Seriously? That was when science was controlled by the church... That had nothing to do with REAL science... In case you missed it,

But hey, you believe what your heart tells you...

I'm sure that Copernicus and Galileo would disagree with you...

 

You can call me whatever you want. I don't care. All I really want to know is why you believe in Global Warming.

Well, not you personally. I mean any True Believer.

I can see I'll never get a straight answer out of you. That's why I've asked Herbie. He seems more reasonable.

 

I've actually given a straight answer on this very thread. Not my problem you missed it. Go look for my post about the population growth and our extracting of fossil fuels from the earth... These are very new concepts for the history of the planet.

But I'm sure that you will disagree with the simple concept...

Hell, even Tommy agreed that it is plausible...

 

I didn't miss that post. I even responded to it. And I agreed that the crackpots are crackpots.

That post explains where some of the crackpots get their money.

It doesn't say a single word, in terms of substantiating the Global Warming hypothesis.

It explains why you won't consider the points of view of the crackpots. But it doesn't explain why you are convinced that the Global Warming hypothesis is valid.

 

OK, I'm talking about my post #80 on this thread. Unless you responded without quoting my post, I missed it. What post number should I look at? Not to be snarky, but the research for you on this particular point would be a lot easier if you could show this downtrodden idiot a little love. I didn't use the term crackpot, so I'm not quite certain what you talk about.

So, the ideas I've presented aren't enough to make you think? The number of people, cars (and other oil burning ventures), fossil fuel extraction, cows, chickens, loss of trees and rain forests, the destruction of the environment in general (land, air, and sea; for those military types)...

Oh never mind, those things are unimportant.

And if you have actually read the things I've talked about, you would realize that I'd prefer to err on the side of caution, meaning do something to reduce the greenhouse gases and be wrong, than to do nothing and be right.

Seriously, please think about what I wrote for a bit before responding, and if you don't at least see my point, then tell me I'm wrong and let's be done with it.

 

I'm rather enjoying the return of large snow accumulations and very cold temperatures that I remember from over 40 years ago. Climate change indeed. Cyclic and 100% natural. To try to reverse it is unnatural and could have disastrous consequences.

 

Okay, I can buy that easily.

Yet, it does seem that the extremists on both sides of the issue enjoy making such remarks. By word or by inference, you do often present your arguments in such a manner. There is no doubt that climate change is real, just as it has been since the dawn of time, nothing in the natural world is static. There is also no doubt that man's influence on nature is strong, but is not man part of nature?

We can influence changes in both good and bad ways, the question becomes, at what cost? We have great societies built on the exploitation of natural resources, filled with billions of people, who are each in some manner contributing to these influences. Do we remove them from the earth to accommodate nature?

As in most every other cause of change in nature, it will adopt it's own changes at some point, the atmosphere is but one such change.

 

The problem we have here in the United States we have become very polarized. I began to really notice it during George Bush's terms as president. Now our current administration seems hell bent on increasing the divide. When citizens are told lies it makes it extremely difficult to convince them of anything. I for one believe climate is natural and man having a part in affecting it is highly unlikely. However after reading a lot about it, I'm not really sure about my position.The problem is I've been exposed to so much hypocrisy from the left along with deception, I can't trust the information they put out. We need a honest administration that when in office is neutral and can be viewed by all citizens as being truly for all the citizens. The progressives, the moderates, the conservatives are all citizens and have to be embraced equally by the government in power. If it was like that the citizens could believe the government officials. After all when you are elected president you are the president for all the people.

 

Tenguy, I don't think my request is all that unreasonable.

The only Believer on this thread who has tried to help, by posting substance, is Stumbler. (Above he posted a good FactCheck article that does a pretty good job of showing the pro side of the temperature measurement debate.)

The rest of them are all hot air.

I have been doing my own hunting on my own. I've been to the UN-IPCC site, which (predictably enough) contains all of the IPCC summary reports and background information in PDF form. Yet the place has no actual data or analysis, whatsoever.

I've also been to Wikipedia, which is worse than useless. The climate topics in Wikipedia are bullied 24-7 by Believers.

And lots of other places.

I've found no actual science.

Try it yourselves. Google "Climate Change", with words like "science", "substantiation", and/or "corroboration".

You will get lots of opinion pieces that debunk deniers.

But you won't get anything that purports to show why the Global Warming hypothesis is believed to be correct.

First and most important rule in scientific inquiry: disproving one thing does not prove another.

To sum it up for the thousandth time:

1. I know that CO2 warms atmosphere. Yes, that science is settled!

2. I know that the deniers are nuts. Let's assume they're wrong!

3. I want to know why the Global Warming hypothesis is believed to be applicable to the real world!

 

I don't think you're an idiot. Somewhere on this thread I've said that you and several others are much smarter than the average True Believer.

Are your points food for thought? Sure!

We all have ideas. We all have opinions and intuition.

But I want more than opinions. I want more than intuition. We have been crippling the world's economy over this question! It is informing global policy and causing deep division among nations. The loss in productivity, over these policies, is allowing oppressive regimes like China to grow and pursue hegemony, while at the same time we are hobbling ourselves economically and degrading our own abilities to achieve viable technological solutions that could really replace fossil fuels, such as deuterium fusion and commercial hydrogen.

Believe me, anon, I want to believe that we haven't been hoodwinked by shortsighted governments that care about nothing but lining the pockets of Green Economy cronies and taxing us into the Stone Age.

But wanting to believe it doesn't make it so!

All I keep hearing about is this consensus of scientists. Well, show me the damned science!

 

The believers and the deniers seem to assume very similar polar stances whether the discussion is climate, religion, guns, politics or whatever.

We have those who actually have a scientific basis for their stance. We also have those who have a "science is conspiratorial" stance. Again, apply this to most any subject and these folks fall into their niches instantly.

We used to have many posters/members who actually were neutral in their approach to such discussions, willing to be be persuaded to anothers point of view by reason, not knee-jerk reaction.

 

Well, I am open minded about it.

Yesterday we (my other and I) were up on the roof, clearing off three feet of snow to make way for the additional foot and a half that we're getting tonight and today.

Our back yard is surrounded by a four foot high fence (due to the pool), and this morning it is completely buried.

The irony of this winter has me thinking as never before, and I am honestly looking at this subject with an open mind, in an effort to discern any substance whatsoever.

Here is what has me concerned: human progress is better at finding solutions if it is allowed to move unfettered. Whether it is the Malthusian warnings about over-population in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, or the New Ice Age scare of the 70's, or this Global Warming scare today, human progress tends to solve the problems if we allow it to do so. Not so long ago, we didn't think we could support more than 2 billion people. Now the population of the world is pushing eight billion, and people (generally) are better off than at any time in history.

I am reminded also of the deforestation scares. There was a time when we thought we would run out of trees. But then people moved off the farms, and urbanized, and now if one walks through the woods, one finds ruins of barn foundations and fieldstone walls. There are more trees now, in many parts of North America, than at any time since the sixteenth century.

As far as Global Warming, technology could solve it, if we stopped meddling with our economies by introducing market distortions. Fusion power would solve everything, and it is an engineering problem within the scope of human ability. But what are we doing instead? Meddling. Making billionaires out of pirates like Elon Musk, so they can ram solar power down our throats at a loss and sell us coal powered electric cars.

Are the distortions necessary? That depends. Is catastrophe around the corner? Is the climate about to destroy civilization?

Or do we have a few years? Or a few decades? Or a century? Or more?

We all have opinions on these questions. But somewhere, somewhere, there must be some verifiable substance.

Right?

 

On this subject I can be pretty sure of Clarise's sincerity. All someone has to do is show unbiased information one way or the other. Clarise could be persuaded either way. I could also. Take air pollution, we can all admit there was air pollution because you could see it. The U.S. has really curtailed air pollution. That is a fact not because of information I read, but because that is what my eyes and nose tell me. The trouble is we can't believe others because of the lies we have heard. If I had one wish, I'd wish "no one would be able to tell a lie".

 

These questions prompted me to start another thread on the subject of potential threats to civilization on Earth.

 

Yes, and I've responded there. Thanks.

Most notable: ecological catastrophe, due to global warming. Risk according to the Scientific Consensus: 0.01%.

Approximately equivalent to nanotechnology. (Bill Joy's Gray Goo Scenario.)

 

Boston Harbor was once one of the dirtiest places on earth.

We spent billions on a state of the art water reclamation plant, and now we can swim on the beaches again.

Portions of the oceans are no doubt ailing, and fisheries are depleted, and so on. But these problems tend to solve themselves as we move forward.

In our lifetimes, we will be able to grow edible meat-- beef, fish, and so on-- without killing animals. We will be cloning edible muscle, without the animals! Sound crazy? Absolutely not. The technology is already under development.

Then the ocean coastlines will grow back, the same way the forests are growing back.

But these kinds of advances will not happen-- or they will take much longer than necessary-- if we cripple ourselves economically.

 

Good points, but they are a tad myopic, the problem labeled "pollution" is huge and it is present in every area of land, sea and air. The most insidious types of pollution are largely unseen and unchecked. We tend to pay attention when the air that we breathe has the effect of choking us, or the water that we drink causes us to immediately vomit. We also react rather quickly to trash floating on the streams or choking the banks of the waterways, when it disrupts our ideas of what is ascetically pleasing.

But, we are very slow to react to the invisible threats, such as aquatic life becoming genetically altered by the pharmaceuticals that we routinely dump into the waters. Recently scientists have discovered traces of over 150 human and veterinarian medicines in the Arctic.

 

I agree, man has routinely dumped his waste in our bays and oceans. You would think by now we (mankind) could see the repercussions of it and cease.

 

In the case of drugs, it is not so much the dumping of them, but the fact that a vast majority are simply passed through our digestive system and deposited with our wastes into the sewers. Our present methods of treating such wastes does not remove any of them, so they simply continue on downstream.

 

These traces, measured in parts per billion, aren't really threats-- they're a warning that if something isn't done to properly treat wastewater someday in the distant future there may be a threat.