Religion of Global Warming Exposed by one of their own.

[ahamtatsat]

How? Environmental issues (including but not limited to climate change), are inexorably connected to human activities (including but not limited to economic behaviors that result from practicing economic ideologies). I don't see how we could come up with any workable solution for environmental issues while ignoring a major causal variable.

i like to make "human activity" a little tighter in explanation. Why are petrochemicals so pervasive? Because they were leveraged into power. Take alcohol as a fuel. The Model T had two switches - 1 on the carburetor, 1 for the fuel selection. Many farmers and entire towns made enough alcohol to fuel their cars. Rockefeller - evil minion that he was/is - bought a govt "Prohibition" of alcohol and all the infrastructure was destroyed. After the Prohibition ended, no alcohol cars, no towns or farms with the necessary stills... Now we have pervasive petro AND the people that run that industry have exponentially more power than had they a legitimate competitor on the fuel scene.

ALL our problems are corporation based, not caused by the "little people" or as the self-annointed "elite" morons phrase it: "the useless eaters".

 

[ahamtatsat]

How about regulations? We find other solutions from regulations.

We have many regulations like restricting asbestos and mercury. Isn't this a process that could satisfy your dilemma?

The ONLY effective regulations would be industry and corporate regulation, and since they own the govt - dat ain't happenin'. We the people are not the problem. They the parasites are.

 

[siti]

The only thing I take issue with here- comparing global warming to religion is a little unfair... to religion. Climastrologers would have to at least acknowledge their own faith to rise to this level. As is it's more of a superstition, a very ancient one at that

Climatology is science - you do measurements, get data and monitor the trends. Climate change denial is different - you get some out of context sound-bytes from some implicitly trusted but inaccessible wise men with no scientific credentials whatsoever and on the basis of these deny the reality that is right before your eyes - sound familiar?

 

[icehorse]

@suncowiam and @icehorse -

I get the impression we're not on the same page in our thinking about this, because I'm not seeing how what either of you wrote counters my argument. Icehorse requested that we somehow divorce conversations about climate change from capitalism. I countered that this was absurd, given ... well... I don't really feel like I need to repeat myself.

How? Environmental issues (including but not limited to climate change), are inexorably connected to human activities (including but not limited to economic behaviors that result from practicing economic ideologies). I don't see how we could come up with any workable solution for environmental issues while ignoring a major causal variable.

Let me take another whack at this. I agree that we need to apply some systems thinking to this situation; that indeed there are linkages between the climate debate and economics. IMO, the root cause of climate change denial stems from industries who are invested in "dirty" energy sources such as coal and oil.

To switch our R&D emphasis and our subsidy emphasis from dirty energies to renewables will of course have some impact on our economies. There will be some winners and some losers when the emphasis shifts, but my sense is that overall, the economy won't take a huge hit. E.g., oil workers will become solar panel installers.

And my early post tackled the idea that we could take relatively small actions that could have a BIG impact on energy consumption and reducing our negative environmental impact.

Does that clear anything up?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Climatology is science - you do measurements, get data and monitor the trends. Climate change denial is different - you get some out of context sound-bytes from some implicitly trusted but inaccessible wise men with no scientific credentials whatsoever and on the basis of these deny the reality that is right before your eyes - sound familiar?

[science] such wholesale returns of conjecture, from such a trifling investment of fact: Mark Twain

 

[Robert Vincelette]

Capitalism better fits the definition of a religion. The most ruthless oligarchs get worshiped as something above the human race, they make human sacrifices on the altar of those who usurp power sucking the life blood out of the economy: tobacco industry and its customers matching the average annual murder rate of Auschwitz in the number of nonsmokers who die from chronic exposure to second-hand smoke, people incinerated alive in the Ford Pinto because the law suits cost less than a simple retooling of the fuel system (and nobody who made the decision was arrested let alone did time for manslaughter, children in gold mines in Africa having limbs amputated if they fail to meet production quotas, coal mines sacrificing human lives to save money.) Perhaps it should be defined as an implicit form of Satan worship.

 

[siti]

We the people are not the problem.

@ahamtatsat I agree with your anti-corporate stance, but I disagree with this statement to some extent. 'We the people' are only helpless pawns if we allow ourselves to be so - in reality, all the power is in our own hands. We don't have to buy anything that we suspect is produced in an unsustainable or unethical manner. It is not an easy thing to do in practice, but in principle the power is in our hands - and in our pockets - no matter how little of it we have, we can each make a difference by our consumer choices. Like I said earlier, this mysterious 'market' economists like to talk about is really nothing more than the sum total of all our consumer choices. And right now 'we the people' are the only ones who can change that - but we have to have the will and the knowledge to do so. That's why opposing the anti-knowledge of the OP in this thread is so important to me. People need to know that every time they flick the light switch, start the car, eat a burger...etc. there is a cost - and that cost will mostly be borne by future generations, not by us.

 

[siti]

[science] such wholesale returns of conjecture, from such a trifling investment of fact: Mark Twain

Oh! You want trade Mark Twain quotes - OK here's a couple that are slightly more topical (with my emphasis):

"Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven..."
The Lowest Animal ~ Mark Twain

"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3

​

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Oh! You want trade Mark Twain quotes - OK here's one that's slightly more topical (with my emphasis):

"Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven..."
The Lowest Animal ~ Mark Twain​

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason

 

[suncowiam]

The ONLY effective regulations would be industry and corporate regulation, and since they own the govt - dat ain't happenin'. We the people are not the problem. They the parasites are.

Obama enacted many anti-business regulations. We do see that now with Trump, consider how many repeals the republicans are doing.

You have a point but it's not conclusive to suggest that all business has a hand in government. I would consider corruption and that we would have to fix it and that we are trying to fix it.

 

[raw_thought]

Those that deny global warming are members of a cult that hates science. EVERY scientific organization in the world confirms that global warming is real and we have significantly contributed to it. The global warming denier cult actually believes that every scientific organization in the world is part of a conspiracy to harm the defenseless international oil companies. Who is behind this conspiracy? The Masons? Elvis? Bigfoot? BTW since they believe that ALL data about global warming is a fraud, where do they get their data that global warming is not happening? Oh yeah, some tin foil hatter's blog.

 

[Tiapan]

I agree totally as a member of the sacred "head in the sand" religion.

 

[Blastcat]

Thank G-d; I can't stand Capitalism!

I suggest taking a seat. This might take a while.

 

[siti]

1 or 2 extra molecules CO2 in 10,000 of air = any significant change in the climate, let alone a deleterious one.

Sorry Guy - one or two extra molecules...? I'm afraid I am probably not a skilled enough teacher to reduce the science of climatology to your obviously pre-school level of understanding - but I'll give it a shot anyway because it is important. Let me try an analogy to start with - how many of the trillions of cells in the human body need to "go rogue' to trigger a cancer that can kill you? Right just one. OK - so making the number of bad bits small and the number of good bits huge doesn't help the argument. So lets forget that line of reasoning and focus on the actual science.

You know - I presume - that the 'greenhouse effect' is a real phenomenon. If not you can do an experiment yourself. Close all the windows in your car on a sunny day and sit inside. After a short time it will hotter inside than it is outside. This is because the heat energy (infrared radiation) is trapped inside - it can get through the glass but as it interacts with the stuff in the car (causing molecules to vibrate) on the way in it loses energy (lower frequency, higher wavelength) and when it is re-emitted it can't get back through the glass and remains trapped causing the atmosphere inside the car to heat up.

Well, the same thing happens with CO2 and other gases (like methane) in the earth's atmosphere acting like the glass of the windows. A proportion of the radiation from the sun arriving at the earth's surface is re-emitted but at lower energy, lower frequency, higher wavelength and cannot escape back into space because the CO2 (and other) molecules trap it just like the glass in the car window. This is not a bad thing because it is for this reason (in part) that the earth is not a frozen ice world.

But...if the levels of CO2 and other 'greenhouse' gases becomes much higher than the levels that are normally present, then, it should be obvious, more energy is trapped within the atmosphere and it gets hotter. This is the phenomenon of 'global warming' and we are - without any question whatsoever - in a period during which this is happening. We have been actually measuring the average global temperature for 137 years and whether you are looking at the land, the ocean, or the overall average or at the global, northern hemisphere or southern hemisphere the coolest years were all between 1907 and 1911 and the hottest have all been since 2012. It has been getting gradually hotter for the last century. We have also been measuring the actual CO2 levels directly for more than 50 years and they follow the same trend as the temperature.

We can also take ice cores and measure the amount of CO2 trapped in them. By correlating this with measured data we can estimate the atmospheric CO2 going back hundreds of thousands of years. By also examining pollen etc. we can find out what kinds of plants were growing and from that we can deduce information about the climate - whether it was a relatively hot or relatively cold climate (I am assuming that you know that there is a reason we don't currently grow bananas in Alaska so I don't need to go into this any deeper). I also assume that you know that the earth has gone through numerous cycles when the temperature has fluctuated between glacial (ice age) periods and interglacials (warmer climates). Well it turns out that the CO2 measurements we got from the ice core samples I just mentioned follow a trend that exactly matches these fluctuations - i.e. the more CO2 the hotter the atmosphere - and we know for certain (from archaeology) that these fluctuations are also mirrored by significantly rising and falling sea levels.

All of this is a natural cycle. All of this is going to happen with or without human activity or industry. This is called climate variability and we know it happens.

But...in all of the measurements that have been done on ice cores dating back to 600,000 years ago, we have never measured a level of CO2 higher than around 280 parts per million from any core dating to before about 200 years ago. The current level is about 400 parts per million. This is fully 40% higher than at the highest point of any interglacial period in the last 600,000 years. To suggest that this extra '1 or 2 molecules per 10,000' will not make any difference is equivalent to saying that making your car windows 40% thicker would have no effect on the atmosphere inside the car. Its almost like double-glazing your home and expecting it not be any warmer after you have done so.

The only question left is to determine what the cause of this extra CO2 is. And this is your homework. Get graphs of world population, global industrial productivity, agricultural productivity, oil production...any other measure of human activity you can plot on a global scale since, say, 1800 and put them side by side with a plot of atmospheric CO2, atmospheric methane and/or average global temperature and tell me what you notice. Correct, they're all pretty much the same shape. They have followed the same upward trend. They are, as we say in the trade, correlated. There IS - no question - a correlation between the unprecedented rise in atmospheric CO2 levels, increasing global temperature and human agricultural and industrial production.

You can critique this with data that shows otherwise - if you can find any - but please don't post any more silly remarks that simply display your profound ignorance of the subject or attempt to replace data with poorly written and baseless right-wing invective.

 

[psychoslice]

OK - check out the evidence here, noting that 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming that has already happened over the last century is likely due to human activity. Check out the references and the data that is cited in the footnotes and look at these statements from some of the most respected scientific organizations in America and then obtain some actual data that actually refutes all this evidence.

Personally, I am not 100% up to date on climate change research per se being more directly involved in the technical aspects of the measurement part of the process - atmospheric methane, in particular, and ozone levels over the South Pacific, among many other things, but I certainly know, from first hand experience of doing, not just reading about, the science and from my own direct experience of vulnerable coastal communities in the South Pacific region over the last 20 years, enough to be certain that global warming is real.

I have done the science, I have examined the data, I have seen the evidence and evaluated it in my mind - I have thought very deeply and carefully about it. I have even edited a book about the chemical aspects of climate change as they relate to the South Pacific islands (I was invited by a professional body of scientists to do this and I made no money out of it - the proceeds all went to support educational projects). Point is - I know its real - I have no vested interests - except that my children and grandchildren have/are growing up in a country that is vulnerable to climate change.

So no, the same does not go for me. And it does irk me that so many people are so gullibly inclined to take the word of the right wing press without giving a single second of their time to actually examine the evidence, because its my kids future as well. By all means disagree - but an issue this important at least have the decency to do intelligently!

Of course all scientist that are involved with global warming are going to agree, they get millions of dollars to fund their projects, not all scientist can agree because not all scientist are into that field, so no you cannot totally believe what they say. The earth is always changing and it will keep changing, we seem to make a big deal about the weather these days, just because it doesn't do what we want it to do, of course we should look after our planted, the planet has spewed more dangerous gases into the air than we as humans ever could.

 

[psychoslice]

It's always had something driving said change

Said change ?.

 

[SDRAmerica]

Global Warming is a tool used for the enforcement of the mark of the beast. So it absolutely has to do with religion.

 

[siti]

Of course all scientist that are involved with global warming are going to agree, they get millions of dollars to fund their projects, not all scientist can agree because not all scientist are into that field, so no you cannot totally believe what they say. The earth is always changing and it will keep changing, we seem to make a big deal about the weather these days, just because it doesn't do what we want it to do, of course we should look after our planted, the planet has spewed more dangerous gases into the air than we as humans ever could.

Again you are simply putting the unfathomable depth of your prodigious ignorance on public display. Read the information and then tell me - with reasons - that you disagree with the vast majority of actual climate scientists.

 

[siti]

Global Warming is a tool...

It should feel right at home around here then!

 

[psychoslice]

Again you are simply putting the unfathomable depth of your prodigious ignorance on public display. Read the information and then tell me - with reasons - that you disagree with the vast majority of actual climate scientists.

And may I say you also that you show your ignorance on believing anything you hear, from the very ones who make up this crap.