The Climate Crisis Is Real

All any of these wingnuts need to do is watch the Discovery Channel showing that Polar Bear sitting on that little piece of ice that’s left. Idiots!

Many people have a hard time grasping the implications that the fast food meal they just ate means for their colon tomorow. So you can’t expect them to understand the implications of climate change 50 years from now.

But Rox, everyone knows that that polar bear shot is a plant. Just like the lunar landing.

Glenn Beck doesn’t understand science? Like at all? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!

I’ve never professed to be either a denier, or a believer of man-induced climate-change.But I wonder, Bob, and everyone else here, do you know enough about the ACTUAL science to know the truth of the matter if it is revealed? I hear liberals say all the time, “the science is incontrovertible”, at which point, i look at the person who just said it, and wonder, “And how would you know that?”Let’s face it, none of us here is a climatologist; we might read an article or two a week on climate change, but that doesn’t qualify any of us as being educated enough on the subject to state unequivocally, “the science is incontrovertible”.There is a lot of money to be made in “Green” technology. I’ve often said the next financial bubble will be Green. Could you guy at least admit that you don’t know much more than I do about the subject (and I read A LOT), and that it’s at least possible that there is a financial agenda behind the push to go “green”?

Even if you take climate change completely out of the equation, it still makes vastly more sense to use green renewable energy sources rather that limited fossil fuels. I say limited, because we can’t suck oil out of the earth forever. Eventually it will be gone.Renewable energy makes more sense for safety, national security, health, and economics. The fact that we pump so much shit into the air that its effecting weather patterns is just an extra insentive.

PPP – Even if the opposite is true, even if climate change is a big fucking hoax, how can you deny that polluting less, conserving energy, conserving water, creating green technology and heading in that direction is a bad thing? Even if there’s a financial agenda to go green, isn’t the ultimate result a better option than what we’re doing now?

No PPP, there isn’t a financial agenda behind green technology, but like any other movement, there are people who try to make money off it.What kills me is that if we do nothing, it’s possible our actions will make the earth uninhabitable for humans. If we do something, we MIGHT prevent catastrophe. If we do something and it turns out science has been wrong this whole time, the worst that happens is we clean the air and the water for a relatively small price, which may just make our air more breathable and the food supply healthier. Who knows, cancer rates may go down as a result, it seems it would be worth it just for that.I learned about global warming in college back in the 90s. That was the first time I learned the science behind it. I don’t remember every detail but it made sense at the time and seemed incontrovertible to me. I can’t speak for everyone else, but just look at who the backers are on either side. There is no debate on whether the earth is warming, it’s only the causes behind it, and there’s not even a real debate on that. The ones claiming humans aren’t responsible also have a financial and/or political interest in denying it.As for that email, this is the holy grail for the deniers and they’ll still be talking about it in the 22nd century, if we’re lucky enough to still be around.

Carl, I have no problem with earth conservation; I believe in it strongly and practice it. But I don’t really need a “Global Emergency” to do something about it.Back in the late 80′s and early 90′s, the big scare was HCFC’s, or, the chlorine being vented into our atmosphere from refrigerants (eating a hole in our ozone and causing global warming, yes, back then, the hole in the ozone was causing global warming, and the science was finished on it ). Never mind that Beverly Hills spewed more chlorine into the atmosphere than all the AC and refrigeration units in the world combined; we couldn’t touch their swimming pools. But we made an entire INDUSTRY retrofit their machines and go gangbusters toward finding new refrigerants (most of which aren’t nearly as efficient as the old ones).My initial point here was, how can any of us know with any certainty that the science is incontrovertible, since we aren’t scientists? The BEST we can do is hope the proponents of man-affected climate change aren’t fudging the truth due to an agenda.Even more curious is that this issue is political at all. All liberal believe climate change is caused by man, and all conservs believe the opposite. Now, how did that happen?

Even more curious is that this issue is political at all. All liberal believe climate change is caused by man, and all conservs believe the opposite. Now, how did that happen?

Maybe it’s the same difference between reason and irrationality.

PPP, you find it curious that this is political? EVERYTHING is political. The president talking to students or throwing out the first pitch at a game is political. Something that involves government regulations will always be political.As far as none of us being scientists….I hold a Bachelor of Science and did study this in college, so speak for yourself.

Carl, very well said.

What’s curious to me is that this is an issue where, for once, Republicans refuse to ‘speculate’. EVERY other issue thats all they do! Boogeymen and what-if’s – never real math, or science, or history, or proof – just speculation blended with fear.Like some of ya said already, IF the folks who believe that we are damaging the Earth turn out to be wrong, there are still multiple huge benefits to be had!When the Republicans speculate incorrectly, we get in wars and economies fail and we find ourselves on the verge of very dark days with our ‘political discourse’ in the toilet, and yet…they still want to be taken seriously?Zero cred.

PPP – I’m an environmental scientist. You’re not understanding the issue or at least framing it incorrectly. “All liberal believe climate change is caused by man, and all conservs believe the opposite. Climate change isn’t caused by man, but rather greatly influenced since the Industrial Revolution. There really is a ridiculous amount of information and data out there that shows human involvement. If people choose to ignore it, fine. But if it’s our lawmakers who are doing the ignoring, then that’s gross negligence. Since Republicans of the past 2 decades have shown nothing but contempt and malice towards science, maybe that’s why political battle lines are as you describe.

There is no “science,” Bob. That’s the point. People don’t want to believe the science is real and feel utterly vindicated. My Thanksgiving brother in law said “he’d heard” the global warming crisis was over and asserted this decade wasn’t any hotter than the last one.The same stovepipe is blowing the same smokescreen.

There is a good side to this story. If you own stock in aluminum foil then you should be rolling in the bucks. After all, the wingnuts are buying it up left and right for their hats.I swear the wingnuts are making the truthers look sane anymore.

As a Department of Interior employee, I can assure you all that the government is not ignoring this issue. Politicians aren’t doing much of anything, but us staff flunkies are all over this. We have all sorts of committees, planning teams and research groups analyzing the hell out of the problems and devising potential approaches that we can take in order to ameliorate the effects of climate change on wildlife and natural communities. The problems are very real, and the potential solutions are few, but we’re working on it.

Unfortunately, all we can do is deal with and work around the effects of climate change. It’s the politicians who need to get on the ball, and implement legislation to slow, or even possibly reverse the causes of climate change.

PPP said:

Let’s face it, none of us here is a climatologist; we might read an article or two a week on climate change, but that doesn’t qualify any of us as being educated enough on the subject to state unequivocally, “the science is incontrovertible”.

You’re right, PPP. I’m not a climatologist. But I have enough general knowledge to understand that human emission of greenhouse gases is driving climate change at an unprecedented rate.I have a good friend who until recently argued that it was all a “natural cycle,” and the “one active volcano” produced so much carbon emission that it made the “climate change is man made” argument laughable (this, of course without a shred of scientic data to back his claim up).So I started searching at on of the most respected scientific agencies in the world – the USGS.Guess what I found?

Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes–the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)!

If anyone’s interested, you can go here and read the info.My point is, I don’t need to be a climatologist to recognize the danger in global climate change (or “global warming,” if you must call it that) any more than I need to be a nuclear physicist to recognize the world-wide danger of nuclear proliferation.

PPP, I’m an environmental scientist (also!), and the data is clear, and in strong support of anthropogenic influence on climate. Bob has it basically right – that wingnuts take typical back-and-forth of scientific debate as proof that anyone can throw their uneducated two cents in. It’s not easy to interpret climate data – there’s an enormous amount of background knowledge required to know what you’re looking at and make a critical assessment of the data.So it’s swell that you read A LOT, PPP. But the fact that you group people into “deniers” and “believers” proves you foolish. It’s not a question of belief. I believe in climate science the way I believe in gravity.And really: who the hell are you? There are thousands of highly-trained, highly-specialized professionals that unanimously (or as near to unanimous as you’ll ever get in any group of thousands of people) declare that climate change is real and anthropogenic. But here’s PPP and Glenn Beck telling them that they don’t know what they’re doing. Do you tell your MD that you’re skeptical about this whole antibiotic thing? Do you tell your car’s mechanic that you’re going to wait until the whole “brake inspection debate” is over, whether or not such a debate exists? Do you tell your airline pilot that you don’t think he’s qualified to fly the plane? No? Then why is it OK for any layperson to tell professional climate researchers that they don’t know how to do their jobs? When did this become acceptable, even a point of pride?I’ll tell you why: If there was as much corporate money behind disease-causing bacteria as there is in fossil fuels, we’d certainly be hearing about “the antibiotics debate”.

Please Mather, do not ever lump me in with Glenn Beck. I just asked some questions, and put the focus on this idea that every liberal KNOWS that the science is incontrovertible, when in reality, there is no way they could. You being an environmental scientist, I am more inclined to listen to you.This issue is akin to me saying, without being an expert in the field, that abiogenesis, despite the long odds, was actually a scientific slam dunk, DESTINED to happen. Could you possibly take me seriously? Yet, were I a liberal leader, there are many people in that camp who would take it as gospel, and recite it at every chance.In the end, my point is that we are listening to people who are reciting something they have read or heard, and who have no scientific background to defend their claim. Bob says the science is incontrovertible; fine. Does he know that for certain? How can he know it, if he doesn’t understand the science behind it?I’m a financial advisor, not a scientist. I’m good at making money. i’m not good at talking about, or proving the science behind climate change.

“i’m not good at talking about, or proving the science behind climate change.”You certainly aren’t. And yet you do anyway, and that’s why I lumped you in with Beck: Thoroughly unqualified people impugning the work of thoroughly qualified people.You are, though, absolutely right on this: “we are listening to people who are reciting something they have read or heard, and who have no scientific background to defend their claim.” Which is, of course, just what you’re doing. But the big difference between, say, Beck and Bob is that Bob is taking the word of climate scientists, while Beck is taking the word of insane idiots and/or oil-industry shills.MY point is that there is an objective truth here, one that’s been determined by decades of research, based on both theory and observation. So when people (like you) treat it as a matter of faith, where everyone’s entitled to their opinion and no one really knows anything for sure so all opinions are equallt valid, well, that’s unacceptable to me.

I research in the area of environmental economics and I can tell you that banks, insurance companies, utilities, and – believe it or not – oil companies have been bracing for the effects of global warming for at least a decade.Australian oil companies are already having difficulties with their platforms and utilities need water to function. Banks take both emissions and risks associated with global warming in their lending and the same with insurance companies with their policies.Dow Chemical uses more electricity than some small countries and they are finding that their savings from energy conservation have been embarrassingly huge.Beck and a handful of others may have their heads up their asses, but the rest of us are working very hard to evaluate risks and the costs and benefits of resource conservation.

That’s certainly true, ec, but it’s letting ‘em off too easy.It’s easy to say “OK, even if climate change isn’t real, energy and resource conservation are really great and so is decreasing pollution”, but that “if” implies that there’s a chance climate change isn’t real. Which there isn’t. OK? There just isn’t.So what you’re doing (and I totally get why you’re doing it) is allowing the reframing of the debate, by suggesting there’s a compromise position. There really isn’t.

Mather. I know climate change is real and so does everyone else in the business world.They also know that the threat of regulation is real, which is why they are doing risk assessments and long-range projections like never before.I am an academic, so I have no skin in the game except in the publication process, but I have talked with many consultants – who often have Ph.D.s in sciences such as physics – and they say that companies are committed to resource consumption reduction for a variety of reasons. But they are committed.This is good because fifteen years ago, when I wrote my dissertation, I couldn’t find anyone who gave a crap about global warming, just TRI emissions.

PPP, the reason why the big scare in the 80s and 90s was CFCs damaging the ozone was because the emissions of CFCs WERE damaging the ozone layer. And yes, the data supporting that was incontrovertible. So, we ratified the Montreal protocol and now most of the CFCs have been taken off the market. And guess what? Since then, the ozone layer has shown signs of recovery.And, as much fun as it may be to point fingers at Hollywood and Beverly Hills for owning swimming pools, you’re comparing apples and oranges. Chlorine offgassing from a swimming pool does not tend to migrate into the stratosphere, where the ozone layer is found. CFCs are a rare group of gases that are capable of crossing the tropopause and entering the stratosphere. That was the big concern, these gases were able to carry the chlorine into the stratosphere, unlike gaseous chlorine emitted from things like volcanic.Oh, and yes, I’m an environmental scientist, too. Not only do I work for the state Department of Environmental Protection, but I also teach the subject at the local community college.

Thanks to those of you with personal knowledge who have chimed in. Anyone in the industry care to argue that our actions aren’t causing climate change? Didn’t think so.