I have a bit of a problem with Mr. Gore-his personal carbon footprint is enormous:
-he has a string of houses that he uses rarely-one home has a heated indoor basketball court
-he has a fleet of 12 MPG SUVs
-he travels around the world, pushing his message of energy conservation (while using enormous amounts of fossil fuels)
If Gore truly belived what he preaches, he would practice it.
No, Chief, that somehow seems to be what you think, despite your repeated and express denials of exactly that point.
And you only show here that being carbon neutral does not mean that he should go into the stone age, of course one can notice that the need to keep a straw man going it is needed to continue to confuse others.
Nevertheless, many do not agree that just being carbon neutral is the only solution and Gore is criticized for that, but as always you need a big fat cite for what you claim here. Because as usual, nothing that I have seen from the right on this issue is the whole history or it is exaggerated for FUD purposes.
What is the reason you think that?
I am critical of Mr Gore’s (and my own) lack of substantive change in our personal lifestyle given that we both accept AGW as a real problem.
Refusing to personally be inconvenienced by a serious problem is not tantamount to denying it anymore than being fat means you refuse to believe obesity is a pathology.
What I’m looking for is what GIGObuster actually does on a personal scale, and what GIGObuster thinks are the best solutions to effect on a larger scale.
This is apparently such a difficult concept for you to grasp that I wonder if you have even thought of your answer to either question. Have you been so busy preaching hell that you’ve forgotten to address a plan of salvation?
Let me ask a simpler question, predicated on the general notion that efficiency in transportation will diminish AGW.
Would you fly coach if given the alternative to fly first class?
It is not the “deniers” that are the problem. It’s folks like me who refuse to sacrifice personal time, money or convenience in the name of a common good, even if the problem is real.
I already answer the larger scale ones, they are in the links provided from Skeptical Science. The problem is not wanting to deal with what actual experts recommend.
Nope, the only thing I’m doing here is showing all how unwilling you are on learning from the links provided.
I rather not fly, the anser for this is to ask the old time question: "Is this trip really necessary?
We already know that you don’t know what folks that talk about the issue are also doing. Even Gore is putting his money on reducing the footprint that he uses and making energy saving improvements on his home, he also recommends large scale solution to the problem, but we already know that you do not know that either. Not even after a complete quote was made already.
We have not had freakish weather the last few years. When will people stop saying this?
Hopefully the debate will never be “over” that means that science is failing itself. Understanding Global Climate Change is in it’s infant state and needs to continue to be studied and debated.
Yet another one that thinks that 100 years of climate science is describing an infant. General Relativity is younger than that and it is considered mature.
What you said there is ignoring also the latest, climate scientists are not making predictions about the number of extreme events like hurricanes or tornadoes coming, the most supported item is that anyhow, those events will be stronger when they come.
But, as Richard Alley told us already, just because freakish weather is not happening to your liking (and it is hard to see the extreme loss of ice in the Arctic in the summer and the increase of intensity on extreme events and spring coming early as not freakish) does not mean that scientists do not have already good empirical evidence to tell us the most likely outcome an increase in GWG will do to the world. It is like someone telling us that we should continue to discuss about gravity because it is a theory and we should continue to endlessly discuss why it is that we can not exit our homes from the window on the second floor.
Point being that some issues are well understood already and there is less discussion in scientific circles about what we should do to avoid even more disruptions than the ones already expected in the future.
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/big_picture_solutions/big-picture-solutions.html
OK, but if you have to fly, would you turn down First Class if offered, and remain in coach?
Mr Gore wouldn’t, so I’m not sure that “reduce my carbon footprint” means actually sacrificing anything. And if we all lived like Al and me, we’d be even more screwed than we are…
Nope, you do not have any idea what carbon neutral is, in reality your position depends on remaining ignorant on what it truly means. And it also depends on denying what Gore and others are doing to reduce his and to deal with the imbalance.
So, as it was demonstrated once again, you do not know what Gore is talking about, and you are only pushing a caricature up to discredit him, the only result is that it is only the ones pushing that caricature the ones that are discredited.
But it is not my problem if they want to get that reputation here. 
I am completely aware of the concept of buying indulgences–I mean; carbon offsets–to pay for my sins–I mean; excess CO2 footprint.
If you think carbon offsets offset carbon production, I’ve got some bad news about St Nick.
But, as I said, Mr Gore would be unwilling to fly coach instead of First.
Neither he nor I are inclined to actually disturb our personal lifestyle.
How about you, GIGObuster? Or is it the case you’ve given up any optional vacation destinations that would require flying because the trip is not really necessary?
This is like requesting to be hit again on a game of 21 when you have already 22.
In other words, repeating this only shows to all how useless your points are, and you only show all that you can not see a quote that even mentions what to do in your “hypothetical” case.
Thank you.
But back to my question about what GIGObuster personally does when choosing an optional destination such as a vacation spot.
Given your position that one should question whether a flight is necessary at all (because of the seriousness of AGW), do you choose not to fly anywhere? When you do go somewhere do you take the bus instead of a car?
When Al and I are jetting over your house, can we look down and say, “Too bad he can’t afford carbon offsets”?
What is an example of your personal response to this serious problem?
Ah, so climate change science is complete. There is nobody working on what causes climate change or what the end results will be? I must have been under a rock for 20 years. We know contributing factors but not precise degrees. You state that we know exactly what the future brings but there is clearly no agreement on that.
100 years of data is one thing, 100 years of climate science is quite different. You make it sound like Gravity science was a two hour observation. I don’t care if climate science is 500 years old, it is still an infant if you cannot tell me exactly what will happen at any given point down the road.
I can tell you exactly what will happen in regards to gravity for any given object, including precisely when you hit the ground after you walk out that second story window.
There must be a sale on straw I was not aware of.
Actually the latest paper has a new reconstruction of past temperature covering the last 11,300 years. And there are already conservative estimates of what we can expect if nothing is done.
Good, just hold that thought, because as it is clear, you are thinking that Climate Science is not as clear as that on many items, the mistake is to think that most of what you are complaining about was not debated before, there is still a lot to be done on the resolution, that is: how the already agreed global warming and current causes that has been observed are going to continue to affect the climate, specially in specific locations. However, just pointing at the uncertainty in specific locations is not a good reason to dismiss all, because at the regional level scientists can already tell you what is the most likely outcome.
10 empirical indicators of a human fingerprint on the current increase of warming:
I made a simple statement and you assumed I was a complete denier. Maybe infant was the wrong term. How does pre-schooler feel? Climate science has not grown up and moved out of the house yet.
Science that is solved says that given known conditions you know exactly what will happen at any given time in the future. Given any disturbances you can adjust the final results.
We have yet to precicely calculate a result of climate change using set formulation. Anything that has come close has completely failed the next test.
Actually this shows lots of ignorance, if you think you are correct you should be able to easily find a cite that shows that climate science is not recognized as that or not mainstream.
And this also shows that you did not check the last link, at the basic level, most scientists in the 70’s reported that the world was going to warm thanks to the GWG released, while at the same time the popular press cherry picked what the researchers said and told many people that it was going to get cold. Time showed that most of scientists were correct, and currently even more data has been obtained to declare that what you are saying here is just more ignorance.
Have you had a chance to decide what you are doing, personally?
Do you have an opinion on which large-scale solution(s) are the best ones? Top three, maybe?
What is the estimate of what we can expect if we do something–and what is that Something?
When it ceases to be in the economic interests of deep-pocketed corporations to fund the illusion that there’s a real debate about it.
No, you can’t. There are still very complicated situations in mechanics, such as the three-body problem, that the theory of gravitation cannot answer “exactly” because they’re analytically unsolvable. But this doesn’t mean that the theory of gravitation is still an “infant”, or even a “preschooler”.
In fact, the Newtonian theory of gravity was pretty much universally accepted among scientists within about fifty years after its publication, even though it took much longer to work out “exactly what would happen” for certain gravitational problems. Predicting the mechanics of lunar motion, for example, didn’t get reliable results within the limits of observational precision until the 20th century, and physicists are still tinkering with the lunar-orbit model.
So no, a scientific theory is not required to achieve 100% predictive success in answering every question before it can be regarded as being out of its infancy. The science of climate change, like the science of gravity, should definitely be subjected to continuing study and further refinement, but we don’t have to wait till it’s completely perfected before accepting it as valid.
I think you may be misunderstanding the basic nature of climate-system physics. Climate, like the three-body problem in mechanics but even more so, involves chaotic dynamical systems whose behavior it’s theoretically impossible to predict exactly. Climate science is never going to produce deterministic predictions of chaotic events, no matter how “mature” it gets.
Climate science definitely can (and has, as GIGObuster points out) predict lots of things about climate, but AFAIK it’s never going to be able to answer questions like “how many hurricanes will there be next year”. Not because the science isn’t good enough, but because the system it’s modeling simply isn’t deterministic in nature.