"... to lowering planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to help stave off the most drastic effects of climate change."
Thought the final deal did not achieve all that environmentalists, scientists and some countries had hoped for, it set the table for further efforts to slow down the slide toward an unlivable planet....
An unlivable planet? When did the prediction become an
unlivable planet?
The stated goal of the agreement is to begin to level off the rise in fossil fuel emissions enough to stave off an increase in atmospheric temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). That is the point at which, scientists say, the planet will be locked into an inescapable future of devastating effects of global warming, including rising sea levels, severe flooding and droughts, food and water shortages and more extreme storms.
Why would 3.6 degrees make the planet
unlivable? Why wouldn't humanity adapt to this change? I understand the argument that it would be better to avert the change, but I don't understand why we would not be able to live on Earth and why we can't explore ways in which it could be better to live on a 3.6 degree warmer Earth. Climate change has been presented as high-quality science, with the deniers as the hysterics who don't want to believe what they don't like to have to believe, but the idea that we are "locked into an inescapable future" of nothing but "devastating effects" and an "unlivable planet" doesn't impress me as science-based.
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157 comments:
What a horrible joke. They make The Oscars seem to be about a scientific reality. It's nothing but feel good moment for tree huggers.
We normal people can adjust. The wacky liberals who can't adjust to a few degrees need to do the right thing and go the way of the Jim Jones cult followers. This is a "Sky is falling" cult. Hell, a mass suicide will help the environment and the economy.
Let the cheating commence!
Its all about power and little about science.
It's all coercive progressive bullshit on stilts.
IIRC, the proposed emission controls will lower the predicted temperature rise by 0.01 degrees Celsius. Of course, the model predictions are worthless, but if you are worried about CAGW, you can keep worrying.
Several random thoughts.
G77 The United States, which has been a leader in the negotiations, said it approved of the pact, as did the European Union, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, the Marshall Islands and the 143 countries that make up the G77.
so the G8 is 8 countries, how does the G77 become 143? cell division?
$100B a year? That would make the US contribution $25-30B a year borrowed from the Chinese...
Rising sea levels.The sea has been rising continuously since the end of the last ice age, 20,000 years ago and will rise continuously until the start of the next ice age. It has nothing to do with man.
AGW will be bad?Previous warming cycles, e.g. Roman, Middle Ages, etc were drivers of intellectual break-thrus and population growth.
"make the planet unlivable"
The rich and corrupt politicians might only have to have 1 jet and 3 houses. Where would they Autumn?!
"but the idea that we are "locked into an inescapable future" of nothing but "devastating effects" and an "unlivable planet" doesn't impress me as science-based"
No shit.
Another Hoax Story. Representatives of this Country have not yet spoken on the Warmist Hoax Science. Only the Destroyer-in-Chief Obama has agreed to our demise and is dancing in the streets.
Complete and utter bullshit. Like you said, what difference would 3.6 degrees make? To start with, the projections are a farce but even if it does warm a little, it might actually make things better. More productive crop yields etc.
NOW there is sufficient room for graft.
1) During human history the Earth has been much warmer than it is today. (MWP)
2) During human history the Earth has been much colder than it is today. (mini ice age)
3) All of human existence (~200,000 years), has occurred during the current ice age, which began 2.5 million years ago.
4) All of human history (~5,500 years) and all of human civilization (~6,000) has happened in the current interglacial (which began ~11,000 years ago). An interglacial is a warming period in the middle of an ice age.
5) Humans existed for nearly 190,000 years as small bands of hunter-gathers until global warming began. Only then did we build civilizations and write history.
All in all, global warming has been pretty good for humanity.
Roger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr
@bradplumer Bottom line:
Requires deployment of >1 GW carbon-free energy (consumption, not capacity) every day starting 10 yrs ago til 2050
I for one am not of the many stupid deniers that populate your blog. I have absolutely believed each of the last chance predictions made over the course of the last two decades; as has been repeatedly predicted it is now at the end of 2015 just way too bloody late to do anything. http://climatechangepredictions.org/categories/last_chance
Anyone who thinks there is more time to act is just denying the science that has repeatedly predicted that by this point in time we will have already reached and gone past the point of no return. You can stick your heads in the sand and pretend that all those predictions were wrong (and that we still have time), but that is just disgusting and abject denialism of science.
SCIENCE has already predicted and proven that it is now too late to do anything to save the planet. We should stop with the denial, and just relax and have fun during these last years before the deluge.
So what is the ideal temperature? They still don't know that, so how can they say that global warming (if it is even happening) is good or bad?
The "normal" earth climate is a great deal warmer than that, and the dinosaurs did just fine with a very luxuriant plantlife to support them.
"Ice ages," like the one we are living in, are "abnormal."
This is all a waste of time as the human race was extinct years ago from the Population Bomb !
Billions in climate aid pledges have 'wild west' accounting
"LE BOURGET, France (AP) -- There's a lot of money in climate financing. Six years ago, rich nations pledged that by 2020 they would provide $100 billion a year in aid, loans and private money to help poorer nations cope with climate change and wean themselves off fossil fuels. This week in Paris, they're pledging even more, and discussing whether developing nations like China need to pony up, too.
But what exactly are they paying for? In the wild west of climate finance, the funding includes things like a "love movie festival," research on elephant sounds and even new coal plants."
Lifted from Insty:
"Richard Feynman: “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
Did Harrison fly his private plane to the conference? Or just up the coast for a cheeseburger?
> Harrison Ford has warned: ''there won't be any d**n people' left on the planet if we don't do something about climate change."
> Ford recently revealed in an interview the extent of his love for piloting, telling Britain’s Live magazine, “Learning to fly was a work of art. I’m so passionate about flying I often fly up the coast for a cheeseburger"
Canada and Siberia would be more appealing.
Lifted from Insty:
"Richard Feynman: “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
Actually, that's the banner from the top of the Web page of Don Surber's blog.
Ann as usual skewers the language when the language is used to obfuscate. In this case, it's worse by far than the aspects she picks up on. Take the sheer fakery of even pretending to such precision as is suggested by the 3.6 degrees F target ceiling. The models on which the entire warming alarmist juggernaut is based have all been off substantially all the way along already as to what they have predicted so far, yet we are supposed to accept that this agreement can calibrate to a tenth of a degree where average temperatures will be 84 years from now? As to the billions pledged, I wouldn't worry. As best I can see, the developing nations demand it in order to justify doing nothing on their own to curtail their fossil fuel use now (and hopes of snookering the rich nations out of a small portion at least) and the developed nations promise it so as to preen before the mirror as to their pure intentions and justify various wasteful subsidies to clean energy boondoggles at home. Little to none of this wealth transfer will ever happen.
The Drill SGT said...
"Rising sea levels.The sea has been rising continuously since the end of the last ice age, 20,000 years ago and will rise continuously until the start of the next ice age. It has nothing to do with man."
Actually, it appears that a small part of the ongoing rise in sea levels is due to our pumping water from aquifers, whioh then ends up in the sea. And, in fact, if there were 2 or 3 degrees of global warming, the resulting rise in sea level would be problematic for people who already live at sea level. Other than that, it would likely be a net positive. But if you live in Bangladesh, I could see how you might be a bit worried. Or India, which is where all the Muslims in Bangladesh would go if the sea rose. God help India.
But the models which formed the basis of the catastrophic predictions that propelled charlatans like Al Gore and NASA idiot James Hansen to stardom have been conclusively disproved by the now-18-year "pause" in warming, during which the CO2 level has gone right on rising as expected. In fact, I suspect that the slight warming due to CO2 and other greenhouse gases is temporarily masking something far worse than AGW; NAGC. Non-Anthropogenic Global Cooling.
Yes, you heard it here first, folks, but you'll be hearing a lot more of it soon. The whole world is going to freeze solid right down to the Equator! And the only solution is -- more money and more power for Lefties! Yay! And ignore all those Muslims we are settling in your country, they are not a problem. These Muslims are not the Islamists you are looking for.
This is all about power and control. Earlier this week, conference attendee CA Governor Jerry Brown was quoted "Never Understimate the Coercive Power of the Central State".
http://bit.ly/1M9Bfpv
Oh - and taxes. Bonus quote: “You can be sure California is going to keep innovating, keep regulating,” the Democratic governor said. “And, shall I say, keep taxing.”
Nevada's looking pretty good about now.
Expecting 2.5 inches of rain this weekend in the Twin Cities. If that isn't proof of global warming I don't know what is!
The whole things a scam to transfer wealth from rich, industrial nations to third world shit holes. The opportunity for graft and corruption will be unprecedented.
It doesn't impress you as science based because it isn't science based.
David Friedman has discussed this on his blog a number of times, focusing on the issues of how big the rise is and how high the cost of coping will be: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com
---An unlivable planet? When did the prediction become an unlivable planet?
A lefty was posting on another site and said that at 40 degrees C (120 F) all life would end 'like children dying in a hot car'. When I stopped laughing I reminded him that Iraq and Saudi Arabia see those temperatures in summer and our GI’s performed their duties while carrying plate armor on their bodies.
Oddly, this lefty says he’s a lawyer. He must have had his common sense surgically removed.
If we kill all the cattle, the reduction in methane will be H-U-G-E...
Meat eaters must pay a surcharge, it's the only way :-)
...it set the table for further efforts to slow down the slide toward an unlivable planet....
There's an old saying in the corrupt system of Massachusetts political patronage: "Don't kill the job."
"When did the prediction become an unlivable planet?"
Oh, you Denialist, you. Don't you know that 99.44% of Scientists agree...
"... food and water shortages..."
And I still really want to know how you get from a longer growing season to worldwide famine.
Whatever is happening in Paris is irrelevant:
Asia is building 500 coal plants and another 1,000 are on the drawing boards.
Roger Pielke Jr. @RogerPielkeJr
@bradplumer Bottom line:
Requires deployment of >1 GW carbon-free energy (consumption, not capacity) every day starting 10 yrs ago til 2050
He goes on to say that's making 1,500 2MW windmills per day from emission free sources.
Unicorn farts.
Unknown said...
A lefty was posting on another site and said that at 40 degrees C (120 F)
40C = 104F = the average high June temp in Phoenix. July avg high is 107.
World's highest recorded temp is 134 F. In exotic California.
In the near future, they will claim credit for having stopped global warming.
Why does action on climate change always seem like a scheme for extremely rich people to feel important and hold events? They can jet around to meetings and summits, make serious-sounding announcements, furrow their brows in concern for the temperature welfare of all of us, their pawns. This allows them to socialize together and have fun without feeling frivolous. I think I'd rather they all went back to fox hunting.
Michael K. is correct. Those of us living in the rubble of a once-great civilization brought down by mass starvation and pandemic disease can only hope global warming finally puts us out of our misery.
Since Snowball Earth didn't seem to pan out.
Actually, the United States didn't agree to anything. At least not until the Senate ratifies this comical bit of birdcage lining.
Actually the United States didn't agree to anything. At least not until the Senate ratifies this comical piece of birdcage lining.
To avoid the "denier" label, you must accept three propositions.
1) The earth is warming.
2) Man, via CO2, is the primary cause.
3) The only way to prevent to the end of life on earth is the immediate and radical cessation of C02 generation. Technology can neither prevent nor help us manage the catastrophe.
What do you call the guy who finishes last in a Triathlon? A triathlete. What do you call a person who accepts points one and two above but has some doubts about point three? A science denier.
Unlivable is part of the scam.
Because the crisis is so, so horrible, heroic measures must be undertaken. At US taxpayer expense, of course.
The other part of the scam is that the goal to avert the crisis is 85 years away! After everyone who was at the conference and all their kids are dead.
Al Gore predicted the end of the world early in 2016. He made this prediction about 15-20 years ago. That fraud needs to be called out.
This Global Warming thing is the biggest scam in the history of the world. A complete disgrace.
"Show me the Money !"
Stop all this useless blather. I haven't got all day. I have to get back to Kiribati !
Watt's has good analysis:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/12/final-draft-of-cop21-reached-with-a-1-year-opt-out-clause/
Sarah's mind slips wistful into the past, to that One Hot Summer in 1957 in Madison County...
"My Goodness, Mandingo, it has been One Hot Summer here this year."
"I don't know: I seems to remember last summer was pretty hot, too. Most summers I can remember have been pretty hot, I reckon. Jess have to live with it, I guess."
"Easy for you to say, Mandingo: you Negroes were made for the hot, sweaty jungle. Us white people are more sensitive to the heat."
"It must be tough sometimes, being white."
"My grandmother says that when she was a child sometimes it would take four Negroes fanning her just to be comfortable enough to drink her sweet tea."
"That's funny, Miss Sarah."
"Funny? How so, my Mandingo?"
"You white people used to have us Negroes do everything for you."
"I don't see that as funny, Mandingo. I wouldn't mind me having some Negroes to help me with my daily routine. You know, washing and fetching things. The past might've been a better way, you know. "
"I don't knows about that, Miss Sarah. I remember seeing the whip marks on my Grandfather's back when I was a child."
"He must've been a bad Negro to deserve such a whipping. Did he rape a white woman?"
"No, nothing like that, Miss Sarah."
"Then what was it?"
"What it was was the Master didn't like him complaining about the Heat..."
I am Laslo.
Everything about "glo-bull warming" is a lie, a hoax based on Communism-turned-"environmentalism", the ultimate "watermelon" fantasy. (Watermelon; green on the outside, red in the middle.)
We are far more likely to experience widespread COOLING than warming, because the Sun appears to be entering one of its intermittent 'quiet" phases. The difference is a few fractions of a percent - but enough to affect climate far more than any amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
I love this video that was put out prior to this latest boondoggle. He states that the US had signed up for an 80% emissions cut by the year 2050. So, what does that mean? To meat this goal we'd essentially have to go back to emission levels we were at in 1870.
As point of comparison he notes that the people of Nigeria exhibit .2 tons of carbon dioxide per person. Nigeria. Which barely has electricity. And there are only three cars for every 100 people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvlCu6AkLBg
Now, you can agree or disagree with his assertions, but if you disagree, please explain where he's wrong. For those who want this, do you really thing it feasible? And what modern appliances are you willing to forgo? Do you have a car? are you on the internet?
Those pushing this are big on giving us these lofty goals, but they never describe the implications of their proposed goals.
And again, this was the LAST proposal of the administration. I'ld love to hear what pie in the sky dreams they have now.
Now that energy prices are about to skyrocket, is there some sort of rebate or tax credit in place for those of us who are childfree, who have already done our part in not doubling our carbon footprint by breeding. And we have done our part in conserving water, plants and animals of the planet.
It's the spawn of the breeders who will go on both to contribute the most to "climate change" and to benefit from all those expensive measures taken to prevent it.
Will we see a continuation of child tax-credits to add to the problem?
"When did the prediction become an unlivable planet? "
About the same time I started hearing people inflate the already bogus/misleading 97% consensus figure to 98%. Cooling, Warming, Changing..hell..next up: "Climate Stasis"
On cue, Facebook peeps have reacted to a warm December in Wisco coinciding with the Climate Fraud Conference. I posted a link to completely apolitical weather data showing that day to be 2 degrees below the record set 100 yrs ago. It was "liked"..and I just know they felt it was supportive to the alarm...
I receive the Dem troop orders emails (far more frequent than anything frmo Repubs or conservatives). I see it in my email and there it is on facebook.. I don't get the sense they ever get a moment to think before they're ordered to act.
Climate change, baby. Cool!!
My enthusiasm for this historic pact is tempered by the thought that where I am sitting was covered by a half-mile of ice during the last glaciation 18,000 years ago and will be again, maybe soon.
It's even worse science if you know some of the ingredients.
The planet is unliveable in places where there is little electricity thats for sure. . Here though, we all have the internet and air conditioning and cars. Sounds like they could have a little of what we have. But the environmentalists hate black people.
The great part of this deal is that it doesn't have to go before the Senate for ratification. Obama is going to commit the entire country to this hoax all by his" onesie". The problem of course is going to come in the financing and in the courts when the executive branch tries to take extra -legal action or wants financing.
Sooner or later this hoax will explode. It is interesting that El Nino is having a much greater impact on our current climate than any of the dire - and unsupported - predictions, but there is no call to "do something" about El Nino. It's just a natural phenomenon.
"When did the prediction become an unlivable planet?" When the old memes didn't work anymore and the alarmists needed a new one.
"Why would 3.6 degrees make the planet unlivable? Why wouldn't humanity adapt to this change?" Don't you know that adaptation is a denialist trope?
"I understand the argument that it would be better to avert the change, but I don't understand why we would not be able to live on Earth and why we can't explore ways in which it could be better to live on a 3.6 degree warmer Earth." Lots of things you don't "understand" when you assume arguments are put forth in good faith, that logic and evidence matter, and that what you don't "understand" can all be cleared up with just a little more intellectual effort. Of course, in the real world of Prog politics arguments are tools, data are to laugh, and your or anyone else's "understanding" is irrelevant.
its not like a rise of 3 degrees is going to make us melt. If the water levels are going to rise, start building levees. Thats a lot cheaper than going back to emission levels from 1870. Not even Leonardo DiCaprio is going to agree to that.
"The final agreement would include a commitment to keeping temperature rises “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels with a target of keeping them at 1.5C. Ministers are meeting on Saturday afternoon to decide whether or not to approve the agreement."
Is there a like a societal thermostat we have where we can crank up or dial back the temperature? So simple. All we have to do is keep the temperature at 2c above pre industrial levels. Problem solved!
So, how do you propose to actually do that?
.............................
"An unlivable planet? When did the prediction become an unlivable planet?"
"Today, the scientific community is virtually unanimous: climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and we have a moral responsibility to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy and leave this planet a habitable planet for our children and our grandchildren."
Bernie Sanders, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/us/politics/democratic-debate-transcript.html?_r=0
90% of the planet's history is an ice age. Life nealy got wiped out when photosynthesis basically stopped during the Snowball Earth era.
Warming is good for life. Earth's biosphere absolutely flourished during the dinosaur age, when CO2 levels were more than five times higher than they are now.
So what is the ideal temperature? They still don't know that, so how can they say that global warming (if it is even happening) is good or bad?
There is no Platonic ideal temperature. However, people have settled in various places, built houses and office buildings and power plants and such, cleared fields and planted crops, pastured animals--mostly within a fairly narrow range of climate in the last 200 years. A big enough temperature change (going up or going down) would mean a lot of changes would have to be made. Expensive and potentially wrenching changes.
The desire to bring average temperatures back to where they were in 1900 or so is profoundly conservative, even reactionary. Of course, much of environmentalism is.
But just think what a rebuke to ISIS this will be seen as. Sorry.ISI-S/L/Tom Daschle.
The "warmists" have a theory. They have all programmed it into their models. At a certain level of temperature increase, "positive feedback" causes the CO2 warming to feed upon itself to initiate other warmings. A catastrophic rise thus begins.
Of course this only a theory with no evidence to back it up. But it sure scares people who believe any computer model offered to them. In actuality, the feedback might not even be positive - CO2 warming might induce other negative warming effects.
But don't try to argue with a media reader who has seen a graph produced by a computer.
I have little to add to this conversation so I think I'll just quote Zerohedge (which is rare in and of itself):
"The 31-page pact does not have binding language or a mechanism to force countries to live up to the promises to cut greenhouse gases"
This agreement is meaningless.
Climate change "science" is not so much high quality science as it is low quality propaganda. When I was 32 years old Time magazine had a cover story saying I was going to freeze to death because of a coming Ice Age. Now that I'm 72, Time wants to tell me that I'm in danger of burning up. Can't those twits at Time make up their minds?
Read/Watch this by the founder of Greenpeace and tell me we have a problem with CO2.
http://www.thegwpf.org/patrick-moore-should-we-celebrate-carbon-dioxide/
There is no Platonic ideal temperature. However, people have settled in various places, built houses and office buildings and power plants and such, cleared fields and planted crops, pastured animals--mostly within a fairly narrow range of climate in the last 200 years. A big enough temperature change (going up or going down) would mean a lot of changes would have to be made. Expensive and potentially wrenching changes.
Actually, no. The economic life of the buildings that would be potentially lost (if you can believe this nonsense) is shorter than the time frame of rising seas, cleared fields, etc. In the first (and probably second) world, migrating crops is not that big of a thing. You just get different seed, and maybe do irrigation a little different. But you have decades, maybe centuries, when the needed changes need years.
Read/watch this by Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace and tell me if you think we still have problem with humans producing CO2: http://www.thegwpf.org/patrick-moore-should-we-celebrate-carbon-dioxide/
1.5 Degrees in 100 years is the most current data I've read. And that's only with a lot of asterisks stating that everything must go just as the models show it or it might be less. Not sure where 3.5 degrees came from. I suspect from such renowned scientists as Leo DiCaprio and Al Gore? Or maybe Michael Mann? Sure, Dr. Mann can prove anything he wants. And if you don't believe it, he'll sue you in court.
Nice movement you had there. Sure would be a shame if nobody played along. Sure would be a shame if nature refused to play along.
Now, here is a new one!"
Whatever the temp was when we had alligators in the arctic seems optimum to me. And furthermore, although I have never seen data on the maximum bushels per acre of corn grown on a glacier, I would be willing to bet it isn't much what we are getting in Iowa now.
"This agreement is meaningless."
Shhhh! Don't tell Daschle!
"Grant said...
The whole things a scam to transfer wealth from rich, industrial nations to third world shit holes. The opportunity for graft and corruption will be unprecedented.
12/12/15, 2:21 PM"
It's worse than that.
It's wealthy countries bribing the governments of third-world nations to block industrialization -- to keep their people in poverty.
Sure, that's not the stated intention. But that's the actual effect.
It's all about control of people by government with the elite running the show. BTW, Paris has pretty much the same Prescription as when they were hysterical about an ice age in the 70s.
As usual, power must be taken out of the hands of the people and given to...politicians.
I particularly like predictions of massive numbers of human deaths from sea-level increases, which are supposed to average no more than a few centimeters a year over the next century. High tide will kill millions, just because they won't know where to go. It's science, don't you know?
Lol you think it's about science
Meanwhile, POTUS, FLOTUS and COTUS plan two weeks of sun and fun in beautiful, tropical Hawaii to celebrate the good news. Never mind the fleet of aircraft and motor vehicles shuttled halfway around the heating planet to make it happen. Just the cost of doing business.
I'm wondering, will the FIRST couple will need separate air accommodations? Will Swaggy need to fly back for some important photo op? I'm sure hoping Congress passes a budget! Will FLOTUS need to extend her time there to enjoy herself, like last year. Will the COTUS need time away from Mom and Dad, maybe Ibiza? Can't wait to see the body surfing and church service pictures.
I no longer worry about the expense to the debt ridden country. Nothing is too good for Swaggy and his girls. I do worry about the damage done to the our fragile planet. I'm sure that Josh ha great answers for all the questions he will receive about the environmental cost of all this travel. After all, Bush was always on vacay!
Classic Ann throwing red meat to the Althouse Hillbillies! Though Ann, I hope you don't have any grandchildren that will discover that you treated their future in such a cavalier manner.
Is Virgil really Laslo posting under another name? Well done!
Climate change hysteria is the Marxism of the chattering classes.
Actually, I stopped at the notion of 195 countries. Really?
A bit of comic relief--George Carlin's take on Climate Change:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BB0aFPXr4n4
This is the epitome of "Let them eat cake."
1.5 Degrees in 100 years is the most current data I've read. And that's only with a lot of asterisks stating that everything must go just as the models show it or it might be less. Not sure where 3.5 degrees came from. I suspect from such renowned scientists as Leo DiCaprio and Al Gore?
Well if you don't know the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit you probably should STFU before you make fun of Al Gore and Leo DeCaprio.
And Althouse wonders if I think her commenters are stupid. The answer is obvious.
Factor in that CO2 has no effect at all on temperature. Zero effect. And everybody knows it.
Then defend the scam artists as if they are saving us.
Humans have thrived on this planet for 18K plus years. During those 18K years and has been a helluva lot HOTTER and a helluva lot COLDER. Those warm periods and cold periods swung FAR outside the range of 2 degrees FH or 3.6 degrees C. And what happened during those WARM periods and COLD periods? People continued to thrive. And they did so with far LESS technology and advantage than we have today. And during WARM periods the thrived even more easily than they did during the COLD periods. It's almost like the participants in the Climate Summit - who each, individually, blew more carbon out the ass end of their airplane than me, my children, my parents and our extended families will emit in three generations, just want to control our lives. F-them.
I'm playing golf tomorrow morning... in New England! Explain to me again why this is bad?
Humans have thrived on this planet for 18K plus years. During those 18K years and has been a helluva lot HOTTER and a helluva lot COLDER. Those warm periods and cold periods swung FAR outside the range of 2 degrees FH or 3.6 degrees C. And what happened during those WARM periods and COLD periods? People continued to thrive. And they did so with far LESS technology and advantage than we have today. And during WARM periods the thrived even more easily than they did during the COLD periods. It's almost like the participants in the Climate Summit - who each, individually, blew more carbon out the ass end of their airplane than me, my children, my parents and our extended families will emit in three generations, just want to control our lives. F-them.
" I hope you don't have any grandchildren that will discover that you treated their future in such a cavalier manner."
I don't know if she does but I do and I have two families of grandchildren. One that is conservative and realistic. The other is typical lefty and assumes all will go as they desire.
The "models" are laughable but understandable with idiots like you who know no science or math assuming that money grows on trees and that wishing will make it so.
An unlivable planet? When did the prediction become an unlivable planet?
Coming into a discussion with some basic knowledge is always a good thing. What percentage of humanity do you think lives in areas directly threatened by sea level rise?
What proportion of tropical pests and diseases would you guess are less dangerous or destructive than temperate zone pests or diseases?
Climate change has been presented as high-quality science, with the deniers as the hysterics who don't want to believe what they don't like to have to believe, but the idea that we are "locked into an inescapable future" of nothing but "devastating effects" and an "unlivable planet" doesn't impress me as science-based.
The thing about appeals to one's own, vague impressions, is that they're not very "science-based", either. Much less so, in fact. The fact is that climate change is here and it is hard to point to something good it's done. Tropical pests causing more problems for American crops in the south and melting permafrost leaving Alaska's civil infrastructure more unstable are not good things. We don't know if California's five-year drought is a direct effect of this either, but it's hard to see how that would be a good thing if it is. Same with these polar winters that have disabled our economies for the last two years. And with the bleaching of the coral, it's hard to see how an acidified ocean, which makes mollusks incapable of keeping their shells from melting, would be a good thing.
We could be talking about altering the entire ocean's ecosystem and whether it can support sea life that we rely on for food and much more, and you're hoping for a miraculous way that all of these things might somehow end up as good things. I think those who are uncomfortable by the actions of those who rely on evidence and rational thought should bring some of their own to the table. A far-off possibility is no such thing.
Quantum mechanics, for instance, predicts that while it's theoretically possible for all the molecules in a ball to simultaneously orient upward, the statistical probability is so low that spheres never seem to spontaneously levitate. Your Christmas wish for a beneficial global warming is akin to that. Perhaps it's theoretically possible, if incredibly unlikely. But "why" is the question you would need to answer. Science already knows why and how it's bad. At the least, people for hoping it to be good could give an explanation for why they think it would be good.
The "models" are laughable but understandable with idiots like you who know no science or math assuming that money grows on trees and that wishing will make it so.
How theoretical world do you have to live in to cast the northerly spread of tropical pests or the melting permafrost of Alaska as "models"? See, the people in those regions don't pretend climate change isn't here. But I guess that your ideology makes it seem so. Economics before natural science. The solution is to pay off the starving polar bears with greenbacks and to bribe the northerly spreading tropical pests with mortgage-backed securities. The natural world needs to learn that economics comes first. More than just a science, economics is the king of all ideologies. Somehow we will one day teach all those affected by a toxic spill that they were just serving the greater economic good, and playing an important role in keeping us free. Pollution is a good thing, industries never distort science for their own short-term gain, and tax cuts will keep us solvent by forcing spending to decrease. And prayer is a better way of treating disease than medicine. These essentials in the canon of the conservative catechism will one day be supported by all, but in the meantime we can call all those who are not convinced "idiots" and "liberals".
So I guess conservatives now believe evolution is important, as they assume entire ecosystems will adapt fast enough to keep up with the "needs" of the next quarterly financial cycle.
The answer is to make every invertebrate and fish a shareholder. Send them a recent stock portfolio update and then they will surely agree that their survival is of no consequence to supporting the cycle of life on this planet.
Money before life. That's the way it's always worked and the way it always will.
3.6 degrees F = 2 degrees C, a nice round number.
Same as translating the 10 kilometers wide (meaning "quite large") meteorite that did not cause the dinosaurs to go extinct - not even the non-avian ones - into 6.2 miles wide, or even 6.214 miles.
"So I guess conservatives now believe evolution is important, as they assume entire ecosystems will adapt fast enough to keep up with the "needs" of the next quarterly financial cycle."
You have the oddest beliefs about what conservatives do and do not believe, R&B.
There is no Platonic ideal temperature. However, people have settled in various places, built houses and office buildings and power plants and such, cleared fields and planted crops, pastured animals--mostly within a fairly narrow range of climate in the last 200 years. A big enough temperature change (going up or going down) would mean a lot of changes would have to be made. Expensive and potentially wrenching changes.
Actually, no. The economic life of the buildings that would be potentially lost (if you can believe this nonsense) is shorter than the time frame of rising seas, cleared fields, etc. In the first (and probably second) world, migrating crops is not that big of a thing. You just get different seed, and maybe do irrigation a little different. But you have decades, maybe centuries, when the needed changes need years.
When I said "a big enough temperature change," I also meant "in a short enough time." Sorry that wasn't obvious. As you imply, large change in a long period of time is a lot easier to "mitigate" than one in a short period of time.
It is one thing to rebuild a building 10 miles away when it wears out. It is another thing to move whole sections of a city at once. A lot of agriculture (and even more people) is not in the first world; if quick changes had to be made, things would get ugly.
"The "models" are laughable but understandable with idiots like you who know no science or math assuming that money grows on trees and that wishing will make it so."
Michael K., I find it amusing that people who think you can take on hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars of debt each year indefinitely have a sincere concern about the future of the country.
As Iowahawk tweeted: "We've come up with a plan to control temperatures in 2065," say governments that will all collapse by 2025.
There have been studies done showing that we could adapt to a 3.5 degree rise in temperatures much easier than we could try to prevent a 3.5 degree rise in temperature, if it ever happens, but no; the Left wants to legislate us all back to the Stone Age. Fascists, all of them.
I was being facetious.
What Roger Sweeny said.
When did the prediction become an unlivable planet?
Maybe about two or three years ago, I think.
The reason for 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit is that the lowest level at which you could hope to stabilize the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, assuming you have it right what causes it to go up, would leave a temperature rise of 3.6 degreees Fahrenheit in the climate models that show the most extreme effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on temperature.
The whole thing is reasoned backwards from the maximum, and I mean really maximum, political results they can get.
The claim is: Action is urgent and disaster preventable but just barely preventable, but maybe disaster won't happen even if the goals are missed, which they will be of course, because the climate models might overestimate the effects of carbon dioxide.
Of course there couldn't be anything more wrongheaded. For one thing, if temperature goes up, the earth can be temporarily and reversibly cooled by some idea s mentioned in Freakonomics -- except that they've been taken off the table by international agreement.
And this agreement, as announced on televison, seems to be an agreement NOT to control burning of carbon based fuels, nothing so measuable as that, and not even to control the level of carbon dioxode in the atmposphere, but to control temperature, as if the models were estbalished facts, and we knew how to do that.
And if course it has not been established that a temperature rise is bad. It's now supposed to be because higher temperatures are supposed to cause greater evaporatoion of water (more fresh water in the world!) leading to changes in rainfall patterns - more irregular rain, so more floods and droughts and severe storms. And the oceans rise maybe more than otherwise would.
They don't talk about any good effects, like there couldn't be any. But any change has got to have pluses and minuses. You get a longer growing season and faster growing crops. Milder weather in December and January.
Anybody really miss early winter?
as was pointed out in tuesday's hearing,
http://www.steynonline.com/7353/too-big-to-bomb
Ain't mass hysteria a beautiful thing?
walter said...12/12/15, 4:35 PM
But just think what a rebuke to ISIS this will be seen as.
It seems to me that everything that ISIS and al Qaeds are trying to do would reduce carbon emissions. Is that not true?
China doesn't have to do anything.
Any nation that gets the designation "Developing country" (e.g., China, India) just are asked to make voluntary commitments. America, on the other hand, must regulate itself into oblivion.
Iranian nukes - stopped (with diplomacy not war / or not)
Climate change - stopped (oceans will soon respond / or not)
Al-Queda - on the run (or not)
ISIS - contained (or not)
Homland safe - TBD
Health care - millions more covered (with Medicaid)
Great Recession - averted (no shovel ready jobs-spent trillions)
Stock market - IRA looks good (artificially primed-QE)
Deficit - cut in half (after running it up to >$1T)
Republicans - demonized and strawmanned (totally not a challenge)
Putin - well, that's another story
China - another long sad story
DOJ - politicized
IRS - politicized
DHS - politicized
ICE - neutered
MSM - neutered
Local popo - neutered
Lilly Ledbetter - got a raise or something
Celebrity status - greatly improved
Golf game - greatly improved
Party skills - greatly improved
Constitution - shredded
I'd say we have a transformational POTUS in the history books!
"I am come Obama, Savior of Worlds"
Snork!
This is an important pact if you 100% committed to:
1. Direct cause and effect CO2 emissions and temperature
2. Significant amount of CO2 emissions are man-made.
3. Significant amount of man-made CO2 is controllable.
4. Belief that reduction in man-made controllable emissions will off-set any normal climarte variations.
5. Belief that current models accurately predict the amount of change that will occur with suggested reductions.
6. That the resulting negative climate events will be as dire as predicted.
7. Current actions that reduce emissions will not cause other dire consequences, e.g. greater poverty through higher energy costs
As someone who has spent significant amounts of time creating multiple regression models in order to predict future events, I am not committed to the accuracy of any of these models.
Second, the point of Ann's post was that these dire events may not be that dire. The gradual rise of the oceans will not kill anyone per se. People will move. People have always moved. They moved from Greenland when it froze. Citizens of the Maldives will not drown. Also, the rise of sea levels may or may not happen because the relationship of sea temperatures (the most important factor in sea level rise) to CO2 emissions isn't remotely cut and dried. The dire predictions of ocean temperature rise and acidification isn't tracking the doomsday scenario. Of course, it rarely does.
And finally, dire predictions of climactic events such as extreme weather events isn't at all conclusive. It is based on theory and supposition, not regression models. For example, hurricanes have not increased as temperatures and CO2 have increased.
I think the science died as soon as we went from warming to climate change. I think the thought of population loss to the fly-over states has progressives screaming silently.
What I just wrote may be a crime in a few years.
If you bother to read the IPCC, one of the first thing you notice is that the IPCC's authors talk in terms of probabilities, while liberal intellectuals, MSM 'journalists', and especially liberal politicians talk in terms of absolutes.
Real scientists rarely use absolutes when discussing natural phenomena.
I saw Bill Gates of Microsoft fame on CNN. I think he has lost his mind. He was talking about liquid sunshine, and how we needed to harness sunshine into chains of hydrocarbons. He also stated that "The problem of distributing chains of liquid hydrocarbons had already been solved."
He effectively described gasoline.
"This agreement is meaningless."
Not in the land ruled by Emperor Obama. The treasury will spew forth.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY, MONEY....That is all it is about. Get ready to pay more taxes everyone!!! "We are the ones" they've been waiting for...
Funny, how they all flew their private jets over there. Thank God they are so concerned about us driving SUV's....Hypocrites.
I think that one of the more hilarious parts of this was President Obama telling us that 99.7% of scientists agree on this. Which, of course, is up from the 97% figure that has been repeatedly, and decisively, debunked and discredited. That is the thing that drives me crazy - that he thinks that we are so stupid, and so willing to follow whatever we are told, that we will follow him wherever he goes, despite probably having even less of a scientific background than AlGore (who infamously had a C- and a D+ in his two bonehead science classes at Harvard). Obama opines like he is an expert here, whereas in real life, likely doesn't have a clue, except that this sort of hysteria is good for his moves towards a socialist Utopia.
How theoretical world do you have to live in to cast the northerly spread of tropical pests or the melting permafrost of Alaska as "models"? See, the people in those regions don't pretend climate change isn't here. But I guess that your ideology makes it seem so. Economics before natural science. The solution is to pay off the starving polar bears with greenbacks and to bribe the northerly spreading tropical pests with mortgage-backed securities...
Picking your horrors, while ignoring the benefits. While tropical pests may advance, along with them is higher density farming. The warmth that allows tropical pests to advance also allows more tropical plants to advance. And, yes, plants overall like both warmth and CO2. And, then we get to melting permafrost. Another way of looking at that is that the line of what can be farmed advances. It turns out that the amount of land that would be opened up for farming if the freeze line moves north a bit is massive. Just look at a globe, and notice how much of Canada, Russia (esp. including Siberia), Alaska, etc. is currently unfarmable because of permafrost. At this point in time, the line of permafrost is fairly constant around the circumference of the globe, since the continents, and their plates, are currently pushed together around the northern part of the North Pole. Which means that a large percentage of the land mass of N. America and Eurasia is locked up in permafrost and can't be farmed. Which means that anyone who worries about feeding all the billions on this planet should really want a bit of global warming, enough, at least, to force the permafrost to melt a bit.
Umpteen convoluted sentences spent by Bruce Hayden to ignore the fact that temperate-zone economies have always done better and been more efficiently than tropical economies. Yet he's the one who wants to pretend the only industry worth a damn is agriculture - while he agitates for a massive and unpredictable change in the same climate conditions in which agriculture arose and was sustained for the last ten to twenty thousand years! But surely we can make our farming conditions more like those that prevail in Africa, where grain is always a plenty, mass starvation never occurs, economies flourish and governments are decent. And locusts, malaria, desertification and swamps are no argument against his desire to green Putin's Russia - a massively well-populated and stable country where our best friends and contributors to civilization have always resided.
Next time I see a UNICEF commercial with a starving Ethiopian orphan enduring flies walking around the edges of his mouth and mucous-laden face, I'll remember that he's living in precisely the climate zone that Bruce Hayden wants to impose on North America and Europe - because agriculture rulez or something.
And such a person wonders why his "scientific" expertise isn't taken seriously. Wow.
"...force the permafrost to melt a bit."
There's no "bit." Underneath that permafrost are massive stores of methane that will unlock a positive feedback loop and keep us trapped in a massive and unescapable warming gambit, for all intents and purposes, irreversibly or forever.
But that's Hayden the Problem Solver for you! Let's pretend to forget that humans can build vertically (including skyscrapers that can hold arable land) and assume that all farming has to be done on a singular flat surface of the earth. Multi-level greenhouses are an impossibility in Hayden's World, because if it didn't despoil as much precious square footage of the face of the earth as possible, it's useless. And let's remember to not treat run-off either and make for a dead-zone a la Mississippi in as many river deltas as possible.
Ok, let's simplify. If it gets much hotter, you may lose some agriculture nearer the equator, but will pick up massive temperate climate agriculture near the frost line, as it moves north. The problem with Ethiopia is not that it is tropical, but rather, that it is too dry. Hot and dry, with the hot and wet being further to the west. And, yes, one shouldn't ignore the problems of tropical insects and parasites, because arguably they are why there were no cattle in S. Africa, until they could be brought in by ship.
But, if the Ethiopians are starving, then by all means bring in grain and meat from newly opened up farmland in N. Canada, Russia, and Alaska. And, have fewer kids there. You still are ignoring that historically, mankind has flourished when it has been as hot, and even hotter, than it is now, and has suffered, through plague and starvation, when it has been cooler. The most number of people will probably do better with a slightly warmer planet, while you concentrate on the few who will do worse.
Blogger Sammy Finkelman said...
It seems to me that everything that ISIS and al Qaeds are trying to do would reduce carbon emissions. Is that not true?
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They are very selective in that decarbonization ...
I'm sure they are they are shaking in their boots seeing infidels signing up for self-flagellation.
From Rhythm and Balls "The fact is that climate change is here and it is hard to point to something good it's done."
Actually a recent report shows that perhaps the biggest effect of increased CO2 is not even related to climate - it is the substantial increase in vegetation this food for plants is naturally causing.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/benefits-of-co2.pdf
I'd only add for the sake of hyper alarmists like Rhythm, this current agreement may actually be your side's death knell. A toothless agreement that requires NO nation to set ANY specific emissions reduction targets, but merely asks them simply to TRY to come up with what is hilariously entitled their "intended nationally determined contributions" - in other words promises. And every five YEARS we will get back to you to see IF you set any INDC, IF it is significant, and IF you came close to achieving it. And despite all this iffyness, the agreement still posits either 2 C or even 1.5 C temperature target. Since no national emissions reductions targets are guaranteed at all, how can the COP21 people fool themselves into thinking these targets can be reached? In my view, they cannot so fool themselves. What they probably see is that warming is in fact not occurring as the models predict and the world will likely stay under 2 C increase for the century anyway, no matter what we do. So let's set the goal now and say later how great we are for reaching it. As Jim Hanson is honest enough to say, it's all a joke. I for one am glad.
The supposed "science" underlying the IPCC is fraudulent, contrived, and the product of a grossly incompetent science establishment. Read the emails. Read the takedowns of the laughably inept hockey stick. We were told the IPCC assessments were based solely on peer-reviewed studies. FALSE. And peer-review is a ridiculously low standard for quality.
Until climate science adopts even minimal standards for quality control, there is no reason to bother paying attention.
The part of this discussion which people like R&B don't acknowledge, or don't know, is that the AGW issue is made of multiple parts. Some have a pretty good consensus, and some just don't.
Has the temperature gone up in the last century? Very high consensus, maybe more than 97%.
Is that temperature rise attributed to CO2? Consensus that most of it is, but not 97% percent. Probably a very solid majority, but plenty of others (Curry is one) who think that natural variability may contribute a major part as well. Actual surveys show around 80% (http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/the-climate-science-consensus-is-78-84-percent).
How much will temperature rise for CO2 doubling? No consensus: the IPCC gives a range of 1.5-4.5 degrees C - a factor of three. There are a number of papers that came out after the IPCC closed submissions (Google Nic Lewis) that point strongly to the lower edge of the range, which would mean that we might stay below 2 degrees without doing anything at all. They also point strongly to the idea that the top edge of the range is extremely unlikely, which helps a lot with many of the more extreme concerns.
How much damage will the temperature rise do? No consensus at all. A lot of educated guesses by biologists and economists and stuff. Which doesn't mean that it's wise to mess around with the Earth's temperature for no good reason. It isn't. But:
How much will it cost to fix it? No consensus at all. Many economists, including some with Nobel Prizes (google Copenhagen Consensus), think that the current measures are a terrible waste of money and won't help much, and that actually fixing the problem will require suppressing the move to modernity of the Third World. That means that literally billions of people will die early in poverty who could have been saved by cheap energy. And that's a steep price tag, and should be weighed against the costs of Global Warming by anyone who really cares about the good of the world. I don't know if you get even 50% of economists to agree on this issue; the field is pretty non-settled.
Will the current measures actually fix the problem? A pretty good consensus that they will not, and further that there is no political will to do what needs to be done. It's nice that Europe is determined, but Europe isn't the issue. China and India and eventually Africa are the issue, and their lip service on what they will do later is just that, just lip service.
In summary, the strong consensus is just on the starting point of this problem. The rest is completely up for grabs. Anyone claiming "97%" is just trying to shut down discussion of a very complex set of issues.
Ok, let's simplify.
Simplify = Brucespeak for "omit facts."
If it gets much hotter, you may lose some agriculture nearer the equator,
Some? How much is this, douchebag?
but will pick up massive temperate climate agriculture near the frost line, as it moves north.
Yes, near our great ally Russia in Siberia. I already said that. What a wonderful boon to humanity it will be to give Putin that much more to do with. He just doesn't have enough already.
The problem with Ethiopia is not that it is tropical, but rather, that it is too dry.
Right. I forgot that heat waves lead to less droughts.
Hot and dry, with the hot and wet being further to the west.
In jungles. Cut down the Congo and the rain forests. What could go wrong?
And, yes, one shouldn't ignore the problems of tropical insects and parasites,
No, I think you should, actually. Your argument is much more sound once it waves away that whole thing.
because arguably they are why there were no cattle in S. Africa, until they could be brought in by ship.
Which has nothing to do with anything. We're talking science 2015 and Bruce reminds me that humans are capable of transport. As they've been for thousands of years. Thanks, Bruce.
You still are ignoring that historically, mankind has flourished when it has been as hot, and even hotter, than it is now,
Right. Like when it was as hot as it was tens of millions of years ago before humanity even existed.
The most number of people will probably do better with a slightly warmer planet,
I'm glad you've got your adjustment settings on the global thermostat down to a precision art. Yep, just dial up a few or back a few. We can do this thing. Nothing unpredicted, nothing out of control. It's all a finely tuned mechanism that humanity will be able to control with the precision of German engineering. Bruce doesn't understand where the Sahara is, that heat and drought and flooding are linked, where our cities are or how easily it would be to "move" them, but he can control global temperature exquisitely and in any direction he chooses, at any time.
while you concentrate on the few who will do worse.
90% of the planet lives close enough to sea level to be flooded out of existence but Bruce has got everyone covered! He will change the human habit of living close to bodies of water, uproot 6 - 9 billion souls (depending on population at the time) and move them to places that have no comparable history or infrastructure because that will clearly be less disruptive to our economy than simply using better energy resources.
Behold the inefficiency of right-wing ignorance!
Yep. All this was "made up" and acting to stop it a tribal political thing that must be defeated. But John Burack knows what plants eat. That's reassuring. For a minute I was worried that the atmosphere would run out of plant food. The Great Starvation of the CO2-Deprived Plants is now over!
And Stan knows that emails have put an end to what those pictures and videos show.
It's ok. Humanity will evolve to be like the ostrich, sticking its head in the sand. Stan and Jon's Ostrich Brigade are on the case!
Thanks MikeR. So we've caused the majority of what you acknowledge, but that's still not good enough to do anything about. Whatever it takes to submit. You guys are like Islamists. Denying the problem, blaming it on others, sticking heads in the sand and making sure that nothing gets done to stop it. Cast uncertainty and doubt whenever you feel you can get away with it!
Blogger MikeR
97%" is just trying to shut down discussion of a very complex set of issues.
----
"I'm your vehicle, baby
I'll take you anywhere you wanna go"
. . .because if [farming] didn't despoil as much precious square footage of the face of the earth as possible. . . . etc.
I don't regard farming (or agriculture) as a despoilation of the land. I see it as something beautiful. Is non-farmed land "better" than farmed land? Why? This is a value judgment: the idea that land in its natural state, whatever that may be, is "better" (presumably less injurious to the earth?) than cultivated land. But I don't see it as injurious. It's just a different way of using the earth. A good way. Land in its natural state is not necessarily "good" unless you regard "natural" as ipso facto good.
"So we've caused the majority of what you acknowledge, but that's still not good enough to do anything about." Is that supposed to make sense? We've probably caused the majority of what's happening, and therefore - we should think about what makes sense to do. What are the costs of action, what are the costs of inaction, and everything in between. No: we must do something!! It won't actually solve the problem, it will badly hurt developing economies, they won't actually follow the prescription. But at least it's something!
It doesn't give me confidence that you care about doing the right thing if you only look at the costs of inaction, but not the costs of action. It doesn't give me confidence that you quote the scariest scenarios, many of which the IPCC declared "extremely unlikely" (IPCC SREX). How do you expect to get anywhere if you're quoting things as facts on which we don't agree - and on which the IPCC doesn't agree? Who do you expect to convince?
It's just a different way of using the earth. A good way.
Like this, Roughcought?
Land in its natural state is not necessarily "good" unless you regard "natural" as ipso facto good.
Seeing as how that's the state in which the life around us evolved, we have no choice to see it as good. Unless you want to get rid of all the life that's evolved around us, or pretend that you can do it in a selective way.
Humans evolved near the equator in Africa. As they spread, some adapted to live through the Ice Ages. Then when the planet dramatically warmed humans adapted to that and the first cities were created. But another few degrees will kill us all. Because we're stupider than them.
But another few degrees will kill us all. Because we're stupider than them.
When you want to reimburse 90% of the planet to move its dwellings and infrastructure away from the bodies of water that will rise with the temperature, then you can do that. But I guess you weren't smart enough to figure out how you would pull that off.
"When you want to reimburse 90% of the planet to move its dwellings and infrastructure away from the bodies of water that will rise with the temperature, then you can do that."
So seaside real estate is getting cheaper? Do tell!
Only zealots and liberal arts undergrads really believe this shit. Everyone else can see 'global warming' for what it is -- a plan to remove sheckels from the purses of the poor and working classes and move them into the ever swelling purses of the rich.
These people are so stupid they can't understand Bastiat's 'broken windows fallacy.'
Instead of dismissing your nonsense as if higher insurance premiums weren't the reality or that these things were only of interest to "liberal arts undergrads and zealots", I'll instead pick up on your curious use of the word shekel. Someone on another thread went around complaining of Al Gore and his supposedly grotesque larger than life visage and (apparently) influence so much, that it reminded me of Illuminati conspiracies and images like this.
I'll leave it to you to contemplate the character and intelligence of people who placed a lot of stock in those images and ideas back in the day, and how they relate to your own way of understanding (or misunderstanding) the matter.
I want to add: just because I have pointed out R&B's incoherence on how to deal with the problem of AGW, doesn't mean that the other side can't be incoherent as well. All the posts and comments about the "fraud" of AGW are no improvement. Climate scientists are mostly like other scientists, mostly just trying to do their jobs, mostly trying to work out the truth. There is a whole lot of politics that gets in their way and a lot of group-think and a lot of jumping from facts to policy prescriptions - and unfortunately the public face of climate science tends to collect the politicians and the fanatics. But a lot of climate science is clearly correct, as anyone who studies it knows, and denying that just shows ignorance of the subject.
Posted without reading other comments, or the report out of Paris, but I suspect the 2 C threshold was chosen because of when ice sheets melt.
Oh Mike. If only everyone, including every scientist, could be as coherent as you.
But alas, none of them can be. Science is about making sense of "facts" and evidence, not about pretending that inconsistencies in them don't exist. We don't know what existed before the big bang. I guess MikeR would accuse that ignorance of being "incoherent". But it's not. It's just growing up and accepting that you don't need to know every answer to know the important answers.
But a lot of climate science is clearly correct, as anyone who studies it knows, and denying that just shows ignorance of the subject.
Ok..answer these questions:
1) What is the "correct" temperature of the Earth?
2) Why?
3) Is it true that the Earth is currently in an ice age, and that in fact all of human existence has occurred during that ice age?
4) Is it true that the Earth has been in an interglacial (a period of global warming during an ice age) for the last 11,000 years or so?
5) Isn't it true that all of human history and human civilization has taken place during this period of global warming?
Humanity ran around for 190,000 years or so in small bands of hunter-gatherers until global warming began. It was only then, in the last 6,000 years that human civilizations and history have flourished.
Climate change and global warming have been pretty good for humanity.
"Science is about making sense of "facts" and evidence"
Tsk, tsk. Look who doesn't know much about science.
Science is observe, hypothesize, experiment, repeat. Originated as natural philosophy. Founding ideas from Descartes and Bacon, though it's changed a bit from those days.
You can look it up. They have books about science, you know.
MikeR - If you look at paleoclimatology as a branch of scientific investigation, you find that it isn't very old. Tectonic plate movement wasn't accepted until the late 1950s-early 1960s. You also discover that most of the fashionable ideas about what climate was doing at various times in the Earth's past and what was causing it were thrown away after a few years. for some time variations in the Earth's orbit were blamed for things like the ice ages. Now that's right out. Human production of greenhouse gas is now considered, with little evidence, to be the most significant driver of variation in the Earth's climate, evidence to the contrary be damned.
This is driven by politics, not science. Politics is as old as the human race. Science goes back about 500 years.
The smart money is on politics.
You lost me at wikipedia, R&B.
No serious person quotes wikipedia on anything other than popular culture.
But what exactly are they paying for? In the wild west of climate finance, the funding includes things like a "love movie festival," research on elephant sounds and even new coal plants."
I suspect that most of the money will go directly into the coffers of the elite in the various corrupt hellholes euphemistically called “the Third World.” Most of these tin pot dictators and posers wouldn’t know “climate change” from their ass.
@ Althouse - Presumably you know that your question - "Why wouldn't humanity adapt to this change?" - is outside the bounds of acceptable discourse. You must now join Bjorn Lomborg and his ilk of excommunicated apostate "deniers." (You know, these are just like Holocaust deniers. Nice, huh?) You can search up "Bjorn Lomborg denier" to see all of the typical poser "fact-check" sites working to discredit him. He is a man with qualifications and the author of books and other works on the subject of climate and risk considerations. Trust you've heard of "Cool It."
I believe Lomborg accepts in general the premise that human emissions of carbon dioxide is causing (or may cause) planetary warming. However, he veered from the official state-funded-scientists' prescription of the policy and political solution (much, much, more state control and central planning and diminished wealth and living standards worldwide). He questioned the assessment of risks, costs, and benefits of the perceived problem and potential solutions against other competing risks facing humanity and individual humans living and to be living here, and got booted from the club. He may even have had the gall to asked whether the proffered solutions are not worse than the problem!
The tactics, goals, and implications of being booted from this club are covered well in the emails that were disclosed from the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit servers. Usually, it involves getting scientists expelled from peer review committees, blocking approval of articles for publication in "peer-reviewed" journals then criticizing their qualifications for lack of peer-reviewed articles, getting targeted scientists fired, and hounding and harassing targeted scientists. Look at what Judith Curry, John Christy, and Will Happer have had to endure just by following what they observe. It's outlandish.
A weak idea is one which requires that people expressing competing ideas must shut up. The trend over the last 10-15 years for these people who are on about carbon dioxide is "shut up," whether it is people holding or backed up by levers of state power claiming that "the science is settled" or "the time for debate is over," referring to people skeptical of the plainly state-directed messaging and state-funded "science" as "deniers" (which by the way is your 97%, being the percentage of Americans who mark issues other than this one as their issue No. 1), or all of the other harassment and hounding. Now, we have at least one Senator calling for RICO criminal suits against, well, anyone that does not toe the line and is of sufficient influence to warrant attention by the federal government for this harassment. As well, the New York Attorney General is using poorly drafted securities laws to bypass the First Amendment in order to harass the directors and owners of Exxon (and of course send a message to the smaller fries) for not having adopted and proclaimed views acceptable to him.
Humanity ran around for 190,000 years or so in small bands of hunter-gatherers until global warming began. It was only then, in the last 6,000 years that human civilizations and history have flourished.
Because it allowed grasses to evolve and be cultivated as cereals. But that doesn't happen in swamps and deserts. There's a reason human migration went northward instead of south.
Like this, Roughcought?
Like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=photos+shenandoah+valley+farm&newwindow=1&biw=1280&bih=541&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJ3KW3sdrJAhXD7B4KHYyRCcEQsAQIHA
Seeing as how that's the state in which the life around us evolved, we have no choice to see it as good. Unless you want to get rid of all the life that's evolved around us, or pretend that you can do it in a selective way.
No, sorry, that won't do. The fact that I don't see land in its natural state as necessarily a good thing does not mean I want to get rid of all life that's evolved around us, etc. In the event, I believe that humans are part of nature: not separate from it, not an extension of it: part of it.
Gahrie, everything you said is true. It nevertheless remains true that the current temperature is probably mostly due to CO2, and that running large-scale open-ended experiments on Earth's atmosphere is probably a bad idea.
That doesn't (necessarily) mean that it's a good idea to discard or delay modernization to avoid it. That's a weighing of evils. Certainly there are those (as I said, with Nobel Prizes) who think that mitigation of AGW is far down the list of bad uses of our money; it returns pennies on the dollar. There are lots of good things the world can do with its money to help people; some of them are hundreds of times better in terms of how much you get for your dollar.
"Because it allowed grasses to evolve and be cultivated as cereals."
This is vastly over-simplified pop-science.
Grasses didn't evolve to to be cultivated as cereals, they were selectively cultivated by man to become cereal crops. For some reason -- no one knows why -- this process began about a thousand years later in the New World than it did in the Old World.
There's a reason human migration went northward instead of south.
Human migration went in every direction. From Africa to the proverbial four corners of the world, Antarctica excepted. Including from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge and into North America, Meso America, and South America.
Because it allowed grasses to evolve and be cultivated as cereals. But that doesn't happen in swamps and deserts. There's a reason human migration went northward instead of south.
Why didn't you answer my questions?
How can we know that global warming is a problem if we don't know what temperature the earth is supposed to be at, or even what temperature is best for humanity?
I meant to say: the journey by humans across the Bering Land bridge into North and South America was a southward migration.
The difference between a global warming denier and a creationist is that people shut up creationists with refutations and "deniers" with threats of social exclusion.
Why didn't you answer my questions?
You didn't ask any questions. You just threw some rhetorical points to prove and played language games.
The difference between a global warming denier and a creationist is that people shut up creationists with refutations and "deniers" with threats of social exclusion.
For good reason. Those who take the science seriously are willing to consider the downsides of their being wrong. Whereas deniers are happy to tell those who accept the science that they should just put up with and be happy to die from all the consequences, no matter how devastating, of AGW even if their rejection of it turns out to be wrong.
So that makes them morally bad-faith actors, ipso facto. We can't sell a product for consumption in America without the manufacturer being liable for punishing lawsuits should his new thing result in loss of income, life or limb. But AGW deniers are recalcitrant to even considering their personal stake and moral culpability if it turns out the policies they pushed were wrong.
Wrong and arrogant.
You didn't ask any questions
In other words...you dislike the answers you would be forced to give.
Which kind of proves my point.
One of the safest bets you can make: that the 'consensus' number is a lie. They lie *all the time*. Of course climate change is real, and humans are changing climate change. Let's get some models of climate change that actually have predictive validity and then we can talk about whether the planet will end up colder or hotter than we want it to 100 years from now. Any change over the next 20 years just can't be significant. Consider that the true physical 0 degrees (absolute zero) is -273C. Say surface temperature is 20C. This wildly overstated change of 2C is then 0.66% It's true there are some nonlinearities around 0C that we might care about (ice). But seriously. It's gradual change that will be easy to adapt to. The economic cost of an additional few inches worth of dykes, or the cost of building elsewhere, is nothing compared to the cost that limiting CO2 emissions would impose. Nothing.
Let's talk about air pollution. Burning wood is bad for your health. Burning dirty coal is bad for your health. Forget warming (scientists can study it but it's not for politicians to talk about, yet).
"the current temperature is probably mostly due to CO2" - that's what people say. do they understand what they mean when they say it? CO2 increased steadily along with temperature - except for a 20 year span around 1950 when temperature didn't increase. Scientists might want to figure that one out before advising us on Maggie Simpson's steering wheel corrective measures. If you're curious about *reasonable* CO2-sin-religion skepticism Google Bob Tisdale.
Almost nobody is taking an honest look at the costs and benefits of increased atmospheric CO2 and average global temperature. For sure you get greater agricultural productivity. For sure changes in climate for warmer *or* colder, if large enough, are costly (because it takes a while to move fixed infrastructure to more productive regions).
Poor countries' crappy leaders can demand payments in exchange for not burning their forests. If we act like we don't care about CO2 then they can't blackmail us.
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