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The comment section of that ArsTechnica link was highly entertaining.

Very valuable link from the comments here: https://thelogicofscience.com/2016/10/18/debunking-25-arguments-against-climate-change-in-5-sentences-or-less-each/

There are links within to longer versions of the debunkings.

With regards to the Australian algal bloom, I need to look into it some more. Here's a review of the science of intentional ocean fertilization.

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13 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

A half of the 25 Q&As is a labeling.

While still no explanation about the 10kya ocean level raising by 20..100+ meters, 1 km-thick glaciers melting, and why has the Earth not been devastated that time, compared to the modern centimeters (from the link, ~4 cm), and how did the hunter-gatherer fires caused that climatic change, as the mentioned researches prove that there can be no such dramatic climatic change without the human activity.

So, the total human industry can cause just centimeters of the ocean level raising, while 10 kya, with no industry but campfires, it raised by a hundred of meters because the ice shield had melted.

As well, the Viking vs Rembrandt epochs. First when Greenland was somewhere green, next when the Dutch were skating at home.
The 30-year long chart is good, but it took about 500 years to make the Northmen skating, so the short straight line can be a short part of a sine wave as well.

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Before us, the system was in balance, with roughly the same amount being removed and produced (plants, the ocean, etc. all remove some CO2). 

Dynamically balanced, and permanently changing.

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 Thanks to humans, however, that balance has shifted and now more CO2 is being produced than is being removed.

So, not just the input has grown, but also the output has reduced.
What about the forest cutting to make new plowlands for the human population having gotten increased from 2 bln in XIX/XX to 8 bln now, mostly in low-tech regions?

And as the population has grown for 3..4 times, it needs at least 3..4 times bigger industry and plowland, doesn't it?

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Water vapor increases in response to an increase in temperature. So, water vapor is a feedback mechanism, wherein CO2 from us causes some warming, that warming increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, and that water vapor causes even more warming

A word juggling.

Volumetric 0.2..0.5 % of the atmospheric water vs 0.03..0.04% of carbon dioxide means at least ten times greater warming input from the water steam.
And the CO2 concentration is a same feedback mechanism named "carbonate-bicarbonate buffer" (and btw where is it mentioned in the green alarms?)

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Bad Argument/Myth #12: In the 70’s scientists predicted an ice age

Reality: No they didn’t. There were a total of seven papers on global cooling, and during that exact same time, 42 papers were published on global warming

And all 7+42 papers were equipped with same accurate charts and numbers.

Let's vote! Science means democracy. 7:42, they lose.

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Bad Argument/Myth #14: But scientists have been wrong in the past, and we can’t be totally certain that climate change is true

Reality: The fact that scientists have been wrong before and might be wrong now does not mean or even suggest that they actually are wrong now. 

Brilliant.

We were wrong previously but fools doubt our word in advance.

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Bad Argument/Myth #15: There are thousands of scientists who disagree (e.g., the Oregon Petition)

Reality: The overwhelming majority of climatologists (somewhere in the high 90’s) agree that we are causing climate change.

The overwhelming majority was sure that the continents don't drift just a half-century ago.
Also funds. Any scientist needs food. Food means money. Money means grants. Grants mean those who are ready to give the grant.
The mainstream always rules in scientist feeding. Kepler was being fed by the astrology, not by the astronomy.

(This is also about several next "bad arguments" in the article).

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4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The overwhelming majority was sure that the continents don't drift just a half-century ago.

Or, you could put it more plainly: yes, but what about the thousands in the above-mentioned argument?

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I wanted to respond to Kerbiloid's post, but it's a borderline incomprehensible word salad mixed with copious doses of sheer ignorance. Can we just tell the troll to read a Wikipedia article or two and then never come back?

 

The last portion responding to the three quotes is sort-of possible to understand, at least. The argument for all of them boils down to "Scientists believed something different in these fields before anybody knew how to make actual measurements, so we shouldn't trust them now either even though actual methodology has been developed and tested over many decades". This level of ignorance itself is a blemish on a forum that's otherwise quite science-oriented.

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1 hour ago, Codraroll said:

I wanted to respond to Kerbiloid's post, but it's a borderline incomprehensible word salad mixed with copious doses of sheer ignorance. Can we just tell the troll to read a Wikipedia article or two and then never come back?

I'll step in for a second and say that I LIKE Kerbiloid, I just think he's wrong (and I can prove it). English isn't his first language and it's a heated discussion--Of course it's going to get messy. I've made quite a few editing mistakes in this thread that I only noticed after the fact. My perspective is that I'm LUCKY to be able to argue with someone who has made the effort to learn MY language.

EDIT: Per Joe ninja'ing me, I'll do my refutation when I get done with work.

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The thing to understand about kerbiloid is that (I believe) both the execution of his intentions and writing style might be a little like Charles Fort.

Fort had one belief- that scientists in the early 1900s were beginning to enter a religious-like state in defence of their own theories. So he decided to write wacky books (that ultimately had rather poor writing style, perhaps on purpose) about UFOs, sea monsters, falls of animals during storms, and other bizarre occurrences to criticize them. He himself however once said that he did not believe in any of his own theories he wrote on those matters.

With kerbiloid, his “beliefs” vary. In this case, it is [described below]. I believe his intentions may be like this based on his response to suggestions that Starship be used for changing the orbit of the ROSS (silly remarks about using Angara instead).

I think regardless of the accuracy of his claims in that particular post, all he is saying is that scientific claims need to be supported and accepted based on actual data and proper use of the scientific method, not a five word sentence from a Q&A article.

Don’t take this as some kind of gospel obviously. Just trying to help others understand why his posts are the way they are sometimes :)

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10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I believe his intentions may be like this based on his response to suggestions that Starship be used for changing the orbit of the ROSS (silly remarks about using Angara instead).

My post is absolutely serious. Just in non-academic language.

***

The adepts of the warming warning:

1. They ignore the fact that just ~12k years ago (in human history, not in dinosaur time) the kilometer-thick ice shield in the Northern hemisphere melted, the ocean level raised by tens (up to hundred and more) meters, opposed to the current centimeters declared to be catastrophical. And this happened just in several centuries.

But as we can see, it didn't cause anything like hurricanes devastating the continents. Just the climate got more comfy. 
Of course, we miss the hairy elephants and sabretooth cats (actually not so much), but much more developed species feel absolutely happy instead.

2. They ignore the fact that just in several centuries the Vinland lost vineyards, the Greenland lost green, the Holland started skating at home, and then everything turned back.
The Dutch winter is now far from subarctic, and the process just returns to the green Greenland and vineyard Vinland, like a thousand years ago.

3. They ignore the ~5600 BC disaster, when the American cold Agassiz Lake dumped a mass of cold water into the Atlantic ocean causing cooling and drought in Eurasia, which killed the Fertile Crescent civilisations and forced the founding of the documentally known ones (Egyptian, Mesopotamian).
The effect was significant, but just because of poor agriculture of those times.

4. They bring charts of hardly measurable processes (like how much do the volcanoes exhaust, how much do the forests exhaust and inhale).
Of course, this can be measured with some precision, but the cross of error around these points could be wider than the chart itself.
Instead they just draw smooth curvy lines perfectly matching each other. While they should be wide bands, making the chart look not so much impressive.

5. They ignore the fact than since XIX/XX (i.e. just in a century) the human population has increased 4 times (from 2 bln to 8 bln), and the funny part is that all of them need food.
So, they should either have increased the plowland area 4 times (impossible, but they are trying), or have raised the plowland productivity by 4 times (mostly done since 1913, when Bosch started producing synthetic ammonia from air and water, thanks to Fritz Haber).
So, the combination of these two factors still allows to feed the 4 times greater population on the same land, but it's strange to wait that it could be done without burning more and more coal to produce the fertilizers and power the plowland watering. 
Of course, it's much easier to blame the plastic bags and straws (like if the blamers drink with hands from a river and eat wild berries and mushrooms), than to accept the fact that more people need more energy just to have grown some crops and to deliver it to the population.

6. They ignore the fact that following the mainstream is the most available path for a scientist to get funds for his researches, regardless of his personal scientific point of view.

He can find himself the human-caused global warming theory totally idiotic, but he needs money to study a forest, a volcano, a glacier, and the obvious way to get funded is to say "Look! The smoke clouds are rising above our heads causing the oceanic storms, and as a minor part of our struggle we need to study this forest/volcano/glacier".

Or an engineer wants to develop some tool to measure the sulfur oxides in air.
What should he say? "Look! We need a new tool to measure sulfur oxides because it's cool and I like it!" ?
No. If he has a piece of brain, he must say: "Look! We have no air to breathe and urgently need a new tool to measure the sulfic pollution to make the whole world cleaner!"

So, the magic of big numbers doesn't work here at all.
The fact that 90% of scientists are shouting about the global warming caused by the human industry doesn't mean they actually believe it .
Actually, 90% of them don't care. They are just small people doing the job they like or they can. The most important part of any scientist work is to find money for the scientist needs to let him do this work. His article and active position won't change the world, but will provide him and his family with some food and pleasures, and maybe even will be used later by another scientist to disprove his theory and make the world better with an opposite one.
Just people tend to overestimate the significance of their personal position in the human history.

As Kepler said (quoting from memory), "The astrology is a prodigal daughter of astronomy. But without this daughter the mother would die from starvation."

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5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

1. They ignore the fact that just ~12k years ago (in human history, not in dinosaur time) the kilometer-thick ice shield in the Northern hemisphere melted, the ocean level raised by tens (up to hundred and more) meters, opposed to the current centimeters declared to be catastrophical. And this happened just in several centuries.

Ignore? Where the heck do you get that from? Look at the temperature graphs, it's right there. XKCD has a great chart to illustrate that the current situation is a tad more serious than the gradual warming over thousands of years that ended the last Ice Age. A temperature change of one degree per thousand years is about as drastic as it gets under natural conditions. We've seen a degree of warming in less than a century now, and it's still accelerating.

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

But as we can see, it didn't cause anything like hurricanes devastating the continents. Just the climate got more comfy. 
Of course, we miss the hairy elephants and sabretooth cats (actually not so much), but much more developed species feel absolutely happy instead.

In biological terms, the industrialization of human society is a mass extinction event, but sure. Absolutely happy. There's no way this can come back to bite us in the ass later.

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

2. They ignore the fact that just in several centuries the Vinland lost vineyards, the Greenland lost green, the Holland started skating at home, and then everything turned back.
The Dutch winter is now far from subarctic, and the process just returns to the green Greenland and vineyard Vinland, like a thousand years ago.

No, it's right there in the statistics, and all accounted for. Greenland was never very green. Viking settlers managed to eke out a few meagre grain fields during its short summers, but it's not like the ice caps weren't there back then either.  The settlements were always at a sustenance minimum and it didn't take much of a change in the climate for them to be abandoned. The "Little Ice Age" was a mostly regional phenomenon.

Besides, again, the speed at which things are happening. I trust you haven't come to this discussion without at least looking at a temperature graph, but I suspect it didn't sink in.

Same with point #3. You seem to pretend that climate scientists have failed to notice events you can find on Wikipedia, then claim them as evidence that you are right and they are wrong. Chances are that the people whose job it is to study the development of the global climate over time are taking into account historical events when the reports are written.

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

4. They bring charts of hardly measurable processes (like how much do the volcanoes exhaust, how much do the forests exhaust and inhale).
Of course, this can be measured with some precision, but the cross of error around these points could be wider than the chart itself.
Instead they just draw smooth curvy lines perfectly matching each other. While they should be wide bands, making the chart look not so much impressive.

Any examples of this? Any decent scientific measurement should include error bars. And if nobody reports the error bars, how do you know how wide they are?

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

5. They ignore the fact than since XIX/XX (i.e. just in a century) the human population has increased 4 times (from 2 bln to 8 bln), and the funny part is that all of them need food.
So, they should either have increased the plowland area 4 times (impossible, but they are trying), or have raised the plowland productivity by 4 times (mostly done since 1913, when Bosch started producing synthetic ammonia from air and water, thanks to Fritz Haber).
So, the combination of these two factors still allows to feed the 4 times greater population on the same land, but it's strange to wait that it could be done without burning more and more coal to produce the fertilizers and power the plowland watering. 
Of course, it's much easier to blame the plastic bags and straws (like if the blamers drink with hands from a river and eat wild berries and mushrooms), than to accept the fact that more people need more energy just to have grown some crops and to deliver it to the population.

Now you're making a mishmash mix-up of overpopulation, land use, pollution, and climate change. They are related, yes, but the presentation here is too tangled up for the argument to have any sort of understandable meaning. You seem to be implying that people blame plastic straws for climate change, which absolutely nobody has done ever, and use that as an argument against the idea of climate change in general?

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

6. They ignore the fact that following the mainstream is the most available path for a scientist to get funds for his researches, regardless of his personal scientific point of view.

Hahahahahha no.

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

He can find himself the human-caused global warming theory totally idiotic, but he needs money to study a forest, a volcano, a glacier, and the obvious way to get funded is to say "Look! The smoke clouds are rising above our heads causing the oceanic storms, and as a minor part of our struggle we need to study this forest/volcano/glacier".

Or an engineer wants to develop some tool to measure the sulfur oxides in air.
What should he say? "Look! We need a new tool to measure sulfur oxides because it's cool and I like it!" ?
No. If he has a piece of brain, he must say: "Look! We have no air to breathe and urgently need a new tool to measure the sulfic pollution to make the whole world cleaner!"

So everybody finds the theory "totally idiotic", but it just so happens nobody says it out loud, and they do so despite the fact there are no good alternative explanations for the very well-observed warming. They have no arguments, just like you have no arguments, yet believe anyway despite themselves having put forward arguments for the opposite. How utterly convenient. I see only one totally idiotic thing here, to put it that way, and that is your reasoning. Look at the body of evidence from every relevant field. It should not be hard to find if you care to look. But you can look very long for an alternate explanation, and many people do, and they haven't found anything yet. There would be a lot of fame and fortune awaiting anyone who could debunk the idea of anthropogenic climate change, and since such a find would massively benefit the fossil fuel industry too, there's no lack of scientific funding for anyone wanting to pursue "alternative conclusions". Yet everything these well-funded detractors have managed to come up with includes massive methodological errors or outright fraud. If there had been a truth out there for them to find, so obvious that even a random guy on the Internet knows that it's correct, wouldn't they have managed to document it better and not have to cheat to arrive at their desired conclusion?

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The fact that 90% of scientists are shouting about the global warming caused by the human industry doesn't mean they actually believe it .

It's actually so close to 100% the difference is barely a rounding error, but the argument itself is still absurd. What reason do you have to believe that they don't believe it? You're taking this assumption out of your rear and running with it. An argument built on a baseless assumption does not lend credibility to the person making it. You might as well say the same about the shape of the earth: "All those knowledgeable people have put forward plausible and solid arguments for it being round, but deep inside they may all think it's flat". You're basically taking the available evidence, saying "but what if it's all wrong and this alternate fact for which there is no evidence is correct?", and going with that assumption. That is not compatible with any known system of logic except that of certain creatures in Scandinavian folklore.

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Actually, 90% of them don't care. They are just small people doing the job they like or they can. The most important part of any scientist work is to find money for the scientist needs to let him do this work. His article and active position won't change the world, but will provide him and his family with some food and pleasures, and maybe even will be used later by another scientist to disprove his theory and make the world better with an opposite one.
Just people tend to overestimate the significance of their personal position in the human history.

And your point with this is what? That the scientists don't really bother with accuracy, so the whole scientific framework around climate change is flawed? Or are you just ranting randomly about scientists now?

 

16 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

I'll step in for a second and say that I LIKE Kerbiloid, I just think he's wrong (and I can prove it). English isn't his first language and it's a heated discussion--Of course it's going to get messy. I've made quite a few editing mistakes in this thread that I only noticed after the fact. My perspective is that I'm LUCKY to be able to argue with someone who has made the effort to learn MY language.

English isn't my first language either. And it's not necessarily his language I have a problem with, it's the utterly baffling logical jumps and groundless assumptions. I suspect the post would have been just as much of a word salad if he had written it in Russian. 

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3 hours ago, Codraroll said:

The "Little Ice Age" was a mostly regional phenomenon.

I appreciate your post!  Thanks for taking the time to write it

Re: the quote above...  I read people citing the work on that and worry that they assume the quote means the LIA was a tightly regional, North Atlantic event only.  Instead we know that it did affect (at a minimum) the entire Northern Hemisphere albeit:

'"...what we find is that the actual minimum occurred at different times at different places.”

For instance, during the Little Ice Age, minimum temperatures hit the eastern Pacific during the 15th century, northwestern Europe and southeastern North America during the 17th century, and most remaining regions during the mid-19th century.'

https://www.google.com/amp/s/eos.org/articles/the-little-ice-age-wasnt-global-but-current-climate-change-is

 

In East Asia: 

"We find a rather warm period during the first two centuries CE, followed by a multi-century long cooling period and again a warm interval covering the 900–1200 CE period (Medieval Climate Anomaly, MCA). The interval from 1450 to 1850 CE (Little Ice Age, LIA) was characterized by cooler conditions and the last 150 years are characterized by a continuous warming... "

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-26038-8

 

The LIA is also a good metaphor for two other truths - rapid climactic change is hard on people and societies, and prolonged cold weather is hard on people. Period. 

On the other hand, Humans do seem to tolerate hot and wet climates pretty well; the highest population areas of the planet enjoy humid subtropical conditions. 

 

 

 

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A few pages back, I expressed frustration with 'what zero' are the climate researchers and activists choosing when reporting discoveries or advocating change based on warming since a given date.   In the days leading up to the UN climate report, I kept seeing articles talking about 'temperature increase since 1850' which I thought was a bad 'zero'.

This one is interesting: temp-2020_comparison-plot.jpg

It's from this page1 about 2020 tying for the hottest year on record.  I like the 'zero' they use, which, while only a 40 year span of time (okay, they say 30) - is time that is relatable to those of us living today (highly likely for people born in 1940 to be still alive).  It's a good, relatable zero. 

2020 Tied for Warmest Year on Record, NASA Analysis Shows | NASA

The thing that I find strange is I know from reading history that the Little Ice Age (far left side of the above graph) was a difficult time for people.  From the 'zero' of this graph, those were temperatures barely 0.5 degrees C less than 'the Common Baseline'.  

 

So a question: would one expect that if 0.5 degrees lower than 'normal' causes misery that 0.5 degrees above normal should be uncomfortable as well?  Where's the (broadly regional) misery?

Admittedly this is a strawman - but it does go into my perception that humans living in a warmer world are better off than when we live in a colder world.  Again, not advocating for continued pollution, but recognizing that we are not killing ourselves in the next decade, either.

Another interesting thing: NASA analysis (link above) said 2020 tied for warmest, but NOAA data tells a different tale: 

ytd-horserace-202012.png

Global Climate Report - Annual 2020 | 2020 year-to-date temperatures versus previous years | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) (noaa.gov)

Ultimately it doesn't really matter if 2020 tied 2016 or not... but why don't the two analyses match up?

...

This, then, brings me back to a couple of things I've posted about in recent pages.  Our concerned scientists are doing good work, but constantly learning new things - like that nations are underreporting emissions and their own best guesses underestimate the efficacy of how natural processes act as carbon sinks.  This necessarily means that older models that did not have access to the newer data are likely to be less correct than their authors presented.  (I'm aware that the newer models are broadly in agreement with the warming trends of earlier models - but its worth noting).

Further, there really are reputable scientists looking at what's going on in the world who are concerned that we could see a global or regional cooling event (c.f. the Woods Hole links I posted).  Those 'inputs' don't seem to be making it into the models of folks focused on atmospheric heating.  Problem is, if the ocean scientists are right - the atmospheric CO2 clean-up advocates have a problem; if it happens, the present and immediate threat of colder climate on human life will almost certainly result in an uptick in CO2 emissions as people's demand for power for heating and food production/preservation will increase substantially.  No one will agree to let Granny freeze to death so they can have a greener grid.

...

Shifting a third time: I really do understand people's skepticism about climate change.  Very few people do the depth of reading that we here are likely to do.  But presuming folks here do read, I think it's fair for one of us to be skeptical and ask questions - with the caveat that I don't think its rational or fair to deny that our pollution is having no effect whatsoever, no how, no way.  Similarly, I don't think its fair to expect orthodoxy with regard to climate concern.  There are inconsistencies in how climate concern has been presented since the 1980s.  The models are not perfect.  They're akin to economic modeling; frankly more art than science (in the prognostication, if not the data)... which brings me to my final point: to the extent our scientists and experts advocate policies premised on reducing pollution, they will have my support. 

But any policy based on Climate Remediation strategy does not.

This is one of the reasons I actively push back on trying to quell dissent.  The real risk of any movement is 'what happens when they succeed?'  History tells us they don't just quietly pat themselves on the back and move on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The thing about climate change is that “colder” and “warmer” does not necessarily mean a literal change in the temperatures humans feel per say. It (the temperature humans feel) does/will, but that’s not what the main point is- the main point is the climate as a whole is going to change (in various complex ways, not just “hot or cold”), and that will be very bad for fragile organisms, from plants to animals, that depend on it. Living on Earth, us humans then depend on those organisms as well, and there will certainly be consequences if they were to go extinct. Furthermore, agriculture is a far more fragile industry than most realize, and the increase in extreme weather (not hurricanes and tornadoes- just higher and lower average temperatures, more rain or less rain) could have disastrous effects on the food supply.

Whether the climate models are correct or not does not really matter. The fate of how climate change will play out aside, we are aware and know for sure that CO2 emissions are causing relatively rapid ocean acidification. Not as severe (not “if you don’t halve by 2030 it’s done”) requirements, but basically the same steps to reduce CO2 emissions need to be taken to stop that- unless we want to cause the collapse of the marine ecosystems we depend upon for food and possibly have that extend forward to terrestrial ecosystems. This isn’t based on some art like prediction with questionable characteristics- it’s based on measurements of the pH level of the ocean, what we know about shellfish and other calcifying organisms, and what we know about marine ecosystems (“hard facts”- not future models and interpretations of past data).

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Shifting a third time: I really do understand people's skepticism about climate change.  Very few people do the depth of reading that we here are likely to do.  But presuming folks here do read, I think it's fair for one of us to be skeptical and ask questions - with the caveat that I don't think its rational or fair to deny that our pollution is having no effect whatsoever, no how, no way.  Similarly, I don't think its fair to expect orthodoxy with regard to climate concern.  There are inconsistencies in how climate concern has been presented since the 1980s.  The models are not perfect.  They're akin to economic modeling; frankly more art than science (in the prognostication, if not the data)... which brings me to my final point: to the extent our scientists and experts advocate policies premised on reducing pollution, they will have my support. 

But any policy based on Climate Remediation strategy does not.

This is one of the reasons I actively push back on trying to quell dissent.  The real risk of any movement is 'what happens when they succeed?'  History tells us they don't just quietly pat themselves on the back and move on.

 

It’s basically the same though. Assuming “climate remediation” is CO2 emission reductions, the same would end up being done for air quality improvement anyways. The reason “we” have to argue for “climate change action” instead of “pollution reduction” is because pollution reduction is really just a nice have, and in addition, basically everywhere on Earth the pollution is either a) has no dramatic impact that requires reduction on the time scales “we” would otherwise need to stop climate change or b) considered “ok” in the name of economic development. And all of this needs to be done to stop ocean acidification anyways (if it makes those with concerns over climate change feel better, as stated earlier ocean acidification is based on “hard facts” and not just models based themselves on interpretations of data).

I don’t think any “real” climate activists actually try to “quell dissent”, at least I have never heard of such events occurring in the manner you imply. It’s the six word sentence FaceBook disinformation people get so aggressively defensive over. Now, it isn’t really visible here in this corner of the Internet, but unfortunately many (not all, I repeat, not all) of those who “question climate change” are just doing so based on conspiracy theories and pure disbelief.

Also in terms of “asking questions” about climate change data, I don’t recommend using sentences like this-

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The real risk of any movement is 'what happens when they succeed?'  History tells us they don't just quietly pat themselves on the back and move on.

It alienates those you are discussing with. Are you implying that everyone who supports action against climate change is going to get high on victory and try to “do stuff their way or the highway” elsewhere while “quelling dissent”? (serious question about why this was included, not getting offended :)). It also gives off a conspiratorial vibe, which sends many of the more emotional climate activists into “passion mode”- they react not based on logic but on what “feels right”, which is a no no when trying to accurately analyze data and present it to skeptical people.

*the following is my personal views, and not part of the wider discussion about climate change data (also just to be clear, the portion below is not an attempt to convince or “turn” you, just describing my views and reasoning for my thinking*

On a final note, I’d like to note that none of these potential consequences of climate change “we” discuss are as simple as they seem- it’s not just “no more tigers and elephants, some shortages at the grocery store, a lot more Venices in the world, and cold winters and hot summers”. If they come to pass, it would mean famines that would kill millions, collapsing ecosystems that thus would wreck the environment and as a result cause famine, and extreme weather that would pose a severe threat to the lives of those without modern shelter (most of the human population). Relatively slightly higher sea levels would be the least of the problems, as that mainly impacts real estate and where people live, which are pretty easy problems to eliminate if you actually try.

This is all based on how fragile modern human civilization is and what the effects on it would be if the climate was different. And when I say “fragile” I don’t mean “err muh gerd end of civilization”- I mean trying to protect thousands of lives, because if the “boat” of civilization gets caught in a storm, yes, it won’t sink, but many of the crew will be washed over board, and the ship itself will suffer heavy damage.

Now from a scientific standpoint of view those aren’t major issues- humanity could probably survive (as long as we curb our “other” pollution). But from a “real life” standpoint, one would obviously want to try to save those millions of lives. Hence even though none of this is “absolutely” “necessary” per say, “we” propose and argue for it.

Theoretically at least, there is obviously a possibility “we” are wrong. But I implore you not to see calls for climate change action as doomsday-saying over bad dreams (which is the vibe I get from your post), but somewhat see (not support, see :)) them as warnings and countermeasures to a disaster based on *data*. Is it perfect data? No, but is it decent data, properly collected and analyzed to the best of scientists’ ability? Yes, to a decent extent*.

*Obviously there is bad data as you and others have pointed out. But it’s important not to fall into confirmation bias- good data exists too. Just because there is bad data does not mean there is automatically no good data. If one searches for unanswered problems, they will get unanswered problems. I say this not in an accusatory manner, but as a cautioning in trying to gain more knowledge in general :) (this might not even be the case for your personal research/education/whatever you want to call it on climate change- but just something to be careful of in general that I thought I would mention).

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On 11/12/2021 at 1:25 PM, Codraroll said:

Where the heck do you get that from? Look at the temperature graphs, it's right there. XKCD has a great chart to illustrate that the current situation is a tad more serious than the gradual warming over thousands of years that ended the last Ice Age.

I don't mean that they don't show this on the charts.

I mean that they don't explain, how can it be that the modern centimeters are a disastrous event caused necessary by humans, while a (by-orders of magnitude) greater climatic changes and ocean level and global temperature changes don't need the human as The Greatest Evil and didn't cause the planet-wide devastation.

Maybe, the puny human efforts are overestimated compared to what happens besides?

On 11/12/2021 at 1:25 PM, Codraroll said:

In biological terms, the industrialization of human society is a mass extinction event, but sure. Absolutely happy. There's no way this can come back to bite us in the ass later.

In biological terms, some species had gone (mostly those ones which were requiring just a control headshot), while the human-adopted ones have spreaded around like they never could themselves.

Bisons have been replaced by greater amount of cows on the same place.

Compare the population of dogs and wolves, sheep/goat and antilopes, etc.

Compare the human population to other species.
Do you know that many 70-kg heavy species counted in billions, populating every climatic zone, and still increasing both lifespan and population?
Maybe you don't like the speaking bipedal monkeys as much as sabretooths or rhinos, but they still are a part of fauna, and are much more perfect than either of them.

So, it's anything but extinction. It's a Darwinistic optimisation.

On 11/12/2021 at 1:25 PM, Codraroll said:

No, it's right there in the statistics, and all accounted for. Greenland was never very green. Viking settlers managed to eke out a few meagre grain fields during its short summers, but it's not like the ice caps weren't there back then either.  The settlements were always at a sustenance minimum and it didn't take much of a change in the climate for them to be abandoned. The "Little Ice Age" was a mostly regional phenomenon.

It still looks like something comparable to the nowadays changes. And a half-thousand long.
The 500-years drought of 5600 BC was half-thousand long.

Maybe it makes sense to compare 500-year-long cycles, rather than cut out the 30 years?

***

https://www-window2baku-com.translate.goog/Caspian/caspianlevel.htm?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=nui

sealevel.gif

 

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43 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

I mean that they don't explain, how can it be that the modern centimeters are a disastrous event caused necessary by humans, while a (by-orders of magnitude) greater climatic changes and ocean level and global temperature changes don't need the human as The Greatest Evil and didn't cause the planet-wide devastation.

This has always been, and still remains, insane logic.

The equivalent logic is to say that lots of people die of old age, so how can it be possible that shooting someone with a bullet through the heart will kill them?

The fact that the climate has made massive changes in the past only proves that massive changes are possible. It in no way disproves that we could be causing one right now.

Edited by mikegarrison
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2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Maybe it makes sense to compare 500-year-long cycles, rather than cut out the 30 years?

***

https://www-window2baku-com.translate.goog/Caspian/caspianlevel.htm?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=nui

Using the Caspian Sea as an argument against sea level rise is like using indoor temperatures in an airconditioned building as an argument against global warming. The Caspian Sea is an inland sea primarily fed by the Volga, which the Soviets diverted quite a lot of water from in the 1930s for the purposes of agriculture and hydroelectric power. No wonder the sea level in that particular sea fell a bit back then. If there had been more substance to your argument, you might have had a less regulated sea to use as an example.

 

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

I mean that they don't explain, how can it be that the modern centimeters are a disastrous event caused necessary by humans, while a (by-orders of magnitude) greater climatic changes and ocean level and global temperature changes don't need the human as The Greatest Evil and didn't cause the planet-wide devastation.

The main issue with sea level rise is the destruction of infrastructure on the coasts. As @SunlitZelkova said above, it's primarily a real estate problem ... but over the past couple of centuries we've built a lot of real estate on the ocean front. It's mostly a human issue, with potential millions of people who will be displaced by increasingly frequent flooding. Natural habitats will be destroyed too, of course, but that's not the part that makes things so hideously expensive. 

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Maybe, the puny human efforts are overestimated compared to what happens besides?

1) The human efforts happen alongside the natural effects. That's what makes things so drastic, because the equilibrium moves.

2) That "Maybe" is pulled out of your own backside and then you run with your assumption as an argument, which is troll logic. Half your arguments are variations of "All available data points to one conclusion, but maybe all the available data is wrong, and this conclusion for which there is no data whatsoever is true instead?" Give us the fricking data you're basing yourself on instead of saying "maybe, maybe", or face the idea that your uninformed opinion might be wrong. 

Edited by Codraroll
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9 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

I just want to see the "working mathematical model" of catastrophic centimeters vs safe decameters and of total power of campfires melting glaciers and raising ocean vs industry causing the centimeters.

Just formulas.

I make some allowances because your English is a lot better than my Russian, but this is not an understandable sentence.

The only thing I got out of it was that you want to see the science. And for that, I refer you (again) to: 

 

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1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

I make some allowances because your English is a lot better than my Russian, but this is not an understandable sentence.

The only thing I got out of it was that you want to see the science. And for that, I refer you (again) to: 

 

"I want to see scientists' explanations of  how hunter-gatherers and their campfire technology raised the sea levels by tens of meters, a rise that wasn't apocalyptic, while all of modern society only raises the sea level by a fraction of a meter, which is apparently a big deal"

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12 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Exactly, but not a verbal explanation, but a set of formulas where 

disaster(industry) doesn't look like disaster ~ 1/industry

They talk about models. Models are formulas.

And I pointed you to almost 4000 pages of scientific discussion, including a massive number of paper references for you to look up. If you want to. However, I am pretty sure you *don't* want to.

Edited by mikegarrison
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37 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

And I pointed you to almost 4000 pages of scientific discussion, including a massive number of paper references for you to look up. If you want to. However, I am pretty sure you *don't* want to.

I had seen the IPCC 6th report webpage mentioned above, but it's like giving a link to an online library full of ads when I'm pretty wanting to read some concrete document like this one:

http://robert-ibatullin.narod.ru/utilities/astro_formulas.pdf

where I can take numbers from a table, put them into a formula, and get the value to clearly see, how can it be that

1. Tens meters were not so disastrous as several centimeters.

2. Tens meters happened without human efforts, while all human industry can add just centimeters.
Maybe it's just a periodical natural process, and we live on the raising hillside of a sine wave.
Or a non-periodic natural one, but still invariant to human activities.

I believe, the climate models are not more complicated than the astronomical ones.

(Just because they are a part of them).

Edited by kerbiloid
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14 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

I had seen the IPCC 6th report webpage mentioned above, but it's like giving a link to an online library full of ads when I'm pretty wanting to read some concrete document like this one:

http://robert-ibatullin.narod.ru/utilities/astro_formulas.pdf

where I can take numbers from a table, put them into a formula, and get the value to clearly see, how can it be that

1. Tens meters were not so disastrous as several centimeters.

2. Tens meters happened without human efforts, while all human industry can add just centimeters.
Maybe it's just a periodical natural process, and we live on the raising hillside of a sine wave.
Or a non-periodic natural one, but still invariant to human activities.

I believe, the climate models are not more complicated than the astronomical ones.

(Just because they are a part of them).

I can't help it if you want to post about a complicated  subject without learning about it first.

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1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

I can't help it if you want to post about a complicated  subject without learning about it first.

Before learning 4 000 pages of a scientific discussion, it's always good to first get a brief extract of its result, to see if it's worth it and not a discussion without a practically applicable conclusion.

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