Climate Change Poll

[Laika]

This is a quick poll to see where people stand on climate change.

The wording of each of the responses varies so it picks up on varying positions which reflect degrees of public opinion and the level of scientific knowledge. Rather than go for a simple "yes" or "no" poll I just wanted to expand the ground that is covered.

The first response is the one that approximates the scientific consensus. However, it is better to answer based on what you think and know rather than bow to science simply as an authority. Whilst this is a polarising issue the hope is that this thread may expand the range of responses and help educate people on what the data says rather than engage in political attacks to help foster a consensus based on evidence and understanding rather than partisan political positions.

All responses welcome.

 

[Jumi]

Voted other. Caused by both humans and natural causes. I see it as both beneficial and harmful.

 

[Palehorse]

Climate change is due to Wi-Fi and cadilac converters spewing liquid gold gas into the air.

 

[Quintessence]

No deniers so far, wasn't expecting that from a religious forum!

Why? I'm not seeing the correlation.

 

[Quintessence]

Generally where I live all of the climate change deniers (a good 40-ish percent of people) are climate change deniers because of Abrahamic dogma.
Wasn't expecting so little of that thought from a religious forum, that's all.

From what I understand, climate change denial is rarely related to Abrahamic religious dogma. Was a podcast interview I listened to a few years back by an academic who makes a study of examining why people reject various types of information - particularly in the context of climate change - and that wasn't the issue. The apparent correlation has more to do with the fact that conservatism and dogmatic Christian fundamentalism are strongly overlapping demographics; it's economic/political philosophies that have more to do with it. A conservative hears "climate change" and they hear "big government regulation" and "oppression of free markets" and the like. Religion doesn't really come into it. Wish I could remember the name of the folk who were doing this research... was long enough ago that I listened to this that I can't remember.

At any rate, with respect to the OP, I had to vote "other" because I didn't find any of the listed options precise or accurate enough. There is no single cause of climate change; climate is too complicated for that. What's important to note is that the changes are driven by anthropogenic activities or human ecosystem engineering. As for whether or not this does "harm," I find it very important to remember that change is a fundamental constant of this planet as well as the entire universe. The universe is what it is. Do I find it sickening that the geological legacy of my species will be a sixth mass extinction largely driven by irresponsible ecosystem engineering? More than I can express with words. But it is what it is.

 

[metis]

From an overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, climate change is real and offers a severe threat to life forms, including us humans.

 

[Shaul]

I presume you meant to ask whether anthropogenic climate change is real. Climate change itself is ineluctable. The degree to which anthropogenic climate change exists relative to other causes is an area for research and is debatable.

I take issue with your comments regarding "overwhelming consensus of the scientific community". Despite anthropogenic climate change alarmist propaganda the scientific community has both widely differing opinions and proffered examples of the supposed consensus are politically generated. Not that it matters much, since in science consensus is not a proof basis. It is an example of the logical fallacy of Argumentum ad populum.

Now, in my opinion I will say this much. Any anthropogenic climate change that is occurring is a manageable issue and not some crisis. Furthermore the issue can be managed by individuals and free markets. It should not be managed by political apparatchiks or faceless government bureaucrats. It is not worthy of alarmist hyperbole. It is definitely not grist for political authoritarians to expand their power and control over the masses.

Debates over whether anthropogenic climate change exists are less important than the debate over how pols are exploiting the ersatz issue to pursue increasing their own power.

 

[ShivaFan]

Human made climate change might be real in the future as we become more powerful to control or destroy such things, but in general what is being peddled as "man made global warming" is a scam by some politicians who want to loot other people of theIr valuables and land.

Of course there is "climate change", the weather changes every other day. Duh. This came as a surprise to some who were dupes of the "global warming" scam, as it became clear by the scientific data that in fact we are probably going into a period uf global cooling, so they were confused and as suckers had to be told "ah, yeah, it is now called climate change, not global warming"...

The idiots then looked out the window (shelters from weather) and said, "yeah! it was warm last month... now it is cool and raining! amazing, I sort of noticed it but now I know SOMETHING... honey, turn the channel to the dancing show..."

Sun spots. Planets and circumferences, asteroids... tides turning backwards... El Nino. Yadda, The climate changes. Going on a long time. Greenland once was green and Vikings grew grapes there. Then it got cold. The Thames froze over. Once some Philippino like people cross over walking from China thereabouts to Canada... yup, weather changes.

Now I suppose some humans COULD really make some bad changes. Like the Iranians. Setting off a big hydrogen bomb on Israel or something, the earth pushes the plates over here as a result and the core opens more over there as a result and the lava shoots up over there and the gas goes up and covers the sun and kills some of the grapes in Brazil as a result as humans hide in air conditioned metal bunkers with hydro farms and porta potty with geno-heaters yadda.

I suppose some crazed Islamic terrorist can cause something.

Right now, however, everything is normal. Which means, changing.

 

[YmirGF]

I could not vote in your poll as per what @Quintessence outlined. Should we treat our environment better and harvest the resources in a more prudent manner? Absolutely. Should we move away from fossil fuels? In time, sure, but I'm not so sure we should break the world economy to do so. Evidently the world's politician's don't believe so either. After all the years now of Climate change/Global warming hysteria our elected representatives had done pretty well diddly squat about it. No government on the planet has adopted serious measures to combat climate change/global warming. Most governments aren't even seriously discussing the issue, even at this late date.

On the other hand, wouldn't it be ironic if we spent trillions of dollars to lessen the impact of climate change and were making observable progress only to have the super-volcano that is Yellowstone National Park blow itself to smithereens? Likewise there could be a large asteroid hit the planet blasting us back into the stone age. There isn't anything we could do about either probable event. Climate change/global warming is something we can make marginal progress towards mitigating but we sit on our hands waiting for someone else to go first.

 

[metis]

There actually has been quite a bit of progress made. We got into this situation gradually, and it'll take some tome for us to get out of it.

 

[Laika]

Thanks for the responses so far. In response to @Quintessence and @YmirGF I was rather limited in the options I could put in the poll so I aimed for the key factors (it being real, caused by humans and generally harmful-though I could have said harmful to humans to be clearer). But with the exception of the 5 "other" votes, it is a remarkable consensus in favour of the first answer even with the options Included.

That's interesting to see.

 

[Quintessence]

Yeah, I understand that a poll has to be simplified.

What really pushed me to select "other" were the options I had for characterizing impacts. What I'd want to select is both the first and the second, because impacts can be characterized as all three of those things depending on what one is looking at and depending on one's values. But after deleting a paragraph or two of ranting, I'm just going to leave it there before I go off on this. XD

 

[Ouroboros]

Answered: "Yes. Recent climate change is real, caused by humans and is harmful."

It was the closest to what I think. But I don't think humans are the only reasons to climate change. I suspect it's part of a natural cycle as well as accelerated by human activities. Also, it's harmful to us and most animals, but it's not harmful to the world at large. Many species of animals and plants will not only survive, but evolve to the new conditions. We might not survive as a species.

 

[metis]

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, they estimate that 2 billion out of the 7 billion people here on Earth will be at varying degrees of risk because of global warming.

 

[Quintessence]

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, they estimate that 2 billion out of the 7 billion people here on Earth will be at varying degrees of risk because of global warming.

How was that determined in their study?

Seems to me that the thing with global events is that it affects everything on the planet. Not sure how they figure that all humans are not going to face some degree of risks from this. It's all interconnected.

 

[metis]

How was that determined in their study?

Seems to me that the thing with global events is that it affects everything on the planet. Not sure how they figure that all humans are not going to face some degree of risks from this. It's all interconnected.

I do not know the details of the study with the exceptions that rising sea levels in highly populated areas would be involved and also that there would be greater chances for war because of that and probably other consequences.

 

[Nous]

I've never known, or known of, anyone who denies that the climate changes. Indeed, all people I have known who question or dispute some aspect of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis point to the fact and history of non-anthropogenic climate change as part of their reason for questioning or disputing (some aspect of) the AGW hypothesis. I believe that the issues relating to the AGW hypothesis would be less contentious and would entail less partisan entrenchment if people's arguments and assertions were not misrepresented.

I'd say that anyone who doesn't question the global temperature projections promulgated by the IPCC (et al.) is not assessing the matter critically, that is, scientifically. There is a great deal to question about those projections.

In any case, while the effort to reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels for energy production is admirable and necessary (e.g., crude oil is quickly running out at our current rate of consumption), the fact remains that reducing global CO2 emissions is not going to make any difference in global temperatures anytime soon, i.e., within the next 400+ years, due to the long half-life of CO2, except for the fact that continued CO2 emissions will abrogate the efforts to lower global temperature or prevent global temperature rising by reducing emissions of short-lived GHGs. When (if) world leaders ever actually become serious about the issue of adverse effects of anthropogenic global warming, they will begin to propose and agree to measures than will reduce anthropogenic emissions of the short-lived GHGs such as methane, the largest portion of which comes from livestock, which are also responsible for a variety of other environmentally destructive effects (deforestation; pollution; fresh water depletion) that urgently need correction. Continuing the practice of humans raising, using and eating other animals is going to wipe out humans and the planet one way or the other.

 

[VioletVortex]

Climate change is obviously real. However, it is not only caused by humans. It also occurs naturally. That is why we have had ice ages in the past, and it's also why we will have them in the future. However, in the very near future, maybe 20 years from now, the climate will be a lot warmer due to man made climate change. This will cause many problems. First, there will be flooding due to the ice melting into the ocean, many animals will be killed by the heat, flooding, or loss of ice cap, and finally, it will be unbearable hot in the Summers. The Winters will just be nasty and warm with too much rain.

Hopefully, we get another ice age fairly soon to help counter man made climate change.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Climate has always changed- and bad weather has always been blamed on people since the dawn of civilization, it's the oldest superstition known to mankind

It was global cooling when I grew up, live long enough and it will be again.

On consensus: 100% of astrologers believe in astrology, and they should know, they're the experts!

The fact that a significant percentage of climastrologers don't even buy into their own c**p is pretty telling

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I've never known, or known of, anyone who denies that the climate changes. Indeed, all people I have known who question or dispute some aspect of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis point to the fact and history of non-anthropogenic climate change as part of their reason for questioning or disputing (some aspect of) the AGW hypothesis. I believe that the issues relating to the AGW hypothesis would be less contentious and would entail less partisan entrenchment if people's arguments and assertions were not misrepresented.

I'd say that anyone who doesn't question the global temperature projections promulgated by the IPCC (et al.) is not assessing the matter critically, that is, scientifically. There is a great deal to question about those projections.

In any case, while the effort to reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels for energy production is admirable and necessary (e.g., crude oil is quickly running out at our current rate of consumption), the fact remains that reducing global CO2 emissions is not going to make any difference in global temperatures anytime soon, i.e., within the next 400+ years, due to the long half-life of CO2, except for the fact that continued CO2 emissions will abrogate the efforts to lower global temperature or prevent global temperature rising by reducing emissions of short-lived GHGs. When (if) world leaders ever actually become serious about the issue of adverse effects of anthropogenic global warming, they will begin to propose and agree to measures than will reduce anthropogenic emissions of the short-lived GHGs such as methane, the largest portion of which comes from livestock, which are also responsible for a variety of other environmentally destructive effects (deforestation; pollution; fresh water depletion) that urgently need correction. Continuing the practice of humans raising, using and eating other animals is going to wipe out humans and the planet one way or the other.

crude oil was supposedly 'quickly running out' > 40 years ago, nobody predicted a global glut in 2016.

Likewise agriculture was supposed to collapse the planet's ecosystem a couple of hundred years ago according to Malthus.

So going forward I think the safer prediction is that oil, gas, and coal, will be the miracle fuels of the future, the climate will continue to be variable, with the warmer periods being vastly more beneficial than the colder ones

Our current contribution of CO2 is a little over 1 molecule in 10,000 of air, there is no scientific method by which this has any significant impact on an already dynamic climate system.

Unfortunately- becasue we need something vastly more potent to stave off the next imminent ice age