I'm interested as to how the debate plays out in various parts of the world.

I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, so its our turn to face a traumatic summer. It has barely started and is already proving quite difficult, with major drought, high temps and consequently severe bushfires. Inland towns have run out of water and there is no rain expected for at least 6 months.

Sydney has been having third world air quality as a result of unstoppable fire activity. Catastrophic fire events are feared for January/February. Plenty of Canadian and US firefighters are already being deployed to help out (we do likewise during your summer).

The politics here is accordingly changing. Conservative state and Commonwealth governments are beginning to accept that they have to do something as part of a global movement towards reducing carbon consumption. For the first time, environmental concerns are becoming more important than economic concerns among voters.

One of our religious rugby players has lost a lot of supporters by blaming the bushfires on gay people. Our Prime Minister is also religious and is fighting to get people to accept that the current problems are just normal climatic cycles and we can keep burning and exporting coal without risk.

Its all going to get messy. The economy (local and global) will be impacted by all the negative aspects of climate change.

And yet, once the rain does come and the temperatures cool down for the winter, we will all lose interest, and you guys in the Northern Hemisphere will be gearing up for droughts and bushfires.

How do you think it is going to play out politically and culturally if this trend continues?

Australia seems to be the canary in the coal mine. Politicians seem to be somewhat stymied at the moment. I think what is really going to break the logjam is insurance companies. They don't give a damn about politics. They will charge enough to cover the risk of fire or flood, or they stop selling policies.

When that starts happening, and mortgage companies refuse to make loans without adequate insurance on the properties, everyone will sit up and take notice and demand action. I wonder what a fire policy costs in Santa Rosa, CA these days?

yes, that's the only thing that will change the current affairs is 1st world nation's insurance companies making it harder to get building loans, for banks to stop funding risky property development. No one should be insuring risky investments. But think about that for moment, who the insurance adjusters are... educated economists, business majors, statisticians. Surely they would have found some convincing numbers by now that show that the sea is swallowing up Europe, and California, and all construction should cease in Manhattan and Miami? They haven't found it yet.

As for our troubles in California, when it's summer in the South West it gets hot, man didn't invent fire, and when it's winter in Yellowstone it's cold. That's what climate change is. For us mere mortals to take 140 years of Western data and pretend that we have knowledge to conclude anything reliable is laughable.

The real issue is that this is group think problem. There is one result that is the accepted consensus, from years ago, that most scientist/academians use and try to fit their models to. They fiddle with the variables until it works, it's the only way they get legitimacy. And Keep the money running in.

Keeping you scared gives them a job. Don't buy the Bull S.

Typical.


---------------
> No one should be insuring risky
> investments.

Measuring, evaluating, and pricing risk is exactly what the insurance business is. Are you suggesting that the industry should not exist?


-----------------------
> But think about that for moment, who
> the insurance adjusters are... educated
> economists, business majors, statisticians. Surely
> they would have found some convincing numbers by
> now that show that the sea is swallowing up
> Europe, and California, and all construction
> should cease in Manhattan and Miami? They haven't
> found it yet.

Of course they have not found it yet. BECAUSE THE MODELS DO NOT INDICATE IT SHOULD EXIST YET. You present a typical straw man argument.


--------------
> For us
> mere mortals to take 140 years of Western data and
> pretend that we have knowledge to conclude
> anything reliable is laughable.

What is laughable is that someone who does not understand the quadratic equation, the basics of genetics and evolution, or the procedures scientists use to date ancient species now stumbles, embarrassingly unclad with basic knowledge, into yet another scientific field.

We have data going back not your "140 years" but billions of years, as you could understand if you had paid attention to BoJ's discourse on ancient atmospheric conditions. For his data on nitrogen and oxygen concentrations 2.4 billion years ago will inevitably also include the figures for atmospheric carbon over the same period.* You know that, right?


----------------
> The real issue is that this is group think
> problem. There is one result that is the accepted
> consensus, from years ago, that most
> scientist/academians use and try to fit their
> models to.


In fact, climate change proves precisely the opposite. A century ago virtually no one believed humans were changing the climate. Fifty-thirty years ago the topic was hotly debated. But as the data mounted, scientists did what all responsible people do--they changed their minds to accommodate new facts--and the result was a general consensus behind various climate change models.

The "group think" occurs among people like you who insist on staying with a false narrative that does not fit the data over billions of years. You speak to your fellows and assure each other that while Manifest Destiny is "true," science is not. Please God, give me ignorance.


-----------------
> They fiddle with the variables until it
> works, it's the only way they get legitimacy. And
> Keep the money running in.

No, it is not the variables or data that they "fiddle with;" it is the models themselves. As new data emerges, they adjust their models to get a closer fit to reality. That is what scientists do; it is what reasonable people do.


------------------
> Keeping you scared gives them a job. Don't buy the
> Bull S.

The world is flat, right? And all that nonsense about a spherical earth that keeps rolling in is just scientists seeking to appease their financiers. Don't believe those researchers' "bull s.," macaRomney. Stay in your cocoon.



*For BoJ's disquisition on atmospheric conditions over billions of years, in the unlikely event that facts interest you, consult:

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2272041,2272501#msg-2272501



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/2019 06:47PM by Lot's Wife.

I read silly comments like this every day in the comments pages of the Murdoch-owned newspapers. Meanwhile, the temperatures rise, the water runs out and the fires burn with unprecedented intensity.

Business and insurance companies are reading the tea-leaves better than politicians. Many banks and funds will not support new coal mining and power plants because of shareholder pressure.

The scientists are being proved right. Unfortunately the solutions are complex and costly.

It's appalling to read various close-minded newspaper articles about how it's twice as hot at x than in the rest of the world. And that's being written all over the world.

No it's not the x hottest year ever measured.

Tony Heller is very good at digging up relevant diagrams and statistics and old alarmist newspaper articles. It's really fascinating to see all those old texts, and compare to the modern ones.

Hiding The Hot Past
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WppbuIoyXdg
This video details how the Australian Bureau of Meteorology hides Australia's hottest temperatures, which occurred before the year 1910.

Maldives To Drown Every 30 Years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icz_wpgJBt8
Thirty years ago, experts said the Maldives would drown within thirty years. Now they tell us that Maldives will drown in thirty years.

Dr. Richard Feynman said "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts."

Ah yes, Tony Heller, the climate change denier whom climate change deniers disown as a crackpot. That's an excellent source on which to base one's opinions.

https://reason.com/2014/06/23/did-nasanoaa-dramatically-alter-us-tempe/

Tell me, has Heller found Obama's Kenyan birth certificate yet?

I just had my defense of science deleted. I would ask the admins why it is permissible to attack science, scientists, and academic endeavors but not conversely to attack the purveyors of ignorance.

How many times do macaRomney and his friends get to denounce science and rigorous analysis?

perhaps because it is OT, and really there is no point debating with the slowly boiling frogs.

It is interesting to note, though, that the politicians are really having to start to move now, because large numbers of younger generations are rapidly getting animated about their future(s).

Time to stop debating the facts, and start working out global agreements on efforts to ameliorate!

LW....Thanks so much for the phorum link. More fascinating reading!

Thank you, cinda. Apparently the moderators did not share your appreciation for my analysis, which is unfortunate.

Whose ox did you gore?

Evidence indicates that the climate is changing. It appears that changing climate has been happening for many thousands of years.
Unfortunately, the current trend seems to add up to significant impacts on the world that humans have constructed.

I would hope that our species has the ability to come up with ways to adjust as the climate changes. It really is not productive to accuse, point fingers, wring hands, cry or curse at what was done by our species in the past.

It is incumbent upon us as occupants of this earth to make changes that accommodate and even capitalize on the weather trends for our progeny. Use our intellect to roll with whatever changes are forthcoming...

Jesus is going to come and re-freeze the tundra, put back the melting glaciers, and bring rain to Australia. Should happen any day now, now that Rusty has fixed the church.

Only if people pay enough tithing.

LOL. This is the third thread (that I recall) in as many weeks that has born on the topic of climate change. MacaRomney has seen fit to weigh in on all three of them. He apparently thinks he has something Very Important to share.

Maca, you already have a firmly established, entrenched even, reputation for being obstinately ignorant about how radiometric dating works. Regardless how often people try to educate you, you come back spouting the same nonsense when the subject comes up again. You are not stating opinions. You are making statements that simply are not true.

Note to admins before I go on. RFM has traditionally been willing to allow discussion on climate change. While i can't speak to your reasons for doing that, I think it is useful because it is about the fundamental issue of how are facts determined.

This is highly relevant in the Mormon context, because Mormons have been trained to ignore/deny/"refute" facts, regardless of how well established. No, the earth is not 7,000 years old, we don't care what God told JS. No, the American First Nations did not come here in 600 BCE from Jerusalem. Just no.

So, how are facts established is a skill some Mormons desperately need help with. I hope admins will continue to let climate change be a topic of discussion here. I understand editorial whacks over the head when it starts chewing up too much space, but it is a useful real-time case of people coming to accept facts. Most people have come around to the position that something certainly appears to be happening, even if they disagree on exactly how bad it is.

The few hard core denialists, like Maca, are starting to sound like the moon landing deniers. "It was all faked because NASA was afraid its budget would be cut if they didn't land on the moon." I suppose we should be impressed that the 400,000 employees of NASA were able to keep a secret for 50 plus years now, and that those who figured out it was faked because they noticed the shadows were wrong on a photo were Truly Brilliant. [eyes roll]


Pardon my digression. Back to the subject at hand. I'll keep this short (for me) and simple. Yes, we only have recorded worldwide temperatures for about 140 years. There are other ways to estimate temperatures before that time. While not as precise as actual thermometer readings, they are still pretty good. I won't go into the gory details now.

The most recent ice age, which we are technically still in, started about a million years ago. There have been a number of warmer and colder spells in this ice age. They correlate basically exactly with rising and falling CO2 levels in the atmosphere. We can measure the CO2 levels in glacial ice cores, going back about 800,000 years. Farther back than that, the ice layers are so smooshed (technical term :) that they are difficult to date, but 800,000 years is still plenty of data.

The CO2 levels have consistency swung between 170 parts per million (ppm) in the cold periods to 270 ppm in the warm periods. A few centuries ago it was in the 270 ppm range. With the Industrial Revolution, we began pumping gigatonnes of CO2 into the air each year, and have quite accurately measured the rise. It is now above 400 ppm, and nobody reading this now will ever see it below 400 ppm during the rest of their lifetime.

We may not know exactly what that is going to do to the climate, but I'm pretty sure that "it will have no effect" isn't correct. It is dissolving in the ocean, acidifying it. Acidi water dissolves calcium carbonate, releasing in the process, you guessed it, more CO2. Ouch. It is also a greenhouse gas, which lets light through, but traps infrared radiation from the ground, which is to say, it traps heat.

Warmer oceans expand, and warmer ice melts and runs into the ocean, also raising water levels. It is a slow, but inexorable process (I almost never get to write "inexorable")

And thirdly, warmer temps melt permafrost, which contains copious amounts of CO2, and methane, an even worse greenhouse gas.

A bit of history. CO2 was first described in the mid 17th century, and more was found out about it in the 18th century. By 1804, scientists began discovering that it was a greenhouse gas, though that term was not used for another hundred years. Thomas Jefferson was president in 1804, just to give you a frame of reference. One of the discoverers was Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, who was studying heat transfer. He developed a mathematical transform algorithm for analyzing frequency data in a signal, which is today known as the Fourier Transform. It's what makes MP3s possible. If you've ever wondered how it is possible to shrink a WAV file by 90% when converting it to an MP3, and still have enough information to recreate, pretty closely, the original, the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) is the trick, and even when you know how it works, it is a gob-smacking bit of mathematical sorcery.


A couple links for further reading (if you really want to get into the weeds, there is a ton of stuff out there, but this is a good start):
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
Somewhat to my surprise, NOAA still has this excellent web page about climate and CO2.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/sunday/science-climate-change.html
This is an article from a month ago about how the predictions of climate scientists have been pretty consistently underestimating the actual changes in the climate.


Whew.

Yeah, I earlier posted a link to your earlier disquisition on atmospheric gasses but my post got expunged. Much as I would like to blame my discomfiture on your essay, I fear it had more to do with my rejection of willful ignorance.

You said the same thing, of course, but hopefully the gods of (im)moderation will smile upon you.

Greta Thunberg! [A]nd a little child shall lead them.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/12/11/time-person-year/

Yes and rightly so. She has articulated the issue on behalf of her generation very clearly.

Now its up to the rest of us to support those who are researching the solutions.

Lets not waste our breath debating the facts with the MacaRomneys of the world.

The biggest issue is - how do we replace fossil fuels with cleaner energy without creating massive economic collapse and social disruption?

Are you kidding? Implementing the already available technology is going to be an economic windfall. We’re going to make tons and tons of money off this. And the energy companies will lead us once they realize there’s a lot more profit in climate technology than climate denial and remaining entrenched in their old fossil fuel burning ways.

Agreed, there will be opportunities for clean technology developers. For my country, though, we have a major threat in that a lot of our export income is earned through coal. A large industry will have to be shut down and this comes with great political pain, especially in the main affected regions.

Similar dynamics will play out everywhere in the world, leading to tensions of various sorts including protests, conflicts and wars.

And already we're seeing climate change refugees. The people on islands closest to the Equator will be hardest hit. They also tend to be very poor.

And to think when I was a child, I worried about the Earth reversing polarity.

You worried about the earth turning gay?

The Earth turning gay would be one helluva improvement.

A random dogmatic tenet is decided upon, and "contrarian science" roundly rejected . . . despite having at our fingertips the Library of Congress.

Both the left and the right do this.

Welcome to the Dark Ages

That may be true in general, but where there are facts, there are answers. Where there are answers, there are those who are correct and those who are not.

There are mountains of data on global warming as there are facts supporting a spherical earth and a heliocentric solar system. There are details to be sorted out--the earth is not perfectly spherical, for instance--but tiny mistakes in measurement do not vitiate the greater reality.

"The scientists are being proved right. Unfortunately the solutions are complex and costly."

Actually, the solutions are simple.

Live close to work and shopping.

Walk instead of drive.

Do not travel on vacation.

Grow your own food.

Turn your heat or A/c off. Put on a coat.

Live in a smaller house.


All of these actually save money.

Climate change alarmists don't care enough to change their lifestyles. Likely they don't actually believe it.

When Al Gore gives up his mansions and jets, I'll start caring.

No, the solutions are not simple, they are very difficult. Reducing your personal carbon footprint is almost purely symbolic. We won't waste time trying to get people like you to care enough to make minor changes to consumption.

The entire economic basis of global society is going to have to be re-engineered around a transition to cleaner energy, presumably delivered by technologies that we don't yet have.

The first step is to achieve some global acknowledgement of this need, then we must work out how to achieve it. Typically this won't happen until we start to see genuinely catastrophic events which will cause a belated acceleration of effort.

At present, we are watching the politics start to shift in this direction, but my original point was that this will ebb and flow, particularly between different seasons in each location. Much of eastern Australia is again expected to be under attack from heat, bushfires and poor air quality in the coming week, which will further increase pressure on the affected governments to pull their heads out of the sand. They are hoping we have short memories and will calm down when the summer stops in about 3 months.