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Thank you, Polonius.

Here's a very rare bit of good news resulting from global warming, the melting permafrost in Russia is revealing amazing ice age discoveries.

Woolly Mammoth to Be Cloned
http://news.discovery.com/animals/woolly-mammoth-cloned-111205.html

How about volcanic effects?

Polonius wrote:The only question worth answering is "can humans prevent further climate change."

No it's not, because that presumes that climate change is necessarily a bad thing.

Given that most of the alarmist theories about climate change are simply scare-mongering for political purposes, trying to prevent climate change may be a worse option than trying to adapt to climate change.

No it's not, because that presumes that climate change is necessarily a bad thing.

Given that the socio economic model the planet is based on is largely built around the standards of climate common in the last 200 years, and given the fact that rapid environmental changes to that climate have, in the past, produced almost universally detrimental results; one can safely assume that human accelerated climate change that develops and peaks in less then a century is going to cause detrimental results.

The presumption that climate change "is bad' is based on past experience with non standard weather patterns and scientific models predicting the results of global warming on global climatological systems. They're not voodoo witchery assumptions made while high.

Fine, I suppose my question presupposes that climate change is bad. I think that even given the positives climate change may have (the great lakes region would be delightful +5 degrees), the transactional costs are enormous.

Regardless, I'll happily suggest a two step question: is climate change likely to be harmful? And if so, can it be prevented?

Experiment 626 wrote:The Kyoto Accord was a farce from day one... It left out the biggest polluters on the planet and was nothing but a knee-jerk reaction by politicians to garner political point-scoring back home. Truely implimenting what Kyoto called for would have bankrupted most of the countries who foolishly signed on.

No, it wouldn't have bankrupted anyone involved. A commitment to slow the increase in emmissions can't 'bankrupt' anyone. That just makes no sense, and is just empty political rhetoric.

Climate change has happend throughout our planet's history - it's nothing new.

Climate change has never occurred at the rate we've seen the last few decades, because the natural release of greenhouses gases has never matched the steady, constant release we've seen from industry.

Greenhouse gases aren't some purely human invention and while we're a big source, we're not the only one.

Sure humans are doing a great job screwing things up big time! But eventually the planet will heal itself like it always has...

Who gives a flying feth about the magical ability of the planet to keep on trucking?! We live here. What matters is ensuring this planet remains well suited to us.

Simply put, it would cost far more money to adapt to climate change, than it would to curb emmissions. That's it, beginning and end of the story. The clear, efficient option is to control emmissions.


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Experiment 626 wrote:And the extreme left would have us believe that global warming is caused purely by humans and we're all going to die if we don't stop... (total BS considering the last couple ice ages have been naturally occuring events)

No-one is pretending that there isn't gradual change in planet temperature that can be measured over hundreds of thousands of years. It's just that we're simply

Point is, our lovely little planet has endured near-extinction in the past and life has found a way to always carry on. Humans survived the last ice age, I'm sure that come another ice age, a percentage of us will survive again. The only way we'll truely off ourselves completely is if we're dumb enough to start a worldwide nuclear armageddon or a massive asteroid wipes us all out!

Stop it with the armageddon rhetoric. It's got nothing to do with anything.

Here's the simple, straight up facts of the situation. We can spend about 3% of worldwide GDP today to cap emmissions and roll back what we've already done. Or thirty years from now we can spend between 20 and 40% of worldwide GDP adapting to climate change. Pick one.


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Da Boss wrote:Also, CO2 is hardly the worst greenhouse gas out there. Methane is a lot worse.

It isn't just the effect of an individual particle, it's the amount of the gas in the atmosphere.

But yes, a long term solution would also have to account for methane.


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Pyriel- wrote:30,000 Scientists are charging Al Gore with fraud in Global Warming Scam, 9000 of which are PHD researchers. None are a part of the goverment paid biased climate panel but I guess they must all be evil rightwing extremists who hate plants and animals and who refuse to believe in the utter bullgak Gore lied about.

How many of those 30,000 scientists are active in the field of climate change? Is the number less than 1?

And this fantasy about duplicitous scientists sneakily making up research to please their government masters just needs to die. It's fething stupid.


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Frazzled wrote:So what you're really arguing is that we need to exterminate humanity until we get it in line with tree output?

No, we need to focus on rational, science based approaches that understand, for instance, that human carbon dioxide production is easily controllable as long as we make industry neutral.

Mind you, looking at the quality of 'debate' in this thread, I'd say getting everyone to agree to a reasoned, science based approach is significantly less likely than getting everyone to agree to kill themselves, so there's that.


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Pyriel- wrote:I´m saying this:
Why is it wrong?

Because 97% of climatoligists active in the field state that climate change is happening and is caused by man.

Where were you when they had the mini ice age in London some hundreds years ago? Was that also human caused warming or cooling? What did you say? It passed and was natural? hmm...

The idea that human released carbon gases is causing a rate of warming at a high rate does not ignore the idea that warming and cooling periods have occurred before.

Emails being repeatedly manipulated in the global warming camp to exaggerate the warming and push the warming agenda?
There has been like what, two such scandals so far?

There were scandals in which the emails of climate change scientists were hacked. And then there was pretend scandal where people kept talking about the word 'trick' as though it meant there was a vast conspiracy, when it was actually just a way to clarify the data in a graph in a minor study.

Investigations into the emails found no fraud or deception took place. Somehow the 'liberal media' failed to report on that.


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biccat wrote:No it's not, because that presumes that climate change is necessarily a bad thing.

The economic infrastructure we've built over hundreds of years, up to an including where we've placed our cities, is dependant on pre-existing weather patterns. Moving or adapting this infrastructure would cost many, many trillions of dollars.

So the only possible answer to 'is climate change a bad thing?' is 'yes, of course it fething is, what the hell kind of question is that?'

Given that most of the alarmist theories about climate change are simply scare-mongering for political purposes, trying to prevent climate change may be a worse option than trying to adapt to climate change.

And the Stern Report gave an emphatically clear answer to that question. The cost of adapting is far greater than the cost of reducing emissions.

I notice that almost all of the people who deny climate change are American republicans so I'll ask this, and it's a genuine question because i can't be arsed Google sifting on my phone ...

Has denying climate change got anything to do with Jesus?

mattyrm wrote: I notice that almost all of the people who deny climate change are American republicans so I'll ask this, and it's a genuine question because i can't be arsed Google sifting on my phone ...

Has denying climate change got anything to do with Jesus?

I read an interesting piece a while ago, that argued that indirectly it does.

Basically it goes back to the christian reaction against evolution. Thing is, when you have to argue against the mountain of evidence behind evolution, you end up arguing against the character of those people who produced it. So scientists stop being everyday people studying physical phenomena and producing explanations that best explain the observations, they become atheists driven by atheist agenda to interpret all findings to support their godless view of the universe.

Being around people who believe that, or at least don't reject it as the ludicrous nonsense it is has an effect on people, even if they don't buy into a literal, young earth no evolution view of the world, it's likely to have some effect on their faith in science.

It's interesting to see how it's spilled out into a general anti-science set of values. You can find fundamentalist websites railing against quantum physics and relativity, and all kinds of other things that don't even slightly go against anything claimed in the bible.

So when 97% of climate scientists active in the field believe climate change is real and that it is caused by man, well that should be enough to persuade just about everyone, but if you've been knee deep in anti-science rhetoric since you were a kid...

Sebster, I admire your tenacity in repeatedly acting as the shining force of reason in these topics whenever they crop up. But, to be honest, no matter what mountain of evidence that is presented regarding climate change, it is always going to be some left-wing hippy scam to neuter the Great American people, politically motivated to scupper the efforts of Hard Working Americans.

To be honest I think you are beating your head against a wall.

mattyrm wrote: I notice that almost all of the people who deny climate change are American republicans so I'll ask this, and it's a genuine question because i can't be arsed Google sifting on my phone ...

Has denying climate change got anything to do with Jesus?

What an amazingly asinine question.

What you should have asked is, does this have anything to do with the Great Pasta Being? All Pastlings are naturally leery of warm humid environments...

The bigger question is what role do the pirates play in all of this.

n0t_u wrote:The bigger question is what role do the pirates play in all of this.

Indeed.

Well I meant as the prophets of Pastafarianism, their decline is apparently related to the increase of Global Warming, but close enough.

Frazzled wrote:

mattyrm wrote: I notice that almost all of the people who deny climate change are American republicans so I'll ask this, and it's a genuine question because i can't be arsed Google sifting on my phone ...

Has denying climate change got anything to do with Jesus?

What an amazingly asinine question.

Sadly Frazz it is the exact opposite of a stupid question, as Im home from work now, and a ten minute read via google can give you the facts.

In a nutshell, if you deny evolution you deny that climate change occurs. 99% of the time the two go hand in hand. It is a blend of two equally ridiculous ideals, the first one being a distrust of Science because "Its all a conspiracy by the Scientists!" and the second one being "We don't need to worry about the climate, because God looks after the world for us"

Oh and also an alarming amount of American Christians seem to think that even if it IS fething the world up, It doesn't matter because the rapture is long overdue anyway.

Thus, Matty has his hypothesis triumphantly vindicated and Is by default the king of logic and reason.

Huzzah!

mattyrm wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

mattyrm wrote: I notice that almost all of the people who deny climate change are American republicans so I'll ask this, and it's a genuine question because i can't be arsed Google sifting on my phone ...

Has denying climate change got anything to do with Jesus?

What an amazingly asinine question.

Sadly Frazz it is the exact opposite of a stupid question, as Im home from work now, and a ten minute read via google can give you the facts.

In a nutshell, if you deny evolution you deny that climate change occurs. 99% of the time the two go hand in hand. It is a blend of two equally ridiculous ideals, the first one being a distrust of Science because "Its all a conspiracy by the Scientists!" and the second one being "We don't need to worry about the climate, because God looks after the world for us"

Oh and also an alarming amount of American Christians seem to think that even if it IS fething the world up, It doesn't matter because the rapture is long overdue anyway.

Thus, Matty has his hypothesis triumphantly vindicated and Is by default the king of logic and reason.

Huzzah!

Again, your ignorance is showing. Its not the Christians, its the Pastafarians. I thought you would have figured that out by now.

Frazzled wrote:

mattyrm wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

mattyrm wrote: I notice that almost all of the people who deny climate change are American republicans so I'll ask this, and it's a genuine question because i can't be arsed Google sifting on my phone ...

Has denying climate change got anything to do with Jesus?

What an amazingly asinine question.

Sadly Frazz it is the exact opposite of a stupid question, as Im home from work now, and a ten minute read via google can give you the facts.

In a nutshell, if you deny evolution you deny that climate change occurs. 99% of the time the two go hand in hand. It is a blend of two equally ridiculous ideals, the first one being a distrust of Science because "Its all a conspiracy by the Scientists!" and the second one being "We don't need to worry about the climate, because God looks after the world for us"

Oh and also an alarming amount of American Christians seem to think that even if it IS fething the world up, It doesn't matter because the rapture is long overdue anyway.

Thus, Matty has his hypothesis triumphantly vindicated and Is by default the king of logic and reason.

Huzzah!

Again, your ignorance is showing. Its not the Christians, its the Pastafarians. I thought you would have figured that out by now.

Indeed Frazz, there are people who disbelieve in climate change from every walk of life, but the fact remains.

Not all climate change deniers are evolution denying Christians, but (almost) all Evolution denying Christians also deny climate change.

And what's with the Pastafarian thing anyway? It isn't funny, and it never was!

Oh I think it is. You would to, if you're the drunk Matty we all know and love. Hey, its 5.30 in LA, time for a beer!

I don't deny climate change. The climate has been changing constantly since, well the universe decided to create itself. Can we do anything about it?
1. Why?
2. Which way is it going? When I was younger we were worried about global cooling. Younger still I was worried about really big cats and hyenadons, but thats another tale.
3. How much will it cost?

I be highly irate if they say no more charcoal burning for the grill.....highly irate....I have to smoke five cigerettes to calm down because I'm highly irate

It's important to realize the difference between evolution and climate change though. Just because the same people oppose it doesn't mean you should assume they are both equally established.

Evolution, meaning the idea that natural selection is what creates new species, has been pretty firmly established within biology for about 100 years. There are a few outliers, but the vast bulk of researchers accept macro-evolution as the defining theory of modern biology (the paradigm, if you wil).

Climate change is very different. Nobody argues that climate can't change: we have records that show that it does. At this point, few people argue that the climate is changing (although some still do). That's all pretty established.

What's far less established are the details: do Greenhouse gases even increase global temperatures? To what extent does human action affect climate change? How fast is the climate changing anyway?

So, compare this to evolution, which is a central theory. Climate change is a combination of two theories, one mostly accepted (that Greenhouse gases increase temperatures) and one with broad, but not uniform, support (that human actions are increasing the greenhouse gases). To compare this to biology, this isn't like evolution as a mechanism. It's more like arguing if the Panda is bear or a racoon (a decision that flipped twice in the late 20th century).

Now, a nuanced observer would note that unlike in biology, there is money to be made picking a side in the Climate Change debate for scientists. The energy industry funds many studies. OTOH, there is a lot of government money, as well as publicity, for finding better or more alarming data to suggest that the world is ending.

Well on the one end you get "recycle your plastic grocery bags because its green!" to "there's too many people!!!"
To wing buts who want to eliminate all current power generation and use magical fairy dust er green energy.

Even if you don't believe in climate change (being accelerated by pollution of our atmosphere) you should be supportive of more environmentally sound methods of obtaining energy etc.

What will be the harm if climate change is proved wrong? We will have greener energy, pollution levels will be lower etc.

What if it's proved right and we have done nothing or the bare minimum?

Surely it's more economically/socially viable to assume the worst, rather than hope for the best?

Environmentally not economically. It costs nothing to keep going, but costs a fair amount to convert.

Common sense tells me that we must be seriously affecting the planet, I mean, ignoring all the Science.

If you turn your car on and sit in your garage with a hose in the window, your dead inside ten minutes.

How can a BILLION cars driving all over the place NOT feth things up?! And that's cars alone, when you add in heavy industry, planes and everything else, plus the fact the population has exploded, surely that's gotta be fething the worlds gak up!

I dont think we can reverse global warming by cutting back on emissions. Its never going to happen. China will carry on building more coal powerstations every week, (which they use a lot of to build our equipment) and we have no right to tell them to stop as we've been doing it for a hundreds of years.

We need to develop some process to remove methane and CO2 and water-vapor from the air or some other method if the temperature is to be controlled.

The world is warming naturally anyway I don't know how much is influenced by humans but the ice shelves are normally not as big as they are now, we're still coming out of an ice age. Antartica used to be tropical climate for example.

I'd like to know how quickly we've accelerated global warming, if we were able to control temperature would it be ethical to keep the global temperature to a set level or allow it to change as it would naturally given the effect it would have on life? Some animals die out because they cant adapt quickly enough to enviormental changes

Even if you don't believe in climate change (being accelerated by pollution of our atmosphere) you should be supportive of more environmentally sound methods of obtaining energy etc.
***That’s an incomplete statement and in essence, the whole problem. It depends on the cost doesn’t it. I want economically sound methods. Strangely, when nuclear, natural gas, and clean coal are cited, the tree huggers freak out. When windmills are built en masse the tree huggers freak out. We can’t build hydroelectric dams because tree huggers freak out. So where does it come from?

What will be the harm if climate change is proved wrong? We will have greener energy, pollution levels will be lower etc.
***The cost of all that regulation. Entire industries destroyed.

What if it's proved right and we have done nothing or the bare minimum?
***Won’t matter. 1. We’ll all be dead. 2. We can’t do anything about it anyway. 3. Whats wrong with it in the first place?

Surely it's more economically/socially viable to assume the worst, rather than hope for the best?
***While I am down with assuming the worst, you have to plan appropriately. Just because a meteor might crash through this window and take me out, doesn’t mean I should quit my job so I can stay away from the window.

Frazzled wrote:

Easy E wrote:Yes, CO2 is what we breath out, and it is what trees breath in. A great system, until you are putting out more human breath waste then the trees can absorb Fraz. Then it becomes dangerous to the whole system we need to live.

Plus, let's not pretend that we are ONLY pumping out CO2 into the air that we breath.

Again, can we all agree that making the very air we need to breath less safe to inhale is a bad idea?

So what you're really arguing is that we need to exterminate humanity until we get it in line with tree output?

Call me Hugo Drax.

Perhaps, I'm arguing we need to get these lazy, abstinent trees to start getting it on more. Then videotape it and sell it to tree huggers.



On a different note, you know there is no possible way things other than people are giving off CO2, and there are no other unhealthy gases that humans can't breathe being put in the air in large quantities by humans.


This isn't even about global warming for me,. It's like putting your car in the garage, leaving it running and sitting in it. What eventually happens to the the driver if they don't get out? I don't want that happening to the human race. Call me crazy, but racial suicide isn't my gig.

Frazzled wrote:Even if you don't believe in climate change (being accelerated by pollution of our atmosphere) you should be supportive of more environmentally sound methods of obtaining energy etc.
***That’s an incomplete statement and in essence, the whole problem. It depends on the cost doesn’t it. I want economically sound methods. Strangely, when nuclear, natural gas, and clean coal are cited, the tree huggers freak out. When windmills are built en masse the tree huggers freak out. We can’t build hydroelectric dams because tree huggers freak out. So where does it come from?

Nuclear probably, they freak out at pretty much anything that appears to hurt the planet.

So the choice becomes something that works or a mass chant from them with incense. The latter avoiding their complaints the former doing more to resolve an issue besides jamming your fingers in your ears and hoping for the best.

Terra Nova.....we just need to find that Rift

n0t_u wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Even if you don't believe in climate change (being accelerated by pollution of our atmosphere) you should be supportive of more environmentally sound methods of obtaining energy etc.
***That’s an incomplete statement and in essence, the whole problem. It depends on the cost doesn’t it. I want economically sound methods. Strangely, when nuclear, natural gas, and clean coal are cited, the tree huggers freak out. When windmills are built en masse the tree huggers freak out. We can’t build hydroelectric dams because tree huggers freak out. So where does it come from?

Nuclear probably, they freak out at pretty much anything that appears to hurt the planet.

So the choice becomes something that works or a mass chant from them with incense. The latter avoiding their complaints the former doing more to resolve an issue besides jamming your fingers in your ears and hoping for the best.

Wait, how can anything hurt the planet?

Again, whats the magical mystery power source?