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Trump and the Environment

everybody wants clean air and clean water for themselves

you can get more of a consensus on those than on global warming

Fixed.

Who exactly is willing to sacrifice so others can have clean air and clean water?
 
To deny one way or the other that the climate is changing, and even if we have minor effects on it, is to ignore what's the driving force of most conflicts to come. Food shortages, lack of clean water lead to extremism and migration. Throw in the serious public health impacts, Zika, Ebola, other neglected diseases coupled with ease of travel. You end up with a severely stacked deck in dealing with theses events if you start with pure denial.
 
To deny one way or the other that the climate is changing, and even if we have minor effects on it, is to ignore what's the driving force of most conflicts to come. Food shortages, lack of clean water lead to extremism and migration. Throw in the serious public health impacts, Zika, Ebola, other neglected diseases coupled with ease of travel. You end up with a severely stacked deck in dealing with theses events if you start with pure denial.


So if we're all fucked mine as well elect a President who will entertain us while we're still here.
 
To deny one way or the other that the climate is changing, and even if we have minor effects on it, is to ignore what's the driving force of most conflicts to come. Food shortages, lack of clean water lead to extremism and migration. Throw in the serious public health impacts, Zika, Ebola, other neglected diseases coupled with ease of travel. You end up with a severely stacked deck in dealing with theses events if you start with pure denial.


too much uncertainty and distance from the climate change issue, even properly understood

too much uncertainty about what if anything we can do about it

makes more sense to concentrate on real issues that certainly exist and we can do something about: the need for clean air and clean water
 
What do you think we should do to address the need for clean air and clean water?
 
too much uncertainty and distance from the climate change issue, even properly understood

too much uncertainty about what if anything we can do about it

makes more sense to concentrate on real issues that certainly exist and we can do something about: the need for clean air and clean water

Can you tell me what specifically leads you to believe that there is uncertainty regarding climate change? Who is properly understanding it? You? If you are, why are so many informed scientists misunderstanding it?
 
Can you tell me what specifically leads you to believe that there is certainty regarding climate change? Who is properly understanding it? You? If you are, why are so many informed scientists misunderstanding it?

Fixed
 
too much uncertainty and distance from the climate change issue, even properly understood

too much uncertainty about what if anything we can do about it

makes more sense to concentrate on real issues that certainly exist and we can do something about: the need for clean air and clean water

Quantify this uncertainty please. What do propose is the probability that climate change is real? What is the probability that it is human caused? And what is the probability that we can do something about it?

You know it is possible to make rational and transparent decisions about issues and threats even though uncertainty in the cause and effect of those issues/threats persist. Quantifying the uncertainty is ine of the first steps. Next is to quantify your risk tolerance and to understand what's at risk. But first, put some numbers on it...what are probabilities?
 
too much uncertainty and distance from the climate change issue, even properly understood

too much uncertainty about what if anything we can do about it

makes more sense to concentrate on real issues that certainly exist and we can do something about: the need for clean air and clean water

Just to make this point a little more thoroughly. There is a wealth of literature on the subject of decision making under uncertainty, and these concepts have been applied to all sorts of real world problems; even extremely complicated problems with significant observational, process, or stochastic uncertainty, making things difficult but not impossible to predict. Here is a start:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/decision-making-under-uncertainty

Uncertainty doesn't impede rational decision making; Politically opportunistic references to uncertainty impede rational decision making.
 
Climate denialism is incredibly destructive, and we shouldn’t be naïve about what the policy of the new administration will be. But there are areas of research that are beneficial even if you don’t accept anthropogenic climate change. Ag resilience in the form of drought resistant, stress tolerant, nitrogen use efficient crops, energy efficiency (in all its myriad forms), water use efficiency, alternative energy research – these things all have tremendous potential for public benefit even in an imaginary world without climate change.

Climate denialist should be banned in the name of science.
 
What happens if after a decade or so of decreasing carbon emissions the earth continues to heat up? Then what?
 
What happens if after a decade or so of decreasing carbon emissions the earth continues to heat up? Then what?

we continue to try to understand the planet's ecosystem as best we can with the tools that are available to us?
 
we continue to try to understand the planet's ecosystem as best we can with the tools that are available to us?

Let me rephrase. What happens to the public's perception of global warming and willingness to engage in ecofriendly policies if the central thesis behind global warming doesn't bear fruits fast enough?
 
We're past the tipping point by now. The people who still don't believe in anthropogenic climate change aren't going to change their minds no matter how many land masses go underwater. We're past the point where proactive policy is ever going to be enacted on a global scale. Trump doesn't believe in it, and he's certainly not going to bully China into polluting any less.

Science and engineering needs to figure out how to either get us off the planet or be reactive to the detrimental effects of climate change. Personally, I think you can be proactive and reactive. Practically, I think we're too far gone.

I think we're too far gone. I don't think humanity as a whole can adapt fast enough for what needs to be done given the impulse to keep things as they are and take the easy way out. Also, isn't China moving ahead of the US on polluting less? They are spending massively in solar and beginning to move away from industrial activities.
 
So I see scientific / engineering solutions could go a couple ways. 1) re-terraform the earth- think the giant CO2 processors in Seaquest or the artificial tree that was engineered that absorbs 10x the carbon of a normal tree. 2) could go the Snowpiercer route where we try to fix the problem and end up creating a massive issue worse than before. I think 1 has some promise as long as we keep our eyes on 2.
 
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