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Lectro was RIGHT--post1626--(climate related)

knowell said:
OMG. This is earth shattering! We are down to only 60 species of rats in the world. Can humans be far behind?
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You're absolutely right knowbad, if a species of rat, arguable the most adaptable and crafty group of animals on the planet, succumbed to the dangers of climate change, you have to conclude that we are all in serious trouble.
 
birdman said:
You're absolutely right knowbad, if a species of rat, arguable the most adaptable and crafty group of animals on the planet, succumbed to the dangers of climate change, you have to conclude that we are all in serious trouble.
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Some truly scary stuff. Going to be hard to sleep tonight knowing that we (well, China mostly) are to some small, mostly unknowable, degree responsible for the demise of a nuisance rodent in Australia.

I am just happy that the rise of the oceans began to slow 7 years ago. Glad we are winning that battle. We'll get to ISIS as soon as we get this whole thing completely under control.
 
knowell said:
Some truly scary stuff. Going to be hard to sleep tonight knowing that we (well, China mostly) are to some small, mostly unknowable, degree responsible for the demise of a nuisance rodent in Australia.

I am just happy that the rise of the oceans began to slow 7 years ago. Glad we are winning that battle. We'll get to ISIS as soon as we get this whole thing completely under control.
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Actually the US is still the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases.

The whole "derrrr you're so stupid ISIS is what we should be focusing on" is the dumbest fucking argument ever. You can focus on more than one thing at a time. Also, climate change was one of many stressors that could be argued to have led to the Syrian civil war.

Jesus, at least try.
 
BaseballBoomhauer said:
Actually the US is still the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases.

The whole "derrrr you're so stupid ISIS is what we should be focusing on" is the dumbest fucking argument ever. You can focus on more than one thing at a time. Also, climate change was one of many stressors that could be argued to have led to the Syrian civil war.

Jesus, at least try.
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Climate change caused the Syrian Civil war?
 
knowell said:
Some truly scary stuff. Going to be hard to sleep tonight knowing that we (well, China mostly) are to some small, mostly unknowable, degree responsible for the demise of a nuisance rodent in Australia.

I am just happy that the rise of the oceans began to slow 7 years ago. Glad we are winning that battle. We'll get to ISIS as soon as we get this whole thing completely under control.
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Every aspect of your comfortable life is dependent on predictable access to vital natural resources. Climate change most likely disrupts that predictability, but if you are willing to risk the entirety of you comfort on the chance that 97% of climate scientists are wrong...I guess you have a different risk tolerance or risk assessment algorithm than I do.

The loss of this rat is just beginning, when ecosystems begin collapsing and entire human populations begin mass migrations to seek resource stability, we'll all be in trouble and it will be way too late to do anything about it....oh wait, that is already happening in the Middle East and Africa. If this rat was a canary instead would you be paying attention?
 
birdman said:
Tremendous thirst can inspire serious insanity.
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Yep. The Syrian population had grown seven fold since 1950. The state was already struggling to provide for this huge population growth. Then they had to deal with all the refugees from Iraq. Throw in a historic drought and you have a recipe for major destabilization. People in rural areas were forced to try and find work in the overcrowded cities, often without luck. Thousands of illegal wells were dug, thus lowering the water table even further. It's perhaps no surprise that the first areas to become ISIS strongholds in Syria were the regions that had been most devastated by the drought. But here's the thing. With the exception of Turkey and Israel, the entire region is water vulnerable. Not to mention all, or at least most, of the countries have seen enormous population growth. Wrap your head around what Egypt will look like if it has to deal with a historic drought. I certainly don't think you can say global warming caused ISIS. That's way too simplistic. There are many reasons for their rise, some perhaps far more important, including the role of Islam and dissatisfaction with Assad. But was the drought a contributing factor to the destabilization? Absolutely.
 
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BobStackFan4Life said:
Yep. The Syrian population had grown seven fold since 1950. The state was already struggling to provide for this huge population growth. Then they had to deal with all the refugees from Iraq. Throw in a historic drought and you have a recipe for major destabilization. People in rural areas were forced to try and find work in the overcrowded cities, often without luck. Thousands of illegal wells were dug, thus lowering the water table even further. It's perhaps no surprise that the first areas to become ISIS strongholds in Syria were the regions that had been most devastated by the drought. But here's the thing. With the exception of Turkey and Israel, the entire region is water vulnerable. Not to mention all, or at least most, of the countries have seen enormous population growth. Wrap your head around what Egypt will look like if it has to deal with a historic drought. I certainly don't think you can say global warming caused ISIS. That's way too simplistic. There are many reasons for their rise, some perhaps far more important, including the role of Islam and dissatisfaction with Assad. But was the drought a contributing factor to the destabilization? Absolutely.
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I'll go ahead and post this link again.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1

It's an academic peer reviewed paper that concludes the drought was a major contributor to Syria's economic problems and it was therefore part of the equation that lead to Syrian civil war, which created the power vacuum that ISIS filled. The drought was at least as responsible for found ISIS as Obama was.
 
birdman said:
Every aspect of your comfortable life is dependent on predictable access to vital natural resources. Climate change most likely disrupts that predictability, but if you are willing to risk the entirety of you comfort on the chance that 97% of climate scientists are wrong...I guess you have a different risk tolerance or risk assessment algorithm than I do.

The loss of this rat is just beginning, when ecosystems begin collapsing and entire human populations begin mass migrations to seek resource stability, we'll all be in trouble and it will be way too late to do anything about it....oh wait, that is already happening in the Middle East and Africa. If this rat was a canary instead would you be paying attention?
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Color me a skeptic. I have no mainstream religious leanings that factor in and I have a bachelor of science degree so I am not "anti science".

The global warming movement seems to share more in common with religion than science. Science typically postulates a theory, then as evidence comes in, that theory becomes stronger or less so. There is not typically an attempt to silence the debate or to call a theory "settled science" while many respected scientist disagree.
Using the 97% is a perfect example. Those numbers are quite discredited but are used to shut down discussion. That there are any scientist willing to risk their career to speak out against the climate change cabal is somewhat surprising. There are many scientist that fall within several categories. They either feel evidence that man is causing global warming is inconclusive, feel that whatever amount of climate change that is caused by man is small and not necessarily significant, or feel the theory lacks sufficient evidence to pronounce it "settled". There are even theories of global cooling in our future.

It's hard not to be skeptical when the end game is a massive transfer of dollars from producers to governments. There is also a strong incentive to produce the "correct" results in order to keep the money flowing. It is hard to say "results show no problem, please fund my next research project where I further research this non-problem".

Finally, this field has become so politicized that being skeptical is just prudent.

I am not trying to say that none of this is happening, but I would prefer an atmosphere that allowed for skepticism.

That would be much more in keeping with science.
 
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knowell said:
Color me a skeptic. I have no mainstream religious leanings that factor in and I have a bachelor of science degree so I am not "anti science".

The global warming movement seems to share more in common with religion than science. Science typically postulates a theory, then as evidence comes in, that theory becomes stronger or less so. There is not typically an attempt to silence the debate or to call a theory "settled science" while many respected scientist disagree.
Using the 97% is a perfect example. Those numbers are quite discredited but are used to shut down discussion. That there are any scientist willing to risk their career to speak out against the climate change cabal is somewhat surprising. There are many scientist that fall within several categories. They either feel evidence that man is causing global warming is inconclusive, feel that whatever amount of climate change that is caused by man is small and not necessarily significant, or feel the theory lacks sufficient evidence to pronounce it "settled". There are even theories of global cooling in our future.

It's hard not to be skeptical when the end game is a massive transfer of dollars from producers to governments. There is also a strong incentive to produce the "correct" results in order to keep the money flowing. It is hard to say "results show no problem, please fund my next research project where I further research this non-problem".

Finally, this field has become so politicized that being skeptical is just prudent.

I am not trying to say that none of this is happening, but I would prefer an atmosphere that allowed for skepticism.

That would be much more in keeping with science.
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Skepticism is great. No argument from me there (ironic isn't it). I am not sure what you mean by tranfer of wealth from corporations to governments, I am skeptical of that prediction. Corporations already own the US government, that is precisely why the US government has not yet instituted any serious climate change policy.

As you say, in science a theory is proposed and predictions about system behavior go along with that theory. In the case of climate change many of the predictions are coming to fruition. Even really weird and specific ones. For example, years ago scientists predicted that as the Greenland icessheet melts due to climate change (which it is) the sea level surrounding Greenland would actually lower because Greenland's gravitational pull would decrease as Greenland's mass decreased. It was a crazy prediction, but it is coming true: http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2016/07/21/gravity-greenland-dropping-no-really/

Regardless of that, to me it's about risk assessment. Are the risks associated with inaction in the case of severe climate change effects out weighted by the risks of action in the case of no climate change. Seems like the cost of relocating people and cities like Miami, Huston, Shanghi, New York, etc. away from current coast lines is it self going to be enormous. Put a probability on each outcome (climate change is catastrophic to ecosystems and economies and it is not) then put a cost on the outcomes and multiply the cost by the probability. That is a little decision tree exercise and it will tell you if it is worth the effort. To me the data indicate that there is a high probability of severe climate change consequences and there are astronomical costs associated with that...its a no brainer.
 
birdman said:
Every aspect of your comfortable life is dependent on predictable access to vital natural resources. Climate change most likely disrupts that predictability, but if you are willing to risk the entirety of you comfort on the chance that 97% of climate scientists are wrong...I guess you have a different risk tolerance or risk assessment algorithm than I do.

The loss of this rat is just beginning, when ecosystems begin collapsing and entire human populations begin mass migrations to seek resource stability, we'll all be in trouble and it will be way too late to do anything about it....oh wait, that is already happening in the Middle East and Africa. If this rat was a canary instead would you be paying attention?
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LOL......97% of scientists don't agree on whole lot regarding this topic, other than natural climate change occurs. Do you even know how that number was derived?

The loss of a rat to climate change is still based on a ton of hypotheses/assumptions that can't be proven/validated, which have many other possible drivers, and/or are based on theories that have been wrong almost 100% of the time. Neither the CO2 correlation or the greenhouse causation theory can be experimentally proven and none of the theories trying to explain them have been predictive, THE standard for theoretical science. So what is real? Not much. That's why Michael Mann is starting to claim the science doesn't matter. The real science isn't backing up the alarmists claims at all. At this point, the only truth is that the climate always changes naturally and could explain all of it.

 
pourdeac said:
LOL......97% of scientists don't agree on whole lot regarding this topic, other than natural climate change occurs. Do you even know how that number was derived?

The loss of a rat to climate change is still based on a ton of hypotheses/assumptions that can't be proven/validated, which have many other possible drivers, and/or are based on theories that have been wrong almost 100% of the time. Neither the CO2 correlation or the greenhouse causation theory can be experimentally proven and none of the theories trying to explain them have been predictive, THE standard for theoretical science. So what is real? Not much. That's why Michael Mann is starting to claim the science doesn't matter. The real science isn't backing up the alarmists claims at all. At this point, the only truth is that the climate always changes naturally and could explain all of it.

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You're right, I don't know where the 97% number comes from I should stop using it; I am just a birdman not a climatologist. What I do know a little bit about is risk assessment and I cannot understand why people won't look at it that way. It really doesn't matter whether climate change is real or what the cause is...the real important question is what are we willing to risk for the sake of short term economic growth. What is the cost of implementing carbon cutting regulations if the science on climate change is wrong, vs what is the cost of not implementing carbon cutting regulations of the science is right? The last step is a simple probability assessment of whether one the science is right to get the probable cost of acting vs not acting. It is not rocket science or really even climatology, it risk assessment.
 
What if climate change does simply occur naturally, which we know it does. Now knowing that, knowing the consequence of that shouldn't we also attempt to determine how we can prevent that from occurring. Seems like a massive undertaking and maybe too massive for our current technology but that's where we should go with this. Learn to control the climate.
 
Humans are ruining the climate and you want them to control it? :confused: You think humans could do a better job than Mother Nature? Think of all the unintended consequences we've endured in our science and laws. You'd want to extend that to the climate? Who says the climate should be static? What if there are macro-seasons where the Earth gets warmer and cooler, and it is part of a larger natural order of things that is overall beneficial. (I'm just making this up to make a point, but the Earth was warmer during the Middle Ages)

In short, I don't think we appreciate what we don't know.
 
I'd love to control the climate and lock it into a hospitable zone. Unless you believe in 6000 year old we know the earth has gone from completely hospitable to inhospitable and back before. Im sure Europeans would prefer the glacial ice sheet not cover all of Europe or for us the entirety of the northern United States. Throw in the submersion of low lying areas and the prevention looks good. Like I said the technology isn't close to being there and when it is there we probably will be able to leave earth anyways.
 
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