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Climate Change - Bad News

Timidly -Truthful-Seeker

Timidly -Truthful-Seeker

Brilliance!
Quintessence said:
I just read something rather inspiring in one of my tree-hugger magazines.

Folks nowadays have a lack of imagination. In the span of a lifetime, we went from the first human flight to landing on the moon.

In the span of a lifetime, guys.

If we get serious about this issue, we can tackle it. No doubt. With imagination, inventive solutions, and big dreams.
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What the word is, unquestionably, irrefutablely, and sadly in dire need of are dreamers!
Oh, what a Pandora's box an imaginative mind opens with such a question : how can we get people to dream?
 
Riverwolf

Riverwolf

Amateur Rambler / Proud Ergi
Premium Member
ben d said:
To make this accusation, you are clearly a disgusting example of a human being.
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Excuse my poor wording. I should have been more tactful. (Though that's quite a strange accusation you've got there; would you care to explain your logic? I'm pretty sure you can't smell me through the computer.)

Now, do you understand that the state of the air in the region you live in is not the same as it is somewhere else? Furthermore, do you understand that the state of the air is always in flux?
 
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Ben Dhyan

Ben Dhyan

Veteran Member
Riverwolf said:
Excuse my poor wording. I should have been more tactful. (Though that's quite a strange accusation you've got there; would you care to explain your logic? I'm pretty sure you can't smell me through the computer.)

Now, do you understand that the state of the air in the region you live in is not the same as it is somewhere else? Furthermore, do you understand that the state of the air is always in flux?
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Ok, I accept it as a lapse, I live as well an example of life as I possibly can and I generally don't expect others to match, however I draw the line at those who I realize are not up to my standard badgering me to come down to their standard. To be frank with you, it is my understanding from extensive experience, that catastrophic anthropogenic GW activists are really creepy people who mostly seem to have an underlying misanthropic nature to them. I am not saying you are in that camp, but I detect the pattern with your persistent misrepresentation of what I say and the sense of super ego and yet simultaneous ignorance about the actual science.
 
Riverwolf

Riverwolf

Amateur Rambler / Proud Ergi
Premium Member
ben d said:
Ok, I accept it as a lapse, I live as well an example of life as I possibly can and I generally don't expect others to match, however I draw the line at those who I realize are not up to my standard badgering me to come down to their standard. To be frank with you, it is my understanding from extensive experience, that catastrophic anthropogenic GW activists are really creepy people who mostly seem to have an underlying misanthropic nature to them. I am not saying you are in that camp, but I detect the pattern with your persistent misrepresentation of what I say and the sense of super ego and yet simultaneous ignorance about the actual science.
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I'm not intending to misrepresent what you say (apologies for any perceived misrepresentation), but my understanding of science is that it's not data. Then again, you haven't provided any scientific journals for me to review. If I want to understand the ancient world, I read books from the ancient world by ancient writers.

Furthermore, my understanding of the data is that while an apocalypse due to the increase in CO2 is not a current direct danger, it's still of concern in a world where clean air is not necessarily everywhere.

Luckily, the air where I live is relatively clean, thanks to "spare the air" days in winter during which it's illegal to burn wood. You'd think New York would be extremely dirty in terms of air quality because of the extreme condensation of cars and people, but I don't remember having much trouble breathing there on that account, which I attribute to frequent rain, as well as the vastness of Central Park pouring good oxygen into the atmosphere.

However, I hear nothing but horror stories from people describing air in Los Angeles, China, and India. If I forgot my inhaler, I doubt I'd be able to set foot in those places for long before having to go to the ER.

Now, you never answered this question: do you have asthma?
 
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Ben Dhyan

Ben Dhyan

Veteran Member
Riverwolf said:
I'm not intending to misrepresent what you say (apologies for any perceived misrepresentation), but my understanding of science is that it's not data. Then again, you haven't provided any scientific journals for me to review. If I want to understand the ancient world, I read books from the ancient world by ancient writers.

Furthermore, my understanding of the data is that while an apocalypse due to the increase in CO2 is not a current direct danger, it's still of concern in a world where clean air is not necessarily everywhere.

Luckily, the air where I live is relatively clean, thanks to "spare the air" days in winter during which it's illegal to burn wood. You'd think New York would be extremely dirty in terms of air quality because of the extreme condensation of cars and people, but I don't remember having much trouble breathing there on that account, which I attribute to frequent rain, as well as the vastness of Central Park pouring good oxygen into the atmosphere.

However, I hear nothing but horror stories from people describing Los Angeles, China, and India.

Now, you never answered this question: do you have asthma?
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Thank you for your humble response Riverwolf. I apologize for thinking you were 'one of those', I'm happy that you have shown me to be in error.

Climate science is certainly not settled and no one person or group, including the IPCC or the skeptics yet have a handle on it. So to keep up with the latest science, one needs to just watch out for Climate news wherever and whenever it appears. I use RSS feeds to a number of climate blogs and news outlets and get a few hours reading per day. The thing is, I do this not to badger people who believe in AGW, but for my own understanding, I really am interested in what is happening to the planet and I honestly am not convinced by the AGW science claims so far.

No, I don't have asthma!
 
Riverwolf

Riverwolf

Amateur Rambler / Proud Ergi
Premium Member
ben d said:
Thank you for your humble response Riverwolf. I apologize for thinking you were 'one of those', I'm happy that you have shown me to be in error.

Climate science is certainly not settled and no one person or group, including the IPCC or the skeptics yet have a handle on it. So to keep up with the latest science, one needs to just watch out for Climate news wherever and whenever it appears. I use RSS feeds to a number of climate blogs and news outlets and get a few hours reading per day. The thing is, I do this not to badger people who believe in AGW, but for my own understanding, I really am interested in what is happening to the planet and I honestly am not convinced by the AGW science claims so far.
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Well, I'd need more reliable sources than news or blogs.

No, I don't have asthma!
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Count yourself lucky. I do. Luckily, my house is upwind from the refinery that's right in my backyard.
 
Ben Dhyan

Ben Dhyan

Veteran Member
Riverwolf said:
Well, I'd need more reliable sources than news or blogs.

Count yourself lucky. I do. Luckily, my house is upwind from the refinery that's right in my backyard.
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There is no climate science available yet that has all the answers, it's early days, as each new study is published and partly rebutted, the understanding will increase. But that involves time as models are shown to fit or fall against the planet's climate reality. My rough guess is that we should know by about 2025 for sure if the anthropogenic factor is a significant factor in the mix of natural variables. So it pays to be patient if one uses a scientific approach.

Sorry to hear about your asthma, and glad to hear you're upwind from that refinery. But do note, CO2 emissions will not affect your asthma. Particulate pollution is a real problem, and in China causes breathing problems associated with that smog pollution!
 
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Riverwolf

Riverwolf

Amateur Rambler / Proud Ergi
Premium Member
ben d said:
There is no climate science available yet that has all the answers, it's early days, as each new study is published and partly rebutted, the understanding will increase. But that involves time as models are shown to fit or fall against the planet's climate reality. My rough guess is that we should know by about 2025 for sure if the anthropogenic factor is a significant factor in the mix of natural variables. So it pays to be patient if one uses a scientific approach.

Sorry to hear about your asthma, and glad to hear you're upwind from that refinery. But do note, CO2 emissions will not affect your asthma, it's the particulates that do that, and that is the problem in China, dirty pollution,..smog!
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True... one of the problems with the kind of Captain Planet propaganda is that all pollution is lumped together to cause confusion, so all pollution is smog is CO2 is gas... sure, it's well-intentioned (I don't believe it's a scam), but... well, television isn't really any better than Hollywood in terms of accurately talking about science.
 
metis

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
LegionOnomaMoi said:
Modern physics. First, we had centuries of classical physics. That turned out to be fundamentally wrong. Now we have quantum and relativistic physics, both of which we know are inadequate and contradictory and neither of which we can do without.
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But one really doesn't contradict the other, although some projected models have become more or less popular. Just about everything we observe when it comes to physics deal with mega-matter and not quantum. For you to say that quantum physics this makes scientists 90% wrong is totally absurd. I've been a subscriber to "Scientific American" for over 40 years, which is peer-reviewed btw, and there's been article after article on q.m.


When a scientific paper is written, is it written inline with some theoretical framework. These have become more and more complicated, contradictory, and self-supporting in the past 100 years as sciences have become more diverse and specialized.
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That's sort of a worm's-eye view of the research and evidence. For example, I'm a retired anthropologist, and we know a LOT more about human evolution than we did when I first started teaching it in the late 1960's. Diversity and specialization do not create more errors intrinsically. For example, I had a root canal performed on me by a "specialist" because I ran into a problem my regular dentist couldn't handle. So, specialization by itself is not more prone to error.


All actions have consequences including not acting. The question isn't "should we do something" but "what should we do and why". The problem is that thanks to politics the number 1 committee which could have helped here has thoroughly messed up any chance it had to do so by continuously putting politics first and science last.
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Here we agree, although I see this being done far more by the political right than the left, although the latter does do it as well, so I'm not giving them a "get of of jail free" card.

The answer is the kind of fall-out that can occur from "simple" solutions, and many solutions, like Kyoto, were or are lose/lose, as
1) They won't do anything for the climate
2) They will be extremely expensive
Banning DDT was easy. Dealing with millions upon millions of dead thanks to the resurgence of malaria all because Carson wrote Silent Spring is not so easy. Actions have consequences no matter what. I'd prefer not to be blinded by the politics of either side.
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Whereas I agree that we have to be very careful in terms of what we propose and do, the Kyoto proposals had their pros and cons, so I'm not going to stereotype it as you did. Secondly, energy conservation is not necessarily expensive, although it can be depending on what's being adopted.

But one thing is very clear to the researchers, and that is doing nothing goes beyond Russian roulette and into at least partial suicidal. For us to do nothing, is sort of like a man standing on the tracks while a train is coming and not being able to decide which way to jump.

Steven Hawking, who's not exactly a village idiot, believes that we are on a suicide mission here on Earth, and that we need to consider moving some of humanity in the future to a different planet. He believes our "selfish gene", as Dawkins calls it, will have us continue to make decisions for selfish reasons and not what's good for the world eventually. I sure hope he's wrong, but I doubt it.
 
Ben Dhyan

Ben Dhyan

Veteran Member
metis said:
Steven Hawking, who's not exactly a village idiot, believes that we are on a suicide mission here on Earth, and that we need to consider moving some of humanity in the future to a different planet.
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Come on, that's a no brainer, with the advent of this planet's space age, of course we are headed off planet on colonizing missions, but terrestrial humanity will continue to exist. Not to do so is like trying to imagine the Europeans never leaving Europe on their colonizing missions after the ocean going sailing ship age arrived.
 
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