And so it begins . . .

Probably wont make a difference tbh an asteroid will probably wipe us out before it maters imo.

I think within just the last few years there has been as many close calls as fingers on both hands that nobody even saw coming till it was too late.

Imo if I had to put science funding somewhere it would be asteroid defense not trying to change the temp by a few degrees.

Basically if we don't find a way to deal with asteroids at some point be it 100,000 years or 50 we probably wont be here. I wouldn't bet on it being 100,000s of years with how much activity there has been recently.

Also this brings up a good point about both issues the fact that the doom from either event is 50-100 years out makes it so nobody actually gives a hoot about it because they will probably be gone by then anyways. I'm honestly not expecting either problem to be solved in time given how insanely complicated the solution is combined with the lack of caring.

Physicists are able to determine what happened 15 billions of years ago. Also, they created the technology to bring winter (via nukes).

Whatever moron that says that the idea of knowing or altering the weather is hubris should open a physics book once on his/her life and learn something for once rather than regurgitate what they read in blogs and news in their bubble. Humans are terrifying indeed.

"

NeroNoah wrote:

Physicists are able to determine what happened 15 billions of years ago. Also, they created the technology to bring winter (via nukes).

It is (unintentionally, I'm sure) rather ironic that you would use Ye Olde Tyme "Nuclear Winter" to buttress your statement.

Why? Because the collapse of the nuclear winter argument is what led to ....

"The Greenhouse Effect"

When that wasn't scary, it became

"Global Warming"

When the public reacted Warm is nice, and better than cold it became

Climate Change

If the "change" isn't enough to keep the public scurrying, it will get renamed and rebranded.

The origins of Climate Change philosophy go back much further than you might think.

The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich was probably the key instigator of the modern scientific hysteria.

"By a strange coincidence, The Population Bomb was published the year of the death of William Vogt (1902-1968), the man who had introduced Paul Ehrlich to the Malthusian worldview. While largely forgotten today, Vogt was the author of the Road to Survival (1948), a book that reached between 20 and 30 million individuals and was the biggest environmental best-seller of all time until the publication of Silent Spring.

Vogt belonged to a large group of individuals, many of whom had previously been active in the eugenics movement"

....So,

"Climate Change" started out as a way by eugenicists to make sure those subversive sub-human races didn't overpopulate the planet.

Once, again, this is why HISTORY needs to be taught properly.








If you have a good library nearby, see if they have access to "Foreign Affairs" and pull up the series of articles on "Nuclear Winter"

If you read all the articles (not all that many) you will see what happened with the nuclear winter idea (Even Carl Sagan gets in on the analysis), and if you start looking up popular magazines (TIME, Newsweek, etc) from the same period, you will see where the shift to Greenhouse Effect as the new doomsday scenario happen. Why the sudden resurgence in Arrhenius' 1896 idea of Co2 warming?

Anything to do with space was big news in the early 1980s - Whether it was the crazy idea that a giant asteroid killed the dinosaurs, or missions to Venus. Although the data that Venus was HOT was known before, Venus as a hothouse planet was not part of the common vernacular.

When this image, and later images of how melting hot Venus was begin to hit the newsstands, the time was ripe to seize the public mindset with the "Greenhouse Effect" that had obviously wrecked Venus.




If you are interested, here's a few teasers from the Nuclear Winter articles, so that you'll know what you are looking for.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1983-12-01/nuclear-war-and-climatic-catastrophe-some-policy-implications

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1986-06-01/nuclear-winter-reappraised

My main point in starting this topic was not to claim whether one side of the issue was right or wrong, but to point out that BANNING knowledge or ideas is typically the tactic used by despots.

Brave New World, Animal Farm, Catch 22, Green Eggs and Ham, 1984, Charlotte's Web, To Kill a Mockingbird and many others were banned.

A recent example of trying to control what people say that officials dislike is here:

Thai Activist’s Mother Faces Prison Term for One-Word Facebook Reply

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/world/asia/thai-activists-mother-faces-prison-term-for-one-word-facebook-reply.html?_r=0

As for my stance on climate change.... I will trust the data, not the scientist. When data is hidden, and altered and lied about, I tend not to trust that scientist ever again.

One side of the debate has a LOT of money from energy companies. The other side has a LOT of money from government agencies, and non-profits going into scientists hands.

Guess which side of the argument pays for the monthly mortgage?

Follow the money, look at the data, and watch which scientists refuse to show you all the data - or even let other scientists look at it.




What I am on board with is lots of pure science to gather data, so long as that data ends up in the public trust where it will add to our understanding of nature.

The single most important piece of data should be the easiest (once the satellite is in place) to measure and corroborate.

The incoming radiation from the Sun is measured against the reflected and emitted energy from the Earth and these measurements are thrown into a database to be crunched and analyzed vs the temperature trends.

If the Co2 is the primary culprit, then we would see the signature in the Earth's emission lines

Although it won't be as clear as this Carbon spectra:



We should be able to see how much of this is happening




And for those that just like pretty images we have this NASA video of Tropospheric CO2 levels

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=3812

Which although accurate AFAIK, would be a lot more helpful with orbital absorption/emission spectra, and ground based temperatures to tie altogether.

Well lucky for us corps who make money off extracting/mining and consumers burning/using their products own the politicians so nothing will happen no matter how many pencil necks and kids at this school get behind this "movement"

Polar ice caps melting is a business opportunity to sink virgin off shore wells from what I noticed.


I personally worry way more about nuclear winter from real nukes going off. All it takes is one man in the Kremlin or WH to end us all. And we came close already by accidents.

I partially agree with Upandatem, Ray and Dalai on this one, and I definitely thinking banning books is a bad move.

It's pretty silly in my view to underestimate the destruction humans are capable of. Therefore, the argument that we couldn't possibly effect, or couldn't possibly have a significant effect on, climate seems wrong to me.

However, it also strikes me as foolish to underestimate the resilience of the planet, making it out to be this fragile thing when it's been alive far longer than we have. Both human technology and nature are extraordinarily powerful forces, and the process of using one to destroy the other would involve some serious attrition; Nature is very tanky.

But more than anything else, I'm certain that environmentalism has been seized upon as a movement and exploited. I wouldn't be surprised to hear there's real science supporting climate change, but it's abundantly clear that this so-called science has produced scads of doomsday prophecies which haven't or clearly won't come true. Clearly there is some underlying incentive to exaggerate the dangers of climate change, inciting activism from groups of concerned folks and modern-day Gaea worshippers. There's a great Penn & Teller Bullshit on this, by the way.

Not saying the climate change deniers tend to be any better. You guys should know how I feel about the Religious Right by now. But this seems to me to be a very clear-cut case of both sides of the debate grossly exaggerating their points and creating movements more concerned with the quantity of their followers than with the truth.

I'm not quite as tinfoil as Dalai about the motive behind the environmentalist movement, but it wouldn't surprise me to hear that's part of what keeps it going now. Although I doubt you'd find many eugenics supporters among the crowd which thinks ever owl life matters.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

It is (unintentionally, I'm sure) rather ironic that you would use Ye Olde Tyme "Nuclear Winter" to buttress your statement.

Why? Because the collapse

Spoiler

(It didn't hold up to citical examination, and in fact was revealed to have been a collaborative effort to evoke fear -see Foreign Affairs links toward the end of the post)

of the nuclear winter argument is what led to ....

Yet papers like this keep happening (by the way, I couldn't access your links because they are behind a paywall, so I'm not sure of how discredited, or probably "corrected" the whole thing has been). Feel free to discuss it, but I'm pretty sure is outside our are of expertise anyway. As I said, the reason I side with mainstream science rather than deniers is because a lot of works from the latter are full of simple methodological errors. I cannot take them seriously, even if I'm sure I don't understand the physics at all.

I won't answer to the eugenecist part, but I will say that overpopulation is still a problem, a hard to solve one (you can't just reduce the population, see Japan); people just have moved to anticonceptives and abortion as methods of control mostly, except neonazis and "race realists". Just because you have fearmongerers in a movement is not enough to discredit it. I think there is enough sane research to say is not that big of a deal.

The exaggerated alarmism that many talk about is not something I've heard about. Maybe it was a 80s thing, when models where simpler and all that. Then again, I don't live in US, and in most of the world the thing is fairly uncontroversial and plans to mitigate the thing keep going without major trouble.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

My main point in starting this topic was not to claim whether one side of the issue was right or wrong, but to point out that BANNING knowledge or ideas is typically the tactic used by despots.

Then you see news like this:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article12983720.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2646897/Canada-bans-government-meteorologists-talking-climate-change.html

Most of this kind of stuff seems to come from US, Australia and Canada, by the way (is there a pattern to that?). Again, if you wish to complain about that school board, go ahead, but it's fairly insignificant compared to controlling whole government agencies.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

As for my stance on climate change.... I will trust the data, not the scientist. When data is hidden, and altered and lied about, I tend not to trust that scientist ever again.

One side of the debate has a LOT of money from energy companies. The other side has a LOT of money from government agencies, and non-profits going into scientists hands.

Guess which side of the argument pays for the monthly mortgage?

Funnily enough, climate change deniers produce little to no data.

What you say mostly means "there is not a big private market for serious climate change skepticism", well, it should be self evident why. Anyone that works or worked for government research should know that the pay is less than in the private sector so the conflict of interest rings hollow (specially when you can jump to work at almost anything else). I cannot stress enough how you hear about this in a few countries. Good luck about finding something similar in, let's say, Japan or Denmark.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

Spoiler

That data is just from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project, and somewhat processed with data that is not in the original sample. Now, the question is, how we compare Greenland data with the whole world? That graph, without elaboration, is way misleading as it is. The data is also public, although it took a while to find (it's a holiday here, I have free time). It seems to end 95 years in the past, so I'm not sure if it's not mere cherrypicking either, because ignores the last century (and if human activity at mass scale is doing this, the last century is way important). It has information about temperature variation, but I'd argue the data would be more clear in its original form (estimated temperature) because people wouldn't be able to confuse it with the whole world temperature so easily as that graph allows. While temperature variation seems comparable to world temperature variation, the temperature in ºC (many degrees below zero) is way different and it shows how the whole thing is oranges and apples.

“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

Henry Louis Mencken
US editor (1880 - 1956) ..

Nuff said.

"

Aim_Deep wrote:

I personally worry way more about nuclear winter from real nukes going off. All it takes is one man in the Kremlin or WH to end us all. And we came close already by accidents.

The nuclear winter scenarios were based off of worst case scenarios at the worst time of year and with ground blasts (rather than air bursts- which is what would be used against all targets except ground based silos and a handful of other hardened targets) to create the maximum amount of particulates. Even with all that, when they started crunching the numbers, it didn't add up.

IIRC -(been a while since I read the journals) the analysis was that if you were outside a one month window, the particulates (even with ground blasts )the air flow carried most of the particulate over the oceans and the fallout happened too rapidly for any significant change in sunlight.

Interestingly, there were a few places that fallout was unlikely to ever occur (Big Bend park in Texas was one for instance).

^By the way, the paper I linked considers precipitations.

I shouldn't have been so sure about nuclear winter, yet what I searched indicates that is not a totally discarded hypothesis, it's something that keeps being refined.

"

NeroNoah wrote:

Yet papers like this keep happening (by the way, I couldn't access your links because they are behind a paywall, so I'm not sure of how discredited, or probably "corrected" the whole thing has been). Feel free to discuss it, but I'm pretty sure is outside our are of expertise anyway. As I said, the reason I side with mainstream science rather than deniers is because a lot of works from the latter are full of simple methodological errors. I cannot take them seriously, even if I'm sure I don't understand the physics at all.

I see nothing wrong with people agreeing with one side or the other. The majority of scientists (3/4 - 90%+) depending on who is counting agree with the climate change scenario to a large degree. Many of those voicing disagreement, have qualms with specific issues of the science and not the overall idea.

Rather than hide the dissenting information, it should be held up to the light and examined. Many of the sites do that, to their credit. Whether their particular argument one way or the other is 100% correct isn't quite as important as the fact that they are making an honest effort to discuss and debate the issue.

With enough minds and enough data on the subject, we will figure it out and what, if anything we need to do.

"

NeroNoah wrote:

I won't answer to the eugenecist part, but I will say that overpopulation is still a problem

I think it is a problem in terms of what our economic and technological infrastructure can handle. There aren't enough jobs of 7 billion+ people, but that doesn't mean we can't create them.

IMO - the best population control is education (technical job based skills and traditional) and economic opportunity. When people have hope for a brighter future, if they can just hold off a bit, they tend to do so. When it doesn't matter what you do, then why bother?
When there is nothing else to do - at least that you can afford to do - sex is still free.

Getting the bulk of the world out of poverty will naturally lower the birth rates. The opportunity is there, but politico-economic stability and safety need to be there before the big investment dollars will follow.

Stability is the foundation on which we can build a better future.

"

NeroNoah wrote:

Funnily enough, climate change deniers produce little to no data.

If Exxon funded a study that produced data refuting climate change who would accept it? If you were a university scientist and you asked for money for a study that you felt would refute climate change theory, would you be likely to get the money, or likely to have your tenure track canceled and your contract not renewed?

That kind of stuff actually happens :-(

"

NeroNoah wrote:

What you say mostly means "there is not a big private market for serious climate change skepticism", well, it should be self evident why. Anyone that works or worked for government research should know that the pay is less than in the private sector so the conflict of interest rings hollow (specially when you can jump to work at almost anything else). I cannot stress enough how you hear about this in a few countries. Good luck about finding something similar in, let's say, Japan or Denmark.

The pay in the private sector is far more lucrative and enticing. The number of jobs available to such is scant at best, compared to the number of academic jobs, and the guarantee of a long career in the private sector depends on how well the company does that you work for. The issue isn't better pay - it's that so many jobs are already involved with government funding, and the publish or perish phenomenon requires scientists and scholars to
speak up regularly even if they don't have meaningful information ... yet.

"

NeroNoah wrote:

That data is just from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project[/url], and somewhat processed with data that is not in the original sample. Now, the question is, how we compare Greenland data with the whole world? That graph, without elaboration ..,

EXACTLY! Although the data wasn't skewed or fabricated, it is easy to use it one way or the other to persuade someone who isn't fluent in all the particulars. The public is getting the translated version (since they don't speak the dialect) and at the mercy of what they are being told. This is why the idea of banning information makes me more skeptical, rather than less skeptical.

Imagine you are President and someone is translating for you, and instead of translating after each time the foreign Premier speaks, the translator just completely omits some messages, and when you ask the translator what was said, the translator replies "I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to tell you that."

Does that increase or decrease your trust level in the situation?

"

NeroNoah wrote:

is way misleading as it is.

(some snipping)

but I'd argue the data would be more clear in its original form (estimated temperature) /quote]

:-) It would be. A graph with zero (or the equivalent of it) and actual temperatures would allow us to see the scale of the change, and decide for ourselves whether the scale used in the graph accurately represents the significance of the data. The first thing I usually do when I look at a graph is look for the zero baseline. No zero, and I am skeptical that they are trying to emphasize something that might not be what they claim it is.