not end.
    It changed.
    Evidence indicates the change was what brought about much of the evolutionary diversity of life on earth.

  137. Re: The link between science and the fires is mone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You dont know a god damned thing about California or our fires.

    The forests have been mismanaged since the first day our government idiots created the forestry mismanagement service. Fires are naturally occurring here. They are supposed to happen. A lot. They have -nothing- to do with climate change. They have been going on for thousands of years.

    The only change to the intensity is stupid government humans refusing to clear all the dry brush, aka kindling, that accumulates because we put out all the small fires.

    If we stop being so god damned stupid the fires would be just as often but -much- smaller.

    I live here. I have studied this. You obviously have not studied it and if you live here and do not understand California forest history and ecology then please stfu and let people who know what they are talking about take care of it.

  138. Do you not see what an entitled douche you are? by CaffeinatedBacon · · Score: 1

    You really are something else aren't you.
    You're straight back at it again, patting America on the back for being twice as dirty as China.
    Focusing on coal and China again when there are far bigger problems, and far dirtier countries.
    If you really cared about AGW you would be focusing on the highest emitting people not the least.

  139. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by makerfixer · · Score: 1

    So, was Galileo an intellectual or an anti-intellectual in your mind? If he was the intellectual, what does that make the established intellectuals?

  140. Errrm... who is that guy? by Doctrinsograce · · Score: 1

    I am sleeping sooooo peacefully.

  141. No, anti logging by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

    It's not climate change as much as the environmental assholes that will do anything to prevent logging. I've seen it in Flagstaff. Ponderossa Pines, they are normally about 50' from each other and they wouldn't let the forest service thin them out after the 1980s fires. So they grew up thin and spindly and inevitable catch fire again. Sierra club is a big problem. An organization that depends on donations, so they lie about this.

    Let the people that know about this do their job and we won't have this. Listen to people like the Sierra Club and you'll have more of this.

  142. It's a Chinese Hoax by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You lying liberals and your Fake News MSM need to shut your 'Murica-hating mouths.

    Coal is God's gift to man. Wooo hooo, burn it baby!

    #MAGA

  143. Re:Science has a pretty good record - NOT ! by SSA-Ed · · Score: 1

    40 years ago it was an earth wrecking ice age coming our way - and proven by science. 18,000 years ago a mile thick chunk of ice that covered all of Canada and much of the northern U.S. - I LIKE warm, much better, thanks to all who have helped warm the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (and Mr. Spock wouldn't lie!)

  144. Only read peer reviewed pubs [Re:history is here] by XXongo · · Score: 1

    As I said in a previous post, I only accept data presented in peer-reviewed papers.

    Really. That link I posted had a reference section with eight peer-reviewed publications; did you read them? Did you even look at the link?

    Even some NASA data has not been reviewed.

    Really. Let's start with GISS: 2018: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/yea...
    2017: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/yea...
    2016: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/yea...
    2015: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/yea...

    That's just four years.

    I wonder also how many of these scientists are climatologists and of the climatologists what percentage are dependant on government grants.

    So, you won't read papers about climate that are written by climatologists. You are working very hard to avoid reading any data at all, I see. So, you must like the data from the Berkeley Earth project, which is independent: http://berkeleyearth.org/

  145. Climate and weather by XXongo · · Score: 1

    First I will state that I have not looked at the data. I caution others to make sure that they reference peer-reviewed studies before making claims.

    Which is to warn people, then, to pay attention to the actual climate scientists, who are doing careful and well-documented work, and not the various bloggers who post all sorts of garbage with no review at all.

    It is very difficult to hypothesis climate change since the earth continuously goes through climatic cycles.

    And understanding what causes these climate changes is the actual genesis of climate science. This is what climate scientists do.

    So 1 or 2 seasons of fires in California do not represent an irreversible trend. There are other factors affecting the fires in California that will be identified once a root cause forensic review has been completed.

    True enough. One hot summer doesn't mean anything, nor, for that matter does one cold winter. And one or two seasons of hot dry weather in California doesn't indicate global warming either; climate is long term. So I'll agree with you on this one.

  146. Ice Age! [Re:Science has a pretty good record] by XXongo · · Score: 1

    40 years ago it was an earth wrecking ice age coming our way - and proven by science.

    Except the myth that 40 years ago science was warning the world about a coming ice age is just that; a myth: http://web.archive.org/web/201...
    https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-climate-science-really-call-for-a-coming-ice-age/
    http://science.time.com/2013/06/06/sorry-a-time-magazine-cover-did-not-predict-a-coming-ice-age/

    1. Re: Ice Age! [Re:Science has a pretty good record] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Letter to Nixon
      http://magaimg.net/img/5yx5.png

      Context of the letter
      http://archive.economonitor.com/blog/2009/10/an-important-letter-sent-to-the-president-about-the-danger-of-climate-change/

      The October 1972 Science article about the conference was âoeThe Present Interglacial, How and When Will it End?â.

  147. Re:Only read peer reviewed pubs [Re:history is her by nickrao · · Score: 1

    The first link was to a Goddard press conference. The next four links were to the list of all publications that Goddard published in each of the last 4 years. The last link was to the Berkley site pointing to no papers because the link was to their home page. So if you want me to spend days trawling through documents because you decided to send me on a snipe hunt (google it). No not me, I'm stopping here.

  148. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unfortunately so. But also it's not necessary. There have been historically some successful bans of dangerous substances, such as lead, asbestos, cfc and tobacco in public places to some extent. Especially the last should be considered carefully: the "markets" or actually the people going to the bars has "voted" to smoke on public places -- never taking actions on what would be their actual rational interest.
    I find it sad, that governments have been able to improve the health and the smoking the habits of the population in general, where individual (lack) of thinking has failed.

    The governments can make the change -- however too many politicians see the climate change primarily as an opportunity or justification merely for wealth/co2 consumption distribution schemes.

  149. Re: Do you not see what an entitled douche you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There can't be just a single focus. CO2 reductions should happen on multiple fronts and multiple levels. It's not possible to have any significant effect by some biggest actor alone.

  150. Re: Do you not see what an entitled douche you are by CaffeinatedBacon · · Score: 1

    Clearly everyone should do their part. But some people play a much bigger part in causing the problem than others. If an Ethiopian halves his CO2 is anyone going to notice? If an Indian a Chinaman and an American halved their CO2, which is best for the environment? Who has the most fat to cut, who can best afford it?

    Some people, Windy especially, think there should be differing standards people should live by. If you are already rich you should be entitled to a better lifestyle than poorer countries, and there is no leeway for them to catch up and be like him.
    Take cars for example. Americans have 910 cars per 1000 people. China 154 India 50 Togo 2. How many cars should be 'allowed'. Windy will tell those people they aren't allowed to have cars because it will make the CO2 go up. He will also praise the US if it's cars go from 910 to 900 because it's going in the right direction. But he never asks Americans to take 7 or 8 out of every 9 cars off the road, and he would never allow China to have 5x as many cars or India 10x as many, even if they still had less. He's entitled and those other people aren't.

    Someone will say just get electric cars, which China is trying to do. But they still need to be produced, the electricity still needs to be provided etc.
    And that's just a simple example with easy to find numbers. Take any other form of consumption to compare and it will be the same.
    Air conditioning
    Food
    Housing
    Consuming junk in general.
    Western lifestyles and America in particular, produce more CO2. Why should some people be allowed to have a western lifestyle while telling others that they cant. It's completely hypocritical, and just reeks entitlement.

    It's not possible to have any significant effect by some biggest actor alone.

    But it is. If America was more like China and dropped from 16 t per person down to 7.5 like China. It would drop total world CO2 levels by about 7%. A bit more than 7 UKs, or 3 Germanys, or an India. That's a noticeable change. But they will never do it, they are entitled to their stuff. Better to try and force someone else to make the sacrifice on their behalf, all while pretending they are helping by cutting a tiny bit.

  151. Re: Weather or Climate Change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even if there is a record of temperature over co2 on the geological timescale, that is basically only a proof of Earth being able to sustain life over the period of millions of years. What is missing is the other major contributing variants, such as solar activity, cloud coverage, concentration of other greenhouse gases, amount of forests and vegetation, amount of glaciers.
    What's more important is that the geological scale data shows a 800 lag between co2 rise _after_ temperature increase. IMO both models can be true at the same time, but only if the ceteris paribus premise is wrong.

  152. Never read peer reviewed pubs by XXongo · · Score: 1

    The first link was to a Goddard press conference.

    The first link was this one. I said "That link I posted had a reference section with eight peer-reviewed publications; did you read them?".

    Here, copied cut-and-past from that link, are those references listed in the link.

    References
    Budyko, M.I., 1969: The effect of solar radiation variations on the climate of the Earth, Tellus, 21, 611-619, doi:10.1111/j.2153-3490.1969.tb00466.x.
    Callendar, G.S., 1938: The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature, Q. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc., 64, 223-240, doi: 10.1002/qj.49706427503.
    Hansen, J., D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind, and G. Russell, 1981: Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Science, 213, 957-966, doi:10.1126/science.213.4511.957.
    Hansen, J.E., and S. Lebedeff, 1987: Global trends of measured surface air temperature. J. Geophys. Res., 92, 13345-13372, doi:10.1029/JD092iD11p13345.
    Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, M. Sato and R. Reynolds, 1996: Global surface air temperature in 1995: Return to pre-Pinatubo level. Geophys. Res. Lett. 23, 1665-1668.
    Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and M. Sato, 1999: GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 104, 30997-31022, doi:10.1029/1999JD900835.
    Hansen, J.E., R. Ruedy, M. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl, 2001: A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 106, 23947-23963, doi:10.1029/2001JD000354.
    Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo, 2010: Global surface temperature change. Rev. Geophys., 48, RG4004, doi:10.1029/2010RG000345.
    Mitchell, J. M., 1961: Recent secular changes of global temperature, Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 95, 235-250, doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1961.tb50036.x.

    You said you only read peer-reviewed papers. I told you that the link I had posted had a reference list of peer reviewed papers. So: read them.

    The next four links were to the list of all publications that Goddard published in each of the last 4 years.

    Yes, that's right. You wanted peer-reviewed papers, there's a list of several hundred.

    The last link was to the Berkley site pointing to no papers because the link was to their home page.

    You asked about climate science funded y government grants, so I posted a link to the BEST group, which is independently funded.

    What you seem to be doing is coming up with any possible excuse to dismiss the science. First you dismiss science because you "only accept peer reviewed papers", but when I send links to peer reviewed papers you come up with other excuses. It's pretty clear that your only actual objective is to avoid actually learning anything about the science.

  153. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by reanjr · · Score: 1

    You seem to have gotten very worked up at someone's response to an XKCD comic. Settle down, take a deep breath, and get some perspective. No scientists were harmed in the posting of that comment. No one's data was fondled in an untoward manner.

    If you want to be alarmed at science, go ahead. But to get alarmed at THAT XKCD graph is a matter of faith in the impending doom of climate change, more than the science.

  154. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

    I didn't say he has the same gravitas as a climate scientist who has spent her/his career studying climate change, and has multiple refereed papers to her/his name. I said I'm willing to take him seriously. His word alone obviously is not enough to inform public policy. However, he does illustrate the issue in a way that is useful.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  155. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by strikethree · · Score: 1

    If you're not alarmed, you're either ignoring the data, or your stupid.

    Why do you need the other person to be alarmed? That person has no control over anything except their own self. Even if all humans decided to impoverish themselves and not eat any food, not use HVAC to modify temperatures, etc., it would not stop the pollution. Energy will be used, regardless of any individuals. Governments will continue using computers to control their populations and weapons in an attempt at controlling their neighbors. Businesses that provide services to those governments need electricity and to emit more pollution in the creation of those services to the governments.

    Long story short, the individual has jack and shit they can do about pollution other than minimizing what they throw away... but even then, planned obsolescence guarantees the individual will have to throw stuff away.

    I have no control over how the energy that I use is created. Supposedly, I could buy "pure" wind or solar, but as a consumer, the prices do not reflect any such choice. The cost has been manipulated until there is no value or negative value in choosing alternative energy.

    Go ahead and keep screaming at individuals. It makes no difference other than to make you look like a zealot trying to convince everyone that the Second Coming is at hand. I can't make any company, much less all of them, change how they do things. Climate change is occurring and there is nothing any average individual can do about it. This is purely in "government controlled" territory, mostly because the individual has been disenfranchised. If the government (whichever government you look at) doesn't care, then nothing is going to happen.

    Go ahead and tell me to write my congressional representatives. I will tell you that I get smarmy form-letter messages thanking me for my support of whatever it is that the congress person is doing, not even addressing my concerns.

    I guess I could run for office, but I am not a pure snowflake fallen from heaven, nor the money to make it seem like I am, so there is zero chance of me winning any significant office.

    So yeah, go ahead and keep trying to convince individuals that Climate Change is a thing and that they can do something about it. Even the fuckfaces who roll coal aren't having a significant effect on the environment.

    --
    "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  156. Re: Climate has never stayed constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Supposition number (1) Oceans turn out more GHGs and we do - FALSE, the oceans do not produce GHGs, they store them. Ocean water absorbs vast amounts of CO2 and turns acidic in the process, which is why coral shelves are dying all around the world, especially around Australia.

    (2) natural warming causes methane release - MISLEADING, while it is true that methane is released when arctic/antarctic ice melts and all the little bubbles stored in it are allowed to escape, the whole problem we have is that it isn't "natural warming" that is causing this to happen. Humans caused warming in the first place, by burning fossil fuels in large quantity. The small rise in temperature we have caused (1-2 deg C) is what has set off the much larger release of methane, and a self-reinforcing cycle of methane releases that increase the temperature even more. We tipped the balance, now nature is just doing what it naturally does.

    (3) tailpipe boogie man is not the problem - IGNORANT.

  157. Re:Any solution will be technological by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    we should never have come down from the trees, oh wait they're on fire. we should have never left the oceans.
    DNA was right.

  158. Re:The link between science and the fires is money by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    What the fuck are you talking about? I don't know whether you have noticed it, but the world's moving right, not left.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.