# Do global warming "skeptics" honestly see us as a benign species? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 5, 2014, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984 "2014-01-05T23:18:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/161 "2014-01-10T19:38:27Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > That’s a pretty good list. I am extremely skeptical of your claim. Please show me proof that the vast majority of climate scientists and every and every national and significant international scientific organization are convinced that CO2 emissions, if unchecked, will have major negative consequences for humanity. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/162 "2014-01-10T19:43:23Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > It was, but then Republican scientists like James Hansen, Barry Bickmore, Richard Alley, Kerry Emanuel and others have a hard time explaining the evidence to the ones in congress that do have an agenda that makes evidence a thing to be avoided. It wasn’t but you also believe that the IPCC has officially released it’s latest report in full and that the unreleased full report must be fully vetted. To each their own. When did James Hansen become a “Republican scientist”? Are you referring to Hansen the environmental activist who has repeatedly been arrested for blocking trains and gates? He’s not exactly an “impartial” observer. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/163 "2014-01-10T19:47:35Z")
> [@brazil84](#): > > I am extremely skeptical of your claim. > > Please show me proof that the vast majority of climate scientists and every and every national and significant international scientific organization are convinced that CO2 emissions, if unchecked, will have major negative consequences for humanity. It will not be surprising to find that brazil84 avoids the evidence. > **[Scientific consensus on climate change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change)** > > There is a nearly unanimous scientific consensus that the Earth has been consistently warming since the start of the Industrial Revolution, that the rate of recent warming is largely unprecedented,: 8 : 11  and that this warming is mainly the result of a rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by human activities. The human activities causing this warming include fossil fuel combustion, cement production, and land use changes such as deforestation,: 10–11  with a signif Nearly... > [@](#): > > The scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth’s climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is extremely likely (at least 95% probability) that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels. In addition, it is likely that some potential further greenhouse gas warming has been offset by increased aerosols.[1][2][3][4] This scientific consensus is expressed in synthesis reports, by scientific bodies of national or international standing, and by surveys of opinion among climate scientists. Individual scientists, universities, and laboratories contribute to the overall scientific opinion via their peer-reviewed publications, and the areas of collective agreement and relative certainty are summarised in these high level reports and surveys. > > National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed current scientific opinion on climate change. These assessments are generally consistent with the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), summarized below: > > ``` > Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as evidenced by increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, the widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.[5] > Most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to human activities.[6] > "Benefits and costs of climate change for [human] society will vary widely by location and scale.[7] Some of the effects in temperate and polar regions will be positive and others elsewhere will be negative.[7] Overall, net effects are more likely to be strongly negative with larger or more rapid warming."[7] > "[...] the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time"[8] > "The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g. flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification) and other global change drivers (e.g. land-use change, pollution, fragmentation of natural systems, over-exploitation of resources)"[9] > > ``` > > No scientific body of national or international standing maintains a formal opinion dissenting from any of these main points; the last was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists,[10] which in 2007[11] updated its 1999 statement rejecting the likelihood of human influence on recent climate with its current non-committal position.[12] Some other organizations, primarily those focusing on geology, also hold non-committal positions. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/164 "2014-01-10T19:50:04Z")
Sure, we use the method of successive approximation. If you want accuracy to 25 feet, you’d have to make that calculation for every 25 feet of shoreline, not just the outer fringe, but also the inner fringe, then average those numbers. No small task. Imagine for every foot, or every inch now. Alternately, we can derive a mathematical function to describe the shoreline shape and just plug in the numbers. As I understand the matter, fractal geometry looks to be the best shot at finding this function, but to date, this hasn’t produced any results. I **am** hedging my statement in case I’m totally wrong. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/165 "2014-01-10T20:09:15Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > It wasn’t Sure, keep saying that when others can see the evidence. > [@doorhinge](#): > > but you also believe that the IPCC has officially released it’s latest report in full and that the unreleased full report must be fully vetted. To each their own. As \*\*wolfpup \*\*pointed out, my own do include the scientists, academics, in essence what it counts in this issue. > [@doorhinge](#): > > When did James Hansen become a “Republican scientist”? Are you referring to Hansen the environmental activist who has repeatedly been arrested for blocking trains and gates? He’s not exactly an “impartial” observer. As usual you only show the typical problem with timelines, I remember seeing reports of Hansen being one in the past, and he was invited then to be part of the advisers to republicans as President Reagan, back when Republicans listened to the scientists. Nowadays, like Kerry Emmanuel, they can not stomach what is going on and they go officially now as independents, AFAIK only Bickmore still keeps the faith that the extreme Republicans will eventually listen as he still remains one. As for Hansen, this idea of claiming that his arrests subtract from what he claims is really silly, what it shows is that he is willing to be arrested for what he thinks we should not ignore. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/166 "2014-01-10T22:58:20Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > As for Hansen, this idea of claiming that his arrests subtract from what he claims is really silly, what it shows is that he is willing to be arrested for what he thinks we should not ignore. Indeed. James Hansen is an example of the relentless vilification of climate scientists who have the misfortune of becoming known to the public and hence become targets of the great denialist spin machine. Hansen became known as one of the first to warn of the dangers of climate change before it became a major public policy issue and a political hot potato, and the fact that he’s also become an environmental activist makes it doubly convenient to vilify him as an example of the preposterous allegation that scientists are driven by a political agenda. That such allegations are made by, and on the behest of, Big Oil makes them supremely ironic. The reality, of course, is the reverse: although most climate research scientists go about their work in non-political solitude, all are acutely aware of the implications of their discoveries and a few have been driven to some degree of activism, if only to the degree of testifying before Congress, to no avail. The late Hans Oeschger, the first to discover in ice core records evidence for climate tipping points, was deeply affected by this perspective on climate change for the rest of his life. Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was so vilified when he found himself at the center of the so-called “climategate” affair that he was nearly driven to suicide. Michael Mann has been relentlessly attacked for his work on paleoclimate reconstructions, because the resulting graphs provide dramatic visual evidence of the extraordinary rapidity of post-industrial temperature rise. The smears and accusations against those two alone resulted in multiple investigations being conducted; the fact that both Mann and Jones were fully exonerated by a total of four independent investigations means nothing to the denialists; the investigations are chalked up to an orchestrated conspiracy on both sides of the Atlantic, and the attacks continue. It’s all very sad. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/167 "2014-01-10T23:09:57Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > I expect the IPCC to demand that their next report be completely and thoroughly vetted by any organization that wants to view ALL of its data and inputs used by the IPCC to reached it’s conclusions. Or the doubts about the IPCC and it’s results will remain. You still seem to labor under the delusion that the IPCC just makes things up. As has been repeatedly said, their work is based on consensus assessments of existing peer-reviewed and duly cited scientific literature (thousands of papers) conducted by hundreds of participating authors and hundreds more independent reviewers. It seems to serve your purpose to ignore these facts. The reality about the “next report” – that is, beyond the three major reports of the three working groups that constitute the Fifth Assessment – is that there probably won’t be one. The IPCC was formed primarily for the purpose of assessing the reality and the impact of human activities on post-industrial climate change and basically with the completion of the Fifth Assessment their work is done. The science continues to become more certain and more refined but at this point the evidence is more than enough to be actionable. It is likely that the future role of the IPCC will change to issuing more frequent and more specific, issue-targeted reports, with the Fifth Assessment remaining as the definitive baseline reference. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/168 "2014-01-10T23:52:14Z")
> [@davida03801](#): > > Going back to the original question, and not getting into the micro details. I am a GW skeptic and here is why. > > 1. > > The climate has always been changing. In the human experience before the industrial revolution it has been warmer than it currently is now as in the Medieval Warm period and the Roman Warm Period. It has also been much colder as in the Little ice Age. The GW advocates cannot yet explain to certainty why, and I know the GW community prefers ignore these events as they distort your argument. > … etc. etc. I am skeptical, too, but on different issues. I am skeptical that thousands of climate researchers around the world, many of whom are specifically engaged in paleoclimate temperature reconstructions, have somehow just never noticed that “the climate has always been changing.” I am skeptical that trite truisms about climate have any scientific value, and I am **certainly** skeptical that a list of standard denialist talking points such as you’ve presented is a valid challenge to 50 years of comprehensive climate research. The talking point about prior “warm periods” is a favorite among denialists and it has as its primary attribute, like all such talking points, the fact that it’s wrong. The most important thing to know about the Medieval Warm Period is that it has absolutely no connection to what is happening today. It was due to internal variability with no change in external forcing as we have today from elevated CO2, and was neither global in extent nor was it as warm as today even in places where it occurred. The MWP was localized warmth in the area of Europe, Greenland, and some other parts of the Northern Hemisphere, while other parts were exceptionally cold, and most of the Southern Hemisphere didn’t experience elevated temperatures at all. The Arctic did not experience anything remotely like the elevated temperatures and accelerated warming that is characteristic of externally-forced planetary warming. There’s some evidence that the localized warmth of the MWP was partly caused by decadal scale changes in ocean currents. The fact that global temperatures didn’t change significantly is crucial to understanding what the MWP was and wasn’t. But trotting out the MWP at every opportunity serves the denialist agenda of “proving” that the earth’s **global** temperature can change at the drop of a hat for no apparent reason – in violation of the laws of physics – so that climate is apparently driven primarily by magic, and climate science knows nothing. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/169 "2014-01-11T00:24:46Z")
What do you, **wolfpup** , think we should do about this situation? What specific recommendations would you make to the US Congress? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/170 "2014-01-11T01:47:59Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > What do you, **wolfpup** , think we should do about this situation? What specific recommendations would you make to the US Congress? The thing is that much smarter people than me have **already** drafted specific roadmaps to carbon mitigation strategies as well as to necessary adaptation strategies because we are already well past the point where climate change will significantly alter our ecosystem. But it’s almost funny to talk about sensible strategies in a political environment where – to pick a couple of examples – North Carolina has [made it illegal for any state government agency to use scientific methods to estimate sea level rise](http://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science-rising-sea-level/story?id=16913782), and the state of Virginia has gone one better and simply [declared both “sea level rise” and “climate change” to be unacceptable “liberal code words”](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/virginia-republicans-oppose-sea-level-rise-language) that must be expunged from official language. Both states appear to be indulging in the admirable but extremely ineffective “King Canute” strategy of giving orders to the sea, which the sea is generally disinclined to obey. I suppose if you want my views in the most general terms, I’d say it would be a great start if the US and Canada showed some leadership by being **ahead** of European countries in carbon policies instead of lagging behind like denialist troglodytes. The second part of the strategy – to include third-world nations like China and India in comprehensive international treaties – is pretty hopeless unless we can lead by example. And thirdly, I believe we should be willing to motivate engagement in those treaties and enforce them through economic sanctions. In a word, most of the belching pollution coming out of China is to make cheap products for the western world. Don’t tell me that if China doesn’t wish to comply with emissions treaties, that this isn’t something that the western world could control with trade policies if it wanted to. With regard to specifics, once I had by some miracle managed to hammer into the brains of Congress critters the fact that AGW was real, I would want them to understand the [costs of inaction](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/the-cost-of-inaction/) and then to familiarize themselves with some of what has been written on mitigation policies. I wish I could find a non-paywalled copy of the Socolow et al. paper on stabilization wedges online, but here is at least [a presentation](http://www.carbontax.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/socolow-_-wedges-_-oct-2004.pdf) from a talk that Socolow gave. I’d make them read that. I’d make them read [the comprehensive IPCC report on mitigation](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/contents.html), some of the special reports like [this one](http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/) and [this one](http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/), and the one on[impacts and vulnerabilities](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/contents.html) to stress the urgency. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/171 "2014-01-11T04:02:10Z")
I count eight wedgies already up and running. If I understand the principle, we’ve done enough to solve the problem. Gotta tell you, CCS looks expensive … not just capital costs, but the on-going expense. The money’s better spent on power plant regeneration, where the capital costs provide income. Virginia and Carolina aren’t going to stop an honest profit to be made. The congressmen have read those reports, and remember half that material from the Carter administration. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/172 "2014-01-11T04:25:15Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > I count eight wedgies already up and running. If I understand the principle, we’ve done enough to solve the problem. Gotta tell you, CCS looks expensive … not just capital costs, but the on-going expense. The money’s better spent on power plant regeneration, where the capital costs provide income. Virginia and Carolina aren’t going to stop an honest profit to be made. > > The congressmen have read those reports, and remember half that material from the Carter administration. **None** of that material is from the Carter administration. The science has come a long way since then. As for Congressmen having read those reports, no, I’m certain that more than half of them have either (a) never seen them, and/or (b) instructed their staff to give them talking points to refute them. I’m thinking here of illustrious public servants like [Joe Barton](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/21/AR2005072102186.html) or [James Inhofe](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/james-inhofe-climate_n_3582585.html). I think Inhofe fits all the criteria for being judged “clinically insane”. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/173 "2014-01-11T06:55:37Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > … Both states appear to be indulging in the admirable but extremely ineffective “King Canute” strategy of giving orders to the sea, which the sea is generally disinclined to obey… > > I wish I could find a non-paywalled copy of the Socolow et al. paper on stabilization wedges online Thank you, **wolfpup** , for your very intelligent and informative remarks in this thread. It must be frustrating to deal with willful ignorance. (At some point, the psychology of self-deception becomes more interesting than the science of climate change. :smack: ) There is [an online version of the 2004 Pacala-Socolow _Science_ paper](http://www.princeton.edu/mae/people/faculty/socolow/Science-2004-SW-1100103-PAPER-AND-SOM.pdf). Since it’s on a Princeton.edu website, I suppose any copyright violation is condoned. ---
**Author:** ![nachtmusick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac91a4/32.png) [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/174 "2014-01-11T10:12:54Z")
> [@davida03801](#): > > Going back to the original question, and not getting into the micro details. I am a GW skeptic and here is why. > > 1. > > The climate has always been changing. In the human experience before the industrial revolution it has been warmer than it currently is now as in the Medieval Warm period and the Roman Warm Period. It has also been much colder as in the Little ice Age. The GW advocates cannot yet explain to certainty why, and I know the GW community prefers ignore these events as they distort your argument. > > 1. > > From my reading, for the above events, the climate abruptly changed on a dime, on a geological time frame scale. One decade, or century, warm or cold and the next in the midst of the opposite. I am speaking on a geological basis. When things change like this there have to be serious factors involved. Do we know what they all are yet. Doubt it. When there are serious unknowns then to say for 100% certainty this or that is the cause is false. > > 1. > > The fact that the GW, or Climate Change, advocates state that science is closed tell me just the opposite. I feel you all say that since you do not want any close scrutiny of any of the “facts” as you present them. > > This goes 100% against the entire scientific process of when theories are constantly presented and challenged and explored even long after the “case is closed”. For example I still read now that physics types still test out Einstein’s theories which are over 100 years old now. > > If you GW types were so confident of the science I would think you would welcome challenges. But you don’t. > > 1. > > I think all involved in the GW debate are guilty of bias, and I mean both sides. Plenty of evidence on this and for sure this evidence extends to the GW community also. > > 1. > > The GW community has a tendency to shout down, and try to quiet all those who disagree with your cause. In essence this is bullying and I see this in all the time as I follow the GW debate. > > Now with all that said I am all for conservation, using renewable fuels, conservation of energy use, etc, and feel that ALL of that needs to continue. This is only common sense, however on the GW debate itself I am very much a skeptic and those are the reasons why. The science is far from closed, but it’s been decades since I’ve seen any valid argument that would justify skepticism. Here’s the abstract from a recent paleoclimatic study by Harvard and Oregon State climate scientists, published in _Science_ in September, 2013: **A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years** _Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (\<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ~2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change model projections for 2100 exceed the full distribution of Holocene temperature under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios._ In a nutshell, here is their result: [![](https://skepticalscience.com//pics/regemcrufull.jpg) ](https://skepticalscience.com//pics/regemcrufull.jpg) This is a peer-reviewed study published in an internationally respected journal. The result mirrors the results of numerous other studies that have accumulated over three decades of diligent research by an entire planet of climate scientists. These scientists have meanwhile endured and responded to three decades of challenges and scrutiny from people who continuously accused them of being unwilling to entertain challenges and scrutiny. All this challenge and scrutiny has resulted in nothing but stronger evidence for AGW; but some are still not convinced. So what to do? I’d suggest we convene an intergovernmental panel on climate change to comprehensively review the available research, but we already did that and it didn’t work. Turns out all that research was deemed to be suspect because it was conducted by climate scientists who had clearly become prejudiced by their own results. OK, how about we convene an alternate Intergovernmental Panel of Conspiracy Cranks constituted of clear-eyed, independently-minded laypeople who have no clue about climate science? Such a body could be trusted not to allow mere scientific advancement to undermine their noble resistance to GW groupthink. Yeah, now we are making real progress… ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/175 "2014-01-11T11:48:33Z")
> [@nachtmusick](#): > > This is a peer-reviewed study published in an internationally respected journal. The result mirrors the results of numerous other studies that have accumulated over three decades of diligent research by an entire planet of climate scientists. So you are saying that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that current global surface temperatures are significantly higher than they have been in 11,000 years? > [@](#): > > All this challenge and scrutiny has resulted in nothing but stronger evidence for AGW; but some are still not convinced. Would you mind providing a precise definition for “AGW” as you have used that term? Does it mean that mankind’s activities are likely to cause increases in global surface temperatures regardless of the cause and regardless of the severity of the increase? Or does it mean something else to you? ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/176 "2014-01-11T15:09:45Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > **None** of that material is from the Carter administration. The science has come a long way since then. 1. Efficient buildings – This wedge is **in place** , and has been when the Carter administration implemented it. All buildings in the US built since are fully weatherized. Most older buildings have been retrofitted … and that was done for FREE. If you’re looking for any more carbon savings here, I afraid it’s not going to happen. 2. Reduced deforestation – I’m assuming you’re not suggesting throwing everyone off their lands east of the Mississippi River to reforest that land. I happen to live in a forested area and we’ve been replanting for almost 100 years. This wedge was put in place long before climate change was even noticed. 3. Wind power for coal power – This wedge in being implemented, and it’s at full speed. Wind farms are going up everyplace. Pfffft … all my electricity comes from the wind … if yours doesn’t, maybe you’ve got a local problem. 4. Efficient vehicles — Ever heard of a Chevy Volt? I’m going with #2, #11, #13, and #15 as “started”, and that these will come to fruition _without_ any severe government intervention. Now, all eight of these points were known and understood during the Carter Administration. Please tell me you knew that Jimmy Carter installed PV’s on the White House roof. I’m not going to accept you were to young to remember, only that you’re too old to remember. 1. Nuclear power for coal power – Yes, if we started from scratch, we can build safe and waste-free nuclear power plants. I’ve brought this up separately because of past issues, and the incredible costs of fixing these problems. If you include these costs to the expense of building new plants, we’re looking at something that’s not economically feasible. It would be far cheaper to build six foot levees around our coastal communities. Just think of all the 30 foot levees in the Delta region of California. I afraid you are completely wrong about what was known in the 1970s. [Shakes head] You have the same problem now as you did then, no scientific proof, no smoking gun. You have _better_ statistics today, but statistics are not proof, they’re not even scientific evidence. The natural cause denialist _Australopithecus_ are free to wear their partisan blinders and scream death and destruction all the day long. I agree it’s fun, but you’ve Big Oil pointing out that you do so for your own entertainment and that you can be safely ignored. However, if you want to convince people, you’re going to have to change your tone. I count eight wedges, is the problem being solved? Orbital perturbations are the sole agents for determining average atmospheric temperatures, carbon dioxide levels are only parametric to such functionality. It’s not a great theory, but it does comply with the known physical laws of the classical universe. It also works with the dozen or so other atmosphere we know of, and … it works for all the 4.7 billion years climate has been changing. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/177 "2014-01-11T15:12:55Z")
> [@brazil84](#): > > Would you mind providing a precise definition for “AGW” as you have used that term? Anthropomorphic Global Warming - The imposition of human characteristics and emotions onto global warming. ---
**Author:** ![Farin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e79b87/32.png) [@Farin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farin)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/178 "2014-01-11T15:24:04Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > However, if you want to convince people, you’re going to have to change your tone. > [@watchwolf49](#): > > Anthropomorphic Global Warming - The imposition of human characteristics and emotions onto global warming. I find your posts highly ironic, assuming you were being snarky. Anthropogenic is the actual word. It means “human caused”. > [@watchwolf49](#): > > 1. Nuclear power for coal power – Yes, if we started from scratch, we can build safe and waste-free nuclear power plants. I’ve brought this up separately because of past issues, and the incredible costs of fixing these problems. If you include these costs to the expense of building new plants, we’re looking at something that’s not economically feasible. It would be far cheaper to build six foot levees around our coastal communities. Just think of all the 30 foot levees in the Delta region of California. Honestly, if we don’t concentrate on Waste-Free and instead concentrate on building reactors of the current generation designs inside of ground isolation barriers, we would be able to do it far cheaper than going to the relatively brand new and untested waste free engineering. We could also use more of the low-output Thorium reactors so that if one happens to go tits up, we can easily clean it up. If a design flaw is found, it can be replaced more cheaply than having to decommission a current model nuclear facility. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/179 "2014-01-11T15:54:45Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > I afraid you are completely wrong about what was known in the 1970s. [Shakes head] You have the same problem now as you did then, no scientific proof, no smoking gun. You have _better_ statistics today, but statistics are not proof, they’re not even scientific evidence. The natural cause denialist _Australopithecus_ are free to wear their partisan blinders and scream death and destruction all the day long. I agree it’s fun, but you’ve Big Oil pointing out that you do so for your own entertainment and that you can be safely ignored. However, if you want to convince people, you’re going to have to change your tone. As scientist Richard Alley worked for the fossil fuel industry I think you are ignoring that the deniers are the ones with no scientific proof. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/a69_owv4jEE/maxresdefault.jpg ""We don't know enough..." How to talk to an OSTRICH") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a69_owv4jEE) > [@](#): > > It’s true that Earth’s a massive jigsaw puzzle, with lots of pieces intricately fitting together. But, Richard Alley argues, we already know enough to see the Big Picture. The missing pieces of scientific understanding - exactly how clouds work, how extreme weather will change with global warming - are important, but we can already see how Earth works. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/r_qdETSYcDM/maxresdefault.jpg "How to talk to an OSTRICH: "Global Warming Stopped in 1998!"") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_qdETSYcDM) > [@](#): > > Geoscientist and climate expert Richard Alley connects the dots of temperature to show the difference between short-term trends and long term direction. He uses milestones of his own life to make this key argument personal and memorable. > [@watchwolf49](#): > > Orbital perturbations are the sole agents for determining average atmospheric temperatures, carbon dioxide levels are only parametric to such functionality. It’s not a great theory, but it does comply with the known physical laws of the classical universe. It also works with the dozen or so other atmosphere we know of, and … it works for all the 4.7 billion years climate has been changing. Once again, no, yours is an attempt to dismiss that the cycles are already being taken into account, they were the drivers of past climate change (and that only up to a point) they are not enough to explain the current rise in temperature. What is worse is that the cycles do not work unless CO2 is taken into account as being an important factor of the warming and cooling in the past. [http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm](http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm) > [@](#): > > The changes in the atmosphere also answered the old persuasive objection to Milankovitch’s theory — if the timing of ice ages was set by variations in the sunlight falling on a given hemisphere, why didn’t the Southern Hemisphere get warmer as the Northern Hemisphere cooled, and vice-versa? The answer was that changes in atmospheric CO2 and methane physically linked the two hemispheres, powerfully warming or cooling the planet as a whole.(52\*) > > Looking at the rhythmic curves of past cycles, one could hardly resist the temptation to extrapolate into the future. By the late 1980s, most calculations had converged on the familiar prediction that the natural Milankovitch cycle should bring a mild but steady cooling over the next few thousand years. As climate models and studies of past ice ages improved, however, worries about a swift descent into the next great glaciation — what many in the 1970s had tentatively expected — died away. New calculations said that the next ice age would not come naturally within the next ten thousand years or so. The calculations were backed up in 2004 by data from a heroic new drilling effort in Antarctica that brought up ice spanning the past eight glacial cycles. Among these was an unusually long previous cycle where the orbital elements had been similar to those in our own cycle. On the other hand, in 2012 a team using a different ancient cycle as an analogy to the present claimed that the world should indeed be descending into an ice age over the next thousand years or so.(53\*) > > The scientists who published these calculations always added a caveat. In the Antarctic record, atmospheric CO2 levels over the past 750,000 years had cycled between about 180 and 280 parts per million. The level by 2012 had climbed almost to 400 and kept climbing. (The other main greenhouse gas, methane, was soaring even farther above any level seen in the long ice record.) Greenhouse warming and other human influences seemed strong enough to overwhelm any natural trend. One environmental scientist, William Ruddiman, even argued that the rise of human agriculture had already produced enough greenhouse gases to counteract the gradual cooling that should have come during the past several thousand years in the normal descent from a post-glacial temperature peak.(53a) As emissions climbed exponentially, we might not only cancel the next ice age, but launch our planet into an altogether new climate regime. > > The ice cores themselves gave convincing evidence of the threat, according to analyses published beginning in the early 1990s. The “climate sensitivity” — the response of temperature to changes in carbon dioxide — could be measured for the last glacial maximum. The answer was in the same range that computer models were predicting for our future, namely, about 3°C of warming, give or take a degree or so, if the CO2 level doubled. It was just the same range that the models got. By 2012 this finding had been confirmed not only for the recent Ice Age but for many other geological epochs. That raised confidence that the models could not be far wrong.(53b) As for the other atmospheres we know, no you don’t know how they work, nor you seem to know that you were misled once again by the unreliable sources you use. > **[What climate change is happening to other planets in the solar system?](https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-solar-system-intermediate.htm)** > > \There are three fundamental flaws in the 'other planets are warming' argument. Not all planets in the solar system are warming. The sun has shown no long term trend since 1950 and in fact has shown a slight cooling trend in recent decades. There... > [@](#): > > There are three fundamental flaws in the ‘other planets are warming’ argument. Not all planets in the solar system are warming. The sun has shown no long term trend since 1950 and in fact has shown a slight cooling trend in recent decades. There are explanations for why other planets are warming. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/180 "2014-01-11T16:00:55Z")
> [@Farin](#): > > Anthropogenic is the actual word. It means “human caused”. So to you, “AGW” means any increase in global surface temperatures caused by mankind, regardless of the severity of the increase and regardless of the reason? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984.md?page=10)