Readit NewsThis is ridiculous. Can we all agree that this is ridiculous? Because that's what it is. If we can at least all agree that this is indeed ridiculous, perhaps the collapse of modern civilization can be avoided.
If the ebola infections started appearing in all the major cities with airports and seaports, would you want the experts to try their best to stop it, or would you shrug and say, eh, sometimes people live and sometimes they die,
> One might get that impression from the media narrative though. (that AGW is going to kill all life)
I have two responses: one, as potholer likes to point out, we all know that press headlines are sensational. Don't deny the science because you don't like the way the press reports it. Second, I don't personally get the impression that even the press claims AGW will sterilize the planet. It sounds like a strawman to me.
That highly depends on what "the experts" recommend that we do. In any case, your bad analogy is bad.
> I have two responses: one, as potholer likes to point out, we all know that press headlines are sensational.
...which is what makes me far less worried about climate change.
> Don't deny the science because you don't like the way the press reports it.
All this talk about "95% of scientists agree (that the charts point up)" and "science denial" is an argument from authority.
Given that 50% of science is estimated to be wrong[1], I'm willing to take my chances on this one, especially since there's a strong ideological component to it.
The actual simulations are drastic simplifications with wide margins of error, and even those margins have been crossed by observation even in the close term, where the margins are still narrow. All the interesting stuff happens way further down the line, however.
Perhaps a bit more humility regarding the practical limits to the scientific method is in order, at least in this case - but then how would you make your argument from authority?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ3PzYU1N7A
One of the problems cited: the temperature/CO2 graph probably came from an antarctic ice core sample ... and temperature leading/lagging there is different than in non-polar locations.
Second, the climate is a complex feedback system; there isn't one independent variable and everything else is dependent. If something forces any of the variables in the feedback system it can affect the other variables. For instance, say the artificial release of CO2 by humans results in the thawing of the arctic, releasing gigatons of methane, at which point CO2 might no longer be the primary driver. Over geologic time there are different causes for these forcings, but that doesn't mean that the current forcing (human released CO2) isn't the current problem.
He covers all of that and more, much better, in 13 minutes.
[EDIT] I forgot to address "what's even the big issue with changes in global temperatures?"
That is a supremely cavalier attitude. Nobody is saying AGW is going to kill off all life. In the long term life will recover. But in the short term we humans are going to have to deal with the consequences: displacement of millions of people through crop failures and loss of coast, disruption of economic systems, and more civil unrest. The US military is gaming out these scenarios because they believe the science, not because they are pinko tree huggers who hate freedom.
Specifically, he points out that CO2 lags temperature by hundreds of years in the southern hemisphere, but that temperature lags CO2 by again hundreds of years in the northern hemisphere.
CO2 is claimed to have accelerated natural warming through a feedback loop - until it didn't, and temperatures began drifting down again.
That's fair enough. That's reasonably nuanced. I'm missing the extent to which this feedback loop actually made an impact though, because clearly it can't be the dominant driver or ultimate control lever. Otherwise, we'd have had a runaway greenhouse already.
> Nobody is saying AGW is going to kill off all life.
One might get that impression from the media narrative though.
> But in the short term we humans are going to have to deal with the consequences: displacement of millions of people through crop failures and loss of coast, disruption of economic systems, and more civil unrest.
I don't think that's such a big deal, all things concerned. Sometimes, people have to move. Sometimes, crops fail. Sometimes, coasts move. Sometimes, there's civil unrest. Telling people in China or Brazil that they'll have to cut down on their emissions is going to cause civil unrest. "Vote for me, I'll make you poorer" is not a winning political provision.
> The US military is gaming out these scenarios because they believe the science, not because they are pinko tree huggers who hate freedom.
They're also gaming out scenarios of mass epidemics, or political secession. What do you expect them to do?
Yes, it usually boils down to selfishness.
All lifeforms are selfish. If your solution only works on an imaginary selfless version of the human being, then it's not a solution. It's a fantasy.
> That's a strong statement for what it is at best a discernible correlation. It's a strong and very valid statement, supported by a wealth of science. In this instance it's not really possible, or wise, to run multiple randomly controlled experiments on our own planet to conclusively prove the point. Instead, we have a lot of observations and modelling that allow us to run those experiments, and the weight of those say we have a problem.
> We absolutely have to drop everything and start cooling the planet? The majority consensus is not to drop everything but to continue making substantial changes to human activity to reduce warming. You personally do not need to become an eco-warrior, just more aware of the effect you're having on the planet and try to reduce it. Cooling the planet is now beyond expectations. The aim now is for it not to warm up too much.
> Until the next ice age, when presumably we'll have to warm it? That is a terribly big false equivalency! First, yes, I expect so. Second, it's totally different! Ice ages take multiple hundreds, if not thousands, of years to get going. The next ice age is not going to affect the next generation, global warming is.
The benefits to ecological improvements and the risk of climate change vastly outweigh the costs. Less pollution related illness, our limited resources will last longer, etc... The risk alone is enough to make me think that ignoring the problem is the morally wrong choice, the benefits double the equation.
No, the weight of those say there will be an increase in temperature. Never mind that the weight of these have been wrong for more narrow definitions of the word "wrong":
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs/public...
If those models can't predict ten years into the future with any reasonable amount of confidence, how can we trust them to predict the next 100 years?
Even then, let's say these models are more or less correct, what exactly says "we have a problem"? What problem? We already have tons of problems! Not being able to emit CO2 would be a huge problem in and of itself. What are the models to predict the actual problems caused by climate change? How good are those? Do 95% of scientists agree on them?
> The majority consensus is not to drop everything but to continue making substantial changes to human activity to reduce warming.
Okay, I don't exactly feel like making substantial changes to my lifestyle based on these predictions, especially since the impact doesn't concern me much at all. Now what? Good luck getting all that political support that you will need.
It appears that your "deal with" accepts mass migration, mass starvation, and civil unrest, as those are some of the historic ways humans have addressed things before.
If so, I don't see a difference between your view and "just let things happen - some people will survive, and I don't care who."
(Actually, your "worth the cost" suggests that you care less about the world's poorest people, whose deaths have the least economic impact.)
If your view is anything at all like that, then of course we can "deal with" the effects climate change. But it's not a humane approach.
If you want to see civil unrest, just raise the taxes on gasoline, like Monsieur Macron.
As for mass migration, if there really is such a big fallout due to climate change (or anything else) rendering places uninhabitable, let the people migrate. Humans have always migrated. Why stop now?
As for mass starvation, I don't buy it. Most crops today are fed to cattle, there's a lot of leeway in terms of repurposing it for human consumption.
If you can't see how ridiculous that sounds, you might not understand how people become skeptical about climate science.
If we really understand these physics so well, why have most of the predictions been wrong?
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs/public...
Here's a citation - https://www.pnas.org/content/114/35/9326 "Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates".
> Without CO2 fertilization, effective adaptation, and genetic improvement, each degree-Celsius increase in global mean temperature would, on average, reduce global yields of wheat by 6.0%, rice by 3.2%, maize by 7.4%, and soybean by 3.1%.
When you write "This has been predicted numerous times", do you mean, for example, the predicted famines of the mid-1900s, saved by the Green Revolution? Borlaug's Nobel Prize speech cautious us technical success in raising food production is only a temporary victory - we must also limit our population.
When you write "Crop production depends on the weather far more than the climate" ... how is that even a valid argument? Where are the Canadian orange groves? How's the Brazilian maple syrup industry? They don't exist, because the climate is wrong for those crops in those areas.
You write "They recover" .. Citation needed. Simple counter-example - the Icelandic forests from the Norse era have not recovered.
Or, 10,000 years ago the Sahara was green. Now it's a desert. Why hasn't that ecosystem recovered?
No, I'm sincerely interested.
> Without CO2 fertilization, effective adaptation, and genetic improvement, each degree-Celsius increase in global mean temperature would, on average, reduce global yields of wheat by 6.0%, rice by 3.2%, maize by 7.4%, and soybean by 3.1%.
"Without adaptation" is not a plausible scenario. Of course there will be adaptation. But let's take those numbers anyway, and take a very liberal estimate of six degrees of temperature increase: That's 36% (wheat), 19.2% (rice), 44% (maize) and 18.6% (soy), respectively.
That may sound alarming if all that produce had to be turned into food that people need to live. In practice, most of it goes to livestock or even biofuel production. Being forced to have less cattle and fuel might be good for the climate, no?
> Borlaug's Nobel Prize speech cautious us technical success in raising food production is only a temporary victory - we must also limit our population.
Perhaps, but the best way to limit your population growth is to deliver a better standard of living.
> When you write "Crop production depends on the weather far more than the climate" ... how is that even a valid argument? Where are the Canadian orange groves? How's the Brazilian maple syrup industry? They don't exist, because the climate is wrong for those crops in those areas.
I'm talking about actual crop production, not hypothetical crop production. Nobody is starving because farmlands that never existed stop producing. With bad weather, that's different.
If we're talking about climate and agriculture, the argument goes both ways: If global temperature rises, then new places will start making sense for certain forms of agriculture, just as old places will stop making sense. This also will happen regardless of human intervention.
That's your claim, but you can't actually derive that from the data. It may just as well be the case that rises in temperature cause the release of more CO2, period.
> This does not in any way call into question the causality between increasing concentration of CO2 (a greenhouse gas) and increased warming as predicted by gas absorption equations which we teach in high school.
The climate on the planet isn't a simple gas absorption equation, there are other factors. Even if the greenhouse effect is a factor, it couldn't be the dominating factor.
Otherwise, how could an ice age just "end" a period of high CO2 concentration? Shouldn't the greenhouse effect prevent it? And if so, will the next ice age be "tamer" if we keep CO2 levels up? Wouldn't that be good?
The method of replacing entire MCU? Maybe not, flash is likely not the only component in there that has an age limit.
> Maybe not, flash is likely not the only component in there that has an age limit.
The MCU itself should outlast the lifetime of the car in the vast majority of the cases.