Thinking About Climate Change

It’s just sad. You get a real good post with good arguements, followed up with utter tripe.

The world is indeed doomed… if only by our own ignorance and hubris. So be it.

[quote]John K wrote:
Species extenction rates were 1-2 species per year.
[/quote]

Good posts, here’s my slightly on-topic quibble.

The above quote is incorrect. There’s no possible way we could test that if even if we wanted to.

How many of the species that lived have we discovered? We don’t even have a handle on how many there are in the world today. Thousands if not millions of species are created and destroyed in any given period of time (with or without mankind), but we’re only able to look at the ones that we’ve been able to find evidence for.

There were also several points throughout the fossil record where mass extinctions occurred, including the Permian one where most of the species we know about at the time disappeared. If you extrapolate out the thousands of species that we do know about to the millions that we most likely don’t know about at those times, if 90+% of them died then you are already above the “1-2 species extinctions per year” average you mentioned without any species dying in the other periods.

It’s a common tactic when discussing global warming (or anything else) to overemphasize things to make a point, but when you just make stuff up people tend to block you out.

[quote]vroom wrote:
It’s just sad. You get a real good post with good arguements, followed up with utter tripe.
[/quote]

Hi pot. I would like to introduce you to kettle (he’s black too).

[quote]BFG wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
When the price of gas gets high enough people will change.

Bing-f*cking-O!!!

Same with recycling. Same with all this environmental stuff. Hit the pocket book, and then people will care.

I work in the oil business, and I plan on having a job for quite some time. As long as idiots keep buying Hummers, I’m golden. And even with the H3 reaching a reported whopping 20 mpg, I’m not too worried.

FYI - “Because the H2 is built to the over-8500-lb GVW class, its fuel economy is neither published by the EPA nor counted toward Corporate Average Fuel Economy. So engineers could aim at making the H2 bulletproof from a reliability standpoint without risking it being labeled as a gas guzzler.”

Don’t take me the wrong way. I support the idea of Americans driving what they want, but let’s be reasonable. I just drove 115 miles yesterday morning to LAX and then back (230 miles total). It took about forever and a day to do that. That translates to over 5 hours of driving, and I was hauling @ss when I could. Most of those cars (~80%) have one person in them. Many get poor gas mileage. We are a product of our own creation, and our creation is f*cked.

As far as the Kyoto thing, it’s a mess. Damned if we (the US) do, damned if we don’t. If one truly wanted to make an impact on improving the environment, leave the picketing signs at home, and cancel the trip to Detroit. Go to Mexico, China, Bangladesh, or some other miserable hell hole and make a difference where it’s actually needed.

Don’t worry about our backyard. Firstly, it’s not half as bad as you’ve been told. Secondly, we’ll price ourselves out of the gas guzzling business as the world oil demand surpasses capacity. Not if, but when.

To lighten up a little: “I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.” - Mitch Hedberg

BFG[/quote]

Great points. Although it seems to me that with, likely, large deposits in Russia, Canada, and underseas, the oil issue will become one not of supply, but of the increasing cost in accessing that supply. Boils down to the same thing though.

[quote]Cream wrote:
John K wrote:
Species extenction rates were 1-2 species per year.

Good posts, here’s my slightly on-topic quibble.

The above quote is incorrect. There’s no possible way we could test that if even if we wanted to.

How many of the species that lived have we discovered? We don’t even have a handle on how many there are in the world today. Thousands if not millions of species are created and destroyed in any given period of time (with or without mankind), but we’re only able to look at the ones that we’ve been able to find evidence for.

There were also several points throughout the fossil record where mass extinctions occurred, including the Permian one where most of the species we know about at the time disappeared. If you extrapolate out the thousands of species that we do know about to the millions that we most likely don’t know about at those times, if 90+% of them died then you are already above the “1-2 species extinctions per year” average you mentioned without any species dying in the other periods.

It’s a common tactic when discussing global warming (or anything else) to overemphasize things to make a point, but when you just make stuff up people tend to block you out.[/quote]

I second that. There is absolutely no baseline for comparison. There is no evidence to support the claim of either extinction rate. I find this to be a major issue with most ‘archeiological sciences.’ Presuppositions abound based on absolutely nothing, then they make a theory on those presuppositions and from that theory based on nothing somehow manage to state facts. It doesnt work that way, boys and girls.

[quote]vroom wrote:
It’s just sad. You get a real good post with good arguements, followed up with utter tripe.

The world is indeed doomed… if only by our own ignorance and hubris. So be it.[/quote]

Tripe because we are criticizing a horribly written treaty (Kyoto) that very few nations have bothered to ratify?

Tripe because I am stating the obvious facts?

Or tripe because reality does not fit your feel good version of the world?

CO2 induced global warming may indeed be a hazard. I have yet to see a realistic proposal to do a damn thing about it.

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:

Great points. Although it seems to me that with, likely, large deposits in Russia, Canada, and underseas, the oil issue will become one not of supply, but of the increasing cost in accessing that supply. Boils down to the same thing though.[/quote]

Do not forget about refining the oil. An oil refinery has not been built in the US in a long time.

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
However, doesn’t your main idea go to the whole point of the initial post, even if you aren’t pleased with some of its details?[/quote]

Details are everything in chaos theory.

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
How much does is it going to cost Netherlands to deal with its worst-case scenario? That’s a quantifiable number. How much might countries like the U.S. benefit from a climate a few degrees warmer – in other words, under the “worst case scenario” from the perspective of those other countries? Tough to predict, but I’m sure we could make a guesstimate. We can also make a guesstimate of how much it would cost to enact a large-scale emission ban, assuming for the moment that industrial CO2 emissions are in fact causing the climate change. [/quote]

I think you missed a very important point – this is such a chaotic system, that the approach would be to assume the worst possible outcome for everyone at the same time, US included. We cannot assume any good scenario (e.g., a benefit from a temperature increase) for anyone, and we need to assume the worst possible loss in human life.

Again, I do not know exactly what is the worst case scenario for the US – but I know that it’s not getting a benefit from a temperature increase, since I’ve personally seen a new ice age come up in simulations as a possible outcome in just a few centuries (although, again, the rapid drastic change you’ve seen in TWAT is pure fantasy, the final result is indeed possible).

And trust me, a new ice age would not benefit the US economy in any way, and the climate convulsions that were shown in simulations would kill many North Americans.

And that might just be a middle-of-the-road scenario – the worst scenario might be even worse.

So unless you are willing to argue that you can atribute a value to human life, or, rather, a “benefit” to saving somebody’s life, I don’t think we can do a cost-benefit analysis.

To sum it up – this is not about money, it’s about human lives.

I must agree the whole cost vs benefit analysis is impossible to pull off.

They can’t even accurately predict whether it will rain on Saturday and they expect us to believe that they can come up with a model that will predict ecomonic impact of weather changes due to CO2?

[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
However, doesn’t your main idea go to the whole point of the initial post, even if you aren’t pleased with some of its details?

hspder wrote:
Details are everything in chaos theory. [/quote]

Yes, that’s true enough, but I don’t think those details impacted the idea of a cost/benefit analysis.

There’s always a cost/benefit analysis, even w/r/t human life, though it’s not really polite to discuss it in mixed company. We don’t require automakers to include absolute top-of-the-line safety features in every car sold, because it’s a tradeoff. We don’t shut down all our airports even though there’s still a threat terrorists could hijack the planes. It might not be overt, but it’s a cost/benefit analysis that’s occurring.

Now, I realize where you’re coming from in terms of how unpredictable a system we’re dealing with – but we have to make a decision one way or another based on the best info available. And there are quantifiable benefits that have occurred in past historical periods of higher average world-wide temperatures – at least in certain regions.

So, granted we aren’t going to know for certain what’s going to happen, and if the worst-case scenario were to unfold in which higher temps melted the icecaps and an ice age occurred, or whatever horrible combination is a worst-case scenario, then I’m certain whatever decision we make now will appear to have been wrong in hindsight. Just as if a massive earthquake hits the eastern seaboard we’ll be kicking ourselves for only having earthquake-safe building standards in CA, or if a huge asteroid comes and hits the earth we’ll wonder why we aren’t currently plowing every last dollar into a program to avert such a happenstance. Perhaps this is because we constantly undervalue the harm and probability of the worst-case scenario, or perhaps it’s because we have limited means and cannot possibly address each and every worst-case scenario out there.

But stepping back from the worst-case for a moment - especially given how useless the proposed “fixes” seem and given the apparent disagreement over how much effect industrial human CO2 emissions actually have on the warming and cooling cycles - don’t you think it’s an interesting idea?

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:

hspder wrote:
Are we THAT selfish?

endgamer711 wrote:
I hate to say it, but history shows that we probably are. The one thing we’ve got going is that such selfishness usually doesn’t like to be seen in public. We’re as vain as we are selfish.

Yes, and we are definitely even more selfish for not donating all the money spent on sugar subsidies here to starving children in Africa… Or any other comparison you want to pull out between anything we spend money on versus something we aren’t spending money on, which would be of precisely equal value in terms of discussing the issue at hand.[/quote]

In this particular case it’s no such kind of trade-off, BB old boy. It’s just a simple case of ignoring how what we do impacts others.

I don’t know anything about science but I have always rejected the whole global warming gloom and doom story, mostly because it seems to come from the granola munching tree hugging commie types.

That being said, my hometown and its main industry are dealing with a climate change situation right now. I will share it just for interest’s sake, not because I have any great point to make.

The weather here has been steadily getting warmer over the past several decades. Normally, it falls to minus 40 degrees and even colder for several weeks in the winter. This is the necessary temperature needed to keep certain pest populations under control. This has not been happening lately and has caused the mountain pine beetle to spread out of control over the last couple of years. The beetle has affected about seven million hectares of B.C. forests. Forestry is one of the biggest and most important industries in BC and now our most abundant commercially valuable trees are dying off left right and center. Everywhere you look the forests have turned almost completely red. It’s eerie looking. They expect 90% of the pine will be dead within 5 years.

Of course, there is no way of proving that the climate change here is a direct result of global warming. Perhaps these things go in cycles. Perhaps there are beetle infestations every few hundred years. I haven’t heard this but who knows? Also, even though the economic impact will be felt here in a major way in a few years, the whole situation is creating one heck of a local boom economy now as they try and get these trees harvested before they burn (one lightening storm a few weeks ago started hundreds of forest fires).

What would you guys guess the global economic impact of this particular situation will be? Positive, negative, neutral? Thinking about a question like that makes my head spin!

[quote]JPBear wrote:
I don’t know anything about science but I have always rejected the whole global warming gloom and doom story, mostly because it seems to come from the granola munching tree hugging commie types.
[/quote]

Wow, that’s a damn ignorant comment. Not believing in something just because some crazies believe in it tells the world that you really don’t care about facts. What concerns you is popularity of opinion among like-minded individuals.

The story of the evaporating forest is sad, though.

[quote]JPBear wrote:
I don’t know anything about science but I have always rejected the whole global warming gloom and doom story, mostly because it seems to come from the granola munching tree hugging commie types…

The weather here has been steadily getting warmer over the past several decades…

Of course, there is no way of proving that the climate change here is a direct result of global warming…

What would you guys guess the global economic impact of this particular situation will be? Positive, negative, neutral? Thinking about a question like that makes my head spin!
[/quote]

Commies, eh? When was the last time you saw one of those? I guess this is another recycled word, like ‘fascists’?

So you feel there is global warming, you’re just not sure it’s operating in your neck of the woods?

Economic impact? What valuation are you putting on human life these days?

[quote]oboffill wrote:
JPBear wrote:
I don’t know anything about science but I have always rejected the whole global warming gloom and doom story, mostly because it seems to come from the granola munching tree hugging commie types.

Wow, that’s a damn ignorant comment. Not believing in something just because some crazies believe in it tells the world that you really don’t care about facts. What concerns you is popularity of opinion among like-minded individuals.
[/quote]

Wow, lighten up. She’s right, they are a bunch of commie tree-hugging hippies. You don’t wear red, yellow, and green together all the time, do you oboffill? Smoke a doobie and relax, man. :slight_smile:

I very ocasionally look at T-Nation but I did recently to respond to TC’s crusade to keep DHEA legal.

When I noticed this post, I had to respond. I’m a private meteorologist and write a weatherblog at http://hawaiiweatherman.blogspot.com

I have a lot of fun with the Global Warming Religion and it undoubtedly frustrates some folks that there is a professional meteorologist with a MS in the field who has been a long time skeptic.

I used to believe that I was the only meteorologist who could claim to have deadlifted more than 500#. Then I saw a guy on the Weather Channel named Joe Bastardi (maybe it was AccuWeather) who looked like he could rival that. He also disses the GWR.

[quote]oboffill wrote:
JPBear wrote:
I don’t know anything about science but I have always rejected the whole global warming gloom and doom story, mostly because it seems to come from the granola munching tree hugging commie types.

Wow, that’s a damn ignorant comment. Not believing in something just because some crazies believe in it tells the world that you really don’t care about facts. What concerns you is popularity of opinion among like-minded individuals.

The story of the evaporating forest is sad, though.[/quote]

I think she makes a good point here.

She does not trust the messenger so she questions the message.

When the oil companies fund a study that contains information that is is contrary to the theory of CO2 induced global warming, people tend to dismiss it because they understand that the oil companies may be biased.

Many groups in the environmental movement are also biased. They need to preach doom and gloom in order to raise money.

The environmental movement is very strong on fundraisers, lawyers and lobbyists but is comparitively weak on scientists.

I do not know what the truth is but there is a lot of conflicting data out there.

There is no question that CO2 emissions have been going up for over 100 years, yet as CO2 emmissions rose from the 1930’s to the 1970’s global temperature dropped. Some blame this on volcanic action, but 40 some years is a long time to have the temperature drop.

The US has collected the most accurate temperature data since the 1880’s.

The temp in the US has risen a total of 0.6 degrees C since the 1880’s.

Surface temperatures have been climbing pretty steadily in recent years, however the satellite data shows a different trend in the atmosphere.

Glaciers are melting in many parts of the world. Glaciers are advancing in Iceland.

The Antarctic Peninsula temperature is rising, but the rest of the continent temperature is dropping. While the peninsula is shedding ice, the rest of the continent is adding ice.

The computer predictions of climate change have been so far off they are embarrassing.

I am a huge proponent for the environment and energy conservation and I believe the CO2 induced global warming theory has become so politicized that it is currently impossible to make an informed decision on the subject.

You are right about the disappearing forests. That is terrible.

Nope, nobody in the world agrees that this global warming thing has any bearing on anyone…

Yep, looks like it would be costly to try to do anything about it. Some excerpts for the lazy… notice that China and India appear to agree also and then see if you can read between the lines.

Dammit, we aren’t playing roulette if we curb our own pollution levels. We are playing roulette now. I hope the human race gets lucky for a change…


OSLO (Reuters) - Unconvinced that the world is warming,
President Bush looks set to shun pleas by his main industrial allies to step up a fight against climate change at a Group of Eight summit next month.


The July 6-8 talks will test how far other G8 nations, and big developing countries whose leaders will also attend, are willing to stick to U.N. schemes to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases without the United States, the top polluter.


Many scientists are aghast – the science academies of all G8 nations as well as of China, India and Brazil said this month that burning of fossil fuels in power plants, cars and factories seemed the main cause of recent warming.

“I think the consensus is very, very strong and very compelling that we are on a warming trend,” said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of a panel of more than 2,000 scientists that advises the
United Nations on climate policy.


Environmentalists hail Blair’s drive against climate change, even though it always seemed wishful thinking that Washington might repay Blair’s support for the 2003 war in
Iraq by joining other G8 countries in capping greenhouse gas emissions.


G8 nations Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia have all signed up for the U.N.'s
Kyoto protocol, which aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12


Harlan Watson, the chief U.S. climate negotiator, said a U.S. drive to clean carbon dioxide emissions from coal – now one of the dirtiest fuels – and U.S. energy security were reasons to oppose emissions caps.

“Coal is around 55 percent of our electricity production. We have bountiful supplies of 200 plus years of coal at current usage,” he said. A sudden cap on carbon would force power plants to shift from coal to imports of less polluting natural gas

[quote]oboffill wrote:

Wow, that’s a damn ignorant comment. Not believing in something just because some crazies believe in it tells the world that you really don’t care about facts.[/quote]

Read what you wrote there and tell me you are serious.

By the way, I was admitting my ignorance on the subject before offering a little anecdote for interest?s sake. The commie thing was intended to be an overboard, tongue-in-cheek comment. I was trying to give the environmentalist side of the argument some credit by making fun of my own bias.

I’m sorry it went over your puny little head.

[quote]endgamer711 wrote:

Commies, eh? When was the last time you saw one of those? I guess this is another recycled word, like ‘fascists’?
[/quote]

Ha! You obviously have never lived in Canada have you? There are commies in these here parts.

[quote]
So you feel there is global warming, you’re just not sure it’s operating in your neck of the woods?[/quote]

I was asking for smart people like you to come to my aid and explain to me if perhaps something other than emissions could be causing this drop in climate. I was wondering if maybe weather patterns go through cycles. If we are pretty sure that this is being caused by our own behavior, then that personally makes me reexamine my own opinion on the whole matter. Sometimes it takes seeing something in your own back yard to do that. I am open to learning new things and questioning my own beliefs. Maybe my questions sound stupid to you. I’m sorry if they do. There are things I study diligently and consider myself knowledgeable about, but science isn’t one of those things. I thought I mentioned that.

[quote]
Economic impact? What valuation are you putting on human life these days? [/quote]

I don’t think my story contained any deaths so I am not sure what you are talking about. What matters to me in this story are people’s livelihoods. That is why I am wondering about the economic impact. I am curious about the global economic impact because I don’t believe the economic well being of people in my own home town is more important than the aggregate economic well being of our planet.