Climate change apathy Ragnarok thread - The Bear and Badger

monkey

The important thing here is that we've all learned something. Apart from all the people on one side of the argument who were already fully knowledgable about the issues and research. And Dynamite, who hasn't listened to a word anyone has said. So, apart from the people posting in the thread, and the people just reading it who have had to sit through some piss poor argumentation, we've all learned something here.

And that thing is hot space.

Brooks

cockbeard wrote:

Brooks wrote:

I'm not prepared to take the risk that our influence is negligible, that's why 'so what'.

I'd have thought that being as you can only influence 0.0000000016% of potential human impact on global warming, you'd be praying that our influence was merely 'neglible'

I think you're underestimating how much of an End Times cold comfort I'm gonna get from my upstandingness. There aren't going to be many other sources of comfort.

Diluted Dante

Dynamite, you seem to be misunderstanding the 12000 articles thing.

cockbeard

I hear you fella. and hey if enough of us think about reduction as far as possible.. ... ....

That's the point that was missed here I think, fuck telling governments, fuck lobbying shell and esso, just make your own changes

monkey

Diluted Dante wrote:

Dynamite, you seem to be misunderstanding absolutely everything about the issue

GurtTractor

cockbeard wrote:

That's the point that was missed here I think, fuck telling governments, fuck lobbying shell and esso, just make your own changes

This this this.

Too many people just continue as everyone else does, and seem to not recognise the power of the individual for change. Do what seems best to you, and assume that others have made the same decision. Or you know, just carry on despairingly making the wrong choices because you think you wont make a difference, which means you're just part of the problem.

I'm not just talking about recyling cans and whatnot btw.

Yossarian

I'm genuinely not sure what more I could do to reduce my carbon footprint, personally. I don't drive, I don't eat meat, I recycle, I'm careful with electricity usage, my phone is five years old, my laptop's six? Seven?.

Beyond composting my own faeces and installing an exercise bike for my leccy, pretty much all I can do is try to agitate for change.

Yossarian

This is one of the advantages of being paid fuck all, I can't afford to consume.

cockbeard

hahaha, pain I can feel. Just seems a little futile is all. If I perfected fusion tomorrow, do you think it would make a difference to the world. Not likely, the starfleet ideal is precisely that, an ideal. It would simply be a political boon for whatever country took the plans from me

Tempy

I live with someone who is in GUEST (Glasgow University Environmental Sustainability Team) and I have applied to join so maybe I can give you some tips later. I get the futility thing, whilst doing the application It dawned on my I was off to by Syro the next day, so I had to do some research on Vinyl production and then realised it actually isn't as bad as I'd assumed. To be truly conscientious of the effect you have is a nightmare.

Diluted Dante

Yossarian wrote:

I'm genuinely not sure what more I could do to reduce my carbon footprint, personally. I don't drive, I don't eat meat, I recycle, I'm careful with electricity usage, my phone is five years old, my laptop's six? Seven?.

Beyond composting my own faeces and installing an exercise bike for my leccy, pretty much all I can do is try to agitate for change.

From some show on C4 a few years ago, public services account for a huge proportion of your carbon footprint, so the biggest way is to get the government to reduce theirs.

Yossarian

Can I do it by beating the Tory cabinet to death with a hammer?

dynamiteReady

For anyone else out there who also considers the issue of climate change to be a subject for debate, and like myself, know very little, but are keen to ingest a light, well researched and impartial intro (I know... It takes a bit of digging), then you'll find this a good 10 minute read:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/climate-skeptic1.htm

I think it's moderately impartial and (very) easy to read, but not especially exhaustive. The section on page 4 regarding measures for mitigation vs adaptation, while not news to anyone here, has been completely overlooked ITT, and it's where I thought we would have been after 13 pages.

I didn't expect to encounter anywhere near this level of passion/fanaticism around this subject, though it is important.

As for people talking about money and oil company interests, have you seriously considered how much a global energy conservation policy based on an AGW mitigation plan would be worth to the G8 alliance?

We're talking about arrested development here.

Diluted Dante

There isn't fanaticism, there is confusion how people can be so insistent that there is a serious debate as to what the situation is when there is near as damn it a total concensus amongst the people who study it, and the argument on the other side comes from people who don't study it.

dynamiteReady

Please read my last post. I think the link is a good summary of what the dedicated really think.

Both sides.

No long words, no charts, no name calling.
Just a nice simple piece of documentary work.

Yossarian

dynamiteReady wrote:

Have you seriously considered how much a global energy conservation policy based on an AGW mitigation plan would be worth to the G8 alliance?

I've yet to read your link, but why would this be worth even a single penny to the G8?

Yossarian

Jesus man that's not remotely impartial, it's a summary of the arguments of sceptics. Even better, there's not a single reference in there post-07, so it's not even an up to date summary of their arguments.

How is looking at the arguments of one side but not the other impartial?

Yossarian

I've realised I've left a massive open goal there. What I should have said is; impartiality does not equal repeating claims which have no basis in evidence.

Skerret

dynamiteReady wrote:

Both sides.

There are no sides. Your mention of the 30% vs 97% bit suggests you're actively looking for any reason to refute the vast majority of work on AGW (read my link to Gruff btw, it's all in there). The fanaticism you refer to is in fact exasperation and is unrelated to climate change science. I see peeps itt irritated and exasperated by your seeming refusal to accept the use of basic scientific method. You ignore or deny the validity of the method/s and maintain there is a debate. The method is sound, the work has been done, conclusions reached almost universally.

I challenge your assertion about the common cold as I suspect there might well be a tiny proportion who dispute established theory. In that case, the common cold is open for debate and I'm keen to hear from both sides of the argument. 3% does not constitute a debate. Investigate the people who dissent in such cases and more often than not you'll find ample reason to discredit them, either on the basis of incompetence or conflicted interests.

Facewon

Dynamite, you're being a complete fucking moron. Have just read through all of this, & the confirmation bias is off the fucking charts from you. I'll leave everyone else to be polite. Funk and a couple of others have tried to walk your thick head through things, to no avail.

Stop saying fanatical & read some philosophy of science. You, clearly, do not understand how it works.

Are you a young earth creationist?

Do you think evolution is "just a theory?"

Do you know what theory means in a scientific context?

You can answer all those questions and discover that they correlate quite well with climate change discussion.

I could feel bad about being rude, but you're either AAA trolling or being stubbornly wilfully ignorant & obviously not actually looking for answers. So fuck it.

One last question: do you really think that any massive scientific subject/position like this is going to be refuted with a graph?

You have the secret knowledge! Quick, take it to the telegraph, the evil scientists will clearly have to admit it!

dynamiteReady

Skerret wrote:

Both sides.

There are no sides. Your mention of the 30% vs 97% bit suggests you're actively looking for any reason to refute the vast majority of work on AGW (read my link to Gruff btw, it's all in there). The fanaticism you refer to is in fact exasperation and is unrelated to climate change science. I see peeps itt irritated and exasperated by your seeming refusal to accept the use of basic scientific method. You ignore or deny the validity of the method/s and maintain there is a debate. The method is sound, the work has been done, conclusions reached almost universally. I challenge your assertion about the common cold as I suspect there might well be a tiny proportion who dispute established theory. In that case, the common cold is open for debate and I'm keen to hear from both sides of the argument. 3% does not constitute a debate. Investigate the people who dissent in such cases and more often than not you'll find ample reason to discredit them, either on the basis of incompetence or conflicted interests.

Find at least one serious article in a major publication making that case.
There may be one out there.

Unlike the rest of you though, I'll read it, and make up my own mind.

97% consensus in over 12000 papers eh? Where almost 8000 of those papers did not express any partial view? That's just shit.

What's really pissing me off, is that some of you would be more put out by pre rendered footage in a game advert. Or a commercially marshaled entertainment review.

You see, for me, I've learnt two things from that alone. Possibly 3.

1: We really have to be weary of the media spin around this subject. It's way too politicized.

2: A little under 4000 (very little, 24 infact) scientific papers have been written specifically on the subject of AGW and the cases for the theory, but we can't account for the fucking conclusions of all those papers, because the surveys were based on the abstracts. Please. This is a fair point to raise.

3: 8000 scientists agree that there may well be a rising global climate problem, respect the fact that it's worth examining, but can't pinpoint a cause. But again, fuck knows if that's true, because they've only scanned the abstracts. For all we know, those 8000 papers could well endorse AGW, perhaps they don't. Who knows.

Why don't we talk about the water problem instead.
There are absolute facts there.

dynamiteReady

And now I'm being called a moron, for speaking my mind?

Then fuck it. Keep your ideas.
People smarter than yourself and I, are better placed to carry out this debate.

I just wanted to learn more.

And before long, you'll understand that, and see what total pricks you have been.

Skerret

I don't agree with people calling you a moron and I haven't cos I think ur nice. If people could stop being mean to Dynamite I'd appreciate it. And my word counts... *ahem*

Surely you have learned more though; there's a wealth of stuff been posted even if only Griff's Hot Space™.

The link detailing the 12000 papers also states that the authors were, where possible, contacted.

[justify]As an independent test of the measured consensus, we also emailed over 8,500 authors and asked them to rate their own papers using our same categories. The most appropriate expert to rate the level of endorsement of a published paper is the author of the paper, after all. We received responses from 1,200 scientists who rated a total of over 2,100 papers. Unlike our team's ratings that only considered the summary of each paper presented in the abstract, the scientists considered the entire paper in the self-ratings.[/justify]

Again, as indicated in the article, in scientific circles it's not up for debate so it's not necessary for every paper to indicate in the abstract the author's position on the cause. It's accepted by the scientists in question; they've moved on to other things. The debate is occurring outside that specialist group, which immediately invalidates much of it. When I say there is no debate, there's no debate among the people that matter. The fringe nuts/vested interest types are the ones propelling the 'against' case.

Facewon

Oh do fuck off. You could have been treated far worse for the idiocy you're showing.

You won't listen to the people far smarter, so what's the point?

It is entirely possible to be called a moron for what's on your mind. If you say dumb shit and ignore counter arguments, then you may well get called a moron. You get no high ground.

And yes, There is a lot of media spin. As there is with a lot of things. And we all get to do our best to navigate it. That doesn't make highly probable answers impossible to find.

Vela

dynamiteReady wrote:

GooberTheHat wrote:

I missed out. Here is my chart. Its the oceans what's causing it.

Hold on... What do you mean?

It means that the next big el nino event is going to make 1998 look mild when that heat gets released into the atmosphere.

Vela

Yossarian wrote:

You know, looking at more and more data, and it seems the only thing that's out of the ordinary is the amount of dust. According to this Vostok ice core, it has decreased massively. Which is not what you might expect when you think about the industrial revolution, all smog and soot. However dust in the atmosphere provides protection from the sun as well as keeping the earth warm by preventing heat from escaping. Maybe we should burn more shit and get some dust into the atmosphere

So there's more to this than we currently understand? I'm not just being thick?

I think that the chances of the amount of dust in the atmosphere having been overlooked by climatologists until this very moment are vanishingly slim.

Looking at the dust chart - there's a big spike around 70kya which I'm going to guess had come from the Toba Eruption

And it looks like the most recent spike around 25kya could have been due to the Oruanui eruption

Or rather, I should say the dust levels coincide with these events. I'm not a geologist.

What we can say though is that humanity has arisen and thrived thanks to relatively benign conditions for the past 300ky. It appears we are currently at or close to the timing of where the peak before the descent into an Ice Age might be (if they are still cyclical - some of them weren't necessarily).

But we don't know what a warmer world would be like.

Our species, and any extant species save sharks, crocodiles and coelacanths have not experienced that. Ever. And the stress of warming beyond the current range might be too much for many species and also for our society. We have 7 billion people living in mainly coastal environments in many countries. A warmer world is still going to see higher coastline erosion, inundation, compromised drinking water, more storm surges, cyclones can be more powerful if fuelled by extra heat in the oceans, etc etc. Once you start to change rainfall patterns too then you start having to wonder how reliable our current service delivery is. How far away are we from widespread water shortages?

@dynamiteReady - interested on your thoughts here. Whether you agree with the science or not, the measurements that already exist show that the climate has already changed for many places in the past 30 years or so. We can argue for decades as to whether the "science is settled" (in my opinion it was settled long ago) but at the end of the day the observations are in.

Brooks

Seems like the only advantage of cc-skepticism for the individual is a justification for not having to do fuck all.

Granted the lobby has been massaged into political relevance by shitbags so that it's even a known choice, but if the science isn't there (and honestly when does it really matter when it is, most people do not operate with the science in mind because it's hard and they're busy), the sole motivator can be discomfort with the implications for one's comfort.

And that's a real force, which is going to need to be addressed if policy reform is ever going to attract large-scale endorsement, which is what it appears to need.

Also bear in mind that environmentalism has long now be a tribal badge - Mid-West pickup truck dildos are continuing to do what they do as much to antagonise the kind of progressives that march on Wall Street. That's as 'into' the discussion as they're going to get.

Blue Swirl

Because Face asked me to post this. From the Science thread:

Blue Swirl wrote:

"But some scientists reject anthropogenic climate change!" Yes, approximately 0.17%.

Blue Swirl

Brooks wrote:

That's as 'into' the discussion as they're going to get.

If you want to depress yourself, look up the phenomenon of "rolling coal".

Yossarian

Blue Swirl wrote:

Because Face asked me to post this. From the Science thread:

Blue Swirl wrote:

"But some scientists reject anthropogenic climate change!" Yes, approximately 0.17%.

This is really all that needs to be said. If you read nothing else, Dyno, read this and read it to the end.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories