Cont: Global warming discussion V

Ivor the Engineer said:
One myth that was recently busted for me was that a plant based diet needs to be varied to get all the essential amino acids the human body needs compared to a meat based diet. It turns

So there's one less excuse to not reduce meat consumption for the benefit of the environment (and personal health and medical expenses).
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Most Humans are not looking for an excuse to not eat meat.
Just another distraction from the real problem..
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Most humans are looking for an excuse to not act against Global Warming. That is the real problem.
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Most humans don't see global warming as an existential threat.

Most people do see curtailment of industrial and economic activity as an existential threat. Your job is to convince them to end their existence on unfavorable terms, in order to assure the existence of future generations on unfavorable terms.

So go ahead. Make your case.
 
theprestige said:
Most humans don't see global warming as an existential threat.

Most people do see curtailment of industrial and economic activity as an existential threat. Your job is to convince them to end their existence on unfavorable terms, in order to assure the existence of future generations on unfavorable terms.

So go ahead. Make your case.
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The insane thing is our current approach makes people unhappy and sick now.

Trickle-up profits and trickle-down misery.

Perhaps if the wealthy and powerful were made to have some skin in the game rather than finding ever more ways to extricate themselves from the consequences things would be very different.
 
Skeptical Greg said:
That implies they are acting but looking for a way not to.

Really?
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Nope. They aren't acting. What they are looking for are excuses to justify their inaction. And no excuse is too outrageous for them. Everything from 'global warming isn't happening' to 'it's too late we're all screwed might as well party on'.

This isn't an anomaly - it's just how humans behave. Many won't act unless it's in their face (sometimes not even then).
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Nope. They aren't acting. What they are looking for are excuses to justify their inaction. And no excuse is too outrageous for them. Everything from 'global warming isn't happening' to 'it's too late we're all screwed might as well party on'.

This isn't an anomaly - it's just how humans behave. Many won't act unless it's in their face (sometimes not even then).
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Nope. People who don't care are not looking for excuses.
 
Sabine Hossenfelder has released a new video in reply to the dismissal of the points she raised in her previous one on the estimated climate sensitivity.

My understanding is that the newer climate models which more accurately predict future weather tend to estimate the climate sensitivity to be much higher than those that have been tuned to match historical climate data.

If these newer models are right then the date we need to achieve net zero to stay below x.xC warming is a lot sooner than we hoped, in which case some of you boomers will stand a better chance of being around to suffer along with your children and grandchildren. ;)
 
Skeptical Greg said:
Boomers grew up without air conditioning.

In what ways do you think they will suffer?
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Extreme weather events will become more common leading to floods, fires and droughts.

100's of millions of people will head north putting pressure on things such as healthcare.
 
Skeptical Greg said:
Boomers grew up without air conditioning.

In what ways do you think they will suffer?
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You're kidding, right? People die of extreme heat every summer. When air conditioning fails a lot more die. Some places we live in today would be virtually uninhabitable (for people who haven't adapted their lives to it) without air conditioning. Those that don't die will suffer for sure.

If it wasn't for modern technology (which up until now has been almost exclusively powered by fossil fuels) the Earth would not be able to support anywhere near the current population. We can't give it up without a massive die-off - which BTW is Mother Nature's plan A.

Most people have no idea how badly the planet is infested with humans. We are the dominant mammalian species by far. Total global mammal biomass consists of 90% humans and the 'domesticated' animals we grow for food.

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Our species is having way more influence on the environment than any other animal, and unlike the others we are not in equilibrium with it. Every time it looked like we were getting there, new technology was developed to push our population even higher. Fossil fuels are the latest non-renewable resource we have been using to do that. It cannot go on forever, and the crunch time will come much sooner than most people think.

If we don't face the music now it will only be worse. Someone of my age might be able to pretend they don't care because it won't happen in their lifetime, but even that isn't true. My life is already being impacted by Global Warming.

People who don't care are not looking for excuses.
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But many people are looking for excuses, which proves they do care. They don't want to care though, which is why they are looking for excuses. Humans - so smart and yet so dumb.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
If these newer models are right then the date we need to achieve net zero to stay below x.xC warming is a lot sooner than we hoped,
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But x.xC is just an arbitrary value. When we smash through 2 °C they will just set another threshold that 'must not' be exceeded, while the effects become normalized.

At ~5 °C panic will set in and finally things will change, because ignoring it is no longer practicable. At this time the Luddites will vacillate between still pretending it's just weather, blaming 'warmers' for not doing enough to convince them, and pretending that they were aware all along but didn't have the power to do anything. IOW, anything but own up to their part in causing the catastrophe.
 
Most heat related deaths are related to health issues and to the elderly who have less ability to regulate body temperature than younger people. Not to say a warmer climate is not a factor, but it would seem to corelate to not caring about climate change any more than they care about their health. Technology driven by fossil fuel consumption keeps people alive when they would otherwise be dead. Maybe people should sign some kind of waiver regarding the impact on the environment from the lifesaving medical care they or loved one's receive. " Don't resuscitate if it will increase my carbon foot print. "



If it matters, more people die from cold temperatures than heat. Guess what would improve those numbers?
 
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Ivor the Engineer said:
If these newer models are right then the date we need to achieve net zero to stay below x.xC warming is a lot sooner than we hoped, in which case some of you boomers will stand a better chance of being around to suffer along with your children and grandchildren. ;)
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Excellent! I hate not knowing how a story ends.:cool:
(though I'm Gen X, not a boomer)
 
Skeptical Greg said:
Most heat related deaths are related to health issues and to the elderly who have less ability to regulate body temperature than younger people. Not to say a warmer climate is not a factor, but it would seem to corelate to not caring about climate change any more than they care about their health.
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How hot is too hot for survival?
At 40 degrees Celsius and 25% humidity, participants' metabolic rates increased by an average of 35% compared to the baseline, but their core body temperatures did not go up.

However, at 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) and 50% humidity, people's core temperatures rose by an average of 1 degree Celsius. People's metabolic rates also rose by 56%, and their heart rates went up by 64%...

Halsey estimated that if participants had stayed in the chamber at 50 degrees Celsius and 50% humidity for a long time, they might not have survived... "They’d have died in the end, because their core temperature would increase and increase," Halsey said. "The body would be struggling to dump the heat."...

"There are a lot of people around the world — millions, if not more — who are exposed to those conditions" in Halsey’s study, Knowlton said.

People with pre-existing heart and lung issues are most vulnerable to extreme heat, along with older adults, pregnant people and newborns, she said.
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"Who cares about babies, pregnant women and old people? Serves them right for not being a young adult male who has air conditioning cares about their health, like me!" :rolleyes:

Skeptical Greg said:
Technology driven by fossil fuel consumption keeps people alive when they would otherwise be dead.
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People live in places where they wouldn't survive without fossil fuels, that's true. And now their use of it is making it harder to survive in other places too. Fossil fuel is making the situation worse, and it's not sustainable. You have to use more and more of it just to stay alive, then one day it runs out and everybody dies (if not before then).

Skeptical Greg said:
Maybe people should sign some kind of waiver regarding the impact on the environment from the lifesaving medical care they or loved one's receive. " Don't resuscitate if it will increase my carbon foot print. "
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Or they could reduce their carbon footprint beforehand, and then there wouldn't be a moral dilemma.

Skeptical Greg said:
If it matters, more people die from cold temperatures than heat. Guess what would improve those numbers?
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You have a fundamental lack of understanding of what Global Warming means. The main problem isn't the modest average global temperature rise, it's the variations caused by extra energy in the system. This causes some places to become hotter and others colder, and some both hotter and colder.

On June 3, 2023 the city of Jalturovosk in Siberia reached 37.9 °C (100.2 °F), its hottest day in recorded history. OTOH on Jan 10, 2023 the Siberian town of Zhilinda dropped to -62.1 °C (-79.8 °F) its lowest January temperature on record and the lowest temperature in all of Siberia since 2002. Global warming isn't significantly raising the lowest temperatures in Siberia. What it is doing is melting permafrost during summer, causing the release of methane which is 80 times more potent than CO2 in the short term (20 years). We don't want that!
 
@Roger Ramjets

Way to throw a lot of straw at my observation that hypothermia is responsible for more deaths than hyperthermia, which was a simple response to your lecture regarding the latter.
You have little understanding of what I do and do not understand.

Save your condescending elementary school lectures for your lecture circuit.
 
Sadly, this has reminded me of the cemetery in Woomera, which had an astonishing number of young children (i.e. < 2) and men in their 50s. All from the same period of time.
 
Climate scientists are calling it an ‘anomaly’, which is not so much an explanation as an admission that they can’t explain it.
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Really?

I was thinking maybe " .... forty billion tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year. " might have something to do with it.
 
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The Atheist said:
Food for thought: Climate: The anomaly making scientists scratch their heads.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/350229370/climate-anomaly-making-scientists-scratch-their-heads

I won't immediately jump to spruiking his book.
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I hope he's wrong, because if he's right it could be very bad news.

Sulfur dioxide initiates global climate change in four ways
There have also been two dozen times during the past 46,000 years when major volcanic eruptions occurred every year or two or even several times per year for decades. Each of these times was contemporaneous with very rapid global warming. Large volumes of SO2 erupted frequently appear to overdrive the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere resulting in very rapid warming...

Massive reduction of SO2 should be a top priority in order to reduce both global warming and acid rain.
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Imagine that we already did that, and yet the global temperature continued to rise. That could mean reducing SO2 was masking the true rate of temperature rise. That's bad, but here's what would be even worse:- people get the idea that putting more SO2 into the atmosphere would reduce global warming, which it does do for a few years - until...

I fear that geoengineering will be touted as the only way to keep the temperature down, and people support it enthusiastically because then they can carry on with business as usual. We could do something stupid like this and really screw the planet.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...jump-in-antarctic-raises-fears-of-catastrophe

On 18 March, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the east Antarctic plateau documented a remarkable event. They recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological centre on Earth. According to their instruments, the region that day experienced a rise of 38.5C above its seasonal average: a world record.

This startling leap – in the coldest place on the planet – left polar researchers struggling for words to describe it. “It is simply mind-boggling,” said Prof Michael Meredith, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey.
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Roger Ramjets said:
I fear that geoengineering will be touted as the only way to keep the temperature down, and people support it enthusiastically because then they can carry on with business as usual.
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It is already being touted as that by some people. While others pretend that making individual personal changes to 'lower our carbon footprint' is the way to go, unfortunately.

The "Do Something Anywhere at Any Time" approach allows countries and companies that produce the highest greenhouse gas emissions to fail to do anything effective.
All while making you believe that you are the problem and you are the solution.
It tells us that we can change the lightbulbs and buy energy-efficient cars instead of making widespread policy changes.
So what do we need to do?
We need to understand that we can't save the planet through our personal choices day to day. But, we can change where energy comes from!How products are made and who can access sustainable ones!
That way, everyone's emissions go down regardless of individual choices.
We can change how we all change our environments."
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A short video about this immensely stupid idea that actual change can come about by recycling, going vegan, switching out out a light bulb, or driving an electric car.
If you can afford it ...
Recycling, planting trees, and going vegan are just a handful of the many ways to reduce our carbon footprint. Companies and countries do it too, performing small individual tasks anywhere at any time to “save the planet.” But these small actions have little impact when compared to the vast polluting and emissions-intensive systems that underpin modern society. In this episode, join Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant to explore how making individuals fully responsible for reducing emissions can be counterproductive to combat climate change.
Does "Every Little Thing" REALLY Stop Climate Change? (PBS Terra on YouTube, April 4, 2024 - 8:33 min.)
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However, it is unfortunate that PBS stops short of telling people that system change (and not 'Vote for Biden' (which is doesn't say, but it is implied)) is required in order to 'change how we all change our environments'.
 
Good info, and right on target.

But these small actions have little impact when compared to the vast polluting and emissions-intensive systems that underpin modern society.
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Lots of lip service, but society at large refuses to give up the luxuries that are driven by the fossil fuel industry..
 
Deeply self-contradictory, as usual. If "you are the problem" is false, that is to say, I am not the problem and my individual actions don't help, then why should I do or change anything? The advice here seems to be to wait patiently for that system change. Let me know when it's done.
 
Myriad said:
Deeply self-contradictory, as usual. If "you are the problem" is false, that is to say, I am not the problem and my individual actions don't help, then why should I do or change anything? The advice here seems to be to wait patiently for that system change. Let me know when it's done.
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This is just another form of denialism, this whole we're all victims of the fossil fuel industry and unless there's some magical world transformation miracle delivered instantly then we're all doomed. Not a heck of a lot of difference between that argument and the climate has always changed argument. Both are equally extreme.

I like how, in the video they mention the global 1% but fail to mention the amount of wealth needed to qualify for that group. I know, we're all supposed to shake our fists at the uber rice (except Taylor Swift) however.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/15/23874111/charity-philanthropy-americans-global-rich
 
Skeptical Greg said:
The irony there, is that if you wipe out poverty, you're just creating more customers for the fossil fuel industry.
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True. I just used that article because it was the first one that popped up WRT the 1% but all those people in those developing nations with low emissions all want to be carbon emitters just like us.
 
Myriad said:
Deeply self-contradictory, as usual. If "you are the problem" is false, that is to say, I am not the problem and my individual actions don't help, then why should I do or change anything? The advice here seems to be to wait patiently for that system change. Let me know when it's done.
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If you had watched the short video, you would know what should be changed, what would have an impact. What you think seems to be the advice is uninteresting. The advice is not what you think it is, and it is not deeply self-contradictory. That assessment is also based on ignorance. It's a strawman, as usual.
 
Skeptical Greg said:
The irony there, is that if you wipe out poverty, you're just creating more customers for the fossil fuel industry.
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No, you are not. The trick of your argument is to pretend that the only way to produce what people want is by means of fossil fuel. Not true.
People want stuff that makes their lives easier and more comfortable. Their thinking isn't: I want to burn fossil fuels! But with current conditions, the things that they want are generally produced by burning fossil fuels, and that's what needs to change.
The PBS video makes it clear.

I'm surprised that this appears to be so difficult to understand.
 
Stout said:
True. I just used that article because it was the first one that popped up WRT the 1% but all those people in those developing nations with low emissions all want to be carbon emitters just like us.
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No, that's not what "all those people in those developing nations with low emissions all want." 'When I grow up (or when I get rich), I want to be a carbon emitter'.
See previous post. It's pretty easy to understand why this idea has nothing to do with reality.
 
dann said:
No, you are not. The trick of your argument is to pretend that the only way to produce what people want is by means of fossil fuel. Not true.
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I'm not really arguing for anything.

I'm just stating the obvious.
Meanwhile we can imagine a better world where industry abandons fossil fuels to produce what people want.


People want stuff that makes their lives easier and more comfortable. Their thinking isn't: I want to burn fossil fuels! But with current conditions, the things that they want are generally produced by burning fossil fuels, and that's what needs to change.The PBS video makes it clear.
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Now, if only PBS had an audience that is in a position to make the necessary changes.
Industry that's driven by fossil fuel consumption wants an alternative besides going out of business.
I'm surprised that this appears to be so difficult to understand.
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Difficult for who?
 
dann said:
No, that's not what "all those people in those developing nations with low emissions all want." 'When I grow up (or when I get rich), I want to be a carbon emitter'.
See previous post. It's pretty easy to understand why this idea has nothing to do with reality.
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Sure it is, they all want what you got and are only low emitters because they can't afford it. This is reality.
 
Skeptical Greg said:
I'm not really arguing for anything.

I'm just stating the obvious.
Meanwhile we can imagine a better world where industry abandons fossil fuels to produce what people want.
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But you can't imagine doing anything to put a stop to the burning of fossil fuels that that industry is doing.

Now, if only PBS had an audience that is in a position to make the necessary changes.
Industry that's driven by fossil fuel consumption wants an alternative besides going out of business.

Difficult for who?
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For you, apparently.
When PBS points out what the actual problem is, your response is to blame the attitude of stick to the idea that nothing should be done about it, much the same way that nothing should be done about poverty because if poor people were no longer poor they would burn fossil fuels!

One thin is the the 'position' of the PBS audience. Another thing is your attitude
Who is in a "position" to do anything about "the actual problem"? The powers that be?

It's no wonder that so many of you appear to want to leave it to the industrialists or maybe people like Biden to put a stop to it. It's the Dickensian imaginary solution posing as realism: If only people who are "in a position to make the necessary change" would make the change, which they wouldn't, obviously, because they are the ones who benefit from the burning of fossil fuels.
So its much easier to speculate that in the very unlikely situation that poor people getting rich under the current circumstances, which produce both global warming and poverty, would exacerbate global warming.

'Alas, it's out of my hands. If only the PBS audience were in a position ...'
'if only people in a position to make the necessary changes would make them ... just like Scrooge who had a change of heart.'
 
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