Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

[bluesoul]

Oh and what makes you think that it is humans that are responsible for global warming? The same commies telling you so on mass media and facebook?

what tells you humans are not responsible for global warming? and btw: the commies? so who are the other guys? are they cool?

[Stavros]

I guess nobody expected that commies would be supporting implementation of all the inefficient "green" technologies...
Oh and what makes you think that it is humans that are responsible for global warming? The same commies telling you so on mass media and facebook?

A few points to welcome you to Politics and Religion:
1) If you want to engage in robust debate may I suggest you drop the 'commies' stuff which has no meaning and diverts attention away from the point you are trying to make?

2) To help me, maybe others, please tell us what it is in the science of climate change that you dispute

3) We are in a transitional period in global energy systems, so that at the moment 'green energy' solutions like solar and wind are making great progress to the extent that

Just ten years ago, generating electricity through solar cost about $600 per MWh, and it cost only $100 to generate the same amount of power through coal and natural gas. But the price of renewable sources of power plunged quickly – today it only costs around $100 the generate the same amount of electricity through solar and $50 through wind.

The cheap price of solar and wind energy is already encouraging companies to build more plants to harvest it. The US is adding about 125 solar panels every minute, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association and investment in renewables in 2015 rose to $286 billion, up 5 per cent from the year before.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...-a7509251.html
-see also
https://qz.com/871907/2016-was-the-y...wait-for-2017/

-However, you are right to point out the inefficiencies in alternative energies, as studies show that green energy is still less efficient, in terms of production of units, than fossil fuel and coal production; but that is part of the process of transition and in due course green energy will indeed be an efficient means of production. One notes also that green energy employs a lot of people.
An essay on the inefficiencies of green energy can be found here-
http://www.insidesources.com/green-e...-worker-hours/

As for subsidies, the petroleum and coal industries have been subsidized for so long nobody bothers to question it any more, but that is also because we do not live in a world of free markets, but managed markets, or 'state capitalism', where the priority is to produce a lot of wealth for a very few people.

[Ts RedVeX]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Solar-Pane...0AAOSwDFNWFSGB

Oh dear. There seems to be somewhat of a misunderstanding between the communists, like Bill Gates, who is defo not a climate specialist, and Nathan Myhrvold, who claims to develop reactors or whatever without understanding what the difference between energy, power, and electricity is, promoting global warming in order to make people believe that solar power, and other "renewable power generating technologies" are cheap.. Take a look on ebay: 130 quid for a 100W solar panel sounds "a bit" much considering your claims that producing 1MWh costs but a 100 dollars.. It doesn't take an electric engineer to figure out that to squeeze a MWh out of this 130quid panel means it would have to work 10000h (yes, for ten thousand hours non stop). Never mind its redundancy periods, which in the UK and our shitty weather would be way over 60% time... If that makes any sense to your wise yet stupid mind... I am not even going to attempt to go into why the climate of our planet is heating up, as it does every several millennia, and how of a cold period we actually happen to live in.

[bluesoul]

I am not even going to attempt to go into why the climate of our planet is heating up, as it does every several millennia, and how of a cold period we actually happen to live in.

besides the commie thing, this is the second most hilarious thing you've said. good job

[broncofan]

besides the commie thing, this is the second most hilarious thing you've said. good job

Why don't you try to write something about climate change yourself instead of the sideline sniping?

[filghy2]

I am not even going to attempt to go into why the climate of our planet is heating up, as it does every several millennia, and how of a cold period we actually happen to live in.

It's true that there is evidence of other periods when the global temperature was as warm as now, or even warmer. (Sorry the chart is a bit blurry, but I had to shrink it to fit the size limits.) But it's also true that all those episodes were associated with high levels of CO2 concentration, which is already well above the historical range and set to go much higher if nothing is done.

The current global temperature is higher than any time in the last 120,000 years. Back then there were very few people, they lived a very primitive lifestyle (no coastal cities) and there were no borders to stop them moving to somewhere cooler. That was before recorded history, so we don't know much about the impacts, but the mere fact that humanity survived does not imply that it's all okay and there's nothing to worry about.

Btw, this website provides rebuttals of almost every climate change denialist argument. https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
I'm sure that will cover all the other arguments you were going to make, so how about we just skip that to save time and effort? No doubt you will tell us it's all a conspiracy by 'commies'.

[trish]

Briefly, why would one believe current climatological warming trend is anthropocentric?

It’s not really a matter of belief, but rather an assessment of evidence from the perspective of our modern scientific understanding.

First, there’s is a well understood mechanism (commonly known as the greenhouse effect) which quantitatively correlates warming with the density of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. In short, light (in the visible and ultraviolet bands) from the Sun passes easily through the atmosphere and is absorbed by biosphere, the oceans and the ground. The absorbed energy is released as heat and infrared radiation. In this form, this energy then escapes back through the atmosphere. Heat and infrared radiation, however does not pass very easily through carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gasses. So the flux of outgoing energy depends upon the density of the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere that obstruct its escape. When the average net flux of energy is zero one expects the climate to remain stable.

Second, the current warming period correlates predictably with the increase in the density of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, an increase that can be traced back the mid-19th century. Quantitatively the density of the greenhouse gasses and the measured warming fit nicely with theory. So much so that it is certain that our current warming trend is due to the greenhouse mechanism described above. Deniers have suggested the warming is due to the Sun growing hotter or a shift in the tilt of the Earth. None of these suggestions bear the weight of scrutiny. SOHO has been monitoring the Sun for more than a decade and has shown no appreciable gain in solar energy of a magnitude that would cause the current rate of global warming.

Third. It remains to identity the cause of the increase in greenhouse gasses. Humans produce greenhouse gasses as a by-product of agriculture, and the burning of fossil fuels. One might expect that the climate of an entire planet would have enough inertia to remain unaffected by the comings and goings of a single species. That may have been so when the human population numbered in the millions. But we are now seven billion large. In 2010, by burning fossil fuels, we released 33.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That’s 100 times more than the carbon dioxide released by volcanic processes over the entire planet. Clearly the primary source of the greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere is anthropogenic.

Fourth. This realization squares nicely with the fact that the current warming trend is concurrent with the industrial revolution; i.e. that period which saw a dramatic increase in the mining and burning of fossil fuels, not simply for the heat produced, but for work that heat can be made to perform. We saw fuel not merely as a source of warmth, but as a source of energy that can be used for the mass production of goods and services.

[broncofan]

I've actually taken down what Trish wrote in case I have to explain to anyone the case for anthropogenic climate change. Clear, didactic, and well-written, the Das Kapital of climate change explanations. Instead of making the case for a proletarian revolutionary movement she is explaining how greenhouse gases in our atmosphere contribute to climate change. Still, up there with Das Kapital and other important foundational texts though I'm disappointed she said nothing about class struggle or the predations of the bourgeoisie.

[trish]

Actually I was thinking that many of the measurements (certainly not all) upon which our climate models depend originate with NASA, the same organization that launched many of the private/corporate communications satellites that are currently in orbit as well as the military satellites that ‘spy’ for the good ol’ US of A - the opposite of a communist nation - you know the nation’s who’s flag you stand and sing to, not kneel to.

[broncofan]

Exactly Trish. I take back what I said. Your post was the Star-Spangled Banner of climate change explanations. It's the flying the American flag from the top of a white chevy pickup while the wind blows in your mullet kind of climate change explanation that I really dig. It's a get the fuck out of this country if you don't like it kind of climate change argument that really sort of says, there is no debate, take it or leave it. Thank you for reinforcing my patriotism.