One of the few remaining credible climate change skeptics changes views

[GoodGame]

That is the problem with any major breakthrough or discovery in science. It is invariably political, at least to some extent. And this particular field of study could have massive economic consequences so the politics are going to be invariably much greater.

But this is also a testament to the greatness of science. Scientists should remain skeptical and perform their own studies and experiments to confirm or deny the hypotheses. All that takes time.

There's a degree of truth to this, in the funding of research, the dissemination of findings, and popularism surrounding interpretations if findings.

 

[Disgustipated]

Why is climate change such a bad thing? I apologize for how ignorant that question sounds, but bear with me. I believe humans can adapt, our species is very well at adapting. The Earth has been warmer in the past when we had higher CO2 levels, and I believe eventually technology will eventually allow us to remove large quantities of carbon from the air. I really think it's unrealistic to expect hundreds of countries to band together to fight this. It's human nature to use resources available to them. Any animal would do the same thing. Are we really going to stop China from releasing CO2? Nuking them is really the only solution to that.

As for denying global warming, I can't believe there are still those who do deny it. It's pretty obvious it is happening. Although probably by not as much as being claimed (due to some temperature sensors being located in parking lots and near air conditioning exhausts where they weren't 100 years ago).

 

[peter grimes]

It's pretty obvious it is happening. Although probably by not as much as being claimed (due to some temperature sensors being located in parking lots and near air conditioning exhausts where they weren't 100 years ago).

This is precisely the point that the BEST study was designed to study, and it found that there is no significant effect from the siting of the land temperature monitors.

As for 'why it's a bad thing', there are a host of cascade effects.

The thing I worry most about is population dislocation. Whether that comes from sea level rise, aquifer salinization, coastal subsidence, changes in rainfall patterns, or something I haven't mentioned, it is potentially (in my view) the thing that will affect peoples' lives the most.

Add to that ecological collapse, and we're looking at potentially enormous geographic and demographic shifts within our lifetime.

Hopefully not... but the cost of the risk is trillion-dollar in scale.

 

[Murky]

Why is climate change such a bad thing?

See "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math"

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719#ixzz22QaUYZO4

To give a brief summary. We've already put enough Co2 to cause about 2C of warming which is bad but survivable. We can emit about 565 more tons of Co2 before passing a tipping point and go to over a 2C rise. There's over 2795 tons of Co2 locked in the fossil fuels we plan to burn. Since we depend so heavily on fossil fuels, it's going to be difficult to not go past the tipping point and cause a catastrophe, the likes of which, the human race as never experienced before.

 

[Abegweit]

As is par for the course, Muller is liar. Joanne Nova is excellent, BTW.

 

[Hygro]

As is par for the course, Muller is liar. Joanne Nova is excellent, BTW.

You know who is a better source? All my friends who had him as a professor back in 2006 and '07 when he would rant about how climate change wasn't a thing, and definitely not man made.

 

[Dachs]

You know who is a better source? All my friends who had him as a professor back in 2006 and '07 when he would rant about how climate change wasn't a thing, and definitely not man made.

ANECDOTE BLAH BLAH BLAH

words words words penis

unnecessary and badly thought out insult

 

[Cutlass]

Why is climate change such a bad thing? I apologize for how ignorant that question sounds, but bear with me. I believe humans can adapt, our species is very well at adapting. The Earth has been warmer in the past when we had higher CO2 levels, and I believe eventually technology will eventually allow us to remove large quantities of carbon from the air. I really think it's unrealistic to expect hundreds of countries to band together to fight this. It's human nature to use resources available to them. Any animal would do the same thing. Are we really going to stop China from releasing CO2? Nuking them is really the only solution to that.

As for denying global warming, I can't believe there are still those who do deny it. It's pretty obvious it is happening. Although probably by not as much as being claimed (due to some temperature sensors being located in parking lots and near air conditioning exhausts where they weren't 100 years ago).

Trillions of dollars in fixed investment destroyed. Billions of people forced to relocate. 1000s of species made extinct. Just as a start....

 

[Hygro]

ANECDOTE BLAH BLAH BLAH

words words words penis

unnecessary and badly thought out insult

Counter argument involving the giant rolleyes puking the other rolleyes

 

[Murky]

One other thing to note that Richard Muller is the team leader of the Berkley Earth research group. The actual analysis was done by a team of people, not just Muller. There are several notable scientists on the team that are highly respected in their fields. While this study wasn't really breaking new ground on the science, it has political implications. It's that even skeptics like Richard Muller can be converted to accepting the science when they view the evidence for themselves.

As for what Jo Nova thinks, who cares?

 

[Dachs]

Counter argument involving the giant rolleyes puking the other rolleyes

insinuation that YOU'RE TROLLING

previous argument restated but BOLDED IN CAPS WITH LARGE FONT SIZE

smug assertions of superiority and disdain for whatever kind of person you are anyway

 

[Abegweit]

You know who is a better source? All my friends who had him as a professor back in 2006 and '07 when he would rant about how climate change wasn't a thing, and definitely not man made.

Better source? How about his own words

"It is ironic if some people treat me as a traitor, since I was never a skeptic -- only a scientific skeptic," he said in a recent email exchange with The Huffington Post. "Some people called me a skeptic because in my best-seller 'Physics for Future Presidents' I had drawn attention to the numerous scientific errors in the movie 'An Inconvenient Truth.' But I never felt that pointing out mistakes qualified me to be called a climate skeptic." HuffPo -Nov 3, 2011

IOW, the real fanatics attacked him because he didn't accept the numerous fabrications that this thing is built on even though he accepted the basic premise. They have done the same thing to Bjorn Stromberg.

Doesn't surprise in the least that some of his students would twist his point to something it wasn't. That's also par for the course.

I do apologize for calling him a liar. It would appear that the liars are in the media and AGW industry. He's just enough of an opportunist and PR hog that he's not going to correct them.

 

[LucyDuke]

Why is climate change such a bad thing? I apologize for how ignorant that question sounds, but bear with me. I believe humans can adapt, our species is very well at adapting. The Earth has been warmer in the past when we had higher CO2 levels, and I believe eventually technology will eventually allow us to remove large quantities of carbon from the air.

Climate change, not necessarily warming, is a bad thing when it happens too quickly, and unpredictably. Changing parts of the planet have had changing climates since climate became a thing, but always gradually enough that species had time to react or adapt (migrate, evolve, change behavior... or die). Over some given patch of land, the rain tapered off over 10,000 years, not 100 years. Apply that to any of the elements that make up climate (and climate isn't weather, it's patterns of weather). Humans are very clever and we'll be able to adapt and change our behavior better than an average species (if we want to) but we're not separate from the rest of the world. We still need all the services provided by nature, and we still need to eat. If it doesn't rain on the corn field, we're not going to have corn, and we can't even predict where the best rain will be in the future. We just have to see what happens and hope nothing changes too drastically. The warming causes the problems others have already described.


Dax and Hygro please never grow up.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Why is climate change such a bad thing? I apologize for how ignorant that question sounds, but bear with me. I believe humans can adapt, our species is very well at adapting. The Earth has been warmer in the past when we had higher CO2 levels, and I believe eventually technology will eventually allow us to remove large quantities of carbon from the air. I really think it's unrealistic to expect hundreds of countries to band together to fight this. It's human nature to use resources available to them. Any animal would do the same thing. Are we really going to stop China from releasing CO2? Nuking them is really the only solution to that.

As for denying global warming, I can't believe there are still those who do deny it. It's pretty obvious it is happening. Although probably by not as much as being claimed (due to some temperature sensors being located in parking lots and near air conditioning exhausts where they weren't 100 years ago).

As others have noted, climate change can cause mass migrations. In the past, mass migrations usually led to war. With the weapons and tactics available to us now, it could be tragicon a global scale.

Also, others have noted how climate change was sometimes slow enough enough for life to adapt. It isn't always that way - our planet has faced a number of mass extinctions largely because of this.

While I tend to agree that we will discover technology to reverse climate change, I worry it will come only after we have paid a dear price for it. We need to act sooner rather than later or a lot of life, human and otherwise, is going to die.

Some ppl think that global warming can be good by making the permafrost livable. I find that notion laughable when we can't predict hurricanes or even the weather a week out. And what if it makes some countries 'winners' and others 'losers'? Can any guarantee the US will be among the former?

 

[Abegweit]

Dax and Hygro please never grow up.

'Nuff said. The whole lefty thing is about a kindergarten view of the world.

 

[Hygro]

insinuation that YOU'RE TROLLING

previous argument restated but BOLDED IN CAPS WITH LARGE FONT SIZE

smug assertions of superiority and disdain for whatever kind of person you are anyway

Response by reporting your post because my ideology leaves me to upset to handle your dis-acceptance of closely held beliefs. Attempt at showing logical fallacy that backfires.

Better source? How about his own words

"It is ironic if some people treat me as a traitor, since I was never a skeptic -- only a scientific skeptic," he said in a recent email exchange with The Huffington Post. "Some people called me a skeptic because in my best-seller 'Physics for Future Presidents' I had drawn attention to the numerous scientific errors in the movie 'An Inconvenient Truth.' But I never felt that pointing out mistakes qualified me to be called a climate skeptic." HuffPo -Nov 3, 2011

IOW, the real fanatics attacked him because he didn't accept the numerous fabrications that this thing is built on even though he accepted the basic premise. They have done the same thing to Bjorn Stromberg.

Doesn't surprise in the least that some of his students would twist his point to something it wasn't. That's also par for the course.

I do apologize for calling him a liar. It would appear that the liars are in the media and AGW industry. He's just enough of an opportunist and PR hog that he's not going to correct them.

What the hell is wrong with you?

No really. What the hell is wrong with you. Wake up man, you've brought your civfanatics-everything-is-a-left-vs-right-battle to real world dorm conversations.

I'm talking about literally living in a dorm, talking to friends, and the issue of global warming comes up, and one of my friends mentions with surprise that her physics professor claimed all this global warming stuff was bunk. She was pretty surprised.

There were a couple other ones like that.


But oh no, par for the course, everyone's in a conspiracy to tax money to fund robots that kill babies. Or something. Or whatever insane reason you'd accuse my friends of "twisting his words" for whatever par for the course agenda they seem to have.

That's ignoring that you largely mistook what he said to the huffpo.

 

[Abegweit]

I'm talking about literally living in a dorm, talking to friends, and the issue of global warming comes up, and one of my friends mentions with surprise that her physics professor claimed all this global warming stuff was bunk. She was pretty surprised.

There were a couple other ones like that.

Oh. I got the message. Your useless lefty twit friends have no clue what someone actually said. It doesn't surprise me in the least.

How do you reconcile the twit's words with what he has actually said about what he thinks?

Moderator Action: Take another week timeout. Apparently the last one wasn't enough to drive the message home. Regards, Grisu
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Dachs]

Response by reporting your post because my ideology leaves me to upset to handle your dis-acceptance of closely held beliefs. Attempt at showing logical fallacy that backfires.

irritable statement of contempt towards moderators

series of anecdotes about supposed moderator bias

condescending "when I was your age" old person pat-on-the-head that doesn't actually address the topic

 

[LucyDuke]

'Nuff said. The whole lefty thing is about a kindergarten view of the world.

What are you talking about?

 

[ParkCungHee]

To give a brief summary. We've already put enough Co2 to cause about 2C of warming which is bad but survivable.

Wait, the 2 degrees statistic is in Celsius?

No wonder Americans haven't gotten on board with climate change yet. If you're going to drill a statistic into people's brains, use the standard they know!