Climate change is
real.
Just like tobacco
companies spent decades buying scientists and politicians to muddy and confuse
the evidence on smoking, oil companies have bought scientists and politicians
to muddy and confuse the evidence on climate change.
They are helped by
legions of Christians systematically taught to distrust facts and condemn
evidence as elitist. An analogy - the evidence is solid that the age of the
earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old. Scientists can explain the myriad
types of evidence that support this conclusion and discuss the changes the
earth went through in each era. Likewise, the continental US is approximately
3000 miles across, but of course this number varies depending on exactly where
one measures. Let's say someone said "See. See. The number for the width
of the US changes. I'm going to ignore evidence for the width of the US and go
with my number." To be as wrong as 6k years versus 4.6 billion years, this
person would have to believe the US is 19 feet from coast to coast. Consider
the massive and overwhelming evidence they would glibly ignore to believe that
the width of the continental US is less than 20% of the length of a football
field.
Science denial and
glorification of ignorance is a threat to our existence. Evidence matters. The
evidence for human influenced climate change exists and is conclusive.
The author is
right. There are a dozen good reasons to care for our planet. Pick any reason
you like. But pick at least one because this planet is the only one we have.
There is no need
for conspiratorial theories here. Climate change is real, its been going on for
a few billion years. The argument is whether hydrocarbons have had an impact.
Models exist in both directions, and differ in their conclusions. Science is
trial and error. We once believed the Sun circled the earth, it was
"established" science, and the establishment (Church) killed people
who disagreed with this "truth". Science is also not up for a vote.
Newtonian physics was and is used by the vast majority of Engineers and
scientists, but its wrong, as Einstenian physics have shown.
Have patience, tend God's garden, and fill the earth.
Virtually every climate scientist
agrees that the global warming we are experiencing for the last 100 years or so
is at least in part due to human activity, and in large part due to the massive
increases in the burning of hydrocarbons.
Your arguments are
specious. 4th and 3rd C. BCE Greek scientists proposed a heliocentric theory.
It was always religious superstition that held back this knowledge. And
Einsteinian Physics does not refute Newtonian Physics. It improves on it and
applies to particle behavior that Newton was not describing.
Virtually every
scientist in the 4th & 3rd century were wrong, but not because of
superstition, because of lack of complete knowledge. In Akkad, 1500 years
earlier, a kind of copernican view was held. Our Pythagorean equations come
from the Fourth Century. No need to disparage those scientist.
Newton believed the speed of light to be infinite, and based his f=ma physics
on that fact. He was wrong, and investigations of anomalies in Mercury lead to
Einstein's equations. No need to disparage him either.
There haven't been level 3 Hurricane touching the US for 11 years, even though
global warming suggested increases. The number of global hurricanes (monsoons,
etc) has also decreased. New facts change old theories.
I don't believe in the planned mitigation of Global warming, since we are
probably at the beginning of a cooling trend (thought so by "most
scientists" only 30 years ago). We certainly need to take good care of the
Earth, and mitigate carbon and other chemical and human introduced imbalances.
But we do not need to hand over our Economy, or our governance to international
bodies that do not represent us, and we are not facing an immediate and present
danger.
Leonrogson said "There haven't
been level 3 Hurricane touching the US for 11 years, even though global warming
suggested increases."
This may come as a shock, but the
United States is not the only country on the planet.
Hurricanes can and do hit other
places.
Here is a summary of Cat 4 hurricanes
without the bias.
Hurricane frequency
Period Number Number per year
1851–1900 13 0.26
1901–1950 29 0.58
1951–1975 22 0.88
1976–2000 24 0.96
2001–present 21 1.4
Between 1851 and 1900, the average
was .26 Cat 4 hurricanes per year, or about 1 every 4 years. Between 2001 and
the present, the average is 1.4 per year, or about 5.5 every 4 years. This is
technically called an increase.
Facts are your friends.
Put away the tin
foil hat. Responding maturely to global warming is not 'handing over our
governance to international bodies." On the other hand, it is necessary
for national security, and will create jobs as a bonus.
My information is
from NOA, it also stated cat 3 and above storms throughout the world decreased.
Facts are facts.
Also, I am not a denier in change, or even that we probably had a hand in it.
Only that there is no crisis, that Engineering can solve the problem by
cleaning our coal and carbon, using catalytic ... etc.
You have a sense of urgency I don't share. We both care for the planet.
The agency you are referring to is
NOAA not NOA.
Engineering cannot solve a problem
that politcal leaders say does not exist. Politicians are collecting big money
to pretend global warming is not happening. Remember Inhofe and his snowball?
It snowed once in February in Washington DC, proving nothing whatsoever.
We do need to take
action. And the longer we stall, the more dramatic the needed changes will be.
You again make the
assumption that 1.5 degrees Centigrade in a Century is Armageddon. We disagree
on that, and the history of global temperatureshttps://www.bing.com/images/se... shows
no change in temperature for the last 18 years, and https://www.bing.com/images/se... shows
very little change since 1880. Look at the absolute change -.3 to +.6 not at
the impressive upward graph. Only 1C change.
You couldn't be
more wrong or ignorant or something. 97% of scientists agree. That's massive.
Lark's description of how science deniers come to the conclusions they do is
very well stated.
As I mentioned
above, science is not democratic. Galileo Galilei was killed because he
asserted, through scientific studies, that the earth traveled around the Sun.
99% of the scientist then, were wrong.
Similarly in 1914 99% of all scientists believed in Newtonian Physics, but it
too was incorrect. Einstein did not believe in Quantum Theory, which he himself
created, and worked for many decades trying to prove that "God does not
play dice with the Universe". While he did not arrive at a deeper understanding
of Physics that would support his claim, many are still trying to make sense of
how we came about, what the Nature of the Universe is, and why his assertion
was right.
Science is a trial and error system, it posits a theory and seeks to prove it
wrong. As long as it is not proven wrong it is a working hypothesis which we
use in every day life. Science never deals with "absolute truth" that
is left to theologians, ethicists and Rabbis and Priests.
Being one of them, I know how fallible we are when trying to understand God.
Evidence
Evidence is cumulative. When a new
data point is found, scientists do not dump everything and start over.
When scientists realized that Pluto
was just another kuiper belt object, they did not discard the heliocentric
theory of the solar system and go back to Apollo and his chariot.
The fact that science is able to
absorb new data and information is not justification for disregarding existing
evidence.
You are right, of
course. We all use Newtonian physics. Even though it's wrong. It's good enough
if you are not in a deep gravity well and going at snail pace compared to the
speed of light. But it is not right. Absolutes don't exist in science, and our
guesses are sometimes off.
Those advocating for climate change are right. It's changing. But they may have
the sources and the magnitude off. After all their models clearly don't work
very well according to our evidence. We are still heating up at a fairly
standard rate, and we have not had a lot of the armagedon predictions thrown
out. See NOAhttp://www.noaa.gov/ which is definitely for the
political global warming position, but being scientific, has good facts as
well.
"Science denial and
glorification of ignorance is a threat to our existence. Evidence
matters."
Very well stated.
Thank you.
The climate of the
earth has changed many times over the history of the earth. However, the speed
of climate change since the industrial revolution and especially in the last
few decades is way out outside the norm. Humans are feeding climate change, and
if we don't take action we will bring on unprecedented levels of human
suffering.
Models tend not to be trustworthy, they usually posit two to three times the actual increase in temperature over a given period. 95% of them predict more warming than is actually recorded. The earth has recorded a rise of 0.8 - 1.0 C in the last 150 years, the 1st 100 years of warming occurred before Co2 levels rose substantially. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate acknowledged that warming was intermittent, not steady in contrast to the rise in Co2. Applying proper statistical tools to control for normal fluctuations of the earth's climate system, when compared with global temperature data, the entire temperature change from 1958-2012 occurred in a single step (1977), not driven by climate change, it was the result of the reversal of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from Negative (cool) to Positive (warm). Other than in 1998, driven by an unusually strong El' Nino, there was no statistically significant trend in average global temperatures from 1997- (to late) 2015, even though Co2 concentrations continued to increase. A global increase of 1.0 C is relatively innocuous as temperature fluctuations in most areas on a daily basis is ten to thirty times that amount. As veteran MIT climatologist Dr. Richard Lindzen puts it, "So what?" This data is provide from an article posted by E. Calvin Beisner, Ph. D., who, while not a climate scientist, knows where to get sound statistical date from those who are.
