So next time I go camping, I should just start a fire any old place and leave it going?
You have yet to establish that this analogy holds. I see it differently. We don't burn fossil fuels because we want to do evil, but because the use is of immense value to us. It's not like a campfire where the utility of the fire is near frivolous to us or to the other party, here, the state of California. Current fossil fuel use is not just important to us, it is important to those future generations which depend on us to make their future possible. Curbing that harms them just as surely as any other future harm we inflict. That is one way the analogy breaks.
Second, the harm from global warming is greatly exaggerated. I see the cost of as slightly less land, a somewhat different but ample distribution of food production, and slightly more acidic sea chemistry. I see the benefit as a significant better and wealthier future, better able to withstand real tribulations that face us as well as provide a better life for those future generations.
By all means, make more aggressive predictions. The IPCC is in an untenable position and it would be folly for them to follow your advice, but I wouldn't mind. They can't make the aggressive predictions you would like them to make because they will lose too much credibility when those predictions are seen to be blatantly wrong.
If global warming were really as bad as claimed, then we would have seen evidence of this by now. What we really see are global mean temperatures rising around 0.15 C per decade and sea levels rising at less than 3 mm a year. The reality falls short.
This reflected a failure to recognize the need to sequester the carbon from the CO2 emissions, which made coal power seem to cost less than nuclear
How much of a need?
If we recognize the true costs of fossil fuels, nuclear power becomes the clear winner, at least for the next 100 years during which we can develop power sources with even less impact
Unless of course, you take into account the true cost of nuclear.
We cannot afford the impact to climate that another 100 years of fossil fuel use would cause
Of course we can. And that's not even counting that no one has demonstrated that there will be a significant cost to fossil fuel use over the next century.
Then please explain to me why the 2007 IPCC report manipulated the data (and used old, bad data) in a rather dishonest way that halved the estimated future sea level rise?
Real predictions have to be in range else they lose credibility and as a result their political utility. That's why I think they dropped the bottom range of their most recent estimate of long term temperature forcing from a double of CO2.
Well, I'm willing to trust them to be smart enough not to drink it. I think what bothers me the most about this sort of argument is that it inflicts far more harm on future generations than the harm it tries to prevent.
Slightly better well water is not the only thing we can do for our descendants.
Fossil fuels have certainly powered our advancement into a complex industrial society
However, staying on them to the point that it alters the climate that we depend on is not beneficial
Is not as beneficial. You've already established that there is benefit. Now, there is cost as well. Your inability to do cost/benefit analysis is not my emergency.
We need to get off of the teat so to speak and step up to sources of power that have less negative impact on ourselves
We have not established that such power sources exist.
Observation bias is not evidence. There would be places with high tide flooding problems even in the absence of global warming and global sea level rise. Regional sea levels change even in the absence of global climate change. For something to be evidence, it needs to distinguish between competing hypotheses.
Or they can move one or two meters uphill. And irrigate crops. I don't see the point of hand holding people who will be quite capable of managing for themselves, especially when hand holding actually makes things worse for them.
Extrapolation is not evidence. Just because they fit the near future curve (poorly as you admit) doesn't mean that they will project accurately into the future as well.
the smart money is on the upper part of that range (possibly even higher, if we're very unlucky).
The smart money is on the researchers towing the party line of catastrophic climate change by 2100.
I happen to care about my children's future. In fact, I seem to care more about _your_ children's future than you do.
I don't see any evidence of that. That lack of evidence seems to be a common thing missing from this discussion. What's the point of caring, if you don't know whether your actions help or harm what you care about?
My fundamental viewpoint here that current proposed fixes for AGW cause more trouble than they fix with proponents merely hoping that renewable energy and similar things don't mess up society more than they're worth. What I see is that even the current relatively modest restrictions hurt a lot of people - for example, doubling the cost of electricity in Germany and Denmark or forcing poor people to pay more of their income at the gas pump - and are unrealistic - such as the pointless targets of the Kyoto Protocol.
It doesn't matter if you care more, if you're causing more harm than good.
Unless, of course, the actual sea level rise happens to be less than that. Then the low estimate wasn't low enough. It's worth noting that current sea level rise is under a foot a century and that it is speculation at this point whether the low estimate will be met.
decided to bring the khallow sock puppet out of retirement, eh shill?
I've been posting since 2001 or so. And I post about a lot more than whatever gets you butthurt.
Except those who live near the sea. It's not just about when seas reach levels 10ft higher than today, though that seems to be your underlying assumption. It's about storm surges. The modest amount of existing amount of sea level rise caused, during Hurricane Sandy, 50% more water volume to surge and flood into major population centers such as New York City than otherwise would have. That's pretty significant.
And if one actually looks at the claims you just mentioned, one sees that the sea level rise in NYC was about a factor of three greater than global sea level rise. The difference might be due to global warming or it might be due to non-human climate or ocean current changes. But just attributing it in the absence of evidence to global warming is irresponsible and unscientific.
The same goes for the alleged increase in storm strength of Hurricane Sandy. Maybe it would be stronger under global warming, but you need evidence to support that assertion.
Nobody has any evidence that we're close to where this is a significant problem (particularly with the more important problems we have likely to trigger die-offs first).
Except for the whole "half of earth's wildlife has died off in the past 40 years" thing.
Habitat destruction and excessive hunting/fishing/consumption easily explain that. This is one of the great sins of climate change propaganda - the misattribution of greater problems to global warming. A huge observation that people consistently miss is that we have to do something about overpopulation, poverty, desertification, war, economic stagnation, and habitat destruction. We don't have to do anything about climate change or global warming. Fixing the former keeps us from die-offs. Fixing the latter only, possibly while making the former problems worse, does not.
As I see it, you're a false flag shill, intentional or not, undermining support for the AGW hypothesis with ridiculous, unscientific rhetoric and arguments. Seriously, what would your rebuttal be? Asserting would be facts with even more zeal and earnestness? Using yet more fallacies from the usual bag of about half a dozen tricks? Up your game or GTFO.
And? Moving cities over a few centuries isn't a big deal given that most tenants move every few decades and most buildings don't last more than a few decades either.
Except perhaps for those few thousand souls who last week died of heat exhaustion as temperatures climbed well above 112 degrees Fahrenheit in India.
Observation bias is not evidence.
Such heat waves are becoming far more common now and death from heat strokes will continue to rise.
Where's the evidence for that assertion?
This is a problem as even in places like Kansas City, as in less than 100 years at the current rate of increased carbon dioxide induced heating, will have more than 100 days out of the year with temperatures in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Unless, of course, it doesn't actually happen like that. You do realize that your predictions are based on models that are already wrong?
so much that it made the bad carpenters and the good carpenters more or less indistinguishable.
Not at all. Mechanized production requires skilled labor too. The level of skill needed or responsibility for the final product isn't as extensive as someone who needs to maintain their own workspace and is completely responsible for the end product. After all, the factory owner and/or management provides the environment that the factory worker works in and is responsible for most or all of the workflow and end product.
You do realize that it's unlikely that anyone alive now will have to move due to rising sea levels?
The ideal temperature is about supporting 7+ billion humans without huge die-offs, and if we can avoid it, triggering mass extinctions.
Nobody has any evidence that we're close to where this is a significant problem (particularly with the more important problems we have likely to trigger die-offs first).
You won't get a tenth of that if all the ice in the world melts. Sure, a 70 meter rise in sea level would be highly disruptive, but not as disruptive as a major glacial period.
Families of tomorrow poisoned by the psychopathic greed of today because that water from the centre of contaminating fracking fields with thousands of wells will move over time and it will end up killing thousands.
Or the families of tomorrow could figure out how not to be poisoned by their well water. It puzzles me why we're supposed to be so keen now on coddling people of tomorrow who probably will be smarter, more knowledgeable, and healthier. There will be grown ups. Let them take care of these minor problems of tomorrow while we take care of the serious problems of today.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. It then stays what it is: a hypothesis, not a theory.
Except without an empirical basis, it's not even a hypothesis. It's just interesting math with no basis in reality. "Not even wrong" applies here.
So next time I go camping, I should just start a fire any old place and leave it going?
You have yet to establish that this analogy holds. I see it differently. We don't burn fossil fuels because we want to do evil, but because the use is of immense value to us. It's not like a campfire where the utility of the fire is near frivolous to us or to the other party, here, the state of California. Current fossil fuel use is not just important to us, it is important to those future generations which depend on us to make their future possible. Curbing that harms them just as surely as any other future harm we inflict. That is one way the analogy breaks.
Second, the harm from global warming is greatly exaggerated. I see the cost of as slightly less land, a somewhat different but ample distribution of food production, and slightly more acidic sea chemistry. I see the benefit as a significant better and wealthier future, better able to withstand real tribulations that face us as well as provide a better life for those future generations.
By all means, make more aggressive predictions. The IPCC is in an untenable position and it would be folly for them to follow your advice, but I wouldn't mind. They can't make the aggressive predictions you would like them to make because they will lose too much credibility when those predictions are seen to be blatantly wrong.
If global warming were really as bad as claimed, then we would have seen evidence of this by now. What we really see are global mean temperatures rising around 0.15 C per decade and sea levels rising at less than 3 mm a year. The reality falls short.
Again, it's babysitting adults who probably will be a lot smarter and a bit wiser than you. I'll have no part of it.
This reflected a failure to recognize the need to sequester the carbon from the CO2 emissions, which made coal power seem to cost less than nuclear
How much of a need?
If we recognize the true costs of fossil fuels, nuclear power becomes the clear winner, at least for the next 100 years during which we can develop power sources with even less impact
Unless of course, you take into account the true cost of nuclear.
We cannot afford the impact to climate that another 100 years of fossil fuel use would cause
Of course we can. And that's not even counting that no one has demonstrated that there will be a significant cost to fossil fuel use over the next century.
Could it be that they changed for the better because they didn't have invading forces fucking with them for generations?
Do you really have to ask that question when history demonstrates many invasions up to living memory?
Then please explain to me why the 2007 IPCC report manipulated the data (and used old, bad data) in a rather dishonest way that halved the estimated future sea level rise?
Real predictions have to be in range else they lose credibility and as a result their political utility. That's why I think they dropped the bottom range of their most recent estimate of long term temperature forcing from a double of CO2.
Well, I'm willing to trust them to be smart enough not to drink it. I think what bothers me the most about this sort of argument is that it inflicts far more harm on future generations than the harm it tries to prevent.
Slightly better well water is not the only thing we can do for our descendants.
Fossil fuels have certainly powered our advancement into a complex industrial society
However, staying on them to the point that it alters the climate that we depend on is not beneficial
Is not as beneficial. You've already established that there is benefit. Now, there is cost as well. Your inability to do cost/benefit analysis is not my emergency.
We need to get off of the teat so to speak and step up to sources of power that have less negative impact on ourselves
We have not established that such power sources exist.
Observation bias is not evidence. There would be places with high tide flooding problems even in the absence of global warming and global sea level rise. Regional sea levels change even in the absence of global climate change. For something to be evidence, it needs to distinguish between competing hypotheses.
Or they can move one or two meters uphill. And irrigate crops. I don't see the point of hand holding people who will be quite capable of managing for themselves, especially when hand holding actually makes things worse for them.
the smart money is on the upper part of that range (possibly even higher, if we're very unlucky).
The smart money is on the researchers towing the party line of catastrophic climate change by 2100.
I happen to care about my children's future. In fact, I seem to care more about _your_ children's future than you do.
I don't see any evidence of that. That lack of evidence seems to be a common thing missing from this discussion. What's the point of caring, if you don't know whether your actions help or harm what you care about?
My fundamental viewpoint here that current proposed fixes for AGW cause more trouble than they fix with proponents merely hoping that renewable energy and similar things don't mess up society more than they're worth. What I see is that even the current relatively modest restrictions hurt a lot of people - for example, doubling the cost of electricity in Germany and Denmark or forcing poor people to pay more of their income at the gas pump - and are unrealistic - such as the pointless targets of the Kyoto Protocol.
It doesn't matter if you care more, if you're causing more harm than good.
Unless, of course, the actual sea level rise happens to be less than that. Then the low estimate wasn't low enough. It's worth noting that current sea level rise is under a foot a century and that it is speculation at this point whether the low estimate will be met.
Projections are not evidence.
decided to bring the khallow sock puppet out of retirement, eh shill?
I've been posting since 2001 or so. And I post about a lot more than whatever gets you butthurt.
Except those who live near the sea. It's not just about when seas reach levels 10ft higher than today, though that seems to be your underlying assumption. It's about storm surges. The modest amount of existing amount of sea level rise caused, during Hurricane Sandy, 50% more water volume to surge and flood into major population centers such as New York City than otherwise would have. That's pretty significant.
And if one actually looks at the claims you just mentioned, one sees that the sea level rise in NYC was about a factor of three greater than global sea level rise. The difference might be due to global warming or it might be due to non-human climate or ocean current changes. But just attributing it in the absence of evidence to global warming is irresponsible and unscientific.
The same goes for the alleged increase in storm strength of Hurricane Sandy. Maybe it would be stronger under global warming, but you need evidence to support that assertion.
Nobody has any evidence that we're close to where this is a significant problem (particularly with the more important problems we have likely to trigger die-offs first).
Except for the whole "half of earth's wildlife has died off in the past 40 years" thing.
Habitat destruction and excessive hunting/fishing/consumption easily explain that. This is one of the great sins of climate change propaganda - the misattribution of greater problems to global warming. A huge observation that people consistently miss is that we have to do something about overpopulation, poverty, desertification, war, economic stagnation, and habitat destruction. We don't have to do anything about climate change or global warming. Fixing the former keeps us from die-offs. Fixing the latter only, possibly while making the former problems worse, does not.
As I see it, you're a false flag shill, intentional or not, undermining support for the AGW hypothesis with ridiculous, unscientific rhetoric and arguments. Seriously, what would your rebuttal be? Asserting would be facts with even more zeal and earnestness? Using yet more fallacies from the usual bag of about half a dozen tricks? Up your game or GTFO.
And? Moving cities over a few centuries isn't a big deal given that most tenants move every few decades and most buildings don't last more than a few decades either.
Except perhaps for those few thousand souls who last week died of heat exhaustion as temperatures climbed well above 112 degrees Fahrenheit in India.
Observation bias is not evidence.
Such heat waves are becoming far more common now and death from heat strokes will continue to rise.
Where's the evidence for that assertion?
This is a problem as even in places like Kansas City, as in less than 100 years at the current rate of increased carbon dioxide induced heating, will have more than 100 days out of the year with temperatures in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Unless, of course, it doesn't actually happen like that. You do realize that your predictions are based on models that are already wrong?
strange that you capitalized the S
Not at all. It's the beginning of a sentence. Capitalizing "Democracy" is the weird thing.
The GP's comment has merit, yours only proves your ignorance.
Sure, it does. Europe used to be trapped in ancient tribal animosities too. They changed for the better.
I agree that getting off of fossil fuels is the better option all around, for pollution, global warming, and international relations sakes.
I don't agree, mostly because you ignore the camel in the tent, the enormous economic benefit of oil for everyone involved.
so much that it made the bad carpenters and the good carpenters more or less indistinguishable.
Not at all. Mechanized production requires skilled labor too. The level of skill needed or responsibility for the final product isn't as extensive as someone who needs to maintain their own workspace and is completely responsible for the end product. After all, the factory owner and/or management provides the environment that the factory worker works in and is responsible for most or all of the workflow and end product.
The ideal temperature is about supporting 7+ billion humans without huge die-offs, and if we can avoid it, triggering mass extinctions.
Nobody has any evidence that we're close to where this is a significant problem (particularly with the more important problems we have likely to trigger die-offs first).
But under a kilometer of water is better? :)
You won't get a tenth of that if all the ice in the world melts. Sure, a 70 meter rise in sea level would be highly disruptive, but not as disruptive as a major glacial period.
Does being a sociopathic fuckwit not put a bit of a crimp on your social life?
You tell me. I wouldn't know.
Families of tomorrow poisoned by the psychopathic greed of today because that water from the centre of contaminating fracking fields with thousands of wells will move over time and it will end up killing thousands.
Or the families of tomorrow could figure out how not to be poisoned by their well water. It puzzles me why we're supposed to be so keen now on coddling people of tomorrow who probably will be smarter, more knowledgeable, and healthier. There will be grown ups. Let them take care of these minor problems of tomorrow while we take care of the serious problems of today.