Like John, I could care less about the Weblog Awards. For me, it was just fun to beat RedState. Having said that, the results of the Science Blog category are truly comical. Climate Audit basically tied for first. It’s pretty much a global warming denialist blog (at least insomuch as humans are responsible for it.) Here’s what I think about the cause of Global Warming:
Who gives a shit?
There is no question that the Earth is heating up. People who make fun of global warming by noting how cold it is today, or yesterday, or last month, or whenever, are only making fools of themselves and their ability to understand how global warming can even cause frigid temperatures to occur. Having said that, what is causing global warming is debatable (and by that, I mean, sure, we can debate it!) I have no reason to doubt that the sun might be hotter. Heck, maybe geothermal heat is causing part of it. And yes, it could that carbon emissions by human beings is playing a leading role. (I happen to believe that.) Or it could simply be a combination of any number of these or other causes. But I don’t care.
Setting that aside for a moment, we do know that when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it does have the effect of causing warming. That is a known. Let’s assume for the moment that the detractors are right and that we play a very small role in the problem. Does that mean we shouldn’t be doing everything we can to at least reduce the damage we can control? And even if our SUV and car exhaust, factory smoke, and methane-producing factory farms have a low to zero effect on the Earth’s temperature, I can tell you for sure it has an effect on that cloud that hangs above Atlanta in the summer. Isn’t it a good thing in and of itself to want to reduce that? Or are you also going to argue that these factors don’t cause the acid rain that kills fish and pollutes water? And if reducing the effects of the aforementioned only added a few more years to the existence of humanity (assuming global warming continues and it is as detrimental to humanity as some say), shouldn’t we do something to make that happen?
We’ll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on medicine and surgery to keep people on life support for a few extra weeks who would otherwise be dead, but we won’t use mass transit, plant trees, walk to the store instead of driving, choose meat that is raised organically, and all the thousands of things we can do to reduce pollution and possibly keep us around for a few thousand more years…all because it’s too inconvenient (or you happen to hate Al Gore.)
As I said, I’m pretty certain humans play the major role in global warming. But even if you don’t believe that, you can’t possibly believe that changing your behavior wouldn’t reduce pollution. So, ok, you might be right about humanity’s role. But how about changing your behaviors anyway? If you’re right and humans don’t do anything to cause climate change, then you’ll at least be contributing to cleaner air and a more enjoyable environment. And if you’re wrong and humans are the major contributing factor to global warming, then you did something to help.
The bottom line is this: There are a lot of other reasons to “go green” than global warming. I think they’re rather self-evident. Again, I see it every day, especially in the summer, when I look out over the city of Atlanta and see the ugly haze. So I couldn’t care less what the science says. If water is cleaner, air is clearer, asthma cases are reduced, food doesn’t contain all those chemicals, and we can move to an oil-free culture, then going green is good for its own sake.
Xanthippas
Nice.
Gus
Because George Will says that going green will kill more people that all the wars and dictators of the 20th century.
Jon H
“Who gives a shit?”
Bangladesh. 150 million people squeezed into an area the size of Florida, most of which is close to sea level.
Krista
I’ve actually often thought that the science community has made a bit of an error in putting so much emphasis on global warming/climate change. A lot of people just do not believe in something that they cannot actually see with their own eyes, regardless of how much data is presented. Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t have been better off if more emphasis had been put on reducing pollution, as that IS something that the average individual can wrap his mind around very easily.
Zifnab
But… but… but… Mike, polluting is so much cheaper in the short run. Sure, we could cut carbon emissions today, filter out waste regularly dumped into rivers and aquifers, recycle scrap metal and plastic and other waste products, and generally clean up after ourselves. But that could cost us millions – neigh – billions of dollars! Where are we going to find billions of dollars to do all this cleaning, Mike? It’s a well known fact that spending money hurts our bottom line, it decreases employment, it weakens the dollar, it hurts Wall Street stock predictions, and it generally takes money out of the pockets of those who deserve it most.
Going green will bankrupt our economy as solar panels desomate the energy industry and clean air and water totally destroy the nascent air filtration and bottled water businesses. If we don’t fill up landfills, how will landfill owners make any money, Mike? Eh? Eh?
Your reckless disregard for this nation’s economic welfare is appalling. What happened to personal responsibility? You stupid liberals are always so found of evolution, why don’t you just learn to drink sulfer and eat dysentery?
fuddmain
I like this argument: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDsIFspVzfI
Dreggas
religion clearly shows this to not be true, sorry Krista. What it really comes down to is Jesus is coming soon who the fuck cares, in their minds.
If they needed to see what an effect they could have on the environment then people should look no further than the Ozone layer. Remember CFC’s in the 80’s and the big gynormous holes in the Ozone? Just recently they reported that “gasp” since we stopped using CFC’s in aerosol cans and such (which reminds me, yes, all of those 80’s hair-dos were what caused that hole) the holes are repairing themselves and many have been repaired.
I had a friend recently say they didn’t worry about it because they had more important here and now things to focus on with regard to their life. They have a kid and I told them they should worry about this if only for their kids sake.
They asked, well what the hell can I do to fix a problem so huge? I asked them if they used energy efficient light bulbs, they said yes, they also just bought new appliances all of which are energy efficient. I told them quite simply they were already doing something and while this is not a problem any one person will ever fix it’s something we can all do our part in and it’s not even that freaking hard to do.
rz
You left out Energy independence as an advantage of going green.
That should actually be a hit with conservatives.
Li
I certainly agree that going green has many benefits for all of us; I want an Aptera myself, and some windmills and solar panels to go along with it. The upsides of going to an efficient, decentralized electrical generation system only become more pronounced in a climate-changed world where transporting fuels is made much more difficult by flooded ports. However, given the rapid increase in arctic melting over the last few years, it is obvious we have already entered the logarithmic phase of climate change, and even if we completely cut CO2 emission to zero, the self-sustaining reactions at work will remain the primary motivator. For instance less ice means more absorption of heat by the oceans, melting tundra releases methane and CO2, ect.. A more useful action to engage in would be to invest in the new energy grid as much as possible so that it is ready to take over when the waters start rising more quickly (as they will) while building durable, disaster proof and green cities inland from the coasts. Really, this is a world class opportunity for any group that would undertake this task, as this is a chance to build whole cities from scratch, and revolutionize the way we live and interact. A lot of money needs to be dumped into developing easy, cheap and large scale water purification, which is going to be desperately needed as all of the filth in our global coastal cities dumps into the oceans and waterways. Also, greenhouses; we should be building as many of them as possible and putting them away, along with some mills to power lights, so that we have a buffer to hold over and withstand the years where it is hard to predict what will grow well where.
In other words; shelter, water, and food. For some reason, our leaders have forgotten the necessities in favor of a lot of fluff that has little to no real effect on us compared to the effects we will all be feeling in the near future from climate change. For the trillions we have spent on the Iraq war (in total cost, not just defense appropriations so labeled) we could have done all this for not only the USA, but probably the whole continent besides, and employed many millions of people in the process. Oh, for a leader with vision!
glasnost
I certainly agree with the sentiment, but I’m not sure the logic would survive a thorough drubbing.
What other pollution effects does the emission of carbon dioxide, per se, have on the earth other than the global warming phoenomenon?
And, are all global warming skeptics equally against all forms of pollution control and environmentalism?
The leading plans to rollback global warming and cut carbon emissions seem to all involve a lot of expensive substitution work and possibly restrictions on certain kinds of industrial production for its own sake. I support this painful stuff because I believe in global warming: if it was just asthma to worry about, I’d look for less exhausting solutions.
Krista
Good point. I should have said that a lot of people, if they do not WANT to believe something, will not be persuaded by data. If they can be persuaded at all, it will be by actually seeing a river choked with trash, or smog in the air, not by charts and measurements.
Xanthippas
Follow-up on my earlier comment: Like Michael, I’ve always thought there was just something inherently wrong with us throwing our shit everywhere like it’s going of style. Even magical fairies came along and cleaned it all up for us, doesn’t that still make us look like nasty, dirty, lazy and irresponsible people? I mean, isn’t there some kind of moral/personal responsibility argument for just cleaning up after ourselves and not treating the world like a trash can?
The Other Steve
But! Air Conditioners are heating up our climate!
Andrew
Michael D: Least Republican Republican, evar.
Paul L.
So someone who questions the science on any subject are denialists?
Galileo – Geocentrism denialist
No one commented on the Bush administration officials manipulating the science of important public health reports because of political considerations.
Being Overweight Isn’t All Bad, Study Says
Andrew
Your spoofing is becoming a bit too obvious, Paul.
dAVE
Damn, shown up by a republican! I’m always at a loss to explain why we should do what we can when someone says they don’t beleive in global warming and here you go and show how it’s done. Thanks.
scott
Mike, admitting that the climate is changing would lead most folks to beleive that we have a responsibility to do what we can to at least mitigate the problem, even if we didn’t create it.
And therein lies the rub: today’s republican party is all about avoiding accountability and responsbility. They are too lazy, spolied, indifferent, and selfish to change their behavior in any way. Hiding behind nonsense such as “the free market will drive solutions” is another way of saying, “let somebody else fix it. I’m not going to lift a finger.”
So their deal is to deny the data that clearly shows a changing and more unstable climate. You will get as much honesty out of a 4 year old who has a cookie in his mouth, and then denies having taken a cookie out the jar before dinner.
JGabriel
Michael D.: “I have no reason to doubt that the sun might be hotter.”
You do. If global warming were being caused by the sun becoming hotter, then we would see warming at the most accelerated pace around the equator, where sunlight is most direct and has the greatest impact.
Instead, we see global warming having the greatest impact in the polar regions. Naysayers pointing to increased snow in the Antarctic ignore that snow is the result of higher humidity, caused by increased evaporation, which is caused by warming.
That means the increase of greenhouse gases are the primary cause of global warming. The sun is clearly not the cause of that increase. Whether or not we’re the primary cause, we know we’re contributing to that increase – both directly through our manufacture of greenhouses gases, and indirectly in the way our contribution accelerates the release of greenhouse gases in the oceans and the polar regions.
So, whether or not we are the main cause of global warming, we need to stop contributing to the problem. I suspect that’s your main point, but – to the extent that it validates denialist doubt-mongering – the remark about the sun confuses the issue.
Walker
One of the main attempts to go green is to try to measure externalities and price them into the market (carbon taxes, offsets, etc..). Unless we understand how we are effecting the climate, we do not know how to economically measure these externalities.
A large part of global warming denial is to deny that these externalities exist at all. In that regard is just another part of the Republican platform of “privatized profit, socialized risk”. Like Bernanke’s destruction of the dollar to bail out his buddies in the financial sector.
tc
If RealClimate is “pretty much a global warming denialist blog” then how come it’s listed under your blogroll as a “science blog”?
JGabriel
“I suspect that’s your main point…” should be:
“Obviously that’s your main point…”
Sorry for being equivocal where I should have been straightforward.
Dreggas
I remember these people denied the hole in the ozone layer too but it was proven that it existed and we were making it. Ya think they’d learn from history.
The Other Steve
When people talk about Global Warming, they always break down into anti-Global Warming, and denialist.
Why can’t my side be represented? As a proponent of Global Warming, I feel that I am being unfairly disenfranchised!
Michael D.
I mentioned ClimateAudit in my post – not Real Climate.
Li
All of this prattle is irrelevant to how we are going to survive the changes that are happening before our very eyes.
Dreggas
Re: the sun getting hotter
Uh I may be off on this but given the age of the sun and my basic understanding of astrophysics, nuclear reactions, and astronomy, if the sun were to be getting hotter that would be an extremely bad sign. While their are temperature fluctuations on the sun, they would have to increase and maintain a constant temperature to actually heat the earth any more than they do. If this were the case I would be very worried about the stability of our star.
Further if it was a case of more heat getting to earth from the sun then it could also be surmised that either:
A) we are being pulled closer to our star
-or-
B) The sun is expanding or growing in size.
Needless to say none of these would be a good thing. If the suns gravitational pull is increasing enough to pull us closer to it fast enough to cause global warming we have a serious problem on our hands.
If the sun is growing then science is way off in its age calculations and the sun is starting to go through it’s pre-collapse expansion, this is seriously not good but if that were indeed the case it would not be much longer before earth is turned into a piece of galactic charcoal.
chopper
solar radiance varies but only very slightly. a fraction of a percent IIRC.
Michael D.
Dreggas: When I said “I have no reason to doubt that the sun might be hotter,” I should have been clearer. If a scientist told me the sun was getting hotter, I would have no reason to doubt her – and that’s because I know NOTHING of solar science that would cause me to doubt her.
But also, it’s irrelevant to my argument that cleaning our shit up is a good in and of itself. And if the sun IS getting hotter, I’m not sure there’s a whole helluva lot we can do about it!? :-)
Dreggas
Ah ok, I get it. Keep in mind I am a literalist and science geek so these things inevitably lead me to ponder and pontificate further.
Growing up in Upstate NY conservation and keeping the environment clean was just what you did. No one wanted to be walking in the woods and see trash laying around so what you carried in you carried out. It was just the way things were done. People need to start thinking like that and realize, like you said, even if the impact is small it’s still a good thing to do what you can.
bago
In the words of a certain governator… Get your ass to mars!
BFR
A small fraction of a percent of the sun’s energy output would still represent a substantial change in the amount of energy reaching the earth, thus leading to warm periods, ice ages etc., right?
Why is that? Wouldn’t the relative change in energy received on the earth’s surface be essentially the same? Actually, given ozone holes & deflection of certain wavelengths by the magnetosphere, why wouldn’t the change to the poles be slightly higher?
Just interested in an explanation since I don’t understand this very well.
BFR
To my earlier question – for someone who knows about this I’m still wondering why one would expect warming to be greater at the equator – the albedo at the equator isn’t going to change based on energy received – forest canopy & open ocean are not going to experience a change.
However, if increased energy from the sun is melting polar ice at a greater rate, that would lead to a decrease in polar albedo & hence a greater increase in surface temperature at the poles than at the equator.
Is that right or wrong?
Dreggas
BFR,
WRT your first question, not necessarily, the changes would have to be astronomical in scale and sustained across the entirety of the sun. For the sun to “heat up” and sustain a much higher temperature it would have to either grow in size and therefore mass, or it would have to be performing nuclear fusion using gasses hotter than hydrogen fusion, which is what occurs, or is thought to occur in the sun. Basically there is a heat/energy threshold that couldn’t be passed unless foreign material was being constantly introduced, and like I said if the sun were getting hotter, enough so to affect us, we should be worried.
WRT your second question, more of the suns heat and light reach the equator than the poles and therefore more is absorbed., as the equator tends to be hit more “head on” so to speak while much of the heat and light grazes the poles.
Cindrella Ferret
How the science is presented, is not, in and of itself really the culprit. Those who seek to deny or mitigate human involvement in global warming are playing to a crowd pre-disposed to disregard any Science that would challenge their religion, world view, or remove hard earned cash from their wallet.
Although the reporting on climate change is presented in such a way as to make it appear that a true scientific controversy exists over global warming, that perception is fueled by the Media oiling the squeaky wheel, as it were. Of the thousands upon thousand of scientists who agree on much of the science with regard to climate change, only a very few, and insignificant few scientists disagree. To put this example in perspective, if the voice of the denial faction, within the scientific community were given its proportional representation you would hear from them about once a year for a few minutes. Instead the media gives this tiny group a disproportional voice, thus enhancing the illusion that the scientific community is not in agreement with the basic interpretations of the data. But that is the Media’s choice, and it is up to us to weed through the bullshit. Unfortunately, few journalists are equipped to properly report the Science.
If the Scientific Method were better understood by the average non-scientist, we would not be having this discussion. Climate change deniers would be relegated to the dark corners along with the 9/11 conspiracy theorists and holocaust deniers. But, alas snake oil is still popular and most likely always will be, as long as people can be convinced their own pocket book may be negatively affected by changing how they live.
Money! Get your hand off of my stack!
Zifnab
That’s a good question. Someone should ask a scientist. While we’re at it, he could compare the effect of a slight fluctuation of sun energy output when compared to, say, a large cloud of methane and CO2 being pushed into the atmosphere.
Hey wait! We’ve done those studies several hundred times over, and they overwhelmingly agree that it’s those damn carbon emissions that cause the majority of our problems!
Hell, just note the study on temperatures over major US cities right after the plane shut-down after 9/11, and how the entire country cooled off a couple degrees when we didn’t have all those planes leaving huge carbon contrails like a giant blanket over us.
Or you could just say “Fuck the studies. I wanna drive a five ton SUV on $.50/gal gas. And science aight gonna tell me different.”
Tim C
Interesting. I’m currently reading Simon Schama’s “A History of Britain” and in the first section he discusses archeological digs in the Orkneys of neolithic settlements that were abandoned around 2500BC due to climate changes that made farming impossible. Prior to 2500BC, the climate in the Orkneys and Hebrides was temperate enough to grow crops. Then it got too cold. If they had understood what was happening, do you think they would have been fighting to keep global temperatures up?
ThymeZone
I am waiting for Heliocentrism to collapse under the weight of its mountain of lies.
Global warming? I live in Phoenix! Do you people think we are afraid of a little heat? BRING IT ON.
Julie
And, man, is he going to be pissed. What with all that stuff in the Bible about humans being charged to care for the planet and all its creatures, and respecting and protecting God’s creation.
Dreggas
No joke, I mean he may have been all peace and love and shit but I bet he goes all Kung-fu on the human race with his army of angelic ninjas and pirates, and you know if he has both the ninjas AND pirates working together and fighting for him he is seriously, seriously pissed.
All snark aside. Yeah if any of that stuff is real he ain’t gonna be happy.
Brachiator
Yeah, but it is not beyond question that global climate change (a more accurate description than “global warming”) will inevitably lead to world-wide catastrophe 50 to 100 years from now. No matter how hard global warming advocates huff and puff about it, it is NOT science to insist that humans can “destroy” or “kill” the planet, or that projections about what might occur 50 to 100 years is that same thing as an “undisputable truth.”
There’s the rub. You should care. Good science is not about what you or I might believe, but about what is demonstrable. And what if, like the Little Ice Age that occurred between the 16th and mid 19th centuries, a period of global warming is going to occur no matter what humans do? Wouldn’t it be an absolute waste of resources to try to stop something that is a natural planetary event?
Depends on how much it costs and what else needs to be done. The enviro freaks would spend every available dime in the universe to fight global warming because it is their pet cause, even if it means a lowering of the standard of living of everyone in the world, and even if other more immediate problems (like poverty and easily curable diseases in Third World countries) get put aside.
Some religious folks are always looking to storms and earthquakes as evidence of a deity’s displeasure at bad, dirty, naughty, sinful human beings. Environmentalist nutjobs are always looking to perceived changes in the weather as evidence of bad, dirty, naughty, wasteful human beings despoiling Mother Nature. Both sides are made up of zealots who insist that if only people would just stop whatever they are doing and live their lives according to the rules of the religious or environmentalist zealots, then the deity will be happy or the natural balance will be restored. Either way, this is nothing but an authoritarian fairy tale.
Pollution ain’t the same thing as global climate change. This is classic rhetorical bait-and-switch. Reducing pollution is a good thing, but this is not the same thing as mitigating global climate change. Doing one thing (reducing pollution) will not necessarily have an impact on the other thing.
Not at all true.
Science and economics matter. How else are you going to determine what to do and how to pay for it? Unless, of course, you just want to go all luddite on the planet and get rid of all technology. But then you wouldn’t have electricity or computers to blog about it, would you?
Oil-free is not the same as pollution-free. There are always unintended consequences. When automobiles first rolled around, futurists hailed the cleanliness of cars, because it got rid of the stench of horse manure and dead animal carcasses that fouled the city air. They had no idea about auto air pollution. Going green does not repeal the laws of chemistry and physics and cannot magically do away with byproducts from generating energy from whatever new sources you come up with.
Similarly, pretending that science and economics do not matter will never help us to address whatever real problems result from pollution and global climate change.
Tim F.
I usually stop reading a comment after the first couple of strawmen. Maybe someone out there honestly believes that people can kill the planet, which is another way of saying that morons exist. It has the same credibility as me holding the doofus from out top post as a representative example of Republicans.
If you bother talking to sensible people they will gladly tell you that the planet is likely to prove considerably more resilient than human civilization.
Punchy
Natural planetary event? Explain, pray tell, when this has happened before. Don’t give me Ice Ages–give me excessive warming patterns. Name a era in the past 50K years that experienced excessive warming, then reversed back to normal. Go on…I’m waiting.
Holy crap. Are you equating dead horse remains to automobile exhaust, as if they’re equal? Tell me, Doc, how nuke energy contributes to global warming?
We’re not looking for byproduct-free energy, you jackass, we’re looking for CO2-free energy. Unless you’re going to Go Stupid on us and claim that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas….
Face
/cue Brachiator, in his mom’s basement, furiously flipping thru a chemistry book, trying to figure out what “CO2” is, and getting orange fingerprints on every page in between.
Dreggas
Brachiator = Brachiosaurus.
Yeah and no big rocks will ever fall from the sky…
Julie
Jesus would totally have both ninjas and pirates on his side — and the ensuing Day of Judgement would be awesome.
Seriously, though. Leaving aside the (arguable) idea that the Bible is meant to be taken literally, a lot of the lessons throughout it can be boiled down to one very basic thing: bad decisions = bad consequences. That’s why there’s stuff in there about everything from maybe not eating shellfish when you live in the middle of a desert and refrigeration hasn’t been invented yet to caring appropriately for the planet, the poor, the sick, etc.
Dreggas
I could not agree more.
JGabriel
BFR: “Wouldn’t the relative change in energy received on the earth’s surface be essentially the same [at the poles as at the equator]?”
Sunlight at the polar regions hits the atmosphere at an oblique angle, so it scatters more, whereas it hit the equator directly. Even without taking the atmosphere into account, there would be less sunlight per acre in the polar regions than the equatorial regions due to the angle.
I wish I could draw you picture – that would clear it up right away. Try to visualize it, and you’ll see what I mean. Or shine a flashlight on the surface of a baseball or soccer ball. Or basketball. Whatever you prefer.
Zifnab
Here, this might help.
Xenos
A brachiator is just one step away from being a knuckledragger.
les
Careful, here. Pharyngula caught a 500 comment thread with a stupid rating of infinity, by badmouthing Climate Audit. Those boys have tender sensibilities.
Brachiator
Hmm. Matt Lauer, 2006 interview with Al Gore: “And if you were fortunate enough to win the presidency you’d sit in the most powerful office in the free world with a real chance to make, you could be in a position to save the planet, without putting too much emphasis on it. Wouldn’t that be enough of a reason to run for President for you?””
New York Times, October 21, 2007 Thomas Friedman opinion piece: “Save the Planet: Vote Smart.”
Now, for the sake of those who are a little slow, I admire Gore greatly and have nothing but scorn for wingnuts who mock Gore for his Nobel Prize win especially when they are too lazy or stupid to read the work of the scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who did the heavy lifting and were co-winners of the Peace Prize, but much of mainstream commentary about global warming, by people who should know better, too easily slips into “save the planet” hyperbole.
And yeah, as far as I’m concerned, Dubya is very much representative of what the Republican Party has degenerated into.
Why is the past 50K years so special, given the age of the earth (4.5bn years), the time in which humans split from the primate common ancestor (6.5mn years), or the likely time when early modern humans came out of Africa (200K years)? But how about the The Holocene Climate Optimum (a warm period lasting about 4,000 years) or the Medieval Warm Period, (800 – 1300 AD) when Greenland really was green and the Northern seas were ice free.
Uh, no. The point is that every source of energy brings some byproduct that has to be dealt with, and that there ain’t no such thing as a totally clean fuel. Even the enviro freaks try to do a bait-and-switch as though “renewable,” “sustainable” and “clean” are all equivalent or easily achievable if only we got rid of evil oil.
Nuke energy contributes very little to greenhouse gases, whatever its impact on global warming. Ironic, ain’t it?
In order of relative abundance, greenhouse gases include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. I asked a chemist friend how much additional water vapor would be added to the atmosphere if every car, truck and train ran by hydrogen power and gave off water vapor as exhaust. He had no idea.
So, to recap, I think that it is likely that global climate change is real and that humans are a major contributor. However, that global climate change will inevitably lead to world-wide catastrophe if we don’t make drastic changes in our way of life, or that “green” alternatives will be harmless — given our desire to want to live comfortably with technology — well, these projections are not persuasive, given what we currently know about the climate.
By the way, some of the smartest scientists of the 1860s were convinced that human habitation (and especially agriculture) effected a permanent change in the climate of arid and semi-arid regions, making these regions more humid (the “rain follows the plow” theory). Can you say, “oops” and “Dustbowl?” Yeah, we are much smarter now, and we don’t need doubt or caution before re-allocating massive chunks of money to … save the planet. Or do we?
I love the smell of ad hominem attacks in the morning. Smells like … desperation.
Uh, no. Think Hylobatidae.
A great example of climate change not caused by humans and which no one could do a damn thing to prevent. And no big rocks from the sky, no displacement of dinosaurs by mammals. Go figure.
Actually, brachiators are elegant swingers that fly over the heads of knuckledraggers.
Reggie Rasmussen
Are you familiar with the ground floor movement to take solar to the masses by a company called Citizenre? They are trying market solar with an approach similar to satelite TV, cellular telephones, and alarm systems. That is to provide the customer a complete solar system with no upfront charges and make money from a service contract. In this case the service contract would be a rent agreement. They intend to put a complete solar system on a clients home. When the system produces electricity, it will lower the bill from the current utility provider. In most cases the savings from the lower bill will more than cover the rent fee that the company intends to charge. The company currently has no product available but intends to deploy in the middle of 2008. They are currently taking reservations and have 25,000 takers so far. I have written several articles on this company in my blog and even have a couple of vidoes that I have recorded at wwwsolarjoules.com. Feel free to take a look. I welcome comments. As in any start up business, a chance exists that they may never get off the ground and fulfill any preorders, but if this is the case – the potential client has not lost anything. If you cannot afford the upfront cost of solar today, this may turn out to be a great alternative.
Z
Brachiator-
GM has an experimental model hydrogen car. It produces less water vapor than is produced as a by product of gasoline engine combustion. I appreciate your concern about unintended consequences, but lets face it. We have a limited ability to predict all the consequences of our actions. You make the best decisions you can on the best available data. Currently, the best available data very strongly makes the case that methane and CO2 are going to deliver a climate that is downright destructive to our current water, agriculture, and coastal infrastructure. The consequences of doing nothing will be enormously expensive, on top of the human tragedy.
Too often in climate change discussions I hear from people the essentially nihilistic view that we might not be able to do anything (whether because of China or natural climate variation), doing something might be expensive, so we should just do nothing and wait for the apolcalypse. Humanity has overcome many, many threats to its existence, by facing the threat head on and doing its best to deal with it. Sitting on your ass and going ‘Boo hoo, we’re all doomed’ never got anyone anywhere.
Now if you were making the case that minor lifestyle modifications isn’t going to be enough, I would agree. But I would tell you that that isn’t the point. Ultimately, the best we can do with modifying our lifestyles is to slow down the warming to give scientists and engineers more time to come up with a technological approach for sinking the carbon & methane. Thankfully for all of us, there are a lot of very smart and very rich people who have figured out this is really a problem and have started devoting intellectual and financial resources to solving it.
DR
“However, that global climate change will inevitably lead to world-wide catastrophe if we don’t make drastic changes in our way of life, or that “green” alternatives will be harmless—given our desire to want to live comfortably with technology—well, these projections are not persuasive, given what we currently know about the climate.”
1. What the hell do YOU know about the climate. Even the so-called Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, both very localized phenomena, by the way, and in no way global, had Massive impacts on the human population of the Earth. You might remember a small episode called the Black Death…
2. You’re implying, like all the so-called skeptics, that we know little about the climate. Bullshit. We actually know quite a lot; we certainly know more about the climate than we know, say, about the economy.
3. The VAST VAST VAST majority of climate scientists agree with the proposition that: 1. Humans are the primary cause of the current warming trend OBSERVED AROUND THE WORLD, and 2. That such warming, EVEN AS IT CURRENTLY STANDS, is enough to cause major ecological catastrophies, and that unchecked, will INEVITABLY cause major, worldwide, catastrophies. This is not in doubt, except from a small minority of people, most of whom don’t even have the equivalent of a Met 101 course.
What most people have trouble understanding is that climate related catastrophies will take a wide variety of forms, from extreme droughts in the U.S. South East, which is usually quite humid, to vast amounts of rain in Bengladesh, where they certainly can’t afford it. That is in addition to the inevitable global rise in sea levels, which will accompany any melting of land-based glaciers.
Also, any significant change in weather patterns will have a critical impact on agriculture. You may not think much about it, but with farms, you CAN’T EAT. And the idea that global warming will make Northern farms more productive is quite simply laughable; the soil simply can’t withstand that kind of use… You can’t grow grapes in Northern Saskatchewan (outside of a greenhouse), even if you have year round balmy weather; that kind of change would take at least a century.
So yes, to anyone with a brain, global warming is a global crisis, no more, no less.
jcricket
Let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I think of global warming in science right now like the issue of smoking cigarettes causing cancer. In that, there were plenty of reasons to support that (smoking = cancer) well before the scientific community was 100% on board. And rather than wait for everyone (including the industry) to agree, science kept pressing forward with anti-smoking campaigns and additional studies. And it was made harder to gain the public’s backing because the tobacco companies spent 50 years lying about the link and actively trumping up bullshit from their own fake internal studies.
Of course tobacco farmers would have suffered more if we hadn’t exported our chief killing machine to China so effectively, but whatever.
So to it appears with global warming. Keep denying it, argue about the fringe issues/possible worst-case scenarios, whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’s happening, it’s real, we are at fault for a large portion of it. In between now and when we understand climate change 100% there’s a lot we can do for the better. Or we can dick around and make it even more costly to fix (think every single Superfund site).
Let’s have “almost all options on the table”). Wind, solar, geothermal, conservation, energy efficiency, mass transit, recycling, composting, packaging reduction, local sourcing. We don’t need to do any of these things 100% to make a huge difference. The littler slide where Al Gore points out just a little bit of effort in each of these areas reduces our carbon footprint/impact back to where it was before 1900 is pretty telling. And just imagine what would happen if we subsidized the green tech industry like we subsidize oil and corn production.
Moreoever, name one person (outside of Limbaugh) who loves landfills, belching filth into the sky or wantonly wasting energy? And lastly, think of the benefits of reducing our use of fossil fuels are also huge in terms of reducing geopolitical conflict (hello Ron Paul supporters?)!
We don’t need to be alarmists and immediately scrap all our cars, but unless you’re a “the economy is falling, the economy is falling” Republican/Libertarian the minor negative impacts of going green are going to be far outweighed by the positives.
I do love that the people who rail against the Democrats for being “defeatists” or “only negative” are themselves such pansies about how we’re all going to be ruined by a little recycling. Pussies.
Dr. Francis T. Manns. P.Geo. (Ontario)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI
Submit comments on objectivity; avoid ad hominem.
jcricket
This is actually a really funny point. The same people that demand perfection in scientific research are quite willing to expound on all sorts of less understood topics (think the Laffer curve, effect of war in Iraq/Iran) with great gusto.
To be “fair and balanced”, I also see this with the idiot practitioners of alternative medicine. Demanding all sorts of perfection out of science-based medicine while wholeheartedly embracing the claims of every sort of quack that comes along to say something that fits in with their faith-based medicine approach. That’s pathetic too.
Let’s start demanding to see the economic community consensus before Heritage, AEI and Cato ever produce another piece of bullshit about climate change
(Radley Balko’s drug war stuff excepted).
Dr. Francis T. Manns. P.Geo. (Ontario)
I do not agree with DR who states that the vast vast vast number of climate scientists agreee with him.
3. The VAST VAST VAST majority of climate scientists agree with the proposition that: “1. Humans are the primary cause of the current warming trend OBSERVED AROUND THE WORLD, and 2. That such warming, EVEN AS IT CURRENTLY STANDS, is enough to cause major ecological catastrophies, and that unchecked, will INEVITABLY cause major, worldwide, catastrophies. This is not in doubt, except from a small minority of people, most of whom don’t even have the equivalent of a Met 101 course.”
That’s a rubbish throw away statement. The measurements are geostatistics, regionalised variables. The measurements only mean something when and where they are taken. I do not know a single scientist in my personal vast array of scientific acquaintences who see any proof whatsoever of anthropocentric global warming. The facts do not support your claim. Shouting louder cannot make it true. In science, by the way, one dissenter is enough to turn science over into a different path: Curie, Pasteur, Galileo, Wegener, Einstein… You need to understand the rigour of the scientific method. Abandon hope if you abandon science…
jcricket
Seriously, how can you trust anyone who non-ironically wears a bowtie. George and Tucker have those things on a little tight.
Evinfuilt
Woot Galileo gambit. Awesome move there, its usauly pulled out shortly before dissappear into irrelevancy.
Just realize, you’re no Galileo.