Global Climate Change: AGW disproven

Great Debates
1

Somewhat a complement to this thread.

Suppose AGW were debunked. Suppose it is demonstrated that mankind has - and will have - no significant impact on global temperatures. How should we react?

Note that secondary factors like increased atmospheric CO2 and acidification of the ocean are still there.

I’ll start by suggesting that we still transition from fossil fuel usage to nuclear and renewables like solar energy. For countries with fossil fuel reserves like the USA and GB, this is to our longer term benefit as we will retain these resources longer than those who do not transition.

2

Start stretching your stomach and back muscles, cuz kissing your own ass goodbye takes a lot of flexibility.

3

Could you elaborate on your comment to make a positive contribution to the debate?

4

I believe his point is that, if climate change is caused by humans, then humans have a chance of reversing it. If nothing we can do will prevent climate change, then we’re pretty much fucked.

5

Immediate reanimation of Hitler, followed by his installation as king of the UN would be our only chance for survival as a species.

6

To address the OP a little bit more seriously, the numerous anti-environmentalists would all do the happy dance and toss out any filtration or CO2 reduction devices they’d been forced to implement up to that point, if by tossing them out they could save a few bucks.

And we wouldn’t switch to renewables until some time after the non-renewables became economically nonfeasable (ie: too expensive at the pump). That, or governement legislation, are the only things that are going to force through the necessary infrastructure changes.

Oh, and then we’d all die. But that might be in a generation or two, so who would care?

7

I’m not sure if this is what the OP is asking about, but I think the real challenge will be to reform the way that governments, NGO’s and the like approach science so that a mess like this is less likely to happen again.

8

Nearly exactly the same. New technologies should be used. Forests around the world should be protected and modern techniques for agriculture should be introduced in all nations. Pollution should be cut short as technologically/economically feasible.

A lot of people tend to miss the forest for all the trees when discussing this. Selling them on the proposals for dealing with AGW would be no problem at all if it wasn’t for the “AGW” aspect. Who doesn’t want a clean, green world? Who does think that factories should be able to pollute just as freely as they want?

9

Really? Note that I say that the secondary effects, like the acidification of oceans remain. And we would still have to deal with the consequences of global warming.

10

For a guess I’d say some noninsignificant subset of those who aould be negatively impacted on the balance sheet by requirements to ‘green up’. Plus a noninsignificant subset of pro-business or libertariany Republicans.

Yes, I really do think that there are lots of people who would rather not go green if doing so would negatively impact profits. You don’t seriously think that all current opposition to AGW is because the people are genuinely dubious about the science, are you?

Admittedly, you’d still have ecophiliacs arguing other egological points aside from the global warming ones, though seriously speaking being shown to be wrong about AGW after this long would probably greatly discredit pro-ecological scientific findings in general - or at least that would be the spin that was put on it.

11

But who would believe that that’s due to our CO2 ? Even the scientists who now do so would probably have serious doubts, since AGW being ruled out would pretty much destroy their models.

12

Hey, I would like a pony too.

Like Der Trihs says, a lot will have to be dismissed to disprove the AGW.

Now, what to do about it? That does remain IMHO a big juicy subject to discuss, this subject, is way out there nowadays.

13

Poll them. I doubt you’ll find one president on either side of the fence over the last 50 years who didn’t approve conservationist and ecological measures. Where they draw the line will vary of course, but it was after all under Reagan and Bush I that acid rain got off-shored. It was under Nixon that the EPA was invented.

I mean maybe Sam Stone is just chomping at the bit to be allowed to go out and sludgeify the rivers, but I suspect not. Even in Libertaria, personal freedom stops when it’s affecting everyone.

14

The anthropogenic part was always a red herring.

Even in some imagined hypothetical in which current/recent past warming was not due to human influences the issue of how to limit additional risks posed by adding more CO2 into the mix, and how to prepare for the damage that might come anyway, would remain. A forest fire may have begun by a match or by a lightening strike; it’s still a good idea to get the gas can out of its path, to clear the brush around your property as best you can, and to hose it all down before you leave with some of your most important stuff in enough time.

15

Can we please put aside whether AGW is true or not? For the purposes of this thread only, it is not. But we’ve still been using up fossil fuels, the Earth is still warming, there is still an increased amount of CO2 in the air, etc.

16

Why not mphasize the positive? The Medieval Warming Period (ca. 1000-1300 AD), is geerally accepted to have been a positive time for homo sapiens-harvests were generous, the average human lived longer and was better fed, and the population of Europe increased. You could even grow wine grapes in England.
Later, in the cooling period, people had to abadon their homes (in the Alps) as the glaciers expanded.

17

The trouble with this sort of socialist environmentalism is the same as the problem with the Marxist aphorism “from each according to…”

They are very nice truisms, but in the real world who gets to decide the details? Who gets to decide who has the ability to bear these burdens, and who gets to decide who needs the benefits? Who gets to decide which forests should be protected and to what degree (you surely can’t mean that all forests should be protected?:eek:) And so on and so forth.

For the past ~20 years the dire threat of AGW has been used as ane excuse to force a minority of people to bear this burden on the basis that the threat to everyone is so incredibly large. If that threat had not existed those sorts of measures, including preventing people from cutting down trees on land that they own, would never have been passed. And I think that if it were proved to be untrue a lot of people would be asking for their property and other rights back.

If that were the case then why is AGW pretty much the sole selling point in every conservation campaign? The fact is that AGW has proved to be a massive boost to the conservation industry,a dn that without it the industry would lack both support and funds.

The idea that you could sell the public on these things without AGW is belied by the emphasis put on AGW in every single conservation campaign that it can evern tangentially be shoehorned into. If it weren’t a major boost in seeling these things then why would it be used at the forefront of campaigns?

Who doesn’t want world peace?
Who doesn’t want an end to poverty?
Who doesn’t want universal religious tolerance
Who doesn’t want ice creams and lollipops?

These are classic Miss America statements. They ignore the complexity of the real world for a nice sort generalisation. The fact is that everybody wants a clean, green world, and an end to poverty and so forth. But nobody, including you, is willing to give up their luxuries in order to achieve those things.

So the real question is not “Who doesn’t want a clean green world”. The question is “What are they prepared to sacrifice in terms of luxuries, freedoms and rights in order to have a clean green world”. And the answer to that is “A whole lot less if having a green world will still result in mass extinctions due to global warming and if it won’t have any noticeable impact on their quality of life”.

You are claiming that people will give up their rights, freedoms and luxuries just as willingly whether AGW is true or not. That they will give them up regardless fo whether it will prevent the extinction of 100, 00 species, or will not prevent a single extinction. Regardless of whether it will mean their children have a 70% chance of contracting malaria, or no chance at all. And so on for each of the perils we are regularly told will come with AGW.

Making such a claim is absurd in its own right. It is terrifying if its true. You are saying that people will are committed to the conservation measures regardless of cots, regardless of the benefit and regardless of whether they actually have any benefit at all.

I calls bullshit on that.

18

Oh, and to address the OP.

My biggest fear if AGW is falsified is that it will cause a catastrophic loss of confidence is science.

ATM we have a small group of people who say things like “Scientists said th3 bumblebee couldn’t fly” and similar statements intended to indicate that science has been wrong in the past and shouldn’t be used as a guide. These things however are easily countered because either 1) they aren’t true (scientists never seriously said the bumble can’t fly) 2)It wa sonly a minority of scientists. Even the population garbage tat Paul Ehrlich produced can be discounted because it was only one man.

Bu with AGW we keep getting told that this is scientific consensus. Al Gore told us that not a single peer reviewed article challenged the claim. And so forth. If this one fails then I fear that any time that someone wants to use science as a guide to public policy its going to be dragged out to discredit science. And rightly so IMO. Science and scientists have made the prediction of a worldwide catastrophe and have used that catastrophe to push for massive and radical changes in public policy and social engineering. If the prediction fails in this case then why should anyone have any confidence in science in future public policy debates.

To me that is the single biggest outcome of AGW falsification. The loss of science as a overriding guide to public policy won’t be a minor blow to society. I don’t; mean to suggest that science won’t be used at all. I mean that its current position as the primary guide will go out the window completely. Any hint of debate will mean that an issue is scientifically suspect and the science is therefore of limited utility.

19

Why do people keep bringing up Al Gore? Gore is not a scientist.

20

Nor did I claim that he is.

The reason I bring up Gore is because he has been extremely influential in influencing public opinion on this matter. How Gore sees the science on this issue is pretty much how Joe Public sees the issue. Since my post was about the effect this would have on public perception of science that hardly seems irrelevant.