Do you catastrophize about the impact of the global average temperature rising 1.8°F (1°C) ~150 years?

Do you acknowledge that 8 times more people die from cold weather than heat every year?

Do you acknowledge that there is no clean tech future without significantly increasing our fossil fuel burn?

What is all of this about? A power grab?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48467532)

Climate change is a feature of planet earth. It was around long before humans. The planet has oscillated between being ice free and totally frozen and many states in between; While it seems reasonable that human activity could have an effect, it's clearly up against some Brobdingnagian forces which we don't grok. Succinctly, human understanding of the very complex planetary climate system is still rudimentary; therefore, we don't know to what extent human activity actually does influence climate. We know for sure that it does some things, or at least one thing. We know that cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside. Likewise, we don't understand what non human forces influence climate change.

Climate science has become severely handicapped by the theology of climate change and the "science" has devolved to being a competition among models to see which one can best explain past data and therefore predict future events. In my uneducated and ignorant view (so I am told) the historic data has large error bars around it because of inconsistencies in the way measurements were made and then fudged in order to be "corrected." On top of that the models reflect limited understanding of the physics of climate and have become curve fitting exercises (again, Learned Leftists tell me I am ignorant in this matter, but I persist in my heresy). We're not even sure what to put into the models. Solar flux? Orbital precession? Cosmic rays? Magma circulation? Magnetic pole drift? It's a lot more the CO2 and noisy temperature and sea level data. The models are supposed to be based on inputs from physical understanding, but physical understanding is lacking so modeling has become a series of curve fitting exercises. Moreover, almost all climate research is funded by governments and woe to the brilliant egghead who proposes something that might upset the consensus view: ye shall not be funded. It's not just physics that proceeds one funeral at a time.

The net result is that we are nowhere near being able to predict climate trends well enough to risk destroying the world in order to save it.

I will say that human activity might well push climate change one way or the other, and that there are some interesting tidbits suggesting we might ought not to plan on unconstrained growth of burning stuff. We do emit a lot of carbon dioxide, methane, extra water vapor and various other things into the air, sea and land that could well be contributing to climate change, not to mention cancer, endocrine disruption, etc., but we have no idea how much of an effect we are truly having. We do know based on geologic history that HUGE climate changes (not just a piddling 2 or 3 degrees C) have occurred with no humans around at all.

For the record, I am all in favor of pursuing the scientific study of climate, but it should focus more on understanding the basic mechanisms and less on dueling models. Does no one remember what GIGO means?

One thing I find curious is that nobody talks about climate change winners and losers. When sea level rose a hundred meters or more after the last glacial melt off I am sure it pissed off the prehistoric coastal elite, but it also made much of northern Europe, Asia and America habitable for the first time in quite a while. Maybe a little global warming might make things better in some places? Think I could get that project funded? NOT!

If we really wanted to reduce CO2 emissions we could feasibly convert the world to run extensively on nuclear power, but the same folks who want all "clean" power don't like nukes, either, and have mostly run them out of town for probably the next 50 years at least.

Right now everything runs 75% on fossil fuel. You can't build and deliver more windmills or batteries or solar panels or nuclear power plants without burning increasing amounts of fossil fuels. A prudent planet manager would in my opinion already have ramped up nuclear power just in case, but for various reasons, including economics, that hasn't happened.

Another thing we don't do is build robustly. Why put weak buildings in the hurricane country? Why build things right on the beach or in flood plains? Much of Holland has been kept dry by dikes and pumps (insert finger in the dike joke here) for centuries, and even New Orleans does some of the same, though in their unique half assed creole way. I grew up on the Mississippi River. Every year it floods. Finally, in the 20th century, it occurred to people to build levees. If the climate does change abruptly in a bad way, it's likely to do so regardless of human activity. Then everyone will have to learn to build robustly.

I have no idea how many people die of cold vs. heat, but it would not surprise me that more freeze to death.

As to what it's all about, it's how humans do things. Some folks, e.g., Al Gore, saw an opportunity to get rich and more famous. Maybe he really believes some of it. Some people have made it a religion. Some people like power. There are probably some sincere folks, but I don't think you can be both sincere in your belief and also a catastrophist - there are just too many unknowns. Just my humble opinion. If I am wrong, I probably will not know. Learned Leftist tells me that by saying that I am committing murder on future generations because it is my duty to run around shouting "the sky is falling." To do otherwise is to be complicit and guilty of the climatic equivalent of felony murder. So it goes.

I don't have an electric car or hybrid (well, one of them is a "mild" hybrid, but mainly for extra oomph and to satisfy the EPA CAFE standards). I do recycle. I have geothermal heat pumps. I have 10kW of solar panels. The geothermal heat pumps are worth it regardless,though they are subsidized. The government paid me to put in the panels, but as an engineer I admire their quiet simplicity as they make 13+ MWhr/year, but only when the sun is shining. Nevertheless, they are elegant.

Fire and Ice

By Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

As is often the case this has tended toward the unedited rant. So be it <Poast>

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48467894)

other than not having a clue what this means, i agree

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468115)

Climate change/acid rain/50 simple things kids can do to save the planet

Not spreading HIV by being "blood brothers"

Kwanzaa is a legitimate holiday.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48467998)

the HIV shit was insane. it wasn't until middle school that i even understood *why* all the focus was on gays. because my whole life was filled with "very special stories" and tv sitcoms where a chick gets it or one of the other outliers that wasn't unprotected promiscius gay sex.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468031)

I'm convinced that Magic Johnson never had it and was paid a fortune to pretend he did. If you look up how Magic Johnson made so much money, it's some ludicrous story about a chain of "inner city movie theatres," and we're just supposed to nod our heads and say "wow what a savvy business move!"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468072)

Then I saw that it was just like all the other flu strains that they hyped up where only the elderly or people with preexisting conditions were dying. The only reason hospitals were overcrowded was the initial fearmongering

I'd still like to hear a convincing explanation for why flu cases virtually disappeared. I'm convinced the whole thing was a psyop and the numbers were all conflated together.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468150)

The explanation I was given was that people were isolating so flu cases were down but COVID was more transmissible so that's why COVID still struck

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48469633)

They scared everyone with HIV/AIDS when basically no one (especially back then) who wasn't gay or an IV drug user got it.

Also, not so much in schools, but media used the Matthew Shepherd murder to push gay rights when his murderers were also gay and it was a meth deal or something gone bad.

Hollywood and fashion industry pushed the heroin chic/anorexic look which led to anorexia and bulemia. But they never got straight men to say, "hey this isn't sexy, only fags and pedophiles think this is attractive. No porn stars look like that."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468048)

How do people say this over and over and over. Are all of you just reading the same twitterslop

We don't hear about acid rain anymore because we largely stopped doing the shit that could cause it. People say the exact same thing about the ozone hole: "WHy diD wE StoP CARinG?"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468465)

It's all been bullshit to push new laws and regulations, or to create a racket for energy companies.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468488)

Wow, crazy that when you kill the emission which causes something it doesn't become a concern anymore. Can't believe people were worried about that stupid ozone hole anymore either

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468636)

"But there was one very pesky problem. Unlike SO2 *which really does produce unhealthy smog*..."

Acid rain never came to fruition because we stopped it before it became a problem by spreading the "SO2 = bad" message and largely regulating SO2 emissions out of existence.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468998)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48469089)

Again, it was never a big deal. Gasoline vehicle emissions probably result in a similar effect, but there is no panic because the ensuing regulations would not result in a profitable opportunity for the government or large corporations.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48469120)

Acid rain wasn't a big deal not because it was a mass delusion, but because action was taken before there was enough SO2 spewed into the atmosphere to cause it to be an issue. So it was "hysteria" in the sense that "people are portraying acid rain as a definite problem now rather than a potential problem in the future", but not in the sense of "it's just nonsense gibberish fraud fairy tale". If we had never crushed SO2 emissions this would've come to pass.

The thing is that acid rain killing forests isn't the worst side effect of SO2 emissions, it's that people can't fucking breathe if there's enough of it in the air (and it doesn't take much for this to happen). So there was an incentive to strangle SO2 long before emissions got to the magnitude of acid rain being an issue.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48469199)

China and India probably produce more SO2 today than North or South America ever did in 1970. Feel free to link to any empirical evidence of environmental or biological harm, other than higher readings in soil or water

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48469276)

not disputing your point, but weather forecasts seem way better now than when i was a kid. like way better.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468918)

My take is that until scientists can explain what led to the wild fluctuations before humans and even in relatively recent history, and until they can scientifically demonstrate how and when a certain level of CO2 or whatever in the atmosphere will lead to catastrophe, then it all seems like conjecture and a convenient excuse to tax or hamstring certain industries.

And if it really is such a pressing issue, then the environmentalists shouldn't be focusing on Western civilization, but China and India. I can't remember where I heard it, but a guy said if the entire UK disappeared completely, with all its people and industries, global carbon emissions would only be lower by 3%

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468005)

That said, libs need to recognize that western civilization is not the issue, and hamstringing our own industries isn't smart

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48469210)

Cliff Mass is a professor at UW in atmospheric sciences and he's run afoul of the current dogma. He actually explores potential benefits for some regions. We know now that the earth is greener than at any point in human history. Adding carbon (life food) and additional energy to the system will clearly benefit growth. History has shown that when it's warmer out humans do better. If you trace the fortune of empires, bad shit happens not when it gets hotter but rather when we cool. And obviously entering into another rapid cooling phase (which humans have experienced relatively recently ~12k years) would be devastating. Maybe we avert another ice age?

One of the real tragedies of climate change being the near exclusive focus of environmental causes, is the divide preventing us from uniting to fight impacts to our environment that I suspect would get very broad support. I think most people don't like to see our planet shit on with pollution. I like trees and forests. People want clean water and so on. But we can't get there because the starting point always has to be global warming. Nothing can supercede it. I suppose it makes logical sense if you follow it back to the premise 'omg we're all going to die in 20 years' like kids are being taught.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468192)

One of the few good boomers

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48468501)

oh, and "We do know based on geologic history that HUGE climate changes (not just a piddling 2 or 3 degrees C) have occurred with no humans around at all." on what time scales?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48469184)

Some estimates are even more extreme: https://www.science.org/content/article/500-million-year-survey-earths-climate-reveals-dire-warning-humanity

BTW, LOL at this Science article which inadvertently makes the case for powerful non-human warming influences.

Looking more recently, you can see that estimates show significant oscillations: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356606430/figure/fig3/AS:1095462799060993@1638190092136/Global-mean-temperatures-over-the-last-500-000-years-11.ppm

Remember that the Sahara desert was not a desert within human history (the African humid period 11,000-5,000 years ago).

There are many estimates, but they all show the same general pattern.

The typical hockey stick temperature graph we see shows warming being 1.8 degrees C since 1880. We don't know whether that's really right, as the measurement locations and techniques have changed, and while researchers have tried to compensate for that it's not 100% certain they have done it correctly. However, let's assume it's correct.

Even if the 1.8 degree number is right, we have no idea how much of it is due to human activity and how much is due to other forces. The general approach is that it's all due to human activity, but we really don't know. That might be right. Or human activity might account for 10%. It's even remotely possible that it would have warmed more without human activity. People like to overlay CO2 charts and a temperature graph and say "AHA!" That's correlation, not causation. CO2 is actually a pretty weak greenhouse gas compared to a lot of other things (methane, for example), but there is a lot of it in the atmosphere. The most important greenhouse gas is water vapor. It's 95+% of the effect, but it's hard to measure historically. The trouble with water vapor is that the warmer things get the more of it there is likely to be in the atmosphere, but it's a very complicated system. CO2 gets used as a proxy for the climatic effects of human activity, but it's not the most important driver.

Regardless of the data, it seems clear than climate is changing. The growing season where I live has increased a bit in the 25 years I've lived here. Anecdotally, I seem to spend more time cutting back brush.

What we just don't know is how much human activity is affecting climate. It seems reasonable to assume there is some effect, and perhaps it's major. Common sense and things we do know for sure do dictate that it's not a good idea to belch unnecessarily large amounts of combustion products into the air. OTOH, the net zero notion that climate advocates are pushing is unachievable without destroying civilization. If we did achieve it, maybe it would even put us back into an ice age. Many climatologists used to believe (and probably still do but won't say so) that we are in an interglacial period within an ice age, and that a new freeze is coming. That was the climate headline in the 1970s. There's even some chance that anthropogenic warming is saving us.

I don't see any reason to believe that the IPCC'S 1.5 degree catastrophe limit for temperature rise is well reasoned. In my view the understanding is not just there to make such a prediction with any confidence.

If you are a true believer nothing will dissuade you, though.

Once, again, here's my synopsis: The climate is changing. It is a feature of the planet. Human activity is most likely affecting the rate of change, but we are not yet in a position to quantify that change with enough certainty to warrant disrupting the world economy. One thing we need to do more of is to plan for climate change, because in the long term it's going to happen even with net zero.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48469806)

here are two NASA charts about US temperatures.

https://klimatboken.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/usa-temp.jpg?w=751&h=323

the one on the left, from 1999, was done by James Hansen who is a hero to the people who think climate change is really threatening human survival. notice that the high point is exactly where we'd expect it: during the Dust Bowl. notice that the temps drop from there until 1979, which is what we'd expect because science was running all those "the ice age is coming!" articles. (we are basically overdue for the next glacial period, btw.) temps bounced back up from 1979 to 2000 (although they didn't reach the highs of the 1930s). then temps went flat from 2000-2020, although that's not on that chart.

the graph on the right is the more recently adjusted graph where the Dust Bowl is downgraded and the 1932-1979 drop is eliminated. it's fraud.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48469024)

There really have only been three high profile accidents, of which one was ultimately a nothing-burger (Three Mile Island, which maybe did cause some environmental contamination and increased some bad health incomes, but then so do oil and coal plants every day), one was the result of a wholly exogenous catastrophe (Fukushima, and note that IIRC some hydro dams got blown up by the storm and a lot of people drowned but nobody cited that as an argument against hydropower), and one was legitimately a nightmare scenario but was caused by Russian idiocy.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48469076)

"your cattle fart too much guess your way of life is done here haha"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48470482)

Saying that the earth was much hotter 9 million years ago isn't a sensible retort to the question "should we do something about GHG emissions?" It isn't even sensible to say that there was an "ice age" 20,000 years ago. The relevant period to think about is more like 100-200 years.

And one has to be Drake Mallard-level retarded to deny that temps have significantly increased over the last 70 years.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48470610)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48470685)

Do you not see how earth's temperature 60 million years ago is irrelevant to whether we should do something about GHG?

"There is no way to know about short term fluctuations or how quickly some of the changes may have occurred. There could have been 30 degree variations over short periods of time and we wouldn't know."

This is Consuela-level dumb my friend. No climate denier has even hypothesized a mechanism for 30-degree variations over short periods of time (or found any evidence of such variations). And from (at a minimum) evaluation of the polar ice caps and pollen patterns in the muck at the bottom of lakes, we have a very good picture of how climate has changed over the period of time that's more relevant to humans (let's say the last 100k years).

Let me ask a different question to help me evaluate your thinking: Person A says "one shouldn't smoke cigs because they cause cancer." On a scale of 1-10 how compelling do you find person B's response, "but my grandpa smoked for 60 years and he didn't get cancer"?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48470748)

until you get some credibility, your ilk is going to remain ignorable even if you have good arguments and evidence.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48470810)

I'm familiar with your oeuvre so I'm guessing you'll be too retarded or disinterested to read this for comprehension, but for the posters with 100+ IQs: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48470837)

change between 2023 and 2000

China 34.0% 13,259.64 3,666.95 increase +262%

United States 12.0% 4,682.04 5,928.97 decrease −21%

India 7.6% 2,955.18 995.65 increase +197%

European Union 6.4% 2,512.07 3,563.26 decrease −30%

Russia 5.3% 2,069.50 1,681.14 increase +23%

Japan 2.4% 944.76 1,248.81 decrease −24%

Iran 2.0% 778.80 353.93 increase +120%

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48470870)

BTW, I assume you have read about the flash frozen mammoths? That's a big mystery, but it seems that at least locally in the past there have been very sudden and extreme temperature changes sufficient to freeze some of these large beasts right where they stood with their stomach and even mouth contents preserved. Nobody is saying it was a global or even a widespread local phenomenon, but there is no believable explanation for how this happened.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48472488)

that is such a short snapshot -- just a fraction of a second in terms of earth processes -- and for nearly all of that time we have nearly no direct data for virtually all the earth.

if you take a longer view, you see powerful circumstantial evidence of significant swings up and down.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48471274)

"if you take a longer view ... significant swings up and down."

The whole point of my response to OldHLSdude is that it doesn't help to say it was super hot 50 million years ago, and is likely to get super hot again 50 million years from now, because humans weren't around at the first, and won't be around at the second. Realistically we only need to worry about whether we're going to see a spike that will negatively impact are way of life within a short time horizon. I suppose we could say 1,000-2,000 years, but still.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48473805)

the criticisms of shitlib chicken little mentality being applied to stupid policies is all legit. but the entry-level arguments dismissing concerns about short-term climate change are LOL-level stupid and they all get so religious about them that they can't reason outside of that framework.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48477164)

https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matters/dp/1950665798

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48477215)

I understand AGW is not "all made up bullshit," but a lot of the data they use and hostility toward skeptics is flat out unscientific.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48477242)

it's a good intro to Koonin. Lomborg is worth reading. Judith Curry too.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48480532)

I've read some of Judith Curry's blog posts, and I believe she has taken heat for sharing some of Tony Heller's graphs and findings. I started this thread the other day asking if anyone can debunk a few graphs that would seem outrageously important, if true:

http://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5652983&mc=16&forum_id=2

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48480653)

still, some of the facts he touts are solid af. so if you do it carefully you can cherry pick verifiable facts he focuses on.

one of my favorites was his comparison of the 1999 NASA graph of historical US temps as compared to the same graph 20 years later. all the changes run counter to well established history (e.g., the Dust Bowl and the late 1970s warnings of the coming ice age) and run in lockstep with the AGW narrative. but once you know where the graphs are, you don't need to invoke Heller at all.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48481730)

But yeah some of his stuff seems dubious, but when a lot of it is just statistical analysis of official datasets and old newspaper clippings with historical info, it warrants consideration

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5651881&forum_id=2:#48481780)