Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

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Originally Posted by Ben

Yeah, I was discussing that crucial point with my cousin a coupla weeks ago. Naomi Klein used the apt term climate chaos.... And that's what it amounts to. By pumping all this carbon -- via oil, coal and natural gas -- into the atmosphere, well, we're creating a lot of chaos....
And, too, as Noam Chomsky pointed out: say the scientists are wrong about climate change. OK, then you've done a few things and spent a bit of money. But say they're right. Then the species is down the drain.
I mean, we're literally gambling on our own fate.
And, again, as Chomsky points out: we don't have to do this. I mean, there are alternatives.... Why don't we explore those alternatives? I mean, even from the standpoint of pollution. By switching to other forms of energy you reduce pollution. That's a benefit to us. And, too, to future generations.
But a market system doesn't take into account a cost to us, to people. I mean, when there's a traffic accident, well, the GNP goes up. So, that's a benefit to the market system. That gives you an indication of how warped GNP measuring is.

David Suzuki: the economy is not science
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NiauhOCfsk

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You make good points. It seems so obvious in the abstract. Use less fossil fuel and even if there is no relation to the climate, you render the strategic importance of the Middle East declines greatly. The entire region at that point can go on about dealing with its issues and outside of nuclear prolifiration who cares? And the even if burning oil and coal does not men the end of mankind it is unhealthy.

Much of the problem is political will in the face of both enormously powerful players and a bad economy. For the powerful players, the Haliburton's and Exxon's of the world are likely to spend whatever it takes to slow the move to alternatives and move to those alternatives on parallel tracks. But in the face of economic downturn some of the remedies like cap and trade do lose public support.

Looking forward we can only hope that while we will be getting started late, that when mankind finally does take this seriously that we can avoid the most catastrophic possibilities.

As Trish has tried to explain, we have a situation on which science is being hi-jacked by politics, those partisan actors whose primary anxiety is about government introducing carbon taxes or other measures to combat climate change which they see as either expensive, or unnecessary or in the case of subsidies for alternative energy programmes, as a racket filling the pockets of organised tree-huggers. The result is this astonishing attack on science per se, as if since the Rio summit science had got it all wrong. There may be a conversion here of the anti-science lobby withe the the fundamentalists who don't believe in Evolution but creationism, and the few who are uncomfortable with the moral dimensions of stem-cell research and its applications; yet the anti-science lobby that repeatedly pours scorn on climate science does not ridicule the science of computing, or theoretical physics, or the Curiosity on Mars. This is a tail wagging the dog: they don't like taxes or subsidies (unless its for agriculture) therefore the science must be wrong...

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Originally Posted by fivekatz

Much of the problem is political will in the face of both enormously powerful players and a bad economy. For the powerful players, the Haliburton's and Exxon's of the world are likely to spend whatever it takes to slow the move to alternatives and move to those alternatives on parallel tracks. But in the face of economic downturn some of the remedies like cap and trade do lose public support.

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Just from a business point of view, if Exxon cannot make a profit in renewables, why should it stay in the business? The major independent oil companies have never been major players in R&D, if you look at which industrial corporations spend most on the R&D that benefits their business, you will find it is in Chemicals and computing; oil companies rely on other people's research in computing for example, but don't contribute much in the way of R&D capital. They can afford to buy what they don't make themselves. Renewables has problems of storage, and the technological innovations that will substantially increase production, but attracts less research funding than other industries, and until those innovations make renewables profitable, for the major oil corporations it is just window dressing -and why can't someone else do it anyway? Exxon is good at what it does, and it may have to reform itself into a broader energy company in the future to survive -and may just buy up any profitable renewables company, but right now it has enough hydrocarbons to keep it going.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Just from a business point of view, if Exxon cannot make a profit in renewables, why should it stay in the business? The major independent oil companies have never been major players in R&D, if you look at which industrial corporations spend most on the R&D that benefits their business, you will find it is in Chemicals and computing; oil companies rely on other people's research in computing for example, but don't contribute much in the way of R&D capital. They can afford to buy what they don't make themselves. Renewables has problems of storage, and the technological innovations that will substantially increase production, but attracts less research funding than other industries, and until those innovations make renewables profitable, for the major oil corporations it is just window dressing -and why can't someone else do it anyway? Exxon is good at what it does, and it may have to reform itself into a broader energy company in the future to survive -and may just buy up any profitable renewables company, but right now it has enough hydrocarbons to keep it going.

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I agree with everything you say. But as they see the threat to the current business model more serious they will spend more on acquisition and R&D into renewables. Just like Microsoft did not take the internet seriously and then threw everything legal and quasi-legal they had at IE so will the major energy producers once they see an emerging market.

Now IMHO that market's emergence is either accelerated by government policy like or similar to cap and trade or it comes in the face of a great catastrophe. Given the recent history of capitalistic markets over the last the
two centuries we should all hope that the government give guidance and incentive to these markets.

Just my Take

Krugman has a nice take on the GOP's anti-science, anti-reason epistemology.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/op...?smid=pl-share

You can count on Krugman to get to the heart of things. He's a good political thinker and writer.

Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks

Anonymous billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate change science:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...ktanks-network

Newest evidence from ice cores demonstrates there is little or no gap in the time between carbon level increase in the atmosphere and past warming episodes. Deniers always presumed these gaps existed and were large, hinting at their belief that carbon levels never contributed to past warnings.

http://nyti.ms/15U2SRW

http://conscious.com.au/docs/new/CSIROh_20130201a.pdf

This all looks impressive until you attempt to read it. As Ben Cubby, environment editor at the Sydney Morning Herlad said "how does one critically analyse a pile of horse shit?"

Enjoy

That report has no substance at all - merely unsupported slur after unsupported slur. It makes for unpleasant and disturbing reading.

Arab Spring, Gobal Warming...everything is connected...

http://nyti.ms/XMHx6k

BREAKING: Climate Catastrophe - Closer Than We Think - YouTube

Recent research shows that 5000 years ago the planet began to cool, dropping 1.3 F, until about 100 years ago it made a sudden reversal. Today we've regained that 1.3 degrees and now have the warmest climate since 11000 years ago. Somebody open a window; it's hot in here.

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/08/173739...g-and-atypical

Trish, you need to be introduced to Christopher Booker and his latest broadside against the Hoax of Global Warming -note how the real emphasis of his article is on the costs; George Monbiot in the Guardian has ridiculed Booker's stuff before; anyway, also linked is the article by Lawrence Solomon referred to by Booker. But then this is the Telegraph so what does one expect?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/env...l-warming.html

http://opinion.financialpost.com/201...y-being-green/

The Telegraph article reports,

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Lawrence Solomon, recently had the bright idea of publishing in his Financial Post newspaper column a graph showing the temperature changes of the past 15 years in proper perspective, using figures from the most prestigious of all official temperature records, compiled by the UK Met Office and its Hadley Centre.

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Why didn't the scientists studying temperature anomaly think of that? They could have saved taxpayers a lot of money and themselves a lot of trouble had they only graphed the data for just "the past 15 years in proper perspective."

The "brilliant" new idea is climate science is simply chart the temperature anomaly for only the past fifteen years and use a temperature scale (from 0 to 15 degrees Centigrade) that dwarfs the fluctuations in the range of the anomaly (from -1 C to 1C). Yes that is brilliant. If one uses a scale that swamps the information in the thing one wishes to study (the temperature anomaly) and if one crops the data to exclude the period of time one wishes to study (we're testing the hypothesis that the greenhouse gasses produced by industrialization have created a planetary heat imbalance) then one has not so subtly revealed what one doesn't really wish to have studied.

Thanks, Stavros, for the headache inducing articles :)

Trish your graphs makes Solomon's look like an apron -but not in my kitchen!!

Climate deniers and the cycle of abuse:

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.p.../article/7380/

Another example of denial that required correction.

How Thatcher made the conservative case for climate action:

http://grist.org/climate-energy/how-...limate-action/

Let's just really screw up the tiny percentage of actual climate scientists by saying OK your right and we still are going to get rid of fossil fuels as fast as we can because they are running out, they burn dirty and they sold by assholes.

I believe my lying eyes and the melt of Arctic ice, once in a century storms every year and wide spread droughts in the US are enough that I am not all that impressed by scientists with connections to Koch Brothers and their ilk.

Given my age the worst consequences will not be in my lifetime but just the same I see this as an issue that just in case the vast majority of climate scientists are right we should do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint.

Republican Cites Biblical Flood as Evidence Against Man-Made Climate Change - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdgk3NGvdAA

i think from the first graph in your second link its pretty clear that global warming papers cause climate change

Carbon bubble will plunge the world into another financial crisis – report:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...l-crash-crisis

http://nyti.ms/ZTJG1h

How Big Business Secretly Robs America with a Powerful Trick:

How Big Business Secretly Robs America with a Powerful Trick - YouTube

Good news -- for a change -- :)

MUST SEE! 1st County in U.S. Bans Oil & Gas Extraction - YouTube

I love sudo religious environmentalists , they should be standing on corners with placards "THE END IS NIGH ,HONEST JUST GIVE A FEW BILLION AND MY COMPUTER WILL PROVE IT" Oh wait they are :confused::confused::confused:

And computer models DO INDEED PROVE that the Earth's climate is suffering from a energy imbalance due primarily to infrared opaque gasses in the atmosphere that were released by relatively recent anthropogenic mechanisms. The end of life on Earth may not be nigh, nor even the end of human life. But the extra energy in the atmosphere will create more tumultuous weather events, push ecological systems further toward the poles, and turn once arable land into arid deserts. Concomitant with these modifications will be geographic shifts in economic and political power. These are not the ravings of a prophet waving a sacred book. These are the considered, published and peered reviewed conclusions of mathematical and scientific analysis based on carefully collected data and carried out by hundreds of intelligent, educated professionals.

It's the deniers who are the religious zealots here, waving Ayn Rand, invoking invisible hands and denying the results of science when they happen to disagree with their favorite idiot-ologies.

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Originally Posted by surf4490

I love sudo religious environmentalists , they should be standing on corners with placards "THE END IS NIGH ,HONEST JUST GIVE A FEW BILLION AND MY COMPUTER WILL PROVE IT" Oh wait they are :confused::confused::confused:

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I wouldn't call them pseudo religious environmentalists. They are what they are: scientists.
As opposed to religious belief. Which is simply based on irrational conviction. I mean, you can disbelieve climate change. Just because you don't think it's true.
I mean, I can say the moon is made outta cheese. And firmly believe it. That isn't based on science. Just my belief. And, again, I can profoundly believe it. But I'd be wrong. So, again, people can believe what they want to believe.
I mean, we can take no action. But say the scientists are right. Then what?

MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12kMjUkNl5Y

Fine Particulate Air Pollution and the Progression of Carotid Intima-Medial Thickness: A Prospective Cohort Study from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/...l.pmed.1001430

Climate change causes prostitution? Rep. Barbara Lee explains:

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/...,4593965.story

Belief in Biblical End Times Stops Climate Change Action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZezscI2aRY

In 1994, our long time friend on HA, Frank Tipler (for it is he!) published a book called The Physics of Immortality in which he claimed to scientifically prove the existence of God, and his sequel (you can never keep a good idea down) called The Physics of Christianity which applies the principles of the Omega Point Theory to the Christian religion where he asserts in the first chapter that the Second Coming of Christ will occur within 50 years, i.e., by 2057.

Any thoughts, Jamie?

Martin is this the right thread for that question? Frank obviously doesn't realise that according to Benjamin Creme, Jesus came back some time ago and lives off Brick Lane somewhere...

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Martin is this the right thread for that question? Frank obviously doesn't realise that according to Benjamin Creme, Jesus came back some time ago and lives off Brick Lane somewhere...

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Surely it's Elvis who is still alive and working undercover for the Feds

http://www.elvis-is-alive.com

To keep on thread, see http://www.sciencemag.org/content/33.../1198.abstract

More good news about Greenhouse Gases -- ha ha! :joke:
Climate [change] science is rejected because it flies in the face of free market fundamentalism. I mean, nothing, absolutely nothing, should impede their free market mathematical models.
And remember economics is a science. But it IS NOT a physical science like, say, physics. So, it's frightening to go forward on these fantasies that put future generations in a precarious position.


Climate milestone is a moment of symbolic significance on road of idiocy:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...climate-change

Where It’s a Crime to be an Oil Company:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/...n-oil-company/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro...l_million.html

I have always embraced this issues as a good citizen of the planet but recent data combined with the lack of political will in the world for the first time as a 59 year old I actually think that we may screw it up so bad that I will see that horror in my lifetime.

I can't be alone in this feeling and the captains of industry and power must so how feel they will get first class seating an their way to hell, otherwise WTF are they thinking?

They're thinking that economic theology trumps everything. "Fuck the kids & grandkids, if the quarterly report is favorable." Suckin' down that kook-aid, wearing blinders of their own making.