The No-Climate-Change Perspective "All Lies About Global Warming DEBUNKED in One Article"

julian Gerona wrote:interesting data that explains climate change. The real climate change. No I dont deny climate change. As I have mentioned in my first post. Climate change is real. What I dont understand is why take a perfectly normal phenomena and cast it as huge problem.

These objections are truly evergreen.

"(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: Global warming has been going on for the last 20,000 years.

Answer: It is true that 20,000 years ago the temperature was some 8 to 10° C colder than it is today. But to draw a line from that point to today and say, “look, 20K years of global warming!” is dubious and arbitrary at best.

If you have look at this graph of temperature, starting at a point when we were finishing the climb out of deep glaciation, you can clearly see that rapid warming ceased around 10,000 years ago (rapid relative to natural fluctuations, but not compared to the warming today, which is an order of magnitude faster). After a final little lift 8,000 years ago, temperature trended downward for the entire period of the Holocene. So the post-industrial revolution warming is the reversal of a many-thousand-year trend.

A closer look at today’s trend, within the context of the last 1,000 and 2,000 years, makes it even clearer that today’s trend is striking — opposite to what one would expect without anthropogenic interference..."

https://grist.org/climate-energy/global-warming-is-nothing-new/

julian Gerona wrote:Climate change is real. What I dont understand is why take a perfectly normal phenomena and cast it as huge problem.

To quote just one sentence from an article linked higher in this thread:

The one hundred million people in Bangladesh will need another place to live and coastal cities globally will be forced to relocate, a task complicated by economic crisis and famine—with continental interiors drying out, the chief scientist at the U. S. State Department in 2009 predicted a billion people will suffer famine within twenty or thirty years.

This sounds like a huge problem to me! I mean, sure, people who don't think it's happening will discount predictions like that.  But to see it happen and agree it's happening and still think it's not a problem is not a posture that I understand.  

To pick a ridiculous example, imagine that it was being caused by hostile aliens beaming rays at us.  We wouldn't shrug and say "Oh, it's just aliens, nothing to do with us" and go on with business as usual.  We'd still need to come to grips with the problem and treat it like a crisis, doing all that we could to save as many lives as possible.  

julian Gerona wrote:Mount Pinatubo eruption caused a 1.1 degree fall in temperature because dust particles in the atmosphere serves as barrier for suns radiation. All major eruptions is followed by a rapid cooling. More eruptions more cooling. This points to more particles in the atmosphere, including CO2, should cause cooling not warming.

I'm not an atmospheric scientist, but my understanding is that dust from volcanoes cools the earth because dust is opaque: it physically blocks some of the sun's rays, reflecting them back out into space.  Whereas CO2 is an invisible gas (it doesn't reflect light at visible wavelengths) rather than opaque particles.  So it lets all the sun through to strike the earth and warm it.  But CO2 does block a degree of infrared light, so that some of the heat that would normally radiate off into space as infrared radiation is kept inside the atmosphere just as dust keeps the energy out in the first place.  Hence, "the greenhouse effect".  

Hope this helps!

More of this:

"(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: There was global cooling in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, even while human greenhouse-gas emissions were rising. Clearly, temperature is not being driven by CO2.

Answer: None of the advocates of the theory of anthropogenic global warming claim that CO2 is the only factor controlling temperature in the ocean-atmosphere climate system. It is a large and complex system, responsive on many different timescales, subject to numerous forcings. AGW only makes the claim that CO2 is the primary driver of the warming trend seen over the last 100 years. This rise has not been smooth and steady — nor would it be expected to be.

If you look at the temperature record for the 1990s, you’ll notice a sharp drop in ’92, ’93, and ’94. This is the effect of massive amounts of SO2 ejected into the stratosphere by Mount Pinatubo’s eruption. That doesn’t mean CO2 took a holiday and stopped influencing global temperatures; it only means that the CO2 forcing was temporarily overwhelmed by another, opposite forcing."

https://grist.org/climate-energy/what-about-mid-century-cooling/

It would save time and space if folks would go read the entire series of articles. (Posting link again here):  https://grist.org/series/skeptics/

It's not clear what the denialists are really concerned about... if global warming is a hoax, what is the problem with having more transit and electric cars?  How would cleaner power plants or more forests actually hurt anyone?  How would eating less meat and restoring more eco-systems be a bad thing?  I get that certain climate policies are much more controversial, like a carbon tax or the nuclear question.  But these are tactical questions of implementation where we can disagree... as long as we share broader concerns of earth/people care.

Josh Garbo wrote:It's not clear what the denialists are really concerned about...

I think they are concerned that someone is saying they are living in a damaging way, and they are afraid someone might encourage ("force") them to change their way of life.  Some of them believe the "hoax" is a global conspiracy to control the way people live, control it in a way the denialists apparently don't like - forcing them to drive different cars (or no cars!), eat different food (ew, organic!), buy less plastic crap, stop cutting down forests and killing the Spotted Owl, etc.

Tyler Ludens wrote:Some of them believe the "hoax" is a global conspiracy to control the way people live, control it in a way the denialists apparently don't like - forcing them to drive different cars (or no cars!), eat different food (ew, organic!), buy less plastic crap, stop cutting down forests and killing the Spotted Owl, etc.

Tyler, this is a fascinating issue.  I've said before that it seems almost tribal to me -- people often strike me as less interested in knowing the truth or in having a fact-based opinion than in echoing the received wisdom of their political tribe.  I just came across a 2015 article in the Washington Post called Why Science Is So Hard To Believe.  The final sentence nicely distills what I've seen:

For some people, the tribe is more important than the truth; for the best scientists, the truth is more important than the tribe.

In greater detail, the article lays out some of the research work by a professor at Yale who studies science communication.  One bit that's germane to this discussion reads like this:

Americans fall into two basic camps, Kahan says. Those with a more “egalitarian” and “communitarian” mind-set are generally suspicious of industry and apt to think it’s up to something dangerous that calls for government regulation; they’re likely to see the risks of climate change. In contrast, people with a “hierarchical” and “individualistic” mind-set respect leaders of industry and don’t like government interfering in their affairs; they’re apt to reject warnings about climate change, because they know what accepting them could lead to — some kind of tax or regulation to limit emissions.


In the United States, climate change has become a litmus test that identifies you as belonging to one or the other of these two antagonistic tribes. When we argue about it, Kahan says, we’re actually arguing about who we are, what our crowd is. We’re thinking: People like us believe this. People like that do not believe this.

I don't think Kahan has done a good job of identifying the tribes, which I suspect are more numerous than two.  I myself am way out on the end of the individual-rights and suspicious-of-government axis, and yet I am, very grudgingly, willing to tolerate the notion of collective action in the face of what I understand to be an existential threat.  I don't know what tribe that puts me in, but it utterly disqualifies me from any  tribe that reasons from "we extra much don't like what another tribe wants to do about the climate crisis" to the conclusion that "therefore the climate crisis is not real or important".  What can I say?  I've always been bad at tribes.

The climate predictions of the global warming people have not turned out as they predicted. What that means is that the science is not yet settled.

I spent a lot of time last winter searching the net. And, there are a huge number of variables that have been identified as affecting  climate, far more than I think the global warming scientists have taken into account, and I do not think that a lot of variables to climate have even been identified yet, let alone understood.  It appears to be a highly complex subject

Terri Matthews wrote:The climate predictions of the global warming people have not turned out as they predicted. What that means is that the science is not yet settled.

I spent a lot of time last winter searching the net. And, there are a huge number of variables that have been identified as affecting  climate, far more than I think the global warming scientists have taken into account, and I do not think that a lot of variables to climate have even been identified yet, let alone understood.  It appears to be a highly complex subject

Your contention is that you found variables while searching the internet that "global warming scientists" are unaware of?

"Objection: Even the scientists don’t know that the climate is changing more than normal and if it’s our fault or not. If you read what they write it is full of “probably,” “likely,” “evidence of” and all kinds of qualifiers. If they don’t know for sure, why should we worry yet?

Answer: Probability is the language of science. There is no proof; there are no absolute certainties. Scientists are always aware that new data may overturn old theories and that human knowledge is constantly evolving. Consequently, it is viewed as unjustifiable hubris to ever claim one’s findings as unassailable.

But in general, the older and more established a given theory becomes, the less and less likely it is that any new finding will drastically change things. Even the huge revolution in physics brought on by Einstein’s theory of relativity did not render Newton’s theories of classical mechanics useless. Classical mechanics is still used all the time; it is, quite simply, good enough for most purposes.

But how well established is the greenhouse effect?

Greenhouse effect theory is over 100 years old. The first predictions of anthropogenic global warming came in 1896. Time has only strengthened and refined those groundbreaking conclusions. We now have decades of very detailed and sophisticated climate observations, and super computers crunching numbers in one second it would have taken a million 19th century scientists years with a slide rule to match. Even so, you will never ever get a purely scientific source saying “the future is certain.”

..."

https://grist.org/climate-energy/the-scientists-arent-even-sure/

Trace Oswald wrote:

Terri Matthews wrote:The climate predictions of the global warming people have not turned out as they predicted. What that means is that the science is not yet settled.

I spent a lot of time last winter searching the net. And, there are a huge number of variables that have been identified as affecting  climate, far more than I think the global warming scientists have taken into account, and I do not think that a lot of variables to climate have even been identified yet, let alone understood.  It appears to be a highly complex subject

Your contention is that you found variables while searching the internet that "global warming scientists" are unaware of?

It seems obvious that if their predictions were wrong then there must be some data they weren't aware of.

 Even public television admitted that many of the temp sensors they use to base their data on are not there.
Like in huge swaths of the Atlantic ocean.
So they extrapolate it.
To me a good way to tell if the Atlantic waters are getting warmer is the formation of hurricanes.
Warmer oceans should generate more hurricanes.
It hasn't.
I agree last year there were many hurricanes coming from this region but the couple years before,.. not so much.

One look at ice in the artic or antarctic for the last few years shows record ice and cold for many of those years.
Many of the glaciers they predicted would disappear are coming back so when they predict something 30 years out I have to laugh.

I don think it's a coincidence that as these things occur and scientist see it happening, they changed the name of the crisis from global warming to climate change.
Hard for them to admit they've been wrong all this time, like when the earth was flat.

Having said that.
I run a super efficient car, heat and cook with wood.
I use under 6 KW a day from the grid, most because of a freezer and am working to reduce that.
While I think CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas and has little to do with the temperature of the earth;
I still believe drilling and mining for petrol as well as transporting it is a toxic process and should be reduced.

I think it's a hysterical crisis. Created to trick people into buying carbon credits so they can create something out of thin air and sit in the middle of the deal and sell it.
I see many of the posts in this topic talking about talking about it, rather than presenting facts.
I hope I brought up points that can be discussed.
And I have to say it feels like it's been a very safe place to discuss this.

craig howard wrote:

It seems obvious that if their predictions were wrong then there must be some data they weren't aware of.

Can you point me in the direction of the predictions that were wrong?  I would like to look at them and see what the actual result was.  

I don't think anyone is claiming that all variables in this extremely complex situation have been identified.  I just struggle to believe that a lay person checking internet sites has found information that has somehow been overlooked by the people that study this for a living.

craig howard wrote:
Hard for them to admit they've been wrong all this time, like when the earth was flat.

 
Scientists didn't say the earth was flat.  They proved it wasn't.  I know few scientists.  The ones I do have been blessed with an insatiable curiosity about the world, and they love it when they find out they are wrong, because it means they have discovered something they didn't know.

craig howard wrote:
I see many of the posts in this topic talking about talking about it, rather than presenting facts.
I hope I brought up points that can be discussed.
And I have to say it feels like it's been a very safe place to discuss this.

There is a link in this thread that takes you to a website that discusses the arguments in pretty great detail for anyone that is interested in looking at it.  You are perfectly within your rights to think this is a global-wide hoax created to separate people from their money. Among people that study this field for a living, there doesn't seem to be any question as to whether climate change is real, is happening, and is an enormous threat to the planet.

craig howard wrote:I don think it's a coincidence that as these things occur and scientist see it happening, they changed the name of the crisis from global warming to climate change.

"Global warming vs climate change

What the science says...
There have long been claims that some unspecified "they" has "changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'". In reality, the two terms mean different things, have both been used for decades, and the only individual to have specifically advocated changing the name in this fashion is a global warming 'skeptic'.

Climate Myth...
They changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'
They changed the name from “global warming” to “climate change” after the term global warming just wasn’t working (it was too cold)! (Donald J. Trump)

Both of the terms in question are used frequently in the scientific literature, because they refer to two different physical phenomena.  As the name suggests, 'global warming' refers to the long-term trend of a rising average global temperature, which you can see here:



'Climate change', again as the name suggests, refers to the changes in the global climate which result from the increasing average global temperature.  For example, changes in precipitation patterns, increased prevalence of droughts, heat waves, and other extreme weather, etc."

https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm

craig howard wrote:I think CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas and has little to do with the temperature of the earth

"How do we know more CO2 is causing warming?

What the science says...

An enhanced greenhouse effect from CO2 has been confirmed by multiple lines of empirical evidence.

Climate Myth...
Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
"While major green house gas H2O substantially warms the Earth, minor green house gases such as CO2 have little effect.... The 6-fold increase in hydrocarbon use since 1940 has had no noticeable effect on atmospheric temperature ... " (Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide)

Predicting the Future
Good scientific theories are said to have ‘predictive power’. In other words, armed only with a theory, we should be able to make predictions about a subject. If the theory’s any good, the predictions will come true.

Here’s an example: when the Table of Elements was proposed, many elements were yet to be discovered. Using the theory behind the Periodic Table, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev was able to predict the properties of germanium, gallium and scandium, despite the fact they hadn’t been discovered.

The effect of adding man-made CO2 is predicted in the theory of greenhouse gases. This theory was first proposed by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius in 1896, based on earlier work by Fourier and Tyndall. Many scientist have refined the theory in the last century. Nearly all have reached the same conclusion: if we increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the Earth will warm up.

What they don’t agree on is by how much. This issue is called ‘climate sensitivity’, the amount the temperatures will increase if CO2 is doubled from pre-industrial levels. Climate models have predicted the least temperature rise would be on average 1.65°C (2.97°F) , but upper estimates vary a lot, averaging 5.2°C (9.36°F). Current best estimates are for a rise of around 3°C (5.4°F), with a likely maximum of 4.5°C (8.1°F)."

https://skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm

There's a whole section here on CO2:  https://grist.org/series/skeptics/

Terri Matthews wrote:The climate predictions of the global warming people have not turned out as they predicted. What that means is that the science is not yet settled.

Science is never settled. There is always more to learn. But we know there are things that we (the world, advanced nations etc) are doing that are bad for the planet, and we know we can do and must do better. We know that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more extreme. We know that there are cities running out of water. We know that something's gotta give.

Whatever one calls it (global warming, climate change, Boo Boo the Climate Bunny having a tantrum) and whatever the cause (natural, man-made, natural-but-worsened-by-man), there are problems here and we need to make some changes.

Just because human predictions have been less than 100% accurate doesn't mean there's nothing to think about, nothing to change, and no problems to solve. Human beings are not 100% accurate. We make mistakes. We miscalculate. And we don't know everything. We do the best we can with what we DO know, or what we think we know, because doing less than the best we can is not going to help us any.

On the often controversial topic of global warming, there are a few points that should not be controversial, and perhaps good to join hands with folks who may not have identical opinions:
*Peat,coal, crude etc. are called "fossil fuels" for a reason: They took sometimes millions of years to degrade. I do not think it is controversial to state that humans are using the stuff a lot faster than God/ Mother Nature is making it. This makes it pretty certain that we will run out of the stuff someday. We can argue how soon, but the basic premise that we are using it too fast is on solid ground.
*There are different qualities of the stuff: Crude oil needs less processing to be usable while it is harder and more expensive to use tar sands.
*Mr. Clampett may have been able to "shove a stick in the ground and up comes a bucket of crude", but these days are gone. As a sign of things to come, we have to invest into deeper and deeper oil wells. Now we go deep into oceans and very cold places to get it. Some may argue that "we will never run out of the stuff", but that is not reflected by our collective behavior: Who believes that we would be engaged in wars in countries that have nothing of value to "American interests" except their oil? Before the rush for "black gold", we had very little interest in the Middle East. These countries were just a road to the Orient to get expensive spices and silk.
* Yes, we've had times when the CO2 in the atmosphere was way way higher than it is today. A sobering thought about this is that honey bees that pollinate the crops we eat did not exist at the time, nor did humans exist.
* Doing a scientific study of pollen that was captured in amber or in layers of the earth and comparing it with today's pollen of the same plant yields a startling conclusion: Today's pollens are richer in sugars but poorer in protein, and honeybees gather pollen to feed their brood *because* it has usable protein for their brood. Absent the right amount of protein, they falter. [There are a myriad other reasons why our honey bees struggle, but this is an important component: They have to gather more of the stuff in a diminishing area to save their brood].  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4843664/
* Setting aside the conclusion that our climate is warming up, there are economic and health factors that make our reduction in the use of these products the most intelligent route for world economies:
-burning fuel to get motion is not very efficient when compared to electricity, wind and other renewables.
-The reliance on fossil fuels to continue to grow our economies places us/ US as well as the rest of the world in a state of dependency on a handful of countries that are not always cooperating, and that is not a good thing: Producing our energy independently from the OPEC countries would give us a much stronger hand.
- If we were to embrace renewable energies, we would create jobs right here and make a mint in the process.[ That horse may have left the barn already as we are purchasing a lot of solar panels from china.
- A warm up of our agricultural zones may not seem all that bad. After all, I'd like to grow bananas, figs etc in zone 4. The downside is that I would have to say goodbye to peas, rhubarb and all other cold crops. For my health, my body has the immunity of my growing zone. A warm up of the globe means that I would have to deal with tropical insects, snakes, diseases that are found in the tropics as well as all the maladies they engender. Just a small example: I have started finding small hive beetles in my hives. Not often, and just one or two. Years ago, I never had to worry about that.

There are many factions in this world of ours. Many are very interested parties and we will need to tone down the rhetoric over the din they produce just so that reasonable people can come to an understanding of where their interests really are.

Cecile, this brings up the very important point that the energy return on investment (EROI) is dropping for fossil fuels and it's getting worse and worse as we are forced to work much harder to get those fuels.  It's been calculated that we need an EROI of 5 or more in order to support our civilization's current life style.  It has also been calculated that oil is now only at 6:1 (and this has been falling steadily....used to be over 100:1).  Long before we run out of oil we will no longer be able to afford to use it.  The good news is that wind has an EROI of about 15.  Solar photovoltaics are currently less than 5, but are close and the EROI keeps improving.  Permaculture strategies in general continue to look like a VERY wise investment.

Fossil fuels increasingly offer a poor return on energy investment

Yes , climate change is real, and yes humans have been the cause of at least some of that. In the past, human caused climate change has kept us from freezing and now it is helping to cause warming. Is this bad? Is this good? I don't know, but it is happening. No matter what happens, even if we somehow manage to reverse this trend (I don't think so), our sea level will rise and our shorelines will change. No amount of money spent or taxation will change that. So if you live close to the ocean in a place that is likely to flood due to storms or the ocean rising, move. Move now while you might get reasonable money for your property because right now you can move at your own pace with the least disruption to your life.

What not to do about climate change:

Don't: Lobby for government action. First off, it is unlikely any government action will have the desired effect as the government is guided by rich companies and single minded emotional groups. The other thing is that any action the government can take will hurt the poor... while still doing nothing to change things.

Don't: Expect renewables to take the place fossil fuels. renewables are powered by fossil fuels and besides that they can't produce enough anyway.

Don't: Suggest the world needs to use less energy. This seems counter to things but the truth is, anything that does not help the third world countries out of poverty will fail. There is a greater percentage of the world population that needs more power than could do with less and they and their governments will get that power one way or another.

Things that could help:

Anything you can do personally to use less energy. Make your own food, build your own home, etc. Any action or change an individual can do is worth while. Do use renewables when you can.

Don't expect things to remain as they are. Prepare for change. Move if needed... and be prepared to move again in the future.

Don't expect a collapse or SHTF kind of event but be reasonably prepared should that happen. In other words, if things start to "go south" don't immediately go into SHTF mode as that could push things over the edge.

Don't stand in the way of things that could help (next gen nuclear power for example).

The take home of this is that the best things we can do about climate change are personal in our own lives. Climate change is not the end of the world, it will change our world for sure but we are better to figure out how to live in this new world rather than change the world. In the end I am responsible for me and need to deal with my own decisions. Others have to make their own. Anything our government can do will be wrong and misguided and will hurt us and others. Best if they do nothing.

I admit that I haven't personally dug deep into the actual science and raw data. I've been okay to take the summaries of the summaries at face value. https://xkcd.com/1732/ At de the same time, I find no reason to doubt climate change nor the urgency for action.  I do see many reasons to doubt the doubters however as their position seems to be blatantly politcally motivated along partisan belief lines.  

As many have said, action is the best way forward. If you happen to be a persuasive person that through debate, speech or writing can inspire others to act, then please have at it with the deniers.  For every one else, perhaps the best use of time and resources is what you can do individually and corporately in your community. And finally, encouraging people who want to act engage in truly effective changes will make the biggest positive impact.  In these days, words abound but actions are few.  

Fortunately pretty much every climate change mitigation tactic we can undertake as citizens and consumers is positive in many other ways. Almost every way we put out CO2 also puts out other pollutants, so even if you want to deny climate science you’d have to also deny the fact that lead/mercury/pick your poison in our air and water is bad. Climate friendly farming also improves the soil and profits to the farmer. Reforestation and forest conservation drastically improves watershed hydrological functions that directly benefit humans in addition to reducing co2 levels. It reminds me how Maslow (of the hierarchy of needs theory) studied human behavior and concluded that all positive human qualities (ie kindness, honesty, etc) are positively correlated. The same goes for environmentally responsible behaviors, which are positively correlated in their effects on the environment as a whole. With the exception of absurd tactics like poisoning the air with heavy metals to combat climate change, climate action is also good for biodiversity, clean air and water, and long term human wellbeing.

Len Ovens wrote: Climate change is not the end of the world, it will change our world for sure but we are better to figure out how to live in this new world rather than change the world.

I believe permaculture can rapidly and dramatically change the world for the better.  Wide-scale implementation of regenerative techniques could diminish many of the bad effects of climate change, especially at the local level, but also in the larger climate picture.

I for one don't intend to sit around waiting for my land to turn to eroded desert, but instead I am implementing regenerative techniques for a water-retentive landscape.  My neighbors might notice the difference and choose to implement these techniques as well.

Tyler Ludens wrote:

Len Ovens wrote: Climate change is not the end of the world, it will change our world for sure but we are better to figure out how to live in this new world rather than change the world.

I believe permaculture can rapidly and dramatically change the world for the better.  Wide-scale implementation of regenerative techniques could diminish many of the bad effects of climate change, especially at the local level, but also in the larger climate picture.

I for one don't intend to sit around waiting for my land to turn to eroded desert, but instead I am implementing regenerative techniques for a water-retentive landscape.  My neighbors might notice the difference and choose to implement these techniques as well.

Yes, exactly. There is a lot each person can do for their own situation. Example can be a strong motivator as well. I certainly hope all of your neighbours follow your example and the example of other permies. I still don't think I will be buying land in Florida... or even much closer to shore on Vancouver Island. I am within walking distance of the shoreline here, but also a good way up the hill from the highest high tide plus any sea level change likely in my lifetime. (there is only so much ice to melt) I have seen people end up with a sailboat in their backyard in a storm... I don't think I would buy there. The property is still worth more than I could afford anyway.

Take an ice cube, raise the temperature to 10C (50F-ish) the ice starts melting. Now fix the melting situation bring the temperature down to 4C (38F-ish). The ice will not stop melting, rather the whole cube will still melt even if slower. In the same way, even though there are many great things we can do to lower the earth's temperature, we are beyond the point where we can save our shorelines. In fact we might be closer to cooling by more pollution till it blocks the sun... but lets not go there. I am sure with time we can get back to the -1C needed to start refreezing the ice that gets lost but the "with time" is important. During that time the ice will continue to melt and our shorelines will change. (not that they wouldn't change in any case) Therefore, we need to stop thinking about that and move on to the things we can change such as the method we grow our food. Lets make the best of whatever situation we continue to find ourselves in. Personally, I would like to see our governments stay out of it rather than create more poverty and ban all wood burning and all IC powered cars. Some of us can't afford a new Tesla or a new house. Some people can't afford to learn to read or access to the inet so they can't learn about rocket stoves for cooking and build a camp fire in the middle of their hut. Until those people are no longer in poverty, I question  the idea that first world nations can do very much about climate change. Perhaps moving to one of these places and starting there would have more effect. I don't know.

The way I look at the whole controversy of increasing CO2 levels is: what is the optimum CO2 levels for plant growth?  The more productive the plants, the more animal life that can be supported by those plants, so anything that would increase plant productively would be a good thing.  For C3 plants, plant growth rate increases with increasing CO2 levels until CO2 levels reach the low to mid 1000's ppm where the growth rate levels off.  C4 plants are already at their maximum growth rate at current CO2 levels, so increasing them has no increasing effect on growth rates.  This would be expected since Angiosperm plants first evolved in the Cretacious when CO2 levels were in the mid to lower 1000's.  C4 plants first evolved about 8 million years ago in response to dropping CO2 levels, but their photosynthesis is only efficient at warm, tropical temperatures thus limiting their spread to the warmer parts of the planet.  A side effect of increasing CO2 levels with C3 plants is that they become more drought tolerant as CO2 levels increase, since they don't have to open their stomates as wide to take in the required CO2, thus reducing their transpirational losses.

At the other extreme is how low a CO2 level can plants tolerate and still grow?  For C3 plants,it turns out to be around 150 ppm, below which they aren't able to produce enough of a metabolic surplus to support growth and reproduction. For C4 plants this level is around 30 ppm.  The scary thing about this is that there were 3 times during the past 400,000 years (uring peak glaciation) that the CO2 levels reached 180 ppm, getting very close to the level where C3 plants (which includes all marine and aquatic plants) would cease to exist.  So I'm perfectly willing to see CO2 levels increase to provide more of a cushion at that lower end.  I'm not that concerned about a warmer climate since the earth has had a warmer climate for most of its existence and life survived just fine with Cretaceous forests shown to be more productive that those of current day.  There used to be forests growing on Antarctica and Baffin Island, so perhaps one day they will be again.

Graph below showing growth rate plotted against CO2 levels for C3 and C4 plants.  Another graph showing CO2 levels 400,000 years.

Replies to replys about my last post:
Trace asked "Can you point me in the direction of the predictions that were wrong?  I would like to look at them and see what the actual result was. "

I mentioned in my post that ice in the antarctic was growing not shrinking.
I mentioned the same was happening in the arctic.
It's easy to look at ice sat pics and see this.

I also mentioned that much of the data was extrapolated for parts of the ocean that don't have sensors.
This part of the ocean is the area that sends huricanes this way.
If it was warmer there would be more energy for huricanes, that hasn't been the case.
That's an easy one to see.
Here's another prediction that went wrong:
https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/06/10/national-parks-quietly-toss-signs-saying-glaciers-will-be-gone-by-2020-theyre-growing/

For any other predictions you can rewatch Al gore's An Inconvienient Truth and see how many of those prediction came true 10 years later.
I know predicting the future is difficult and not always accurate but they were way off.

Trace also brought up: "Scientists didn't say the earth was flat.  They proved it wasn't."
So who was saying the earth was flat? Back then they were the closest thing to scientists they had.
For a long time flat earth was gospel, set forth by those who studied it for a living. Any scientist that disagreed with their beliefs was attacked.
Eventually the flat earthers were proven wrong by scientists. But for years it was the scientist who were pushing it.
Just like global warming. Global warming is gospel and most of those supporting it provide no evidence of it's existance.
To them the case is settled and they are right, no further discussion needed.

Tyler:"and the only individual to have specifically advocated changing the name in this fashion is a global warming 'skeptic'. "
I don't think Trump is the only one that uses the term climate change.
Many people use that term now.
So global warming refers to warmer temps and climate change refers to the climate changes caused by warmer temps?
So when everyone is talking about global warming they aren't talking about what that does to the climate?
That doesn't sound like, "two different physical phenomena." It all declares the earth is getting warmer, when that might not be true:
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/nasa-scientist-john-l-casey-warns-of-the-coming-cold-crisis-2015/
Sounds like they switched to the term climate change to cover their butts if it gets colder instead of warmer.

And I didn't say CO2 doesn't cause a green house effect that warms the earth,.. just that it's very weak player in that effect.
In fact I believe temp drives up CO2.
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/co2-lags-temperature-on-all-time-scales/
Quote from the above link:
"Based on the above observations, global temperatures drive atmospheric CO2 concentrations much more than CO2 drives temperature."
Another quote from that article that follows what Mike posted:
"Atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high, it is too low for optimal plant growth and alarmingly low for the survival of carbon-based terrestrial life."

I'll keep looking for ways to run a minimalist lifestyle regardless of the effects of CO2.
I'm not going to start splurging and wasting resources because that does cause damage to the earth.
However I don't think forcing others to live my lifestyle will end with anything other than a civil war.
Look what happened in France when they tried to raise the fuel taxes for global warming? Yellow vests.
Same thing in Africa.

From what I've seen locally; we've lost about a month of growing in the spring.
I haven't been able to plant cabbage in April because there is still snow on the ground.
This has only been happening for the last 2 years so it might not be a trend but I do see it happening.
Also used to have a few days over 100F every summer, back in the 80s-90s. Haven't seen one of those for a decade.
I don't delve into the global warming info or debates often so it's been nice to discuss it in a civilized manor.
And I don't think my mind is closed to the idea that global warming could be real, I just haven't seen anything that convinces me it is.

Len Ovens wrote:I still don't think I will be buying land in Florida..

No, obviously we won't be able to immediately stop the ice from melting.

craig howard wrote:Replies to replys about my last post:
Trace asked "Can you point me in the direction of the predictions that were wrong?  I would like to look at them and see what the actual result was. "

I mentioned in my post that ice in the antarctic was growing not shrinking.
I mentioned the same was happening in the arctic.
It's easy to look at ice sat pics and see this.

"(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: The Antarctic ice sheets are actually growing, which wouldn’t be happening if global warming were real.

Answer: There are two distinct problems with this argument.

First, any argument that tries to use a regional phenomenon to disprove a global trend is dead in the water. Anthropogenic global warming theory does not predict uniform warming throughout the globe. We need to assess the balance of the evidence.

In the case of this particular region, there is actually very little data about the changes in the ice sheets. The growth in the East Antarctic ice sheet indicated by some evidence is so small, and the evidence itself so uncertain, the sheet may well be shrinking.

But even this weak piece of evidence may no longer be current. Some recent results from NASA’s GRACE experiment, measuring the gravitational pull of the massive Antarctic ice sheets, have indicated that on the whole, ice mass is being lost."

https://grist.org/climate-energy/antarctic-ice-is-growing/

More about ice:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/six-things-to-know-about-antarctic-ice

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/

It stands to reason that areas with glaciers that are made colder than the historical norm by shifts in weather patterns caused by more heat energy in the system could experience actual glacier growth, depending on a number of factors, including whether or not that glacier is also in an area made more humid than the historical norm by those same shifts.

There are a number of people on the other side, from my perspective, of the climate change discussion who are extremely well-reasoned and intelligent, who essentially conflate weather and climate. If you look at it as a system of heat dissipation, it might be easier to see hot air masses interacting with cold, how coriolis effects the settling out of hot and cold, how it creates weather, and how you get, essentially, giant regional microclimates that differ from what might be expected from their geographic location with reference to the equator, affected by things such as mountain ranges, ocean currents, and jet stream, to name a few.

I am not accusing the "other side" of trying solely to win the argument at the cost of everything else. It's just that laypeople of the fields of study that we are discussing tend to analogise and simplify everything for explanation, or our own understanding. It's just easier to grasp more if it's made more easily understandable.

The downside is that at times, the actual information is lost in the simplification, like a high-quality sound recording being converted to a lesser to save space (I know, I just dated myself horribly, but anyone who remembers trying to listen to mp3s of music they had on vinyl on the same equipment know exactly what I'm talking about). And what if the parts omitted contain the information that qualifies the other side's position, or casts doubt on one's own?

I often like to play a hypothetical game with myself wherein I have a blindspot in a conversation I am having, just in case I do, where I look at my position and identify its weak points, or take myself out of it for a second to examine the underlying premises and assumptions being made. It often serves to make my opinion stronger, but occasionally, I have found new perspectives and changed my position.

It's uncomfortable, because admitting the possibility that one is wrong takes a huge amount of moral courage, and that is rare, I think. I hear that we are all navel-gazers, now, always half-introspective, and paralyzed with indecision because of it. I think it might be more that our navels are localised echo chambers. If we don't challenge what we assume to be true, we have giant, gaping blindspots that could some day obscure the approach of a speeding semi, literal or figurative.

-CK

julian Gerona wrote:Climate change is real. Climate changes all the time, "change is constant". But not for reason stated by the mainstream media and governments. its one of the "problem,reaction, solution" which is ultimately aimed to control the populace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a18Fi9jQQEQ. Carbon tax is one part of it. But on the sidelines there is a more dangerous agenda that is quietly carried on. "Carbon sequestration". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration. Imagine if there is little carbon dioxide in the air.. less plants right? This is a ploy to control much of the food supply. Already rigths to water aquifer is being put into the hands of the few who controls the money. And have you heard of bottled air?

Sorry but this sounds like the typical paranoia expressed by the Right... everything govt does is a plot to control us, science is lying if it doesn't toe the corporate line, and so on. All these hidden "agendas" are cited by people opposing gun control, social programs, good mass transit... just about anything govt attempts to do.

The science, in fact, is sound. The planet is warming. Climate fluctuations are evident nearly everywhere, and human-originated emissions are measurable. Given that similar atmospheric changes are documented for the end Permian and other extinction events, I think that dismissing science at this point is foolish and dangerous.

Len Ovens wrote:

What not to do about climate change:

Don't: Lobby for government action. First off, it is unlikely any government action will have the desired effect as the government is guided by rich companies and single minded emotional groups. The other thing is that any action the government can take will hurt the poor... while still doing nothing to change things.

Don't: Expect renewables to take the place fossil fuels. renewables are powered by fossil fuels and besides that they can't produce enough anyway.

Don't: Suggest the world needs to use less energy. This seems counter to things but the truth is, anything that does not help the third world countries out of poverty will fail. There is a greater percentage of the world population that needs more power than could do with less and they and their governments will get that power one way or another.

The take home of this is that the best things we can do about climate change are personal in our own lives. Climate change is not the end of the world, it will change our world for sure but we are better to figure out how to live in this new world rather than change the world. In the end I am responsible for me and need to deal with my own decisions. Others have to make their own. Anything our government can do will be wrong and misguided and will hurt us and others. Best if they do nothing.

Here again is the notion that govt is inevitably wrong and evil. Really? Should we then not bother voting?

The USA govt has done a number of things which have benefited this society. TVA. Medicare. WPA. NASA. Civil Rights Bill. Environmental regs.

In the end, in fact you are part of a large global population as well as national, state and local communities. Nobody is an independent actor. Nobody makes decisions which are not affected by the possibilities and restrictions instituted by governments, corporations, and other structural forces.

If govt does nothing, then the other powers, which mostly means corporations, will be making the decisions and taking all the action, and so do we really think we can trust the Koch Bros. more than the USA govt? The mythical "free market" should control everything?

Weak central govts are a hallmark of feudalism and other great ills.

Of course, there could be another explanation for the increase in severe hurricanes, flooding in the Midwest, etc.

Everyone probably recalls that evangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have long claimed that weather disasters are caused by "God" being angry at gay people.

If you notice where the weather disasters are occurring lately (NC, AR, etc.), I think we can only conclude that "God" is upset at red states!

Clearly their pro-corporate, anti-gay, pro-NRA and other "conservative" politics are pissing off the deity!

So then, the solution to climate change obviously would be to vote Democratic!

Haaaa... I was joking until that last statement. Voting in Democrats IS in fact the best immediate way to address climate change, clearly.

Thing is, we may not need "the government" to do anything if we all did our own little personal parts to fix the problem, to the best of our abilities.  "Make the world a better place instead of being mad at bad guys."  So far "the government"* has neither helped me nor hindered me in my efforts at permaculture.  If there's a government plot to control us through climate change agenda, it isn't working very well.  

Yes, if the government acts benevolently it may help us alleviate climate change, but right now, at least in the US, that doesn't seem to be happening.

*Federal government hasn't done anything.  State government has helped me by giving me a large tax reduction for Wildlife Management, which includes erosion control.