# Obama calls for urgent action on climate change
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 6, 2014, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806 "2014-05-06T14:09:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 7
### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2014, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/121 "2014-05-10T01:59:04Z")
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> It’s the same technology as the Prius. A small ice engine and 2 electric motors tied to a planetary gear transmission. It wasn’t technology advanced, it was wasted resources. It represents a car not driven. They pissed away an entire production line when they could have mass produced something that made a difference.
>
> Ford had a hybrid SUV years ago. They’ve moved on to making a hybrid for same cost as the stock engine variant. This is what puts cars on the road that save fuel.
>
> It’s reality versus wishful thinking.
Useless retort when one considers what I typed.
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2014, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/122 "2014-05-10T07:42:59Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> Useless retort when one considers what I typed.
It’s basic math. Saying your “for” something isn’t a strategic goal. It’s good intentions. Good intentions are… good. But they’re not a strategic goal. They’re the pavement on the road to financial hell.
If the goal is to reduce global warming then it has to be based on the best return for the money spent. Otherwise we’re losing ground. I pick on the Volt because there was no realistic projected return on investment (financial or co2 reduction). It’s the poster child of waste.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2014, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/123 "2014-05-10T15:38:00Z")
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> It’s basic math. Saying your “for” something isn’t a strategic goal. It’s good intentions. Good intentions are… good. But they’re not a strategic goal. They’re the pavement on the road to financial hell.
Really silly when you are dealing with a niche item. And as I’m taking all the electric cards and hybrids in the picture yours is still and attempt at straw manning what I say.
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> If the goal is to reduce global warming then it has to be based on the best return for the money spent. Otherwise we’re losing ground. I pick on the Volt because there was no realistic projected return on investment (financial or co2 reduction). It’s the poster child of waste.
Nah, it is clear that you did pick it because it was from a car company that was bailed out, incidentally you are going to a lot of pain for so little, what I have said here does imply that items like the Volt are useful to check what works and not and limited “mistakes” offer lessons to what to do next, as the guy from TED that talked about the God complex:
> [@](#):
>
> But Cochrane would do that kind of thing. And the reason he would do that kind of thing is because he understood it feels so much better to stand there and say, “Here in my own little world, I am a god, I understand everything. I do not want to have my opinions challenged. I do not want to have my conclusions tested.” It feels so much more comfortable simply to lay down the law. Cochrane understood that uncertainty, that fallibility, that being challenged, they hurt. And you sometimes need to be shocked out of that. Now I’m not going to pretend that this is easy. It isn’t easy. It’s incredibly painful.
>
> 16:21 And since I started talking about this subject and researching this subject, I’ve been really haunted by something a Japanese mathematician said on the subject. So shortly after the war, this young man, Yutaka Taniyama, developed this amazing conjecture called the Taniyama-Shimura Conjecture. It turned out to be absolutely instrumental many decades later in proving Fermat’s Last Theorem. In fact, it turns out it’s equivalent to proving Fermat’s Last Theorem. You prove one, you prove the other. But it was always a conjecture. Taniyama tried and tried and tried and he could never prove that it was true. And shortly before his 30th birthday in 1958, Yutaka Taniyama killed himself. His friend, Goro Shimura – who worked on the mathematics with him – many decades later, reflected on Taniyama’s life. He said, “He was not a very careful person as a mathematician. He made a lot of mistakes. But he made mistakes in a good direction. I tried to emulate him, but I realized it is very difficult to make good mistakes.”
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2014, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/124 "2014-05-10T17:06:26Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> Really silly when you are dealing with a niche item. And as I’m taking all the electric cards and hybrids in the picture yours is still and attempt at straw manning what I say.
the money spent is not niche money. It’s gone just like the money poured into Solyndra. It was dead on arrival. It’s not a mistake when the business model is a predicted failure. The same thing for Tesla. Tax money for luxury cars that nobody will buy.
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> Nah, it is clear that you did pick it because it was from a car company that was bailed out, incidentally you are going to a lot of pain for so little, what I have said here does imply that items like the Volt are useful to check what works and not and limited “mistakes” offer lessons to what to do next, as the guy from TED that talked about the God complex:
GM pissed away an entire manufacturing plant. It wasn’t a one-time mistake, it’s still ongoing. It represents a real loss in production of a car that could make a difference.
For someone who continuously talks about the serious nature of global warming you completely ignore waste and lost opportunity. Efficiency in energy use starts with efficient use of money toward that goal.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2014, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/125 "2014-05-10T17:10:42Z")
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> the money spent is not niche money. It’s gone just like the money poured into Solyndra. It was dead on arrival. It’s not a mistake when the business model is a predicted failure. The same thing for Tesla. Tax money for luxury cars that nobody will buy.
Again, not accurate as they continue to sell it in the niche they have. So again, you only look ridiculous when you claim that nobody is buying.
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> GM pissed away an entire manufacturing plant. It wasn’t a one-time mistake, it’s still ongoing. It represents a real loss in production of a car that could make a difference.
>
> For someone who continuously talks about the serious nature of global warming you completely ignore waste and lost opportunity. Efficiency in energy use starts with efficient use of money toward that goal.
And doubly ridiculous because you are still attempting to pigeon-hole me when I was referring to battery technology and I do take then all efforts into account. That some are willing to put their money in a Volt is interesting, but not very important for the big picture.
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### Author:  [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2014, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/126 "2014-05-10T17:18:18Z")
There is just so much disinformation, wrong information, and good old fashioned fear mongering associated with “global warming” or “climate change”, it’s become a joke of sorts.
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> The disastrous consequences of rapid climate change are only beginning to be fully appreciated. Just as an example, just yesterday, [in the current issue of _Nature_](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13179.html), a new research article appeared, which was [summed up as follows](http://phys.org/news/2014-05-carbon-dioxide-compromise-human-nutrition.html):
The letter, published in Nature is an example of just how bad “science” has become. Instead of a scientific study on plant nutrition, growth rates and water use of common food crops, in an atmosphere with higher CO2 levels, the only message we hear is “ **Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition!** ”.
Which we see here translated into “The disastrous consequences of rapid climate change”. A study on crops grown with increased CO2 is turned into “The disastrous consequences of rapid climate change”.
There are just so many problems, so much ignorance in this short example.
The most obvious is that a higher level of CO2, the one factor the studies were supposed to be comparing, **isn’t climate change**. It’s a change in the atmospheric amount of a trace gas, which happens to be an essential nutrient for all plants. The studies were not about climate at all.
More importantly, “[The researchers were surprised to find that zinc and iron varied substantially across cultivars of rice](http://phys.org/news/2014-05-carbon-dioxide-compromise-human-nutrition.html#jCp).”
I looked at the data, and what no popular press story is telling the world, is that several of the test areas showed an increase in zinc and iron, as well as some crops showing an increase in protein.
But of course they averaged them all together, and tell only the story that CO2 threatens the food supply. That’s the linguistic hand grenade lobbed into a conversation, so frightened people can yell even louder about “The disastrous consequences of rapid climate change”, while ignoring the much more important parts of a discussion.
A complete and detailed discussion would include all kinds of facts and data that don’t give a sense of danger and urgency. But unlike the short fear filled conversation (like I quoted above), in the real world some people are more interested in solving problems than trying to convince everyone they will only get much worse.
For example, [increasing the zinc in rice](http://www.harvestplus.org/content/zinc-rice). If two billion people are short on zinc, as the nature fear story says, then that is actually [the problem to be solved now](http://archive.thedailystar.net/beta2/news/rice-revolution/).
But back to the brain addled fear mongering. The story started back in 2002 when Loladze thought the extra growth from enriched CO2 was diluting the nutrients. Because he was basing this on greenhouse experiments, using pots, the outdoor CO2 enriched crop experiments started. Lieffering et al. 2004 notes that rice showed a 14% increase in productivity (you won’t hear that in NATURE of course) as well as that with sufficient soil nutrients, enriched CO2 rice showed no sign of dilution of nutrients. Okada et al., 2001, Kim et al., 2003
But come on, who are we kidding. Facts won’t make any difference when the conclusion is already reached. Global warming/climate change is going to be real bad, and we have to act now. That’s the real goal of research, not to enrich the food supply, or increase production. Not to stop zinc deficiency, or increase iron in poor people’s diets.
That’s why there might be a dozen topics about global warming, but never a one about making rice better.
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### Author:  [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2014, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/127 "2014-05-11T11:16:36Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#):
>
> Facts won’t make any difference when the conclusion is already reached.
Ah, irony.
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2014, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/128 "2014-05-11T17:44:34Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> Again, not accurate as they continue to sell it in the niche they have. So again, you only look ridiculous when you claim that nobody is buying.
:smack: nobody is buying this car. It is a huge manufacturing plant dedicated to failure. And yet you ignore the obvious. You’re actually defending a waste of money. It’s the tax funded poster child of what’s wrong this war on warming. It’s not the car, it’s the Solyndra, it’s the lack of support for diesels, It’s a thousand other bits of stupid that add up to billions of dollars of failed effort toward a common goal.
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> And doubly ridiculous because you are still attempting to pigeon-hole me when I was referring to battery technology and I do take then all efforts into account. That some are willing to put their money in a Volt is interesting, but not very important for the big picture.
I don’t recall you ever taking in to account the natural progression of technology and trends. It’s been one long post-a-cite of impending doom. You just don’t get it. There are easy solutions sitting on the curb because politicians can’t make a decision that doesn’t involve giving their cronies millions of dollars.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/129 "2014-05-11T18:57:51Z")
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> :smack: nobody is buying this car. It is a huge manufacturing plant dedicated to failure. And yet you ignore the obvious. You’re actually defending a waste of money. It’s the tax funded poster child of what’s wrong this war on warming. It’s not the car, it’s the Solyndra, it’s the lack of support for diesels, It’s a thousand other bits of stupid that add up to billions of dollars of failed effort toward a common goal.
Again, not my problem that your statements are sounding more ridiculous, complain to the dictionary people if you have a beef on what “nobody” means.
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> I don’t recall you ever taking in to account the natural progression of technology and trends. It’s been one long post-a-cite of impending doom. You just don’t get it.
Nah, anybody else can get it, as I pointed before you are relying on a caricature of an environmentalist when I’m not like that, hence the ridiculousness of your attempts at pigeon-hole others.
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> There are easy solutions sitting on the curb because politicians can’t make a decision that doesn’t involve giving their cronies millions of dollars.
Like the fossil fuel companies, yes.
> **[Fossil Fuels Receive $500 Billion A Year In Government Subsidies Worldwide -...](https://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/11/fossil-fuels-receive-500-billion-year-government-subsidies-worldwide/)**
>
> Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! Originally published on ClimateProgress Producers of oil, gas and coal received more than $500 billion in government subsidies around the world in 2011, with the...
[http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/print/2013/12/want-to-make-solar-more-competitive-cut-fossil-fuel-subsidies](http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/print/2013/12/want-to-make-solar-more-competitive-cut-fossil-fuel-subsidies)
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2014, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/130 "2014-05-11T22:00:24Z")
[The Pentagon is taking it seriously.](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/climate-change-real-pentagon-sure-thinks-so-n101701)
> [@](#):
>
> U.S. military and intelligence agencies are increasingly monitoring and preparing for how, when and where the consequences of a warmer planet will collide with national security, requiring the eventual need to deploy American troops to weather-torn lands.
>
> As climate-change arguments continue at home — including pundits who assert the scientific consensus on the issue is overblown or concocted — current and former Department of Defense officials are mapping future strategies to protect U.S. interests in the aftermath of massive floods, water shortages and famines that are expected to hit and decimate unstable nations.
>
> “For DoD, this is a mission reality, not a political debate,” said Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman. “The scientific forecast is for more Arctic ice melt, more sea-level rise, more intense storms, more flooding from storm surge, and more drought.
>
> “Those changes shape the future operating environment, help us predict missions we’ll have to undertake, and create challenges and constraints on how we operate on our bases,” Wright said. “We’re taking sensible measured steps to mitigate the mission risk posed by climate change.”
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2014, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/131 "2014-05-23T22:48:33Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> [The Pentagon is taking it seriously.](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/climate-change-real-pentagon-sure-thinks-so-n101701)
[Or would, if the HoR would let them.](http://www.salon.com/2014/05/23/house_bans_the_military_from_acknowledging_climate_science_national_security_be_damned/) :rolleyes:
> [@](#):
>
> The notoriously anti-science House Science Committee has hit a new low, voting on Thursday to approve a spending bill amendment that “would prohibit defense spending on climate change research and the social cost of carbon analysis.” Translated: The Pentagon is being ordered to ignore climate science.
>
> Specifically, the amendment, which was introduced by Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., forbids the Department of Defense from in any way utilizing the findings and recommendations of the National Climate Assessment or the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment on climate change, two landmark, comprehensive reports reflecting the work of hundreds of the world’s top climate scientists and experts — or, as McKinley referred to it, “ideology.” In so doing, it renders all that knowledge and understanding effectively irrelevant to national defense.
The bill passed today and is now on its way to the Senate.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2014, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/132 "2014-05-23T23:33:53Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> [Or would, if the HoR would let them.](http://www.salon.com/2014/05/23/house_bans_the_military_from_acknowledging_climate_science_national_security_be_damned/) :rolleyes:
>
> The bill passed today and is now on its way to the Senate.
Virtually all Republicans miss the point of King Canute.\*
-
And no, King Canute was not the loopy one, the King (or to be more precise, the point of the legend) actually made his sea stunt to teach a lesson **to his subjects** that they were really demanding the impossible and the reckless. Sadly that kind of leadership is missing here, the Republicans are only happy to not make waves and tell their [del]subjects[/del] represented citizens that on this issue most of them they are dead wrong.
> **[Is King Canute misunderstood?](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13524677)**
>
> In the recent row over injunctions and Twitter, the analogy of King Canute vainly trying to hold back the tide has constantly been used. But is it correct?
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2014, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/133 "2014-05-23T23:58:00Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> Virtually all Republicans miss the point of King Canute.\*
>
> -
>
> And no, King Canute was not the loopy one, the King (or to be more precise, the point of the legend) actually made his sea stunt to teach a lesson **to his subjects** that they were really demanding the impossible and the reckless. Sadly that kind of leadership is missing here, the Republicans are only happy to not make waves and tell their [del]subjects[/del] represented citizens that on this issue most of them they are dead wrong.
>
> [Is King Canute misunderstood? - BBC News](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13524677)
From [_A Child’s History of England,_](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/699/699-h/699-h.htm) by Charles Dickens:
> [@](#):
>
> The old writers of history relate how that Canute was one day disgusted with his courtiers for their flattery, and how he caused his chair to be set on the sea-shore, and feigned to command the tide as it came up not to wet the edge of his robe, for the land was his; how the tide came up, of course, without regarding him; and how he then turned to his flatterers, and rebuked them, saying, what was the might of any earthly king, to the might of the Creator, who could say unto the sea, ‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther!’ We may learn from this, I think, that a little sense will go a long way in a king; and that courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a liking for it. If the courtiers of Canute had not known, long before, that the King was fond of flattery, they would have known better than to offer it in such large doses. And if they had not known that he was vain of this speech (anything but a wonderful speech it seems to me, if a good child had made it), they would not have been at such great pains to repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the sea-shore together; the King’s chair sinking in the sand; the King in a mighty good humour with his own wisdom; and the courtiers pretending to be quite stunned by it!
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2014, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/134 "2014-05-24T00:04:42Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> The notoriously anti-science House Science Committee has hit a new low, voting on Thursday to approve a spending bill amendment that “would prohibit defense spending on climate change research and the social cost of carbon analysis.” Translated: The Pentagon is being ordered to ignore climate science.
I see that the members of the House Science Committee are not just obviously accomplished scientists, but they are also true patriots concerned with a strong military to protect national security. Because as everyone knows, the Pentagon is composed almost exclusively of tree-hugging environmentalist hippies and **they must be stopped**! 😃
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### Author:  [@The\_Fornicator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Fornicator)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/135 "2014-05-25T11:57:45Z")
Now 17 years since the US rejected the Kyoto Protocol, and still nothing changes. Can anything change in the US, and for the world, while the politial class continues to be funded by vested interests?
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### Author:  [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/136 "2014-05-25T16:31:52Z")
> [@The\_Fornicator](#):
>
> Now 17 years since the US rejected the Kyoto Protocol, and still nothing changes.
That’s not quite true. A lot more CO2 has been released since then, and the global mean temperature has … OK it hasn’t changed.
I think you are right. Nothing has changed.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/137 "2014-05-25T18:14:57Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#):
>
> That’s not quite true. A lot more CO2 has been released since then, and the global mean temperature has … OK it hasn’t changed.
>
> I think you are right. Nothing has changed.
As usual, this is wrong.
> **[RealClimate: What ocean heating reveals about global warming](https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/)**
>
> RealClimate: The heat content of the oceans is growing and growing. That means that the greenhouse effect has not taken a pause and the cold sun is not noticeably slowing global warming. NOAA posts regularly updated measurements of the amount of heat...
> [@](#):
>
> The amount of heat stored in the oceans is one of the most important diagnostics for global warming, because about 90% of the additional heat is stored there (you can read more about this in the last IPCC report from 2007). The atmosphere stores only about 2% because of its small heat capacity. The surface (including the continental ice masses) can only absorb heat slowly because it is a poor heat conductor. Thus, heat absorbed by the oceans accounts for almost all of the planet’s radiative imbalance.
>
> If the oceans are warming up, this implies that the Earth must absorb more solar energy than it emits longwave radiation into space. This is the only possible heat source. That’s simply the first law of thermodynamics, conservation of energy. This conservation law is why physicists are so interested in looking at the energy balance of anything. Because we understand the energy balance of our Earth, we also know that global warming is caused by greenhouse gases – which have caused the largest imbalance in the radiative energy budget over the last century.
>
> If the greenhouse effect (that checks the exit of longwave radiation from Earth into space) or the amount of absorbed sunlight diminished, one would see a slowing in the heat uptake of the oceans. The measurements show that this is not the case.
>
> The increase in the amount of heat in the oceans amounts to 17 x 1022 Joules over the last 30 years. That is so much energy it is equivalent to exploding a Hiroshima bomb every second in the ocean for thirty years.
>
> The data in the graphs comes from the World Ocean Database. Wikipedia has a fine overview of this database. The data set includes nine million measured temperature profiles from all of the world’s oceans. One of my personal heroes, the oceanographer Syd Levitus, has dedicated much of his life to making these oceanographic data freely available to everyone. During the Cold war that even landed him in a Russian jail for espionage for a while, as he was visiting Russia on his quest for oceanographic data (he once told me of that adventure over breakfast in a Beijing hotel).
>
> How to deny data
>
> Ideologically motivated “climate skeptics” know that these data contradict their claims, and respond … by rejecting the measurements. Millions of stations are dismissed as “negligible” – the work of generations of oceanographers vanish with a journalist’s stroke of a pen because what should not exist, cannot be. “Climate skeptics’” web sites even claim that the measurement uncertainty in the average of 3000 Argo probes is the same as that from each individual one. Thus not only are the results of climate research called into question, but even the elementary rules of uncertainty calculus that every science student learns in their first semester. Anything goes when you have to deny global warming.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/138 "2014-05-25T18:29:54Z")
Would it be possible, I wonder, to built a giant radiator-fin at the equator, that protrudes beyond the atmosphere, and bleed off the Earth’s excess heat that way?
Probably not until a space elevator is also possible . . .
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/139 "2014-05-25T19:08:50Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> As usual, this is wrong.
Of course it’s wrong. Everything I’ve ever seen him post on this subject has been wrong. I don’t know why you even bother responding.
Incidentally, I was just reading this new article:
[Athabasca Glacier could disappear within generation](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/athabasca-glacier-could-disappear-within-generation-says-manager-1.2653641)
That article in turn has some good links to related news, in case anyone missed it:
[Unprecedented B.C. glacier melt seeps into U.S. climate change concerns](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/unprecedented-b-c-glacier-melt-seeps-into-u-s-climate-change-concerns-1.2646742)
[Huge Antarctic ice sheet collapsing](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/huge-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapsing-1.2639989)
[Greenland glacier melting 5 times faster than in 1990](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/greenland-glacier-melting-5-times-faster-than-in-1990s-1.1194070)s
[Warmer climate adding to extreme weather woes, expert says](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/warmer-climate-adding-to-extreme-weather-woes-expert-says-1.1149025)
[Glacier time-lapse images reveal ‘epochal change’](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/glacier-time-lapse-images-reveal-epochal-change-1.1146397)
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/140 "2014-05-25T19:23:49Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> As usual, this is wrong. “If the oceans are warming up, this implies that the Earth must absorb more solar energy than it emits longwave radiation into space.”
And the heat from volcanoes underwater goes where?
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