Climate Change
 

Republicans still have their heads in the sand, even after a year of glaring examples of extreme weather; the EPA director says this is not the time to discuss it.

Seems like the perfect time to kick it around since you are the director of the EPA not FEMA.

I've noticed a trend. Many of those who deny that there is climate change believe without question that a guy built a huge boat and put a pair of every species of animal on our planet on board.


Makes you wonder....
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Weren't you just bitching about ethanol gas ??? That's a product of all this craziness
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Yeah that was a bust, but infrastructure, hybrids, all electric, wind and solar. These technologies would have and should have been made available a decade ago.
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they weren't available a decade ago??

name one:wave:

What I wonder, is why none of the climate change fanatics, stop to ask why the High Priest of the movement, al gore, chooses to live his life in a way that is completely at odds with what he professes to believe. Multiple huge homes, private jets, etc. also, most of the dire predictions made. Y these people, haven't come close to coming true. That tells me their models are flawed. I'm not sure there's another conclusion.

We should always be investigating the health of our planet and making changes when necessary. But not reacting to hysteria.
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Nobody denies that the climate changes. What is unsettled is how much man has had an impact on it. Hurricanes, despite the hysteria are not more frequent or more powerful then they have been in the past .
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Maybe not, but you add sea level rise to the equation and it's a different ball game. I hope regulations change regarding rebuilding in these areas.
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What we have today could have been up and running over a decade ago.
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Mans involvement is only disputed by those who dispute Climate change . and use the rights talking point

What is unsettled is how much man has had an impact on it.

Overwhelming scientific consensus says human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. The 2010 Anderegg study found that 97-98% of climate researchers publishing most actively in their field agree that human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change.

Conservatives

More than one thousand scientists disagree that human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. In 2010 Climate Depot released a report featuring more than 1,000 scientists, several of them former UN IPCC scientists, who disagreed that humans are primarily responsible for global climate change.

that says it all

But OBAMA!!!!..............
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I'm almost 65, so for me, global warming if we are accelerating it makes no difference, but for my kids and their kids; it may be worth s serious debate by all.
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The sea hasn't risen by anywhere near the degree the "experts" have predicted . I live on the water and under the Obama admin they changed the flood maps , that in my opinion just resulted in higher ins rates for people that will never see water anywhere near their homes . It's a scam , but he'll ya, increase the cost of building while your at it .
It's BS !
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Follow the money
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Then why does Al Gore (1) lead this movement in the US, and (2) live in a way that absolutely spits in the face of everything they profess to believe. Also, I can't help but notice that of all the dire predictions made by the hard core climate change folks, not one is remotely close to coming true. Their models are based almost exclusively on assumptions, because we don't know what the atmosphere's ability is to absorb changing conditions, or that of the Pacific Ocean. We have no idea.

We should keep studying things honestly. But until Al Gore leads by example, well, I don't buy it. The only thing he has unplugged in the last 15 years, is his treadmill. Ba dum bum pssh.




"that says it all"

Or it could say that that group has an agenda. 99% of card-carrying members of the Screen Actors Guild thinks Trump is worse than Darth Vader. That doesn't make it so.

NOTHING that the "experts" predicted would happen, has happened. Somehow, that doesn't reduce their credibility by one zillionth of a percent (they just changed the name of the movement from global warming to climate change, and we weren't supposed to notice). If these people's predictions came true, My house would be underwater, and North Dakota would be exporting pineapples and sugar cane by now.

this is a brilliant article....

"mostly a series of bullet points about the American Lands Council which he somehow connected to white supremacy, right wing fanaticism, and most bizarrely of all the Kim Davis controversy. I couldn’t believe that someone who was a “scientific” person felt the need to use the guilt by association trap, the screeching leftist “Racist! Sexist! Homophobe!” nonsense in a discussion about land use."

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/09/...at-university/



not only is journalism dead....along with that...education....

what did she write?......"It’s propaganda—dogmatic as any religion." :hihi:

Bull#^&#^&#^&#^&.
None of the science has made projections like that, at least not any of the published, peer reviewed science. You can hear what you want, but the actual scientists, for the most part are conservative in their projections.

Take sea level rise, measured both using tide gauge and satellite altimeter data. Projections have been for a meter or more by 2100 for a while. Measurements made since the those projections have us on at least that track, with the high end\extreme, due to increased melting of land based ice being 9ft+. This is not a linear process and not the same everywhere due to land subsidence, uplift and even gravitational attraction of water to the ice sheets. All of this doesn't produce 'waterworld' inundation... but go walk around our coastal cities at high tide and add 3ft, 5ft of more to where the water is. Hell go to Annapolis now and see what they have dealt with already with 1 ft of rise.


Al Gore was a senator, VP and made a movie. Not a scientist. He is an advocate, and yes a hypocrite.

Not a bad essay in some spots, she makes some good points. Kim Davis, or even Obama or Trump never get mentioned in my courses, and I have had my share of climate skeptic students.

One caution, Watts has frequently been found to mislead on his interpretation of others work, either by commission or via ommisson.

which means what?....

and WTF does this mean?

"climate skeptic students".....they are what?...skeptical of "climate"??....good grief Bryan

Al Gore claims to be an advocate. He clearly lives like a "science denier", he is using this movement, and the sheep therein, to add a couple of zeroes to his balance sheet.

The models are based significantly on assumptions, because there is so much we don't know at this point. We need to keep studying, to keep learning. It's far from settled.

Fishing, scuba diving, hiking, and wildlife photography are my favorite hobbies. No one has a more vested interest in healthy ecosystems than me, especially since I also have 3 young kids who also deserve to inherit a healthy planet. But that doesn't mean I'm going to let people whose environmental footprint is staggering ( al gore, Clooney, DiCaprio) tell me to knock down my house and live in a yurt, while they jet around from one palatial home to another. With liberals, it's rarely about what "they" should do, it's always about what "we" should do.
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I am typing on a tablet at 5am, give me a break.
'Students who are skeptical of climate change'. One I remember well, also hosted a conservative talk radio show on campus. We had some good discussion in class, makes me step up my game.

Then don't listen to Al Gore or DiCapprio.

How about the current Pope???
Read the science, understand the projections, make your own conclusions.

As far as models... Models are based, tested and tuned using historical observations and then run forward into the future. The key thing to take away is not the exact prediction of any one model, but the consensus of the models based on past observations and current trends is that we are headed for certain outcomes; warmer temperatures and higher sea levels are two of them.



This is a good explanation of models:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v9aRQpumPA

Nice broad paint brush at the end there to derail a discussion. No conservative or religious figure ever preaches to live your life a certain way and does the opposite. Nope not ever.

Bryan I work with models, I sometimes build models for the purposes of predicting insurance losses. The accuracy of any model, is very sensitive to the magnitude of the assumptions that underly the model. In the case of predicting the impacts of climate change, there is a tremendous amount of speculation behind the assumptions. We don't know if the atmosphere or the oceans have the ability to absorb, or offset, increased emissions. We have almost no idea. It's very, very speculative at this point. If you are about to flip a coin a thousand times, we know that you'll get approximately 50% heads. That is established science. You want to predict what the effect will be, of unprecedented emissions? Speculation. The third world has never been developed before, so we have very little actual empirical evidence, upon which to base our assumptions. Which means the assumptions are speculative. The last time I checked, polar bear numbers were increasing. That wasn't supposed to happen if the models were accurate.

I want to pay taxes to fund the research. But I don't like the idea of some limousine liberal, suggesting that people
In developing countries don't have the same right to the cheap comforts ( heat in the winter, a/c in the summer) that the limousine liberal enjoys. There is more than a little hypocrisy in the ranks.
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As to the paint brush at the end, Al Gore is the pope of this religion. He has made who knows how many millions of dollars off it, and he obviously doesn't believe a word of it. He doesn't speak for the scientists, obviously. But asking why he rejects all of what the movement professes to believe, is nonetheless a valid question. Of course there are glaring hypocrites on my side, too. And I can say out loud, that those hypocrites damage the ideology which I embrace, and that we need to get rid of the hypocrites. I've never heard a climate change advocate, not once, denounce their supporters in Hollywood who, if the models are correct, are destroying the planet. The only ones who ever get called out, are skeptics.
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:huh: do these students believe that the climate never changes?

I think some people (I assume students) believe or think that yes; hell there are still flat 'Earther's' out there.

A vast majority are skeptical that humans do have a significant impact.

I think fisherman, who can see tangible evidence of mans impact on the oceans (overfishing, acidification) should have a stronger appreciation for mans impact on the climate system as a whole.

Remember when we had a hole in the ozone ?? We all agreed it was due to refrigerant gasses like freon. Scientists found an option and replaced the bad stuff with safer gases and viola! Low and behold, the ozone started to healed itself.

The difference between the ozone and what's happening now is that this is related to oil. We as a planet are addicted to it.
Try telling a drunk that he should stop drinking. Good luck...
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name one...

Yes there are assumptions.
Absolutely, correct.
But if you company made a model for life insurance based on risk factors, and one variable was for smoking, if there were 100 different models with 100 different assumptions about life expectancy and smoking, and all 100 had a slightly different reduction in life expectancy, but all said you were going to die sooner, your company would charge more for insurance for smokers, right? Or because one models aid average life expectancy is reduced 8 years, and one says 6 years and ones says 4 years, you would say, nope, all models are bad.

The models vary assumptions. They vary parameters in future concentrations, and sequestration and volcanoes and increased cloud cover, and future absorption of carbon in the deep ocean etc etc etc.. But the trend of the models is the same. More GHG's more warming. More warming less land based ice and higher sea levels (among other things).


Actually, from the geologic record, we have a very good idea of past conditions. The last time we saw 400ppm of CO2, was 4 million years ago. The cause of that rise was of course not anthropocentric, but one thought is that changes to ocean heat balances (currents) over long time periods produced changes in T and CO2. At that time average temperatures in the arctic were much higher than present (one link below from Julie B-G's team at UMASS).

Do you dispute the basic physics that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?

What do you think of the Pope's stance on climate change?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...-above-400ppm/

https://twitter.com/FlatEarthOrg?ref...Ctwgr%5Eauthor

I find it implausible that they are out there, but I was behind this
guy a few weeks ago...

So I'll ask you, do you think that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?

Kyrie Irving, Shaq

I think fishermen probably do have an above-average appreciation.

I really, really like nature. Before we had kids, my wife and I spent a lot of our money, too much, going to Alaska repetedly. I want that pristine, healthy place for future generations to enjoy.

But over-reacting, can have lethal consequences. Here's what I mean by that...

Not all that long ago, it was determined that spraying DDT to kill mosquitoes, was causing bird eggs to be so thin-shelled, that the eggs were crushed when the mother sat on the eggs. So the environmentalists got a ban on DDT.

Great for the birds. Not so great for the untold thousands of African children who needlessly died of malaria, because the mosquito population exploded.

So when the deep-thinker George Clooney says something to the effect of "why not implement some of the green energy ideas, the worst that will happen, is we'll clean up the planet a bit", he has no idea what he's talking about and should have his head examined to see what's in there, where his brain is supposed to be. But the left gives him a pretty large platform, from which he can spew the lunacy that there's no downside if we change course suddenly. For damn sure, no one on the left challenges his notion that there is no downside.

People who live in the developed world, enjoy a LOT of benefits - more comforts, better health, longer life expectancies. Much of the third world wants those things just as badly as we want them. I don't know on what basis we get to tell them, that they can't have them, just because we got there first and now we're going to change the rules and make it much harder to develop they way we did.

I hear every word you are saying, and I agree with a lot of it, you don't come across as a thoughtless fanatic at all. We just need to look before we leap.

And as usual, we need to stop demonizing everyone who has a slightly different opinion. I'm not an idiot, I'm not a science denier, I'm not anything that they claim I am...you don't advance a major ideological agenda that way.

:cputin:
November 11, 2015

Ozone Hole Over Antarctica Nears Record-Breaking Size Again


The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is nearing record-breaking size again, scientists say. In fact, new observations show that the infamous "ozone hole" is currently larger than the entire continent of North America.

Scientists thought the apparent stabilization indicated that the ozone layer was recovering very gradually. But this year's ozone hole surprised them because it formed a whole month later in the year than the ozone hole typically forms, and its size is almost record-breaking.

I was under the impression that Obama had fixed that too

All of that is why things like the Paris Accord (and Koyoto before that) allow developing countries more leeway. You have a more thoughtful approach to that than many on the right.

This will ultimately become an economic issue; unwise coastal development + increasing sea level + storms (and lets assume the same frequency and intensity of storms) will continue to cost us more and more in the coming years. Swiss Re and Munich Re adopted climate change impacts and as their part of their risk assessment

So Jim...
What do you think of the Pope's very public stance on climate change?

"Try telling a drunk that he should stop drinking"

More like, try telling a family that they won't have heat in the winter. It's not as superfluous as drinking, Nebe. Not everyone on the planet can afford a geothermal system. And if we reduce oil usage, who determines who gets to keep using oil, and who doesn't?

Obama is also under that impression.

Honestly? I'm a fairly devout Catholic. I don't know what his public stance is on climate change, and I don't particularly care, not any more than I care about what George Clooney says about climate change, nor any more than I care what the Pope says about immigration. I care what the Pope says about matters of faith. When the Catholic Church says he is infallible when speaking about politics, is the day I shop for a new religion.