Conservatives and climate change

[mhaze]

No, but given two opposing schools, a layman deciding that the 3% of experts are more likely to be right than the 97% is a stupid stance to take, especially in light of the fact that the 97% are on average more active in publishing papers.

The initial reaction to Einsteins theory of relativity is not equivalent to the current understanding of climate change because it was one new idea that needed to be studied and once studied and understood, was adopted as mainstream. Climate change is an idea that has already been studied and tested for decades (and has now been adopted as mainstream by the scientific community).

Wise comments indeed.

You see, Bill, the reason you are being lectured to is because you have committed the sin of QUESTIONING. This indicates that your BELIEF may not be sound. That you may, sometimes, DOUBT. And we all sin at times. That's why other well meaning members of the faithful come to your assistance. Be grateful to them and piously express your gratitude.

BWHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!

 

[DavidJames]

Splendid!

That is certainly to the point.

Yes. Just like reading the bible to find truth one can believe in.

Bill Thompson should do some research, read what people says he should believe in, and BELIEVE. And then you'll "Leave Him Alone".

I BELIEVE that's true. If someone buys your BS, you'll....

leave them alone....

This is a perfect example of why I stopped responding to your meaningless nonsense months ago, just as I've now done for Bill.

Just so you won't lose sleep tonight wondering why

 

[mhaze]

This is a perfect example of why I stopped responding to your meaningless nonsense months ago, just as I've now done for Bill.

Just so you won't lose sleep tonight wondering why

Hey, no problem. There are possible converts out there among the gullible and naive. They will listen to your alarmist fantasies and you will have their attention for a little while with your stern lecturing and moralizing attitude. Some will become Members of the Faith. Some, though, are steeped in sin and are not capable of being saved. But keep up the Good Work. It is only a few decades we have to save the planet (according to the Gore Sliding Timetable of DOOM, these decades always slide off into the future). Remember, you CAN make a difference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxis7Y1ikIQ

Just remember to hit those knee jerking emotional buttons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glFLCoqn-k8&feature=related

Be sure to have some little girls crying. Pet rabbits and dogs drowning in the big tidal waves caused by Global Warming.

Hey, here's an idea. Force everyone to get CFLs. That'll Save the Planet. Yessir!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6HDjPaKPNE

Brother, Keep Up the One True Faith! These are perilous times and many are led astray from the path of righteousness.

BWHAHAHA!

 

[DC]

Wise comments indeed.

You see, Bill, the reason you are being lectured to is because you have committed the sin of QUESTIONING. This indicates that your BELIEF may not be sound. That you may, sometimes, DOUBT. And we all sin at times. That's why other well meaning members of the faithful come to your assistance. Be grateful to them and piously express your gratitude.

BWHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!

questioning is good. but denial is not.

 

[DC]

Hey, no problem. There are possible converts out there among the gullible and naive. They will listen to your alarmist fantasies and you will have their attention for a little while with your stern lecturing and moralizing attitude. Some will become Members of the Faith. Some, though, are steeped in sin and are not capable of being saved. But keep up the Good Work. It is only a few decades we have to save the planet (according to the Gore Sliding Timetable of DOOM, these decades always slide off into the future). Remember, you CAN make a difference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxis7Y1ikIQ

Just remember to hit those knee jerking emotional buttons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glFLCoqn-k8&feature=related

Be sure to have some little girls crying. Pet rabbits and dogs drowning in the big tidal waves caused by Global Warming.

Hey, here's an idea. Force everyone to get CFLs. That'll Save the Planet. Yessir!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6HDjPaKPNE

Brother, Keep Up the One True Faith! These are perilous times and many are led astray from the path of righteousness.

BWHAHAHA!

well if it were a religion, it would be the only religion on this planet based on scienetific evidence.

 

[Bill Thompson]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming

I guess it really depends on whether or not you consider keeping humans alive "good". Global warming will give us more bad weather, more ocean with a more acidic pH level, less land, and less food, among other things.

Do you consider that "bad"?

My only response would be one of humor.

Thanks for the link. I will study it.

 

[Travis]

i believe in man made global warming. What I think is more troublesome is the idea that Nature is our friend. Since we caused this change and since we think Nature is good and wholesome, we are the bad guys. We seem to want to think this way. Products stamped with "natural" sell better in the stores.

Nature is not "good". Nature is not our friend. I want to see where global warming is bad.

Nature give us bad weather, diseases, and Ice Ages. If Global Warming puts an Ice Age on hold, that is a good thing.

Full stop. We are a part of nature. There is no "good" or "bad" in a moral sense here.

We live on a planet as part of the biosphere. If something in that biosphere changes drastically then things can happen and many of them might be bad.

700 million years ago global warming from accumulated CO2 snapped earth of the snowball effect it had been in for some time. It melted the glaciers all the way from the equator to the poles. The warm period that followed gave us "The Cambrian Explosion."

On the other hand 251 million years ago excessive volcanism produced another round of global warming and that killed 90% of everything on Earth. The only terrestrial animal of notable size to live through it was the Lystrosaurus.

So now we humans are here. And we are doing what those volcanoes did 251 million years ago (bringing huge amounts of fossil carbon to the atmosphere). Yet we somehow think that things will just go on as always?

 

[mhaze]

2x

 

[mhaze]

questioning is good. but denial is not.

I agree 100%.

well if it were a religion, it would be the only religion on this planet based on scienetific evidence.

Well, here I have to bring in Francisca's comment. If the scientific evidence was seen through a filter of "irrational and excessive certainty", then solidly asserted to be Alarmist, then that was viewed as rationally reason to pump out massive numbers of ads, all full of lying propaganda....And if a radical subgroup sought to squash open discussion, labeling any who questioned as "Deniers, a direct analogy to Holocaust deniers. You see, like it or not, the characteristics and modus operandi of a religion are all there.

Those with true knowledge -the path to salvation - who can point out the infidels - the urgent need for redemption - the apocalypse soon to come, only the faithful and repentant may save us from. We may be beset by the famines, droughts, hurricanes, epidemics, the seas rising, the floods, wildfires out of control, exploding cat populations, naked women everywhere....

I truly do not know, faced with worldwide catastrophic caused by madmen of the carbon industries, whether this terrible hell of a future is worse or better than listening to the True believers of the Warmer faith. They are of a sort whose stern sermons put the sturdiest and brightest to sleep.

I suspect that we'd all be better careening out of control into that supposed Hell on Earth, than listening to their stern whispers and knitted, worried brows and serious, drawn faces.

But if you do choose to play with these fanatics or to meekly follow them, or even to stay quiet as they rant and profitize, one word of warning as you listen to their story of warming:

Hang on t'yer wallet, dude!

 

[BenBurch]

This is why nothing will get done. Sad to say, these clowns won't be around to be given a pitch cap by those who will have to live (and die) with it.

 

[bikerdruid]

seems like a good time for a plug for VHEMT.
http://www.vhemt.org/

"LIVE LONG AND DIE OUT!"

 

[balrog666]

I know this thread has taken a different turn but it is troublesome that it has almost become a tenet of the republican party that you must not believe in man caused global warming.

No, it has become a tenet of the liberal/statist media that mainstream republicans must be painted as thinking such close-minded nonsense. Notwithstanding that there are enough of them that actually do think, or at least, suspect that, especially given the source of the so-called facts. But, face it, 90% of the human population can't think their way out of a paper bag in the first place.

 

[DC]

I agree 100%.



Well, here I have to bring in Francisca's comment. If the scientific evidence was seen through a filter of "irrational and excessive certainty", then solidly asserted to be Alarmist, then that was viewed as rationally reason to pump out massive numbers of ads, all full of lying propaganda....And if a radical subgroup sought to squash open discussion, labeling any who questioned as "Deniers, a direct analogy to Holocaust deniers. You see, like it or not, the characteristics and modus operandi of a religion are all there.

Those with true knowledge -the path to salvation - who can point out the infidels - the urgent need for redemption - the apocalypse soon to come, only the faithful and repentant may save us from. We may be beset by the famines, droughts, hurricanes, epidemics, the seas rising, the floods, wildfires out of control, exploding cat populations, naked women everywhere....

I truly do not know, faced with worldwide catastrophic caused by madmen of the carbon industries, whether this terrible hell of a future is worse or better than listening to the True believers of the Warmer faith. They are of a sort whose stern sermons put the sturdiest and brightest to sleep.

I suspect that we'd all be better careening out of control into that supposed Hell on Earth, than listening to their stern whispers and knitted, worried brows and serious, drawn faces.

But if you do choose to play with these fanatics or to meekly follow them, or even to stay quiet as they rant and profitize, one word of warning as you listen to their story of warming:

Hang on t'yer wallet, dude!

so much nonsense.

 

[balrog666]

Global warming has for a long time been a partisan issue rather than a purely scientific one — and in important respects, conservatives have painted themselves into a corner. Based on the reasonable expectation that admitting a problem would lead to a huge government power-grab, those conservatives with access to the biggest megaphones have long used scientific uncertainty to avoid the issue. That game is up, and they suddenly find themselves walking unprepared into the middle of a sophisticated scientific and economic conversation about how to deal with the problem.

Global warming has for a long time been a partisan issue rather than a purely scientific one (and it has been made so by the ecology nuts, the UN, and the academics and NGO's who profit from making it so) and in important respects, conservatives have painted themselves into a corner (by opposing such a power grab intended to implement solutions which clearly don't solve the problem).

Based on the reasonable expectation that admitting a problem would lead to a huge government power-grab, those conservatives with access to the biggest megaphones have long used scientific uncertainty to avoid the issue (or they oppose the statist power grab for reasons of morals, ethics, and personal liberty and note that the "solutions" proposed won't solve the problem in the slightest degree).


That game is up, and they suddenly find themselves walking unprepared into the middle of a sophisticated scientific and economic conversation about how to deal with the problem. Gee, where is that discussion taking place?

 

[DavidJames]

so much nonsense.

Let's face it, when you don't have the facts on your side and your ego won't allow you to withdraw from the discussion, what's left other then nonsense? The primary objective becomes drag the discussion into the realm of the picayune (easy math) or nonsensical bales of straw and logical fallacies (real ones, not the bizarro ones dreamt up by Bill). Anything to avoid honest discussion.

 

[Trakar]

This paper by Revelle and Suess is considered to be the first to convincingly make the case for humans making significant changes to atmospheric CO2 levels.
http://uscentrist.org/about/issues/environment/docs/Revelle-Suess1957.pdf

While the basics of CO2 uptake into ocean water were know several decades earlier, this paper was the first to look at how the back and forth exchange of CO2 between ocean and atmosphere would impact how much anthroprogenic CO2 remained in the atmosphere.

I disagree with your framing. This paper definitely adds more details to the process, but I don't see that it does much more than refine the carbon cycle understandings by recognizing and adding details of the atmospheric buffer role of the oceans in that carbon cycle. It even expressly cites and acknowledges the findings and researches I have already touched upon as foundational elements establishing the fundemental elements of AGW. Much as satellites later allowed a much better refinement of understanding concerning the sun's role and the Earth's radiative energy budget, and computers have allowed much better calculations and modelling, but from my perspective all this paper did was confirm and support the general theses already largely acknowledged and accepted prior to the much later debate within the climate community over why the atmospheric ratios weren't rising much faster than they were.

This probably seems like a non-issue to most, it certainly has little bearing on the politicizing of modern climate change/AGW issues. Perhaps we will discuss it again later in a more appropriate venue. At the least, I think we understand each other's perspective, and seem to be agreeable to the basic facts even if we disagree on some of the historical signifcances.

 

[citizenzen]

The primary objective becomes drag the discussion into the realm of the picayune ...

Exactly.

Post after post debating whether the math behind Climate Change is "easy" or what precisely was the scientific consensus 40 years ago.

It's an excellent way to not discuss the topic.

 

[JudeBrando]

With appropriate planning, preparation, and action both are survivable by our species, if we tackle surviving an ice age like we are tackling surviving global warming, possibly neither. Both the current ice age, and the global warming we are forcing upon the planet's climate have the potential to kill our species.
If you are talking about the advancing glaciations which we seem to have put on permanent hold currently, then we are much better able to survive that potential than the episode of global warming we are currently forcing upon the planet.

Thoroughly brainwashed absolute madness.

 

[stokes234]

Hey, no problem. There are possible converts out there among the gullible and naive. They will listen to your alarmist fantasies and you will have their attention for a little while with your stern lecturing and moralizing attitude. Some will become Members of the Faith. Some, though, are steeped in sin and are not capable of being saved. But keep up the Good Work. It is only a few decades we have to save the planet (according to the Gore Sliding Timetable of DOOM, these decades always slide off into the future). Remember, you CAN make a difference.

Putting faith in scientific expert opinion is entirely different to putting faith in religion. I happen to trust that the people who have spent their entire life studying the subject and are intelligent enough to be recognised and cited by the rest of the scientific community are the ones who are most likely to be correct about the subject. I fail to see why that is irrational in any way.

 

[DC]

Let's face it, when you don't have the facts on your side and your ego won't allow you to withdraw from the discussion, what's left other then nonsense? The primary objective becomes drag the discussion into the realm of the picayune (easy math) or nonsensical bales of straw and logical fallacies (real ones, not the bizarro ones dreamt up by Bill). Anything to avoid honest discussion.

yeah its a shame, especially when one considers how important the topic is. it makes me very pessimistic.