Being named Scroopy Noopers or Flippy Nips honestly doesn't sound any less silly. I know of at least two people who gave their babies the names from Game Of Thrones. That will still be cool in 15 years. Like naming your kid Spock or Bilbo.
I gotta say: it's not stupid to question. I'm a fan of critical thinking, and God knows there is more than enough bullshit out there to confound the average person. When confronted with said doubt, the worst thing you can do is double down and make the person feel stupid for believing what they believe. There's enough evidence to support a logical, well-reasoned argument, without going "HOLY FUCK YOU WILLFULLY IGNORANT FUCK TARD HOW COULD YOU NOT BELIEVE?" This is the way the left/right divide heals. Instead of it being a "HOLY FUCK YOU ARE RETARDED", it's a "well, I think this because of this evidence right here." The left being condescending twats is a problem that lost them large swaths of the country, and that divide needs to heal without further condescension. Share how you learned, and don't be so arrogant to insinuate you knew this since birth. I've seen this over and over with identity politics, and I am as liberal as it gets, but I am a white dude (gasp, the patriarchy!) and from South Carolina (gasp, the racism!), and I'm straight and don't favor overweight women (gasp! CIS and what the fuck ever phobe!). The reality is: if you can make a solid argument, I'm well on your side. If you can do no better than: Insert left/right wing bandwagon position, and can't authoritatively defend your position, then you're part of the problem.
Excellent post. It's worth mentioning that very few people actually know fuck all about global warming or climate change... they are, for the most part, just parroting the stance of their respective information sources. They are just repeating shit they heard somewhere else, and they usually pick the stuff that follows their own belief systems. It is very worth your time to dig into respectable scientific sources and read some of the findings before it hits the caustic wood chipper that is the main stream media and they put their own spin on it. The one thing that I've come to understand is that yes, we hare having a huge affect on the earth's climate. It has been shown, scientifically, that humans have increased the overall temperatures around the world, and that there are results of that; polar ice melting, changing ocean temperatures and shifting biology as a result, etc. Those changes are measurable, and that is what there is a vast majority of agreement on... shit has changed. The thing that is really up for debate is the extent of the problem, how long the damage will last, or how long it will take for it to be reversed. (To be clear, I fully believe that the earth will self-heal at some point... it may well be hundreds of thousands of years after we're gone, but it will heal and reverse itself.) When dealing with the long term effects of climate change, computer simulation is a key component. It is not an exact science, by any stretch of the imagination. Every time they run a simulation and then measure the results against what really happens, they find problems or elements that were not taken into account when they developed the "model" that they used to generate the simulation. So, in true Scientific Method fashion, they learn what was wrong, tweak it, and try it again. And then they find the next thing. And the next. These models have been iterated on many thousands if not millions of times, and each time they are getting better, but they're still not that reliable or accurate over long periods of time. Hell, they have a hard enough time figuring out the 5 day forecast, never mind the 50 year forecast. The main thing that people are reacting to is the fact that year after year, things are getting worse for people, and there are some correlations to the measured changes in climate. Simple extrapolation of a series leads them to think that shit is going to get worse and worse assuming nothing changes. The science behind it is still very new, and is progressing very quickly, especially with the recent advances in simulation technology and AI / Deep Learning. My point form takeaway is as follows: climate is measurably changing as a result of human inputs people and animals are being affected negatively by that changing climate (Antarctica is melting and breaking up, flooding is happening, extreme weather, etc) it's not going to get better all by itself (in the short term) there are a ton of different predictions on what the medium and long term effects are, but nobody can agree on the details of those predictions other than "worse than it is today, assuming no changes". That's because the science around those predictions is still at its early stages and is being developed. people are trying to come up with ways to change the human input into the equation in the hopes of reducing the negative changes that are occurring It's a very nuanced and complicated field of study, and it's too easy for people to disregard things if they don't understand it. "I don't get it, so it's not a thing". I watched the Anthony Bourdain show on Antarctica last night and he said, "you guys [scientists] really suck at marketing... you need a PR firm". And I think that's a huge part of it. Right now the only people with a strong PR firm for climate change are those with a budget for it and view it as a threat, so are trying to get out ahead of it. Most governments right now are not going to go out of their way to fight for what's best for people, against corporations. This Paris accord seems to be a bit of a tipping point, where the absolute buffoonery of Trump has finally triggered everyone else to band against him and his Luddite positions. Yay Trump?
You may have heard that Comey's testimony is being covered by ABC and CBS, live. Guess who just scheduled a speech at that same time? Part of me thinks that Alec Baldwin doing an SNL bit would be less entertaining than Trump during that speech.
I'm still very interested in the climate debate and still don't grasp how scientists can authoratatively say, based on a few 100 years of hard data, that they can model a climate system that is billions of years old? Further, with said data that they can now accurately tell you what part of climate change is natural and what part is man made with very little data. I understand the scientific method, I know that we accept science until science changes but science changes quite often maybe not as quickly as climatologists change their models though. It was just 300 years ago that we used to blow smoke up people's asses to treat an array of medical maladies; we don't even have climate data from that point in time and you understand how absurd it sounds today to even consider blowing smoke up someone's ass due to illness. For me, I have a hard time taking this all at face value when people start throwing around terms like temperature proxies but, again, I'm not a scientist. I accept that the climate is changing and I take them at their word that people are causing some of it but with so many unknowns it's hard to buy in to wholesale changes to the way people live. I double down on that statement when we talk about things like the Paris accord:
"AN AN AN NOW HES OVER ON THE FAKE NEWS LOSER STATION RIGHT NOW SAYING STUFF ABOUT STUFF. HIS DICK IS SMALLER THAN ME AN MY DAD MAKES MORE MONEY THAN HIS DAD." -Donald Trump
Ultimately, does it really matter? If the temperature increases of the past couple of decades continue at their current rate, it's going to cause huge problems with rising sea levels, fucked up weather, and highly populated areas gradually becoming uninhabitable. Suppose the increases are 0% related to human activity. Does that imply that we're to do nothing and just stand by as the Earth becomes more hostile to us? As far as I'm concerned the ratio of natural increase to human increase is only mostly relevant in terms of figuring out the best way to slow it down or stop it. Regardless of what percentage climate change is due to human activity we've got to address it.
What do you mean, 100 years of data? 100 years of data taken with modern (not infallible) instruments and recorded recently? We have billions of years of data. Just because you do not know how to interpret it does not mean that there are not clues all around you. Scientists can actually study fossils and tell to a pretty damned close degree the temperatures and atmospheric conditions of points in time. In the example I am thinking, they can tell how much CO2 is around based on fossil evidence of stomata positioning, and while not a perfect pinpoint to a year, fossils can be dated pretty accurately. Ain't much harder than a fossil, baby. It's the trends that are more important, anyway, right?
Carbon date testing can tell us data from tens of thousands of years ago. It's what proved the Shroud Of Turin to be a crock. Core sampling can give us data from a billion years ago. Of course we're probably going through one of those "cycles" right now where trees twice as old as the pyramids burst into flame, all year long. All-year wildfire seasons and "Superdroughts" recently happening in Austrailia are something not know in recorded history. These did not happen when I was a child, they are happening now and it didn't occur gradually. It happened overnight. In the past five years, we have had three winters with basically no snow here. I'm talking not even so much shovelling the driveway once for four months. Before this time, we never had a anything even CLOSE to a freak occurance like that, ever recorded. I live in the centre of the snowbelt, in the centre of the great lake effect. Plus there's the added bonus of skyrocketing, record-setting heat. Records that get broken more often than Olympic records. Not gradual, 0.0000001 degree rises over a period of a million years, but July records being broken by four full fucking degrees. This gets worse, because we keep polluting more. You basically don't even need research anymore. You just need eyes.
There is a huge difference between being able to estimate and determine historical data like basic weather due to geology, biology, fossil evidence, etc, and determine the basic temperatures involved compared to being able to estimate/simulate/predict what will happen in the future. The former is orders of magnitude easier than the latter. For instance, we know there are ice ages. How did we determine that if we weren't there to measure it with fancy instruments? There are many other data points to explain what happened.
Anecdotes are not science. A case could be made that that headspace is no different than old crazy dude who brought a snowball into the senate, claiming "there is snow here, so we're all good". You can't say "anecdotes are fine" just because it's a side you personally believe in.
But when you can drive up a mountain and see where glaciers have receded and the landscapes have changed - it's awe inspiring and terrifying at the same time.
My point is that isn't hard data. You are talking about proxies found to correlate to temperature and/or CO2 concentrations in specific places at specific times. The key word you used above is bolded. You are right I don't know how to interpret them and I question how accurately you can make assumptions on global climate based on these interpreted proxies. What is the level of certainty in this data? 30 years ago the operating theory was that we were about to plunge into another ice age. Scientists were sure then and they are sure now, one group was wrong and I'm not convinced anyone can say with 100% certainty which one was right or wrong. Again, I am not saying climate change isn't happening and I'm not saying humans aren't contributing but I am questioning what level certainty we are that change is occurring outside the natural boundaries of climate cycles. Then I seriously question the prescription to fix the problem. To hit the ultimate CO2 targets prescribed is not unrealistic, it's pure fantasy. Not only that, I'm supposed to stand by and agree that America and Europe should foot the entire bill AND decrease it's standard of living while China, Russia and India do nothing? C'mon, get serious here.
The left should have pinned global warming on the Russians in the 80's instead of the imperialist polluting heathens of the 1st world. Im curious as to why the carbon tax credit seems to be the be all end all solution being floated? Ive heard it was originally a republican idea in nature (ala the individual mandate)? Dire images of the coast aside, why hamstringing our economy until the green tech gap can be branched all the while letting China off the hook for the foreseeable future? See someone always comes along and puts it much better than I can before I hit post.
Wait, what? Suppose the increases are 0% related to human activity? I'm operating from the footing that the climate is changing no matter what and that is natural; so what is the goal here ultimately? To keep the climate exactly as it is today? Exactly as it was 50 years ago? If you can't say for certain what impact you are having now then how do you know what actions to take? How do you know if the actions you take are too much or not enough? Do you measure again in 5 years? 100 years? This is a climate system that we don't fully understand, I don't understand what we are doing here if we don't know any of this stuff, it is sounding like do something for the sake of doing something.
Regardless of whether you believe that 'climate change is/isn't being impacted by humans', how can anyone not be concerned about all the crap we spew forth into the environment? It used to all 'go away' but 'away' seems to be an awful lot closer than it used to be.
Oh no, we invest in non-polluting energy and sustainability and fix the world for nothing! Boo! I don't understand the math here: to fix climate change, we industrialize a bit more intelligently, take care of mother nature a bit more intentionally and take the power out of the oil and energy companies' hands (because they are such a force for good in the world). It will amount to a tremendous decentralization of power, control and money, if done the way it's going now. So, why in the fucking fuck are conservatives opposed? Isn't this the essence of the libertarian/conservative slant? Qui the fuck bono? Could it be that the oil and energy companies have a very vested interest in the status quo? Are they starting to eerily resemble the tobacco companies that promoted smoking as a healthy habit? In 50 years, we will talk about companies like Enron, Exxon and BP in the same vein as the East India Trading Company.
It only superficially resembles a conservative, less government interference, plan. That's why I asked the question. In reality the end goal seems to be to regulate and tax these industries until it forces them to, necessary sky rocket the prices as Obama eloquently put it, so that the end consumers feel the pinch and demand alternatives. The evil smoke stack companies won't feel it as bad as any end user. It's also not like these big companies don't have a plan to capatalize on green tech anyway, chances are good you'll be paying the same companies you despise if and when it becomes a reality. Most big tobacco companies just rebranded and diversified. Even though I'm more fiscally conservative leaning I'd rather see any green economy pushed more like NASA or the atomic bomb program from the government more than I'd ever want the government regulating industry in the way of cap and trade. It's why I joked about blaming it on the Russians. It's the only way in our recent past where big government spending was universally supported. It's actually sort of ironic how many big companies came out and said they are moving ahead with it despite trumps pulling out of Paris. If you are for limited government interference maybe it could be seen as another 4d chess grandmaster move on trumps part.
How does decentralized infrastructure not fit the conservative mantra? We already regulate and tax these industries, but due to their size and strategic importance it's not enforced to the same degree as say a nuclear facility. Also, as oil in particular gets harder to find and extract, prices will naturally rise. I disagree with the notion of punitive taxes, but I am on board with taxing dirty energy to level the playing field, or making it cheaper for clean energy. Ultimately, it's about a full accounting: the tobacco companies had to pay for the cancer they caused, as they were held responsible for an externality of their business. The oil and energy companies should be held to the same standard of responsibility for their pollution, and then the green energy becomes a more attractive business model. If BP, Exxon, etc. didn't have fingers in the collective ass of the government, would they behave the same? I don't think they would. It's telling that the oil companies spend billions on lobbyists, but someone like Solar City doesn't need to. Why does Trump defend coal? Out of his fondness for mining disasters and blacklung? Qui bono? The people who stand to lose money if their industry gets less competitive and are getting desperate to ensure it remains relevant.