dmcheatw
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tl;dr - There is no real assertions in my below post, just an attempt to better clarify some of the topics and arguments made in this thread as well as possibly introduce some new paradigms to consider. In that way my post may be a bit OT, as the argument made here is that the need to reduce fossil fuel consumption =/= need to reduce fossil fuel consumption because it's going to appreciably change the climate, and you can and should do the former even if you don't believe the latter.
it's unfortunate those fighting the good fight have not rebutted this post, and as such is one of the last words on the subject for now.
the bolded words quoted above betray the paradigm from which many human-driven climate change deniers often operate from, and that characterization of those who do believe in a causal relationship between human activity, Co2, and global climate change is pretty extreme. You make a lot of assumptions; catastrophic depends on who you are (polar bear vs golfer) or what you do (run an east coast ski resort vs running a shipping company looking to open up the NW passage), among other things.
I would say that most people who believe in anthropomorphic climate change are not the end of the world types that al gore personifies.
There were both a medieval cooling period and a medieval warming period btw (and yeah they were global I agree). What caused them to my knowledge is not known, but that the climate changes in the absence of human activity is well known (if not understood) and i do not see how it advances your argument?
My take has always been that yes the climate is changing, yes overall temperature has risen and will continue in the immediate future, yes there is both a correlational and causal relationship between atmospheric Co2 and temperature and yes human activity is adding Co2 to the atm at unprecedented levels. I think those are all facts.
I have believed that humans were the principal driver of this particular temperature shift (and still do) because of the aforementioned relationship between CO2 and heat. Some people believethe sun is actually a bigger factor in the observed rise in temperature since 1800. Both those beliefs are supportable, and both almost certainly operate in tandem, but there is only one aspect we can have any influence on.
Some people believe that humans have an insignificant/negligible impact on global atmosphere and subsequent climatic changes in the present or immediate future. That position is not tenable.
What the current observed rise in global temperature actually means for the future are grounds for debate, and you could support nearly any position from this will cause an ELE to this will have no long term appreciable effect on the climate. Because of this, for me, not much point in debating what our changing climate means fundamentally or over the long haul, because it's so uncertain it's little more than speculation. But there are still a lot of reasons to get off fossil fuels. For example--off the top of my head--I think even in the absence of human driven climate change, finding ways to get off fossil fuels and reduce emissions is a compelling course of action for many, many other reasons (i.e. shake up political power/parties/lobbies; economic/wealth transfers/benefits, both within our households, country, and overseas; keeping a "world" oil reserve; environmental damage from mining/drilling/spills/fires--not the same as global climate change, but local and regional damage).
This is a good point but sentence one and two are non-sequitur. Sentence one is conditional and, moreover, could use the qualifier [for now] at the end, and sentence two is speculation; "will" must be replaced with "could." For example, I have made many, many lifestyle changes, too numerous to list, in order to conserve resources, be more efficient with them, and find ways to reuse (recycle) resources (what would have hitherto been considered waste). I, society, and government, have made such changes in large part because of anthropomorphic climate change theory. Since these ways of living, policy changes, and new technologies allow us to sustain resources for longer, looking at it this way the theory has already had a positive effect as a motivator to save resources for ourselves and those who come afterwards.
In short, you can make economic arguments, national security arguments, environmental (local, regional, national), and probably others, for why we need to reduce our dependency on carbon energy in the absence of any sort of change in the aggregate climate. If we do avert an ELE in the process, that'd be great, although our understanding of the natural world wouldn't allow us to know if we had or not lol. All that said, what you wrote is something to consider for sure, as are theories related to the sun. Saying the sun has no role to play (however small) is likely just as indefensible as saying humans have no role.
BTW carbon being the most environmentally friendly source currently is something you'd also probably take a lot of flak for but i don't know what the actual costs are of windmills and solar panels (of course the full cost of carbon is not that clear either, hence the thread). I do know that nuclear energy is considered very clean and safe, and should be shocking to nobody that--in lieu of some seriously innovative technologies--will be a major source of global energy long term (centuries).
I'm not really trying to debate so much as clarify the arguments in case this thread, or the inevitable new thread, want to continue the discussion.
it's unfortunate those fighting the good fight have not rebutted this post, and as such is one of the last words on the subject for now.
the bolded words quoted above betray the paradigm from which many human-driven climate change deniers often operate from, and that characterization of those who do believe in a causal relationship between human activity, Co2, and global climate change is pretty extreme. You make a lot of assumptions; catastrophic depends on who you are (polar bear vs golfer) or what you do (run an east coast ski resort vs running a shipping company looking to open up the NW passage), among other things.
I would say that most people who believe in anthropomorphic climate change are not the end of the world types that al gore personifies.
There were both a medieval cooling period and a medieval warming period btw (and yeah they were global I agree). What caused them to my knowledge is not known, but that the climate changes in the absence of human activity is well known (if not understood) and i do not see how it advances your argument?
My take has always been that yes the climate is changing, yes overall temperature has risen and will continue in the immediate future, yes there is both a correlational and causal relationship between atmospheric Co2 and temperature and yes human activity is adding Co2 to the atm at unprecedented levels. I think those are all facts.
I have believed that humans were the principal driver of this particular temperature shift (and still do) because of the aforementioned relationship between CO2 and heat. Some people believethe sun is actually a bigger factor in the observed rise in temperature since 1800. Both those beliefs are supportable, and both almost certainly operate in tandem, but there is only one aspect we can have any influence on.
Some people believe that humans have an insignificant/negligible impact on global atmosphere and subsequent climatic changes in the present or immediate future. That position is not tenable.
What the current observed rise in global temperature actually means for the future are grounds for debate, and you could support nearly any position from this will cause an ELE to this will have no long term appreciable effect on the climate. Because of this, for me, not much point in debating what our changing climate means fundamentally or over the long haul, because it's so uncertain it's little more than speculation. But there are still a lot of reasons to get off fossil fuels. For example--off the top of my head--I think even in the absence of human driven climate change, finding ways to get off fossil fuels and reduce emissions is a compelling course of action for many, many other reasons (i.e. shake up political power/parties/lobbies; economic/wealth transfers/benefits, both within our households, country, and overseas; keeping a "world" oil reserve; environmental damage from mining/drilling/spills/fires--not the same as global climate change, but local and regional damage).
This is a good point but sentence one and two are non-sequitur. Sentence one is conditional and, moreover, could use the qualifier [for now] at the end, and sentence two is speculation; "will" must be replaced with "could." For example, I have made many, many lifestyle changes, too numerous to list, in order to conserve resources, be more efficient with them, and find ways to reuse (recycle) resources (what would have hitherto been considered waste). I, society, and government, have made such changes in large part because of anthropomorphic climate change theory. Since these ways of living, policy changes, and new technologies allow us to sustain resources for longer, looking at it this way the theory has already had a positive effect as a motivator to save resources for ourselves and those who come afterwards.
In short, you can make economic arguments, national security arguments, environmental (local, regional, national), and probably others, for why we need to reduce our dependency on carbon energy in the absence of any sort of change in the aggregate climate. If we do avert an ELE in the process, that'd be great, although our understanding of the natural world wouldn't allow us to know if we had or not lol. All that said, what you wrote is something to consider for sure, as are theories related to the sun. Saying the sun has no role to play (however small) is likely just as indefensible as saying humans have no role.
BTW carbon being the most environmentally friendly source currently is something you'd also probably take a lot of flak for but i don't know what the actual costs are of windmills and solar panels (of course the full cost of carbon is not that clear either, hence the thread). I do know that nuclear energy is considered very clean and safe, and should be shocking to nobody that--in lieu of some seriously innovative technologies--will be a major source of global energy long term (centuries).
I'm not really trying to debate so much as clarify the arguments in case this thread, or the inevitable new thread, want to continue the discussion.
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