Do global warming "skeptics" honestly see us as a benign species?

[watchwolf49]

@brazil84

How are you defining “damage” here?

Sea level rise is pretty much set in stone. London, Los Angeles, New York City are all going underwater. So that’s one thing that is damaging to humans. However, let me quick to point out that sea levels have been rising for 10,000 years. Obviously, this damage is more an inconvenience than catastrophic. We can safely speculate that cyclones will be stronger and more plentiful … but it’s very difficult to quantify … it could be 0.1% more, 1% more or even 10% more. So at worst, Hurricane Katrina-type storms will occur every 30 years instead of every 35 years, and they’ll pack winds of 150 mph instead of 135 mph. Umm … kinda reaching here, but increase in CO2, temperature and rainfall is all good for plants. We’ll see higher mitigation costs keeping our roadways and agricultural fields cleared. I understand if you haven’t lived in the tropics, you won’t understand why this is a problem … oh boy … but it is.

That’s not a definition, but some examples to use to ferret out what could be used as a working definition.

[doorhinge]

@Sam_Stone

I wish we could move this discussion away from the tedious debate about all the micro-factors affecting climate change, and just start with the assumption that climate change is real, and that humans are very likely contributing to the long-term warming of the planet.

…2. Given that warming is occurring,…

…There are two radical camps in this debate. First, there are the hard-core environmentalists that assume that ANY cost is worth even incremental improvements to the environment. Then on the other side there are the people who refuse to accept that any damage is happening at all - that it’s all just a grand conspiracy of lefties and scientists to scare us into submission so the one-world government can take over. Both sides are equally nuts.

Since the “man-made-CO2-must-be-at-fault” camp are the ones trying to change the voters opinion, it’s up to the MMCO2MBAF camp to provide actual facts and numbers that prove that we’re not experiencing another global warming/global cooling cycle. The IPCC and it’s supporters are not going to convince anyone to change their position by continually calling the other side “ignorant”, as some people have chosen to do. I’ve bought used cars. I recognize the techniques.

If your intention is to change the minds of those who aren’t buying what the IPCC is selling, you’re going to have to drop the “assumption that climate change is real” and the “given that warming is occurring” spiel. Unless you only intend to preach to the choir. People want to see proof that this isn’t yet another global warming/cooling cycle. People want to see proof that CO2 is the driving force behind global warming/cooling. People want to see proof that the small percentage of CO2 created by mankind is tipping the scale(s). People want to see the actual numbers, data, and man-made inputs used to produce the IPCC’s expectations.

Keep it simple, keep it clean, and keep it believable. I remember the clean air and clean water campaigns. People showed me the facts and figures. They provided undeniable proof that polluting was taking place. I showed others the facts and figures along with the undeniable proof. Momentum was built on trust and passed along person-to-person. The voters eventually forced elected representatives to pass clean air and water bills.

You can start with your assumption that climate change is real but the people you’re trying to convince to support the “man-made-CO2-is-evil” camp don’t believe it. It hasn’t been proven to them. If you ignore the basic building block of proving climate change is real, you’ll be having the same discussion next year and the year after.

[doorhinge]

@watchwolf49

Sea level rise is pretty much set in stone. London, Los Angeles, New York City are all going underwater.

Sea levels have be rising since the last ice age. That’s what happens when ice melts. During the previous global cooling cycle, sea levels decreased. That’s what happens when the ice caps expand.

“n” number of tons of ice equals “x” gallons of water. If the current ice caps melt and considering that the receding shoreline creates an increasing larger container to hold that ice melt, it shouldn’t be difficult to come up with an actual number for expected sea level rise. I’ve heard 3 feet, 20 feet, 20 meters, etc. I expect the “experts” to provide the amount of ice available and the expected shoreline change. The math itself would be simple.

[doorhinge]

@wolfpup

I’m curious about what omniscient organizations you expect will be “vetting” the IPCC report.

That would be any organization that is willing to examine the IPCC report page by page and line by line and fully answer any questions the public might have about their efforts. I expect them to actually verify that the IPCC’s numbers are correct. I expect them to have full access to all of the human inputs used to create the report. I expect them to verify that the temps provided were taken by properly maintained and calibrated equipment.

The IPCC and it’s supporters have a credibility problem. What can the IPCC and it’s supporters do to convince the public that they can predict the future? I suggest that they be open and honest (and not just to the “best” of their ability).

[GIGObuster]

As someone said elsewhere, it is really underwhelming to see some posters that finally sound reasonable after spending days cheering the ones that think that this is a “grand conspiracy of lefties and scientists to scare us into submission so the one-world government can take over”, As Sam Stone said before, it is really a bunch of hot air.

It is even more underwhelming when I notice how this has happened before even in the SDMB, they are aware of how faulty the ideas coming from skeptics are, but by golly, they really sound pretty and should be repeated, only to then claim that all along they are aware that there is a problem.

Of course, the really big problem is that when discussing what to do the big republican elephant in the room is ignored, most of the pushers of that hot air FUD and the ones using actual religion to oppose this issue are in positions of power.

So, going forward and letting the mountain of evidence that there is a problem and humans are the overwhelming reason behind, I can see that the common solution (and once again coming also from groups that at the same time continue to repeat past doubts) is that we can’t tax, or do cap and trade.

Never mind that those were acceptable solutions until the merchants of doubt came to be elected to office in sizable numbers.

So what do a guy that does accept that there is a problem, has experience on the issue, is conservative, republican, like Barry Bickmore suggests we should follow?

Betting on Climate Change

Physicist Mark Boslough proposes a sort of climate futures trading market that carbon dumpers are required to participate in. If climate doesn’t change much, they make money. If it does, they lose money. Seems like an interesting idea for a market-based alternative to a carbon tax.

The fact is we are already betting, and we are all losing the bet, big time whenever the temperature gets up.

…

We are are literally betting the farm that more than 100 years of successful scientific predictions are wrong.

…

We need to demand liability insurance from the carbon dumpers, a money back guarantee that there will be no more warming. A carbon dumper fee.

Carbon dumpers should pay their fair share of the cost.

Industry needs to pay for the change already observed, a bond market regulated so the carbon dumpers pay the fair share from now on.

[davida03801]

Going back to the original question, and not getting into the micro details. I am a GW skeptic and here is why.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[GIGObuster]

@doorhinge

You can start with your assumption that climate change is real but the people you’re trying to convince to support the “man-made-CO2-is-evil” camp don’t believe it. It hasn’t been proven to them.

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.

Alley and Rohrabacher: Brain vs Blowhard

Dana Rohrbacher is angling to be chairman of the Science and Technology committee.
Richard Alley is the highly regarded expert on paleo-climate from Penn State.
On November 17, Alley gave testimony before the committee.
Watch Rohrbacher try to beat brains with bluster - I think Alley is wayyy to good humored and patient with him.

Dr. Barry Bickmore - How to Avoid the Truth About Climate Change

Barry Bickmore is Associate Professor of Geological Sciences at Brigham Young University. His research specialties are low-temperature geochemistry and geoscience education. In this presentation, he discusses how he moved from being a climate change “skeptic” to being an outspoken advocate of mainstream climate science. He then discusses how it is that people like him can so effectively avoid the truth about climate change.

[GIGObuster]

@davida03801

Going back to the original question, and not getting into the micro details. I am a GW skeptic and here is why.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Please notice that there is also ignorance about missing also that your points were explained before.

Read, starting with myth #1, what is the evidence that scientists used to convince all the others that assumed before that nature was going to absorb all our emissions were wrong.

Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics and what the science really says

Climate Myth 	

1 “Climate’s changed before”

vs What the Science Says
Climate reacts to whatever forces it to change at the time; humans are now the dominant forcing.

Natural climate change in the past proves that climate is sensitive to an energy imbalance. If the planet accumulates heat, global temperatures will go up. Currently, CO2 is imposing an energy imbalance due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. Past climate change actually provides evidence for our climate’s sensitivity to CO2.

[Learjeff]

@GIGObuster

Physicist Mark Boslough proposes a sort of climate futures trading market that carbon dumpers are required to participate in. If climate doesn’t change much, they make money. If it does, they lose money. Seems like an interesting idea for a market-based alternative to a carbon tax.

The problem with that is that even GWB eventually acknowledged that climate change is happening, but disputed that it was caused by human activity. So, unfortunately, you won’t get enough takers on that bet.

@doorhinge

The IPCC and it’s supporters have a credibility problem

Not among the majority of climate scientists, it seems. The anti-AGW crowd has a credibility problem too. However, they have the upper hand in that (as you say) it’s up to those who want to change the status quo to show it. That’s the whole point of the IPCC, and they’ve convinced pretty much the vast majority of the climate scientists of this generation, and every national and significant international scientific organization.

They’ve put it in nice simple clear terms, but the naysayers with short-term economic interests befuddle things by finding fringe lunatic skeptic scientists who say just what they want to hear (but without any cohesive climate scientific theory).

I don’t have a dog in the fight. I just want to know what the truth is, and I’d be delighted if the deniers are correct. But the deniers tend to sound like a bunch of lunatics and ignorant folks who ferret out every little scrap of opinion (regardless of how much these ferreted facts contradict each other) and trumpet them like they’re good science addressing the question. Admittedly, on a forum, you have folks from both camps doing this. But where the debate is among scientists, the arguments of the IPCC defenders are much more consistent, reasoned, and convincing.

Unfortunately. I wish they were full of it, really I do.

My guess is that political will is and will be lacking; we’ll do little until the serious problems begin, and then we’ll implement a stopgap solution (like sulfur injection) to mitigate the worst effects, with concomitant costs (like further acidification of the oceans). We’ll find numerous technological solutions to the specific problems as they arise. Whether we’ll do that fast enough to avert serious catastrophes is a good question but I doubt I’ll live long enough to find out.

[Learjeff]

@Sam_Stone

In any event, if you apply standard accounting principles and use discount rates that we use for other investments, it becomes clear that the answer is pretty much ‘zero’ for how much we should spend today unless the harm in the future is very severe.

I agree that standard accounting practices would be best, but as you cite above, they’re terribly difficult to estimate. However, the cost of sea level rise alone will be enormous, without even counting the cost of the social unrest caused by entire populations having to relocate (e.g., much of Bangladesh).

As a fiscal conservative, I’d love to move the debate to the point about talking about remediation on a cost-benefit level, but since vested economic interests are fighting tooth and nail to deny the scientific consensus (and battling quite effectively in the minds of the public), it can’t happen.

It was hard enough to get political movement on issues like pollution and DDT. The stakes are much bigger with AGW.

[GIGObuster]

@Learjeff

The problem with that is that even GWB eventually acknowledged that climate change is happening, but disputed that it was caused by human activity. So, unfortunately, you won’t get enough takers on that bet.

What a way to spectacularly miss what bet he is talking about, you are making that bet. What Bickmore and the Physicist proposes is an insurance to have in case the bet that claims that virtually all scientists are wrong and that the carbon dumpers should continue to do their business as usual was the wrong one.

[watchwolf49]

@Learjeff

As a fiscal conservative, I’d love to move the debate to the point about talking about remediation on a cost-benefit level, but since vested economic interests are fighting tooth and nail to deny the scientific consensus (and battling quite effectively in the minds of the public), it can’t happen.

Wind power is costing me an extra 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, about 15% extra costs. There has been some state tax credits, but those have expired. So the investment of tax dollars has been made, it still remains to be seen if we’ll see a return on that investment. It’s a risk, we’re betting corporations will want a stable and reliable electric sources for their new manufacturing plants [ka’ching] and the added tax revenue they would bring.

[brazil84]

@Learjeff

Not among the majority of climate scientists, it seems. The anti-AGW crowd has a credibility problem too. However, they have the upper hand in that (as you say) it’s up to those who want to change the status quo to show it. That’s the whole point of the IPCC, and they’ve convinced pretty much the vast majority of the climate scientists of this generation, and every national and significant international scientific organization.

Convinced them of exactly what? That the climate is changing? That mankind’s activities have played a role? That CO2 emissions, if unchecked will have major negative consequences for humanity?

[watchwolf49]

The IPCC has three mandates: To provide a statement as to the current state of research, to provide mitigation recommendations to policy-makers and assess the socio-economic impacts of global warming. Noteworthy is the working group composed of … lawyers … just saying …

[Learjeff]

@GIGObuster

What a way to spectacularly miss what bet he is talking about, you are making that bet. What Bickmore and the Physicist proposes is an insurance to have in case the bet that claims that virtually all scientists are wrong and that the carbon dumpers should continue to do their business as usual was the wrong one.

I guess I didn’t put that clearly.

If temperatures are rising due to non-human causes, what possible reason would there be to require carbon dumpers to participate in such a futures market? They’d lose, with no possible benefit to humanity.

My point is that while such a market would be great, it won’t happen. Industry isn’t stupid enough to take that bet. They’re focused on short-term profits, damn the torpedoes, and full speed ahead.

[Learjeff]

@brazil84

Convinced them of exactly what? That the climate is changing? That mankind’s activities have played a role? That CO2 emissions, if unchecked will have major negative consequences for humanity?

That’s a pretty good list.

[watchwolf49]

@doorhinge

“n” number of tons of ice equals “x” gallons of water. If the current ice caps melt and considering that the receding shoreline creates an increasing larger container to hold that ice melt, it shouldn’t be difficult to come up with an actual number for expected sea level rise. I’ve heard 3 feet, 20 feet, 20 meters, etc. I expect the “experts” to provide the amount of ice available and the expected shoreline change. The math itself would be simple.

Yes, it’s easy to take cubic meters of ice and calculate how many gallons of water. There’s a equation for that. Now going from gallons of water to sea level rise … that math is not simple … and we don’t have an equation. Best estimate is 25 feet, give or take 25 feet.

[doorhinge]

@Learjeff

…Not among the majority of climate scientists, it seems. The anti-AGW crowd has a credibility problem too. However, they have the upper hand in that (as you say) it’s up to those who want to change the status quo to show it.

Plus, I might add for no particular reason, no one is going to change anyone’s position, at this point in time, by calling everyone else “ignorant”. Ain’t gonna happen.

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.

[doorhinge]

@watchwolf49

Yes, it’s easy to take cubic meters of ice and calculate how many gallons of water. There’s a equation for that. Now going from gallons of water to sea level rise … that math is not simple … and we don’t have an equation. Best estimate is 25 feet, give or take 25 feet.

Current satellite mapping shows mean elevation levels, high tide, low tide, underwater levels, and shoreline levels. Increase the mean level 1, 10, 25, 50 feet, take in to account the future increased surface area, and the floor angle of the increase minus any cubic feet of any structures that would then be underwater and you should come up with a number more accurate than 25 feet, give or take 25 feet.

[GIGObuster]

@Learjeff

I guess I didn’t put that clearly.

If temperatures are rising due to non-human causes, what possible reason would there be to require carbon dumpers to participate in such a futures market? They’d lose, with no possible benefit to humanity.

They get the money back, you did not see the video.

@Learjeff

My point is that while such a market would be great, it won’t happen. Industry isn’t stupid enough to take that bet. They’re focused on short-term profits, damn the torpedoes, and full speed ahead.

:rolleyes:

They are not making the bet, we (and that it includes some industry, but not all) are, what we need is to have an insurance as the the industry is stupid enough to even fund denialist efforts and loopy politicians. (See scientist Richard Alley’s video testimony in congress responding to that dishonest politician)