Climate Change

[Coffee Pancake]

Actual environmentalism is leftist because the right have historically avoided the subject and enabled corporations to move the problem out of sight, make a big show of recycling domestically, in reality put all the plastics and electronics in shipping contains and send it to the China / 3rd world.

The final chefs kiss is complaining about China / 3rd world not pulling their weight .. you only have to look at all the trash they have and the terrible pollution created dealing with it all !!

There is no compromise with someone who wants you to drown.

[Lindal Kidd]

I'm pretty sure we've bought our last internal combustion car. I expect it will be worth nothing when we go to trade it in, but that doesn't worry me a lot since we typically drive our cars until they're worth next to nothing anyway.

I'm much more worried about the changes I can see around me in my suburban environment just in the last decade. The weather is hotter and drier. Species we used to see in this area all the time are few, or gone entirely. 17 years ago we were deafened by the cicadas, and this year, the year they were supposed to return, there is silence. There are only two or three tree frogs singing in the night, instead of a chorus. The woodpeckers are gone this year. We haven't had the yearly invasion of Junebugs for several years now, but stink bugs have replaced them.

Getting a handle on all sorts of human caused pollution has become critical to survival. That means dealing with plastic pollution AND CO2, AND agricultural practices, AND deforestation, AND clean power production, AND net zero buildings, and on and on.  It's not one thing, it's everything.

[Jackson Redstar]

8 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

When, and by whom, and how widely was it believed, and was it actually a prediction or simply one possible outcome based on a a range of possible inputs and assumptions?

 

Arctic summers ice-free 'by 2013'

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco -  Wednesday, 12 December 2007

Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.

"Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. "So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."

Professor Peter Wadhams from Cambridge University, UK, is an expert on Arctic ice. He has used sonar data collected by Royal Navy submarines to show that the volume loss is outstripping even area withdrawal, which is in agreement with the model result of Professor Maslowski.

"Some models have not been taking proper account of the physical processes that go on," he commented.

"The ice is thinning faster than it is shrinking; and some modellers have been assuming the ice was a rather thick slab.

"Wieslaw's model is more efficient because it works with data and it takes account of processes that happen internally in the ice."

Former US Vice President Al Gore cited Professor Maslowski's analysis on Monday in his acceptance speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo.

[Sid Nagy]

14 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I'm pretty sure we've bought our last internal combustion car. I expect it will be worth nothing when we go to trade it in, but that doesn't worry me a lot since we typically drive our cars until they're worth next to nothing anyway.

My next car will be a private lease one.
That puts the trade in and sell again problem with the car dealer.
But first a few more years with my current car.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[JanuarySwan]

On 6/11/2021 at 9:18 AM, Luna Bliss said:

We seriously need to tackle climate change. I'm relieved to discover brilliant governmental officials in The U.S. who will lead the way:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/09/texas-republican-louie-gohmert-climate-change

* But on a serious note, are you worried about climate change? And do you believe there is a solution?

Yes at times worried and at other times I'm just trying to live life in this "covid" world at the present time and hoping we can "beat" the variants.  But, yes...worried.  

A solution?  I haven't read the thread yet but I sure do hope so and we are all in this together no matter how much governments try to blame the other it's still most governments who need to get their act together as they have more power than we do, no pun intended.  We are the little people, the worker bees, born into this mess in many ways.  We are a product of our environment and that's how we learn.  My family is a hit, miss or OCD type of recycler, with all kinds of recyclers in my family.  I'm moderately good at recycling.  

I wish I had more positive to add but I have been very busy currently.

 

[Jackson Redstar]

4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Climate change (they stopped calling it "global warming") is indeed real.

TBH, nobody argues climate change isn't real. It has been happening for 4+ billion years an will continue to happen - no matter how much we tax carbon... We have had global ice ages and periods that were much much warmer than today (when civillation's boomed) The problem now is every 10 years we have 'planetary emergencies' and all these computer models showing we are all doomed if we don't act now - and 10 years later none of those models turned out to be correct and they issue another all new set of dire warnings

[Coffee Pancake]

20 minutes ago, Jackson Redstar said:

TBH, nobody argues climate change isn't real. It has been happening for 4+ billion years an will continue to happen - no matter how much we tax carbon... We have had global ice ages and periods that were much much warmer than today (when civillation's boomed) The problem now is every 10 years we have 'planetary emergencies' and all these computer models showing we are all doomed if we don't act now - and 10 years later none of those models turned out to be correct and they issue another all new set of dire warnings

"I'm not denying climate change .. I'm just going to be pedantic about terminology, make an argument with no citations at all and use that to deny current man made climate change."

 

[BiliEyelash]

On 6/12/2021 at 5:55 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

 

Take away meat subsidies.

Make beef cost what beef actually costs.

Problem solved.

Its more complicated of course, subsidized grain makes it cheeper to feed the cattle. We need to eliminate all subsidies, let the market deturmine the price of everything.

[Jackson Redstar]

24 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

"I'm not denying climate change .. I'm just going to be pedantic about terminology, make an argument with no citations at all and use that to deny current man made climate change."

 

in science to prove a theory, you need a control subject. therefore, a control 'earth' minus any human activity to compare to the earth with human activity. Short of that, it is all speculation and theory. and like I said before - real science doesn't shut down debate, blacklist those with a opposing opinion, manipulate or er.. "calibrate" data to make sure it fits with their theory. And in general when nearly every single model used to predict their theories turn out to be wrong, it is a pretty reasonable assumption that the base theories are just wrong. In short this whole "climate change" is the biggest scientific scandal in the history of mankind. But that is my opinion. You are free to disagree and have your own opinion on the matter

[Coffee Pancake]

12 minutes ago, Jackson Redstar said:

 In short this whole "climate change" is the biggest scientific scandal in the history of mankind.

There isn't a debate .. unless you have some evidence to support your position you would like to cite ?

[Lyssa Greymoon]

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/
 

Quote

Now a new evaluation of global climate models used to project Earth’s future global average surface temperatures over the past half-century answers that question: most of the models have been quite accurate.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Jackson Redstar said:

in science to prove a theory, you need a control subject.

Um, no. That's how experiments, used to prove or disprove a hypothesis work. That is NOT how most scientific inquiry operates. We've never had a "control subject" earth, or moon, or sun, or universe . . . and yet we've learned a fantastic amount about these things nonetheless. By your logic, we wouldn't understand tidal forces, as we don't have any large bodies of water not influenced by the moon as "controls," to cite one simple instance.

As it happens, however, scientists DO have a model: our understanding of past climates and climate changes. We know how quickly glaciers have advanced or receded in the past, for instance -- and can use that data to measure current rates of melting.

1 hour ago, Jackson Redstar said:

blacklist those with a opposing opinion

Who is being blacklisted? I hear ignorant misinformation and conspiracy theories about climate change all the time. Including, it would seem, here.

Science, like most scholarly endeavours, functions through debate, a back-and-forth dialogue between different views, theories, and data sets. The way it is supposed to work, and the way it generally does work, is that this process eventually produces a consensus. It's fair to say that there is still a great deal of debate about the exact causes and effects of ongoing climate change, but a very clear consensus has arisen among scientists -- we're talking overwhelming here, as in well over 90% of experts in the field -- that human intervention is a major, if not the primary cause of global warming.

Quote

"Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position."

From NASA's web site on climate change: https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

1 hour ago, Jackson Redstar said:

But that is my opinion.

Of course, that's just these scientist's "opinions," right? And you are entitled to your own! Absolutely!

But as some wise woman or another (Marilyn Monroe? Cleopatra? I can't recall at the moment) once said, you are entitled to your own opinions. You are not entitled to your own facts. Which, given that you've produced none here to back up your opinion, is just as well.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Desiree Moonwinder]

I'm not Malthusian. The earth probably has much room to go relative to population-carrying capacity by way of technology.

The problem is that technology becomes essential for life, rather than just a luxury.  Society becomes exposed to catastrophe when the technology fails; cf. recent power outages, pipeline outages, etc.

Also, freedom tends to decline with increasing population density.  For example, if you live on 160 acres (an old US land grant number), and your neighbors do the same, you don't care if your neighbor smokes a cigar.  Conversely, if you live in a 12-story high rise in a 750 square foot apartment in a metropolitan area, you do care if those in the apartment next door smoke cigars.  

Likewise, higher population densities disrupt the environment.  

Still, true might in the world is a function of population, so countries are tepid in their enthusiasm for controlling population growth. Cf. China's flip flop on the issue once they figured out the long-term consequences.  

So, the Tragedy of the Commons is with us still in many areas, including the subject here: Climate Change.

[Desiree Moonwinder]

5 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I'm pretty sure we've bought our last internal combustion car. I expect it will be worth nothing when we go to trade it in, but that doesn't worry me a lot since we typically drive our cars until they're worth next to nothing anyway.

I think the price of gasoline will get really cheap with the shift to electric.  Unless you believe we're running out of oil.  

Quote

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme801/node/486

• The world will run out of oil in 10 years."
  • - U.S. Bureau of Mines (1914)
• "The world will run out of oil in 13 years."
  • - U.S. Department of the Interior (1939 and 1950)
• "The world will run out of oil and other fossil fuels by 1990."
  • - Paul Erlich, Limits to Growth (1973)
• "The world will run out of oil in 2030, and other fossil fuels in 2050."
  • - Paul Erlich, Beyond the Limit (2002)

 

[Arielle Popstar]

7 minutes ago, Desiree Moonwinder said:

I think the price of gasoline will get really cheap with the shift to electric.  Unless you believe we're running out of oil.  

 

I think they are using the climate change hysteria as an excuse to increase the taxes they can extort out of us on the pretext that it is healthy for the environment. Oil is probably a renewable resource spanning decades rather than millions of years. That would explain why these wells that have been pumped dry years ago now are found to have oil in them again.

[Coffee Pancake]

Always some crackpot conspiracy.

You do realize everyone being in on it (for tax purposes?!!) is more complicated than man made climate change being real, right ?

[Desiree Moonwinder]

It's a matter of history.  The conflict of the last several generations was between top-down command and control economies and bottoms-up self-organizing market economies.  The latter performed better.  There are always those looking for some problem that can only be solved by switching to a top-down command and control economy.  One sees it clearly in history.  "Running out of oil" was going to be it, but now we're not running out of oil.  So, they shift to something different.  

[Madelaine McMasters]

13 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Oil is probably a renewable resource spanning decades rather than millions of years. That would explain why these wells that have been pumped dry years ago now are found to have oil in them again.

Citations?

[Coffee Pancake]

  

5 minutes ago, Desiree Moonwinder said:

It's a matter of history.  The conflict of the last several generations was between top-down command and control economies and bottoms-up self-organizing market economies.  The latter performed better.  There are always those looking for some problem that can only be solved by switching to a top-down command and control economy.  One sees it clearly in history.  "Running out of oil" was going to be it, but now we're not running out of oil.  So, they shift to something different.  

 

It appears there are people in this thread who don't even know where oil came from and what specific conditions allowed it to form.

There is no way we're going to trust you to hold up a complicated socio-economic political debate.

This thread is about climate change, lets not get carried away.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Coffee Pancake
Added quote from Desiree for clarity - Maddy is just too fast!

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

It appears there are people in this thread who don't even know where oil came from and what specific conditions allowed it to form.

If all fossils were laid down over the last 6000 years, so was all fossil fuel. That shifts the decimal point on production rates over several places. The specific condition of creation is sufficient to explain anything.

[Desiree Moonwinder]

9 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Citations?

Quote

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme801/node/486

• The world will run out of oil in 10 years."
  • - U.S. Bureau of Mines (1914)
• "The world will run out of oil in 13 years."
  • - U.S. Department of the Interior (1939 and 1950)
• "The world will run out of oil and other fossil fuels by 1990."
  • - Paul Erlich, Limits to Growth (1973)
• "The world will run out of oil in 2030, and other fossil fuels in 2050."
  • - Paul Erlich, Beyond the Limit (2002)

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

Did you read the quote I wanted citations for? If you did, now on Earth did you think your citation has any bearing on it. If you didn't, why are you here?

[Finite]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I think they are using the climate change hysteria as an excuse to increase the taxes they can extort out of us on the pretext that it is healthy for the environment. Oil is probably a renewable resource spanning decades rather than millions of years. That would explain why these wells that have been pumped dry years ago now are found to have oil in them again.

The US is fracking oil. It's more expensive than drilling. It's because the wells aren't what they used to be.

Here's a video I watched a few years ago (and rewatched a few times because I like it.) It's not about oil specifically but there's a part where it explains the process of how it's formed.

 

[Lindal Kidd]

1 hour ago, Desiree Moonwinder said:

It's a matter of history.  The conflict of the last several generations was between top-down command and control economies and bottoms-up self-organizing market economies.  The latter performed better.  There are always those looking for some problem that can only be solved by switching to a top-down command and control economy.  One sees it clearly in history.  "Running out of oil" was going to be it, but now we're not running out of oil.  So, they shift to something different.  

Free market economies are indeed efficient. However, it's important that they prioritize the right things. Our current economies have neglected the environmental damage done by their operation...the so-called Tragedy of the Commons, writ large. This can't be laid solely at the feet of giant corporations; after all, we all eagerly bought their products. I don't believe that top-down economies are the solution either, but we have to price in conservation and environmental restoration.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Citations?

Archbishop Ussher, presumably.

One hopes that rushing all of those fossil fuels into existence doesn't mean that they didn't test it properly for safety. It would be awful to discover that the oil we've been using had serious and detrimental side effects . . .