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If global warming doesn’t kill us the fog will!

Shipping routes
Illustration showing the distance and time saved by going north
through the Arctic Ocean

A new report published by the American Geophysical Union, and touted by it though a press release today, says that while the melting Arctic Ocean icecap — caused by human-caused global warming — will make shipping more convenient, that shipping will be hindered by increased fog — caused by human-caused warming.

Arctic sea ice has been shrinking for decades. That loss has opened shipping channels in the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route, allowing even non-icebreaker vessels to skip the time-consuming Panama and Suez Canals farther south. But as the ice recedes, cold air is exposed to more warm water, and warm vapor condenses into fog in those new passages. Hidden chunks of ice already pose risks to vessels making their way through foggy, low-visibility routes.

“The future of shipping in the Arctic is unclear, but fog could pose a significant challenge,” said Xianyao Chen, a physical oceanographer at the Ocean University of China and author of the study. “When designing shipping routes across the Arctic, we need to consider the impact of fog.”

In other words, everything that is going to happen will be bad, and it is all caused by human activity that must be stopped!

I am of course exaggerating for effect. The scientists who wrote the paper were merely trying to determine the amount of shipping delays increased fog could cause, so that companies could factor this information into their calculations. Granted, they assumed the climate is warming, and they also assumed this warming would produce more fog, but their entire study is an uncertain model, based on assumptions. Its conclusions are interesting and informative, if taken with this uncertainty in mind.

The real problem here has to do with the American Geophysical Union (AGU), which though claiming to be a publisher of legitimate peer-reviewed science has instead become an aggressive and absolutely certain advocate for human-caused global warming. Almost every press release from it touts the evils of global warming. None question the data or conclusions in any way. From the perspective of the scientific method, which make skepticism and doubt the primary considerations when reviewing any research, the AGU has abandoned that method entirely when it comes to climate science.

And like all ignorant global warming activists (Greta Thunberg comes to mind), the conclusion is always pessimistic and defeatist. Global warming will kill us, no matter what.

The future is dim, but not because of global warming, but because of this pessimistic and defeatist philosophy that now dominates our culture.

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On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

59 comments

  • Lee S

    Not just because I live in Greta’s homeland, I reason that the risks of climate change outweigh the cost of cutting down our emissions of greenhouse gases and pollution. I understand that climate change is an ongoing process, and has been for the history of the earth, but we live in essentially a goldfish bowl, but there is nobody to change the water. To me it’s a no brainer that we need to look after this planet better than we do right now.

    Perhaps we are not “all about to die”… But the fact is we have no idea how much our industry, power production, industrial scale arable and pastural farming etc, etc are affecting our climate.

    I am pretty sure that if we genuinely are messing the climate up, our kids will be able to science their way out of the situation, but I genuinely believe the risk that if we are and they won’t be able to is great enough to warrant us making the change to a greener economy now.

    Venus, our sister planet, is a hell-hole because of run away greenhouse effects… However small the chances of earth going down that road , they are not zero. I don’t want my grandkids blaming our generations for doing nothing when we had the chance.

  • Cotour

    No, Lee S, it is exactly ZERO.

    “Venus, our sister planet, is a hell-hole because of run away greenhouse effects… ”

    Do you have any idea what the percentage of CO2 the planet Venus atmosphere consists of? (No, of course not. The entire argument about the percentage of CO2 in earths atmosphere compared to the planet Venus is what is called a red herring / Gas lighting / strawman argument)

    You want to talk about actual pollution and particulate? Then you might have an actual sustainable argument. But until you and those who follow your suicidal climate religion are able to understand the ridiculous notion that the earth is going to turn somehow some way into a Venus like planet this entire argument is but a political ploy and mode of mass psychological manipulation and control in search of absolute power over every human being on planet earth.

    The atmosphere of Venus contains approximately 96.5% CO2.

    Do you even know what the percent value of CO2 currently is contained in the earth’s atmosphere?

    (I will give you a hint, it is measured in Parts Per Million)

  • Lee S

    @Cotour,

    No, the chances are not (quote ) “exactly ZERO”

    The truth of the matter, as I stated, is that we do not know, and indeed cannot know what the chances are… If indeed climate change is adversely affected by man made behaviour, global warming melts the permafrost around the world, releasing god knows how much methane and CO2 into the atmosphere, sea floor mining releases all those balls of jelly methane up into the air… There has to be a tipping point, and neither you nor I or anyone else knows when or if that tipping point will occur.

    The chances of everything going very wrong are absolutely not zero. You are undeniably wrong with your statement. You do not know enough to make that statement as a matter of fact. No one does.

    But as I said, this is a pretty high stakes game mankind is playing. Would it not be prudent to err on the side of caution? And is not cutting down on reliance on fossil fuels and stopping cutting down rain forests, and stopping polluting our planet in general a good idea?

    The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere right now is easily measured, what it will be in 100 years, not so much. Does there come a point when the increase becomes runaway? You don’t know… I don’t know… The scientists don’t know… But if it does, the earth is doomed, unless the next generation can figure out a carbon capture solution. I don’t wish that responsibility upon them.

    It is pure hubris to think you have the answer to an impossible to answer question…

    Venus didn’t start out the way it is today.. it seems it might still be volcanically active, and may once have had oceans, tectonics, all the good happy stuff we have that keeps us rolling here on earth. But it’s now a hell hole.

    What do you propose instead of trying to cut down on pollutants to our small fishbowl world?

  • Lee S

    Oh, by the way, your comment,
    Quote…

    “you and those who follow your suicidal climate religion are able to understand the ridiculous notion that the earth is going to turn somehow some way into a Venus like planet this entire argument is but a political ploy and mode of mass psychological manipulation and control in search of absolute power over every human being on planet earth”

    Is totally wrong.

    I respect science.

  • Lee S

    And one final point… Quote..

    “Do you have any idea what the percentage of CO2 the planet Venus atmosphere consists of? (No, of course not. The entire argument about the percentage of CO2 in earths atmosphere compared to the planet Venus is what is called a red herring / Gas lighting / strawman argument) ”

    Yes I do, and no it’s not. If we are talking logical fallacies, you are trying to move the goalposts… My points have nothing to do with red herrings, gas lighting or straw man arguments…. Just opinions from a logical thinker. Learn your use of logical fallacy terms better before employing them next time please…

  • Cotour

    ” No one does.”

    “NO ONE CAN KNOW” And therein lies the / your problem.

    Actually, the data kind of does indicate some degree of an ability to rationally know something about the subject.

    “What do you propose instead of trying to cut down on pollutants to our small fishbowl world?”

    Now you are strawman changing the issue from the earth turning into a Venus like planet, which is your and your religions outrageous contention, with a 900-degree F temperature because of increased CO2 percentage, to a pollution argument. And you are unable to tell me what the actual percentage of CO2 in earths actual atmosphere is and what it might indicate.

    And no one, certainly not me, is saying that those who produce pollution in industry not do things in a cleaner and more efficient more technologically advanced manner. NO ONE.

    Let’s go through some of the rational knowable numbers:

    1. The earth is approximately 30 MILLION miles further from the sun than the planet Venus. That is a big number one.

    2. The earths atmospheres current CO2 content is approx. 400 parts per million or so. (And it has been much higher) There are 10,000 parts in one percent in the parts per million measurement. And that leaves 9600 parts remaining after the 400 parts before you even get near 1 percent. Think about that and your Venus “out of control” argument for one second.

    3. The plant life on the planet earth thrives when the CO2 levels are between about 300 ppm to 1200 ppm. Anything below 200 ppm plants die and anything over about 1700 ppm is toxic to plants.

    4. The average current temperature on the planet earth is 61 degrees F.

    Do you still want to argue that the earth is in danger of turning into a 900-degree F Venus type planet? At least give me that that part of your fear driven argument is highly selective and fudged or an outright falsehood.

  • Cotour

    Lee S, did you miss me? :)

  • Cotour has got some good numbers. I will counter Lee S’s first conjecture with the risks of taking the current extreme measures for CO2 reduction outweigh the risks to humanity of mild climate change. The risks of taking the current extreme measures are the need to introduce totalitarian socialism, therefore removing the human rights of most of the world’s population and eventually killing off up to 80% of humanity (as Klaus Schwab calls them — useless eaters) to achieve the climate alarmists goals.

    The “climate scientists” work hard to hide such warming periods as the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warming periods whose initial temperature increases exceeded those of the current warming period. The world population during the Minoan Warming Period (~ 3500 BC) ranged from about 45 to 115 million. It was at least 7° F warmer than the current average world temperature. Where was humankind’s involvement in that? The Medieval Warming made it warm enough in Scotland to grow grapes (which the Scottish naturally made into wine). This was about 1000 AD, with a world population somewhere around 300 million. Our current times are coming out of the “Little Ice Age” of the Maunder and Dalton sunspot minima with a gradual warming.

    Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a minor greenhouse gas. Its effect on warming is minimal. There are other factors that affect the climate that we are just learning, and we have no full understanding of all of the factors that affect climate change. Sunspot activity is one of those as above with the Maunder and Dalton minima. The sunspot activity is tied to cosmic radiation which we are just starting to understand, along with the comic radiation’s effect on climate. Oceanic temperature oscillations are another. The Pacific Decadal oscillation is 30 or more years long. It affects the Northwestern U.S. and Southwestern Canada. The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (El Niño – La Niña) has a more immediate effect on local climates as shown by the last three years droughts in Texas and the Southwest in general caused by the La Niña side of the ENSO.

    Enough for now.

  • BillB: Every fact you cite comes from actual peer-review research much of which can be found in my climate and Sun science bibliography.

    One factoid that you didn’t mention and that the scientists who are climate activists rarely make clear is that the entire theory of human-caused global warming — caused by the increase in CO2 — recognizes from the start that CO2 cannot be the actual cause of the rise in temperatures, because it comprises too small a part of the atmosphere.

    These models instead rely on an unproven hypothesis, what they call “feedback.” According to this hypothesis, which is the cornerstone of all global-warming models, the tiny increase in CO2 will interact with the water in the atmosphere, and cause it to warm the climate. It is well recognized that water — the biggest global warming component in the atmosphere and on the Earth — already warms the Earth’s atmosphere about (I think) more than 10 degrees. Without it the climate would naturally be colder.

    The global warming models all rely on water warming the climate more, because of some effect caused by the tiny percentage increase in CO2. That effect however is not well defined, and includes so many assumptions and uncertainties that to accept these models on faith is the epitome of religious faith. It definitely is not science.

    One last thought: No one ever asks if global warming might have a positive effect. It is always assumed, without thought, that it will be bad for us and the Earth. Why? A warmer climate with more CO2 in the atmosphere has been shown by numerous studies to not only benefit plant life, it expands the territory significantly where crops can be grown. If anything, a warmer climate would likely make Earth a paradise, a garden of Eden.

  • James Street

    “Greta’s homeland”

    There’s a meme for that so it must be true:
    https://t.ly/0DQbR

    Meme magic is real!

  • Robert Pratt

    Lee, what exactly is the “risk” of warning? Like many you seem to see change as risky. The climate has always changed and at wildly varying rates. I read much archeology and one notes constant change in almost every discovery and that’s just over the very short, compared to geological, time covered by known civilization. Why are you folk so afraid of change? Do you think man is no longer adaptable or innovative?

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “Almost every press release from it touts the evils of global warming. None question the data or conclusions in any way. From the perspective of the scientific method, which make skepticism and doubt the primary considerations when reviewing any research, the AGU has abandoned that method entirely when it comes to climate science.

    As I recall, about a decade ago the AGU announced that it would no longer publish any science that contradicted the anthropogenic global warming (now called climate change) hypothesis (based upon an assumption and a second assumption). This intolerance of any other viewpoint, no matter the evidence supporting the viewpoint, is the very definition of bigotry. It is amazing that an entire association can be so bigoted.

    And like all ignorant global warming activists (Greta Thunberg comes to mind), the conclusion is always pessimistic and defeatist. Global warming will kill us, no matter what.

    Only by showing that there is a problem to be solved can they advocate for some central control by the smartest among us (obviously the scientists, unless you are a politician, in which case the politicians are the smartest). What good is science if it does not present problems to solve?

    I suppose that they could present the solutions to problems that they didn’t make up, but where is the tyranny in that?

    The future is dim, but not because of global warming, but because of this pessimistic and defeatist philosophy that now dominates our culture.

    So dim is the future that around the world more than one family committed suicide rather than live in that future. This is how frightened people have become over this naturally occurring non-problem. As noted by BillB, above, the world has been generally warming ever since the end of the Little Ice Age. Humanity did nothing to cause this warming, to cause the Little Ice Age, or to end it. The world’s temperature and climate change with or without us.

    When the industrial revolution truly heated up and CO2 output skyrocketed, right around WWII, the global temperature dropped. When temperatures stopped increasing after the Kyoto accords, rather than declare victory and celebrate the solved problem, the scientists fudged the historical data to make it look like there was still a problem to be solved.

    We live in a world in which science is no longer used to solve problems and to discover new phenomena that will help us better our lives, as the Victorian Age scientists and engineers did, but science is now used to present new problems that politicians use to control and belittle our lives. For more than a century, great strides were made in science and living. The world of Jane Austen is not so different than the worlds of Shakespeare or Homer. The world of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein was greatly improved, however. During the Victorian age, civilians were the ones funding and performing the science that greatly improved the world’s technology and healthcare. When civilians were in charge, we got what the civilians wanted.

    Since the government took over funding science after WWII and chose who performed the science, we have had very few new discoveries. The laser and the integrated circuit on microchips were government funded. Until the invention of 3D printing (additive manufacturing) there were very few actual new phenomena, just combinations of old ones (the cell phone combined radio and telephone, and the smart phone added photography and communication with computers). Now that government is in charge, we get very little of what we want and a lot of what the government wants.

    If we compare how we live today with how we lived in 1950, little has changed, except for some stupid social constructs and a tyranny that punishes if we use our free speech rights (even race relations seem to have deteriorated to the point where black leaders, such as presidents and astronauts, are demanding equality and civil rights, just like they demanded in the 1950s). If we compare how the people of 1950 lived with the way the people lived in 1880, there were tremendous changes. Flying to destinations, refrigeration (rather than an ice box) and other convenient household appliances, air conditioning and central heating, surgery due to anesthetics, pharmaceuticals that extended lives, electric households, household telephones, radio and television, automobiles and travel on a moment’s notice, moving pictures — in color and with synchronized sound — and plastic.

    Today, even space travel is still only for the very few.

  • Cotour

    The ever-present dangers of intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man. And these rules fully apply to the sciences as most rational and semi objective human beings can plainly see when they are used to cause the embracing of irrational and in many instances the justified guilt driven suicidal perspectives in order to manipulate the masses in search for absolute power.

    When politics and agenda usurp objective science and common sense, and they are called absolute science there can only be two results, absolute authoritarian rule and justified mass “abortion” of those dangerous life forms causing the “Problem”.

    And the people, the fellow moral rational human beings who are fully on board and indoctrinated into the proposed existential religious belief in whatever subject that has been identified as the effective vehicle of manipulation will justify whatever is necessary to end the existential threat to them and their families and the planet. And at that point, and we may be very close to it that is when the “eliminating” is justified.

    Are you paying attention Lee S? Do you know and understand the reality of history and the human animal related to such things?

    Revised: GOD & SPIRITUALITY V POLITICS, LAW AND JUSTICE, COMMERCE & RELIGION

    1. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man have the potential to be abused in the quest of the few in pursuit of control and power over the many.

    ​2. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man have not always acted in the interests of what they have represented themselves to be acting in the interests of.

    ​3. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man has the potential to be used as a ruthless tool in order to acquire or retain power.

    ​4. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man has the potential to selectively teach the exclusion of some.

    ​5. Humanity must have civilization, governance, politics, law, justice, commerce, God, spirituality and religion, or no religion depending on your perspective, conclusions and choices. And must be cognizant of where their nature as it relates to those subjects in all of their forms can deliver them.

    ​6. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man (and woman) have the potential to be perverted and corrupted and the power derived there of abused. jgl 1/8/23

  • Climate change alarmists – in fact, all environmental activists – need to take a cue from Hippocrates.

    “First, do no harm.”

    And a cue from the famous “watchdog”, Deep Throst.

    “Follow the money”

    For I see signs that climate-change alarmism is being exploited by the moneyed, leveraging the coercive force of law to create the conditions for a new, dot-com-sized bubble that in the short term will produce fantastic returns for investors as we are forced to buy green tech … until the limitations of the current state-of-the-art becomes evident in the long term, popping the bubble and causing the economy to tumble like the 24/7 just did.

  • Lee S

    @Cotour, I always miss you ;-)

    ( Actually, I went to bed ) :-)

    I am currently on my lunch break, so this won’t be a long post addressing every point raised, I will just explain my position further.

    I don’t discount there is a chance that the scientists advocating man made global warming could be wrong, but I don’t discount there is a chance they could be right. If they are right, the results could be catastrophic. The chances of this scenario are obviously less than zero, so should be taken seriously.
    It’s not a straw man argument to point out that it is a good thing to cut down on polluting our planet for many reasons, and to point out that Venus was once more Earthlike. While not directly connected, Venus proves that a run away greenhouse effect is certainly possible, and in the worst case scenario, pollutants ( including CO2 ) could cause this on the earth.

    The main danger from global warming is sea level rise. Just a small rise would be catastrophic today. Sea levels have been much higher in the past, as has temperature, but that was before we built city’s around the world’s coastlines.

    For me, taking the threat seriously is a no brainer. Better safe than very sorry.

  • Lee S

    Oh, and average CO2 levels today are 424.6 ppm.
    This time last year they were 419.56 ppm.

    https://www.co2.earth/

    Is a great resource with no agenda, just publishing the data. I know I’m banging my head against the wall here, but I’m passionate about the things I care about, and even though I live at the top of a hill, I care about the folks that live by the sea.

  • Lee S

    On a tangential note, I’m sure you guys will remember our discussions on the socialist system over here, and the “free” daycare I enjoyed.
    My son ( 18 in December ) just received his papers for his national service. He is quite excited to be spending 18 months serving his country. Where the heck did those years go??

    And one more thing I would like to share…. My daughter (15) just received an A+ on her science project about Europa, and sited “my father” as one of her sources!!
    Showing her the Galilean moons change position over various evenings thru my 4″ reflector ( ironically self built from a soviet ere extreme telescopic camara lens!) Has instilled a love and fascination of all things space. She is bright as a button and who knows … A future space related scientist? This pleases me greatly! There are some things I know I’ve got right!

  • Cotour

    “While not directly connected, Venus proves that a run away greenhouse effect is certainly possible, and in the worst case scenario, pollutants ( including CO2 ) could cause this on the earth.”

    Absolutely false and a ridiculous fear mongering proposal. Silly really in the context of this discussion and our human time frame.

    CO2 now 423 ppm? That represents only 9577 parts per million to go to 1 percent.

    Sea level rise? Sea level just about 11,000 years ago was about 300 + feet lower than it is today. The projected sea level rise in real terms for the next 100 years? 11 inches. And that happened in a very short time, and it is not understood how that actually came to be. And you propose that you and your fellow religious adherents just to play it safe know what is best for all?

    Just silly childish subjective me, me, me thinking.

    Why is it assumed that today the earth and the universe for that matter is / are static like things? When all throughout the history of the universe and the planet earth being static has no relationship to reality. There will be change, the trick is to survive in the new. Improve techniques and systems through better technology? Absolutely. But not at the cost of becoming surfs in an authoritarian CCP like world.

    But it ties in perfectly with fear mongering techniques and the radical and very aggressive politics of the day that are now very much focused on the absolute control of the entire planet and the people that currently occupy it. And they tell you that themselves.

    “The World Economic Forum has developed a set of Climate Governance Principles for boards of directors, with a view to enabling non-executive directors (NEDs)to gain climate awareness and skills, embed climate considerations into board decision-making, and understand and act upon the risks and opportunities that the climate emergency poses to the long-term resilience and business success of their companies, while taking into account all stakeholders.”

    “The CCP is advancing a new model of corporate governance that seeks to insert the Party directly into certain corporate decisions and increase its overall supervision of the domestic economy. This move marks a significant step-change from the Party’s previous presence within domestic companies, which was more ad hoc and uncoordinated. The new approach provides the CCP with a more opaque mechanism for communicating official directives to commercial enterprises, strengthens its potential influence over company operations, and threatens the security of confidential business information. Because Chinese firms operate globally—including within the United States and other advanced economies—the implications from this development are of great importance to the international trading and investment system, which is largely predicated on clear demarcations between “public” and “private.”

    “WEF Founder Klaus Schwab Says China Is ‘Role Model for Many Countries'”

    “On Tuesday, World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab sat down for an interview with Chinese Communist Party-owned broadcaster CGTN. He commended China’s “achievements,” and suggested the nation could be a “role model” for others around the world.”

    “Climate change” religion? = full spectrum control over EVERYONE. “Climate change” religion is but the vehicle to accomplish it.

    Lee S, are you paying attention yet?

  • Cotour

    To my point about your existential climate related religion:

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1651646413275557889

    The CCP / WEF and the U.N. types set the “Moral” agenda, and the radical Democrats who are very focused on the destruction of America as founded are fully on board and are in the process of fulfilling the agenda.

  • Phil Berardelli

    Lee: “Oh, and average CO2 levels today are 424.6 ppm.
    This time last year they were 419.56 ppm.”

    That’s indeed a big change. But let me add a little perspective by posing a question: How much CO2, in terms of ppm, would it take to comprise 1 percent of the atmosphere? Answer: 10,000. Maybe think about how much a 5 ppm change in CO2 content really means.

    Beyond that, in terms of what no one knows, the big, big question is: How much of current temperature change is due to natural, non-human forces? Answer: Undetermined. Setting aside the models, which for the past several decades have consistently overestimated temperature changes, the only empirical data set worth anything is the monthly global average, which has been collected since 1979 (https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_March_2023_v6.jpg). That collection shows, over those 44 years, an average increase of 0.7 degrees C. I reiterate two points: 1) None of the models being used to predict climate change has accurately matched that trend line — all have predicted larger — and in some cases much larger — increases; and 2) No one has been able to determine precisely the split between human-caused and natural temperature variations.

    As I have been writing for a couple of decades now, there is a much greater threat to humanity from the development of a new ice age, which would be the 21st in the past 2-million years that recurs with reasonable regularity over intervals of 100,000 years, with 90,000 years of glaciation and 10,000 years of warming. Last question: When did the last glaciation end? Answer: 11,000 years ago.

  • Lee S

    I feel like I am speaking words, but you guys are not hearing them …

    I am absolutely not saying you are wrong in your arguments, but I’m not saying you are correct… And the repercussions if you are wrong outweigh the costs of trying to fix what we are undeniably doing to the planet.

    What is so hard for you guys to understand? Let’s try and keep the earth clean… There is a non zero chance we could mess it up in really bad ways… Like REALY bad ways, and for a chance more than zero… Perhaps we should try.

    I know it’s not the American way… Im sure you have something in your daft constitution giving you the god given right to burn as much coal as you like, but please guys… Stop instinct biting on anything that you disagree with, stop cherry picking any “science” that agrees with your viewpoint, and have a good look at the data instead.

    I asked this on this forum more than 10 years ago…. Ask yourself “what is the probability I am wrong?” …. Is it 10%, 5% ? Now ask yourself… Would I play Russian roulette with my grandchild with a 5% chance of a live bullet?

    We can, with effort, make a change to a more climate friendly world… Our world… A world which is a sealed system, and sealed systems can go bad.
    Let’s try and make that change… The results if we do can only be good…. And if we don’t, ( and if you are wrong ) things could go very very bad.

    Where is the argument against this viewpoint?

  • Lee S: You are the one who is refusing to listen. You keep assuming that a warming climate is a certain disaster, while making no effort to address the research I and others have noted that shows just the opposite.

    Assume your percentage is right, that the chance of the climate warming is 5%. What if the positive outcomes from that warming outweigh the negatives 85% to 15%? Or it is even 50-50? It seems to me this evidence proves it is absolutely foolish to destroy our free society and our technological society, on the tiny chance that global warming might happen, and when it does it will bring many benefits.

    You however don’t want to address these facts, because it destroys your narrative and your political goals. Good science however is not driven by narrative or political goals. It is driven by the data and facts.

    That the data and facts contradict your narrative and make your political goals obvious is another fact you need to face.

  • Lee S

    Oh, @Cotour… You occasionally raise some good points, but you are impossible to debate because when challenged you dive straight into conspiracy theory.

    There is no big government plan in place to keep the plebs frightened because of anything… Your belief of some big conspiracy is a construction of your own mind to justify your own ideas. Governments have never been able to keep anything secret… How on earth would a plan like the one you seem to believe be possible? No offence my friend, but you are believing the truth in your head, and not the one in the real world.

    ( And please don’t post a YouTube links… I never watch them, anyone can post a YouTube vid, talking any form of nonsense… Post links to papers or discussion I can read )

  • Lee S

    Hi Bob, and thanks for chiming in!

    My argument is that if global warming occurs at the predicted rates, it will be catastrophic for costal areas…
    I genuinely hope that everyone here is correct, and I am wrong, but you have no one on this forum to post an opposing view, so I guess I am the token pinko commie.. Every forum needs a dissenting voice otherwise you get an echo chamber.

    The science is still out there getting chewed over… As has been said way too many times in this conversation , no one knows.

    You do me an injustice by saying I am driven by any political agenda… I am not. I am driven by science, and my attitude to climate change is “let’s go with the majority until it changes”.

    Right now I am not proven wrong.

    Anyway, it’s bed time… I wish all my fellow readers, and our host a wonderful may day weekend! And may we never stop debating… It is only with debate that ideas can move forward!

  • Cotour

    Conspiracy theories? You apparently are not paying attention in the least.

    So far above the actual data, the numbers, common sense, rational and fairly well-informed opinion and the history? Just dismiss it all and continue down the unconscious authoritarian do as I say road. La, la, la.

    “Joe Biden Finally Admitted He Wants To End The Oil Industry”

    Go ahead, read: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/22/joe-biden-finally-admitted-he-wants-to-end-the-oil-industry/

    Where do you believe the president of the United States gets such a firm and defined agenda from? A conspiracy theory?

    “Soros-Funded Group Praises Biden Plan to Open Border: ‘Step in Right Direction’” (Do you believe that Soros is just a kindly old man?)

    “The Center for American Progress, an influential lobbying group financially linked to billionaire George Soros, is praising President Joe Biden’s plan to open the United States-Mexico border by ending the Title 42 border control first imposed by former President Trump.”

    And this is but the tip of a very big iceberg. You learn more thoroughly by reading? Well start reading! Open your eyeballs.

    Sheesh.

    There are no conspiracies, and there are no coincidences. You are just lulled into your dogmatic reality and that is that.

    So happy to hear your kids are healthy and doing well.

  • Cotour

    Related: Conspiracy? (You keep clicking those Rubie slippers together, Lee S)

    HOW STUPID ARE YOU?

    Below are the hands of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, holding a prescreened question and his prewritten by his handlers answer that is set to be asked by a particular media operative formerly known as a reporter for the LA Times at a recent press conference.

    And the LA Times when confronted with the clear and present danger to our country and our freedom of speech and everything else because our current president, the supposed leader of the free world is clearly incompetent and unable to answer most all questions presented to him.

    They just tell you it’s you, not them and they deny what you can clearly see for yourself to be so. That I believe is the definition of gaslighting, no?

    “The Los Angeles Times on Thursday denied it had submitted a question ahead of time to the White House after President Joe Biden was photographed with a written question on a cheat sheet from one of the Times’ reporters.”

    Just how stupid are you? They believe you are very, very stupid.

    Paying attention yet America?

    LA Times Denies Submitting Question Seen On Biden’s Reporter Cheat Sheet

    https://apis.mail.aol.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjN-_95qz8vtNQnj2guvJpSi615JXjYizy9bcZuM2MCqJDk8zBIwKj0CmLH_qmCDE5NsTJVJXmOu9vG5vVhaOWavzw/messages/@.id==AKJd-Hdu4fm-ZEv4LQB5GOoQMys/content/parts/@.id==2/thumbnail?appid=AolMailNorrin&downloadWhenThumbnailFails=true&pid=2

  • Star Bird

    This whole enviromentalists insanity of today started in 1962 with Silent Spring and Rachel Carson, Then 1968 The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich and Earth in the Balance with Al Gore the Bore and now we see the results with this Global Warming/Climate Change scam

  • Cotour

    Do you think this is a conspiracy, Lee S?

    https://youtu.be/YQcEI78W3rk

    And it is ALL related and connected. From climate change to IRS agents showing up on the day a witness, a reporter, is testifying against the government in front of Congress so that he will be intimidated by their absolute power.

    How stupid do you think they think you are? THEY DO NOT CARE! That is how brazen they have become; they are going to strong arm all who stand in their way.

    There are no conspiracies, and there are no coincidences.

    WAKE UP LEE S!

    Do you think that Sweden being flooded with illegals from an entirely other culture as is the United States throwing open its border to also flood the country with illegals, do you think those events are coincidences and are not connected, or the result of a conspiracy??

    Choose one.

  • David K

    Build the thorium plants and be done with it.

    Any other fission or fusion plants will work too, but Earth happens to have a ridiculous amount of thorium everywhere.

  • Edward

    The AGU is an example of the broken nature of much of modern science, also known as “The Science,” which we are constantly reminded is settled (although one would wonder why there are so many scientists and their students still performing more The Science). Rather than let the data drive the conclusion, the nature of science as practiced in the Victorian age, many modern scientists let the desired conclusion drive the data, the nature of The Science. In the case of anthropogenic global warming, the AGU, like the Los Angeles Times, publishes only one viewpoint. Other once-noble institutions likewise have become similarly corrupted. We discovered, about a decade and a half ago, the East Anglia and Penn State climatologists conspired to hide a decline that their proxy data showed, which negated their proxy as a reliable source for data. We found out, about a decade ago, that NOAA and NASA had distributed new sets of historical global temperature averages which differed significantly from previous datasets, the changes coming unannounced, unexplained, and modified in the direction that supported the climatology community’s preferred conclusions.

    This is the very definition of fudged data.

    We keep being given dates of tipping points, beyond which it would be too late to save the planet from global warming or from perpetual climate change. For a third of a century, we have been living in a world in which we have to do something soon, before it is too late. In 1988, we were given one of the first tipping point dates: the year 2000. Even before that date came and passed, we were presented with several other tipping point dates, which have also come and passed. Since the year 2000, several additional tipping point dates have also been announced, some of which have already passed. The latest one that has yet to come is the year 2030. If we have not solved global climate change warming by then, then it will be too late to solve it. Again. Unfortunately, the earliest proposed solution, California forbidding the sale of fossil fueled automobiles, does not take effect until 2035. Other proposed solutions take effect even later. Meanwhile, the people who are proposing these tipping points are still buying oceanfront property and flying in private jets. Not only is it the rest of us who must make all the sacrifices to save the planet, but we must do it in time to save the oceanfront properties of those who fly in their own private jets.

    Apparently, The Science — which is settled — only applies to we civilians, not to the jet-setters and the oceanfront property owners.

    Perhaps the fogs that the AGU is now concerned about will contain enough water that they will prevent the rise of the oceans, saving the oceanfront property owners, but not saving the rest of us. This would explain why they continue to buy oceanfront property while we have to give up our cars.

    In Oscar Wilde’s play, An Ideal Husband, one character presents what he calls the philosophy of power:
    “And now I think it is time you knew the truth. That all these riches, this wondrous luxury, amounts, finally, to nothing. And that power, power over other men, is the one and only thing worth having.” How does one become powerful? He says that the answer is information. Information is more powerful than riches, because the information is how the riches are gotten, ill or otherwise. Science is one source of information. Science is an activity that develops models for us to use to predict the future, and knowing the future gives mankind, and individual men, power. It is why the Astrologers were powerful; they predicted when to plant in the spring so that winter storms did not destroy the seedlings.

    Politicians think that power resides in the ability to generate laws, as do some judges. Political aides think that they have power, because they steer their politicians into generating certain laws. Policemen have the power to change a person’s life with one arrest. District Attorneys and Attorneys General think that power resides in their ability to choose who to persecute and who to let free. Presidents likewise believe that their power resides in their ability to reward friends and punish enemies.

    But scientists are different. They generate the data from which they create the information that engineers and politicians use to change the world. Scientists have power over the politicians and the engineers. When scientists recommend or demand certain solutions, then they have power over we civilians, too. Fauci is a classic example of a scientist who let power go straight to his head. His solution changed the country. If his solution was copied by others, then he had power over the whole world. If he was copying someone else’s solution, then that someone else had power over the whole world.

    So when the AGU directs that only one viewpoint may be considered, they have power over how we live in our future. Now that the Northwest Passage is once again opening up, after the Little Ice Age closed it, the AGU has a paper that will direct shippers as to how to safely use this passage. It is not absolute power, but it is power nonetheless. The information is that the Northwest Passage will be foggy, and their solution (additional information) helps shippers navigate through the fog while avoiding damage by the floating ice that is already not supposed to be in the Arctic — due to global warming or climate change, or something. There is a power in that information.

  • Cotour

    Here is some more (Stupid) “climate change” “Conspiracy” that does not exist for you Lee S. This was all a rumor that was absolutely denied, then they passed a law.

    https://nypost.com/2023/04/28/some-new-yorkers-say-future-gas-stove-ban-in-new-buildings-is-not-so-hot-an-idea/

    “The pending budget deal mandates all new buildings under seven stories be fully electric by 2026 with larger structures following three years later.”

    Radical Democrats while they have power believe that leadership is comprised of authoritarian mandates and rule. It is the nature of the beast.

  • Lee S

    @Edward… All good stuff I’m not arguing against. I’m also not arguing for the case your making either. I’m just liking facts….

    @ Cotoure… I’m afraid your more logical arguments are outweighed by your somewhat crazy conspiracy theories. There might be puppet masters pulling the strings somewhere, but it’s certainly not in our back yard, and they are not interested in your right to carry a gun or run a coal powered heating system. You should really stick to facts. I have no more foil to build a new hat out of. I suppose I will just have to let the Swedish government access my internet history. What a dish of useful information… Behind the black. My local (UK) news site, and several sites regarding ancient coins…

    Are you awake my friend? No one is trying to turn me anywhere in meat space. And I just ignore anything I don’t agree with that I get sent in the mail… I know what I think, and that is that.

    Oh hang on, that’s you, not me!!! I look at the science, the figures, the presumed facts, and make my opinion based on evidence.. Not super hard to do, but apparently too hard for most here!

  • David K

    Stop arguing and build the nuclear plants already. There are many great designs. Any will do.

    If it is not climate change that is ultimately a problem, then it will be a huge price spike that will make the Great Depression look mild by comparison, or a world war over fossil fuels.

    And even if we can get by with fossil fuels on earth, they don’t exist at all in space, so the faster the better.

  • Cotour

    “Not super hard to do, but apparently too hard for most here!”

    Yeah, it’s us, not you.

  • Lee S

    And not one comment on my Nr. 1 son being conscripted into the Swedish military… It’s only 1 in around 50 that gets called up for “the draft” ( I think that’s what you guys call it)… I can only presume that all of us of a certain age approve… The lad will learn a trade, discipline, and being in the Swedish forces, had very little chance of being shot.
    That being said, I know a Swedish guy who got “temporary US citizenship” and was deployed in the middle east somewhere as a US police … He is still not willing to talk to much about it,… But with or without NATO, Sweden cooperates with the west.

  • Lee S

    @David K,

    I can only agree with you! There are so very many safe reactor plans available right now… Fukashima was down to being too close to the ocean ( see above ) and having it’s back up generates in the basement, Chernobyl was down to stupidity and soviet bloody mindedness… Both avoidable.

    I would be quite happy to have a nuclear power plant on my doorstep… Indeed, I might get a better paid job… And it would be nice driving plutonium around instead of pallets of bloody US car parts ;-)

  • David

    Always interesting to see what’s new here. I appreciated reading what’s been written, even a few things that are just blatantly incorrect or exaggerated.

    For anyone interested in learning more on the subject of forcing and feedback, there are many places to go for further exploring the subject. As I’m in a hurry, I’ll leave one right now: GFDL, The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab. They can be found at the NOAA site. Sorry, I purposely do not include links in any of my posts here for personal reasons.

    I think the world of the work the research at GFDL in general is doing and think any person will find it worth the time.

    Much more I’d like to add, but maybe later as time allows…

  • Lee S

    Just a parting remark…
    This conversation has been entertaining, we are never going to agree… ( On many points… ) But it is fun to debate… Without debate or disagreement things just stagnate.

    One thing I must point out though… Cotour, you have called me stupid several times in this thread. I am many things, and not all of them good, but I am by no means stupid. Name calling is not a good argument, and does your side of the discussion no favours. Please try not to in any future discussions. I don’t attack you personally, I expect the same in return.

    ( Much love from the token pinko commie, climate change believing, gun control advocating, dude in Sweden )

  • Cotour

    Lee S;

    That piece is not calling you stupid, if that is what you took from that then I apologize for the misunderstanding.

    That piece is an email that I sent out to my email list that I posted here on BTB. And I believe if the Zman agreed with you I would have heard about it.

    I was asking “How stupid” do the powers that be, and the media think / need the American people to be (Meaning me in other words).

    I would never call you or anyone else stupid in these conversations.

  • Phil Berardelli

    Lee S. “The results if we do can only be good…. And if we don’t, ( and if you are wrong ) things could go very very bad.”

    You should consider reversing that possibility. If YOU are wrong, and the powers that be succeed in cooling the planet and bring on the next ice age, how bad would that be? A couple of examples: 1) During the last one, ice sheets a mile thick expanded down from the Arctic all the way to Manhattan Island. Almost all of Europe — but most prominently Scandinavia and Russia — were completely covered in ice. And 2) Sea levels dropped approximately 100 meters, which is why, in the Chauvet Cave in France, the dwellers there drew vivid representations of rhinos and lions and zebras. That’s because, 30,000 years ago, you (and animals) could walk across the Straits of Gibraltar.

    Any attempt to cool the planet risks such catastrophes. Are you really willing to take such a risk? Twenty ice ages in 2 million years, only 10,000 years or so of warming in between them, and the last one ending 11,000 years ago. All of human civilization has sprung up in that interim. We are unprepared to deal with such a “climate change.” So, let us do all we can to avoid it.

  • pzatchok

    For me the Co2 cycle beats the global warming arguments every time.

    CO2 goes up and plants grow faster and more.
    Plants grow faster and more and they sequester carbon faster.
    Less carbon in the atmosphere and things settle down again.

    This extra plant growth has already been proven.

    The global warming proponents never ad in the CO2 cycle to their calculations.

  • Cotour

    Enlightening, Bill Mahre speaking with Elon Musk.

    Elon on the “Woke Mind Virus”: https://youtu.be/oO8w6XcXJUs 21 min.

    Might be worth listening to.

    Elon is not identifying the “Rational Middle Right Conservative / Middle Left Liberal Mind Virus”.

    I learned to listen to Elon and a couple of other people.

  • Phil Berardelli: You do what more of us should, ask Chicken Little’s like Lee the same question, in reverse.

    However, no need to go back to the the last big ice to make the point. We need only look back to the Little Ice in the 1600s (which happens to correspond to a lack of sunspots for about a century). In that time we did not have giant glaciers covering the land. All we had was a climate that cooled a very slight amount, about the amount geoengineers wish to impose now.

    The result was crop failures, famine, and widespread death. For some parts of the mid-latitudes, there were years in which no crops could be grown at all due to the cold.

    So Lee, what if YOU are wrong and you cause this catastrophe?

    The real point however is not to over react, in either direction. The greatest attribute of the human race is its ability to adapt. Let happen what will happen, and adapt to it. When it comes to the climate, nothing is going to happen quickly. We will have plenty of time to adjust, as long as we all have the freedom to make our own decisions, based on our own particular circumstances. Too many strict government rules and that freedom will be lost, as will our ability to adapt.

  • Edward

    Phil Berardelli wrote: “Any attempt to cool the planet risks such catastrophes. Are you really willing to take such a risk? Twenty ice ages in 2 million years, only 10,000 years or so of warming in between them, and the last one ending 11,000 years ago. All of human civilization has sprung up in that interim. We are unprepared to deal with such a “climate change.” So, let us do all we can to avoid it.

    All excellent points. If we don’t know what we are doing, we could bring on disaster as we have never seen before. As I have said here before, but not is a few years, the next ice age is due any millennium now. Berardelli is correct that global warming is not the problem to worry about, but global cooling certainly is! And the ice age is certain to happen, maybe even start within our lifetimes.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

    The scary part is the rapidity that the temperatures fall. They make the Little Ice Age, when the River Thames in London iced over in the winter with ice thick enough for a Frost Fair on the river. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs. And that was with temperatures only a couple of degrees colder for only a couple of centuries, not enough time for glaciers to form. What will happen when the temperatures are five or six degrees colder for tens of thousands of years? Oh, that’s right. Phil gave us a pretty good idea. Bad things will happen and will become the new normal.

    Planning for the future has been very poor. We have worried not about how to handle warming temperatures, most of which over the past three centuries or so, has been natural change. We have only had the opportunity of increasing the CO2 content for the past century, and when we started our CO2 contributions, the temperatures fell rather than climbed. Instead of planning for a warmer tomorrow, we have pretended that we could overcome Mother Nature and stop her planetary warming regimen.

    We should also have a plan for the century when the next Ice Age begins. Our plan today should be to handle an Ice Age that starts in the next few decades, and we should update that plan every half century, or so, to account for changes to our civilization. For instance, will the next Ice Age identify as a man, a woman — whatever a woman turns out to be — or a non-binary, and what should we do differently for each identity? When this gender identity insanity ends, then we need a plan that does not include the Ice Age’s self identity. This may sound facetious, but it is the sad, mad world we live in today. Our fearful leaders put emphasis on the wrong non-problems and don’t bother with the real problems, especially the ones that are not upon us right now. What are we paying them for, if they won’t keep us safe from the known future dangers? Come to think of it, maybe our fearful leaders should not be in charge of future planning after all.

    So, what is my plan for the next Ice Age? Mars.

  • GeorgeC

    I had a letter to the WSJ published around 1992 that was one of the first popular press public mentions that H2O was the major greenhouse gas. At the time many museums were putting up displays listing greenhouse gasses and none were mentioning H2O.

  • Lee S

    @Cotour…. It seems I took your comments out of context… I apologize, and thank you for the clarification!

    @Bob, here I am correct in saying you do me a disservice by calling me a “chicken little”, I have repeatedly said in this thread I could be wrong, indeed I hope I am wrong. My stance is that I could also be right, and reducing pollutants can not be a bad thing either way. If my stance is correct and we follow the path everyone here seems to advocate, ( IE do nothing and continue burning all the fossil fuels.. a finite resource anyway..) the results could be very bad indeed. I don’t think that is a chance we should take. I am not saying the sky will fall in. I am saying that it could, and even if it won’t, we have the ability to clean up the unarguable mess we are making of the planet, which can’t be a bad thing!

    Which brings me on to my third point, which if given a lot of thought, is genuinely terrifying… If this whole ice age argument given above is correct, it means that man made pollution is the only thing keeping us from a very long winter. If true then we will genuinely need some geo-engineering to avoid catastrophe. What happens when we finally run out of fossil fuels, and have to move to carbon neutral anyway? ( I include nuclear in that, indeed I believe that nuclear is the only way to go.) We will be in real trouble .

    I reiterate…. The sky probably is not falling down, but we have the chance to make sure it doesn’t. Now. And if you guys are wrong, history is going to paint our generations in a very dark light.

  • Lee S

    @Edward….

    Oh, come on!! You raise some good points in your last post, I believe that the world’s governments should really have some plans in place for catastrophic climate change in either direction, just as they should for an asteroid impact, but unfortunately we all know that is never going to happen.

    But to randomly throw in a comment regarding the loony left obsession with gender pronouns … That just makes no sense. I’m actually with you, ( and I’m sure the rest of the readers here, to a man and woman are also!) In that all that nonsense is just that, nonsense… But a discussion on climate change? Really?

  • Lee S

    ( plus…. Your plan to avoid an earth based ice age is to move somewhere colder? I’m all in on colonising Mars… But it’s a bit of a dodgy back up plan! ;-)

  • Cotour

    I think this may be the best boiled down illustration in the media of this issue today:

    “RFK Jr. Says ‘Mega-Billionaires’ Are Using Climate Change To Usher In ‘Totalitarian Controls’ On Society”

    “Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Friday that “mega-billionaires” like Bill Gates are using climate change to implement “totalitarian controls on society.”

    “Climate issues and pollution issues are being exploited by, you know, the World Economic Forum and Bill Gates and all of these big, you know, mega-billionaires, the same way that COVID was exploited, to use it as an excuse to clamp down top-down totalitarian controls on society,”

    If anyone here wants to call that a conspiracy, go right ahead. But that in this example is what the actual data and information to my thinking clearly says. And I give you the Covid19 virus / mRNA shot episode of the past three plus years specifically as hard evidence.

    Just extrapolate that known information sideways to properly understand the “Climate Change” issue. Same thing just another angle.

    When government, big corporate concerns who are no longer patriotic but are now members of an international Global club and science which has been revealed to have been highly perverted and closely controlling the ALLOWED information that the people and their medical professionals who have a fiduciary responsibility to their patients are ALLOWED to know. Under penalty of either cancelation of free speech, being banned or fired from your work and your ability to provide, your medical license being revoked and / or arrested in some cases. That is fact and not a conspiracy to me.

    CLEARLY this is very understandable once you get over the subjective requirements of your religious beliefs. But religion is strong.

    And the science and the data just serve to further confuse and draw those well-known bright lines that must not be crossed especially by those who become intellectually bogged down in the rhetoric and narrative and are unable because of the fog to see through it. People need to be taught to develop a FLIR type ability to see through such things. But that requires an ability to be objective.

    Galileo was able to develop a kind of objective FLIR ability to see through the fog to real reality. But that real reality was not acceptable to those who held the power in society because it threatened their acquisition of and retention of THEIR power. Sound familiar?

    And therein lies the religious zealotry that adherents and worshipers are required either through true belief, ignorance or genuine fear of imprisonment or death to promote and adhere to. And this applies to ALL intellectual structures and concepts of man (And woman).

    You will believe………..or else. It is a very old story. See: Strategy Over Morality.

    https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/young-man-monks-robe-dark-studio-51136276.jpg

    GOD & SPIRITUALITY V POLITICS, LAW AND JUSTICE, COMMERCE AND RELIGION

    1. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man have the potential to be abused in the quest of the few in pursuit of control and power over the many.

    ​2. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man have not always acted in the interests of what they have represented themselves to be acting in the interests of.

    ​3. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man has the potential to be used as a ruthless tool in order to acquire or retain power.

    ​4. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man has the potential to selectively teach the exclusion of some.

    ​5. Humanity must have civilization, governance, politics, law, justice, commerce, God, spirituality and religion, or no religion depending on your perspective, conclusions and choices. And must be cognizant of where their nature as it relates to those subjects in all of their forms can deliver them.

    ​6. All intellectual structures, entities and concepts of man (and woman) have the potential to be perverted and corrupted and the power derived there of abused. jgl 1/8/23

  • Cotour

    To my point: Perception is reality and it can control and or kill you and all who surround you.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12010653/After-100-people-starve-death-Kenya-meet-Jesus-look-DEATH-CULTS.html

    Be careful what religion you choose to follow, especially when you have a choice.

  • Lee S: You are the only one using the word catastrophe, and you do it repeatedly. You also only see the worst possible thing that can happen, and have been arguing that we must take drastic action, now, or we or future generations are all gonna die.

    I think “chicken little” is a perfectly reasonable description of your attitude on this subject.

  • Gary

    In the 70s and 80s, there’s was near unanimous consensus on what being an environmentalist was. It mean cleaning up the environment – (i.e. trash, reducing smog, eliminating toxic chemical spills, not dumping hazardous materials into rivers, etc.). We made great progress in those areas because there was general agreement on what being an environmentalist was.

    Then, the focus was changed from “cleaning up” to carbon dioxide. This was done, it my opinion, not with the focus of cleaning up to change the focus to reducing the supply of power and the supply of food. By reducing power and food supply, you reduce the ability of people to live where they want, drive what they want, eat what they want and more. The government would be the arbiter on what would be acceptable to eat, what would be acceptable to drive and where you would be allowed to live. That’s the entire reason carbon dioxide, which to that point was universally agreed to be an essential part of life on earth, was turned into the source of all evil on the planet.

    Governments won’t give up that notion as it is a great source of power to them. Since our children have been brainwashed into accepting that notion, the prospect for change is dim indeed.

  • Cotour

    Related: Don’t dare question.

    Sky News, Australia: https://youtu.be/NmBWxXia3Po

    Or you will be lawfared.

  • Icepilot

    I got here late.
    Photosynthesis: Plants/Plankton turning Sunlight/CO2/H2O into Food/O2; neither animal nor blade of grass would exist, absent CO2. More CO2 helps plants resist drought/damage/disease, extends growing seasons, lets plants move higher in altitude & Latitudes, shrinks deserts & reduces the spread of fire, plants using & retaining H2O more efficiently. As CO2 rises, photosynthesis flourishes & plants take in more CO2, sparking more growth, photosynthesis & CO2 uptake. Rising temperatures also extend growing seasons, help babies survive, increase net rainfall & save lives. We are in the short period (glacial interstitial) between long Ice Ages, the norm (where I sit) being a half mile of ice. Warm is good, cold is bad.
    This Cradle of Life is greener, more fertile & life sustaining than it was 200 years ago. Because adding food to the base of the food-chain supports all of Nature.

  • Jeff Wright

    I like the doom and gloomers—-use them to divert out defense budgets to space solar power for beaming/powering space exploration.

    Zubrin is selling atomic power…cut it out…use their fear to boost space spending.

    All the talk about global warming?

    https://tenor.com/view/elim-garak-all-true-even-the-lies-especially-the-lies-dr-julian-bashir-gif-14184610

    https://twitter.com/C_Dawg_Knight/status/1279736014861467648/photo/1

  • Lee S

    Bob…. ( Here is the very definition of a straw man argument!!) You have used the word “holocaust” in regards to loony left politics … Let me use the word “catastrophy” regarding things going very, very bad regarding the environment.

    Yes, there is no doubt that higher temperatures and higher CO2 levels would be advantageous in some respects, but not one voice here has addressed the catastrophic ( yup, I said it!) effects to costal regions due to sea rise, due to polar ice melt. It won’t take much rise to flood very many costal city’s, and indeed low lying countries.

    And Bob, to address your point “You also only see the worst possible thing that can happen”… Yes, correct! It is only logical to consider a “worse case scenario” when the results could be so very, very bad. And as for my saying we really should start taking action now… Well if not… Then when?

    If you folks are all wrong, and we are messing up the climate, and indeed the planet, then the longer we leave taking action, the harder it will be, both economically and physically. To start taking action to reduce carbon emissions and pollution right now cannot be a bad thing…

    Continue to keep your heads buried in the sand… Once again, I genuinely hope that you are right, and I unfortunately think that nothing much is going to change, but excuse me for being genuinely concerned about the future of our planet and our children.

  • Lee S: Okay, let’s talk about the coastal areas. In the past century, the average yearly estimated rise in sea level has ranged from 2 to 3 mm per year, depending on the data set you use. (The newer data sets have conveniently been adjusted to the higher number. I wonder why?)

    Let’s use the newer number. At 3mm per year, the rise in a century will be 300mm. That’s one foot. Are you telling me that human ingenuity will not be able to handle such a change, over that time frame?

    As a friend of mine once noted with great sarcasm, “Are we going to simply stand there for a century as the water rises above our knees?”

    Moreover, for there to be any fast and much larger increase, we would have to see a sudden disappearance of both the Antarctica and Greenland ice caps. Neither shows any signs of significant reduction. In Greenland you Chicken Littles always point to the shrinkage in some glaciers, but the overall thickness of the ice sheet (what really matters) hasn’t changed in any significant amount. Furthermore, not all the glaciers have been shrinking, and some that had have even recovered in recent years. The same facts apply to Antarctica.

    Finally, let’s assume the coastal areas flood slowly over time, forcing a retreat. A warming climate will, as Icepilot and I have both noted, just increase the regions elsewhere where life will not only be more habitable, it will become more pleasant.

    You like to claim we have our heads buried in the sand, but all we are doing is carefully and rationally looking at the data, and deciding the fear-mongering by you and others is simply not convincing. Just standing there and saying we have to ACT, without citing real data, is insufficient.

    And once again, what if you are wrong? You don’t seem to want to consider this possibility.

  • Cotour

    An engineer friend sent me this on the subject:

    “From a technical / engineering perspective there is no imminent climate apocalypse to justify or warrant what they are doing and trying to do to our society.”

    He continues:

    “I watched a John Stossel / Alex Epstein interview (on YouTube) last week – and they used a clip of RFK Jr. making a “climate change” spiel saying the gov’t needs to push gasoline prices >$12 a gallon to foster EV use.”

    I replied: (And I liked the Zmans friends quote so much I made a modification and used it)

    “RFK jr. WAS a religious, climate, acolyte, zealot monk in order to force everyone to comply, until, when he realized they wanted to force HIM to accept an experimental drug technology that he actually understood could be dangerous and had many unknowable potentials into HIS body as a part of the Globalist agenda of absolute control. (You know, that crazy Globalist “conspiracy” some are unable to detect even though it is hiding right in front of their own disbelieving eyeballs)

    And RFK jr. knew Fauci the fraudulent liar was involved, and he understood what he was apparently up to.

    Its always a must when it is in the abstract and not in the personal and subjective. And human driven “climate change” is certainly something that exists in the abstract.

    Then things take an entirely different turn. Whatever it takes, and by any means necessary. Hey, wait a minute I didn’t mean me!”

    “What are we going to do simply stand here for a century as the water rises from our ankles to our knees?”

    Be afraid.

    https://apis.mail.aol.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjN-_95qz8vtNQnj2guvJpSi615JXjYizy9bcZuM2MCqJDk8zBIwKj0CmLH_qmCDE5NsTJVJXmOu9vG5vVhaOWavzw/messages/@.id==ADlIFuI7CgBvZE_bDAgxqM-fvls/content/parts/@.id==2/thumbnail?appid=AolMailNorrin&downloadWhenThumbnailFails=true&pid=2

  • Edward

    Do you know what I like about the global warming/climate change* advocates? I mean other than them continuing to use power despite their insistence that it is the worst thing to do, or that they still buy oceanfront property despite their fear of rising oceans, or that since they are right (how could they be wrong?) no other viewpoint should be allowed and those who have an alternate viewpoint should be imprisoned or executed (isn’t intolerance o differing viewpoints the very definition of bigotry?), or that the rest of us should do as they say and not what they do, or that the rest of us must give up our livelihoods, prosperity, and fossil fuels so that they can feel better about themselves, or that they continue to use power and fossil fuels even though they insist that their use leads to disaster, or the American Geophysical Union (AGU) points out a big advantage of global warming and changing climates but still insists that even this benefit is still a problem, or … ?

    I like that they tell us how bad it will be at the end of the century, with the temperatures baking us near to death, the oceans flooding cities and drowning London’s dogs, and the North Pole permanently melted (which was supposed to happen back in 2014, but somehow missed the deadline). But we are a quarter of the way through the century, and how much warmer is it now than in 2000? How much higher are the oceans? Why are we worried about Arctic ice floes being hazards to navigation? What is not to like about these advocates?

    As it turns out, “The Less You Know About Climate, The More You Cry About Climate”
    https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/46678/

    This means that those who get all worked up about how bad things are going to be, due to climate, don’t know much about climate, and those who know more about climate don’t get much worked up about it. It is like Greta Thunberg, who doesn’t know much about climate other than what someone else (who doesn’t know much about climate) told her. At least she was willing to take a sailboat, which is unpowered, to cross the ocean in order to ask the United Nations how dare they use energy when that energy use will destroy her future. She feels. Then she discovered that no sailboats were heading back to Europe. Who knew that saving the planet meant getting stuck on the other side of it?

    It is like Al Gore, who wrote a book about climate and had a seminar/movie about it, but both turned out to be wrong, because he doesn’t know as much about climate as he thinks he does.

    It is like the American Geophysical Union (Geologists, Geophysicists, and some other scientists who study the Earth and the space around it**), which limits its study of the Earth’s environment to avoid any suggestion that the Earth is not warming. Anyone who says it isn’t must be a denier. Oh the horror! Someone might be skeptical of the scientific “consensus.” Wait. What was the “consensus” before Darwin? I guess the consensus can be wrong. So the AGU knows less about the environment than it should, because they will not acknowledge any scientific study that contradicts their preconceived notions. Talk about confirmation bias, this truly takes the prize! They even announced their confirmation bias, but how many scientists called them on it? Not many, but fortunately a few did resigning in disgust from the AGU.

    What word was it that is defined as an intolerance of differing viewpoints?

    So, we can see that a climate change advocate does not know much about climate when he cries that we have to do something about climate change. He thinks it is better to destroy our economy, livelihoods, and lives because the risk of changing climates outweighs the consequences of the better climate it changes into.

    Adapting to new climates is so terrible. What happens with the next Ice Age? With the polar ice caps coming below the 49th parallel and the oceans receding a hundred meters, leaving our port cities high and dry, if we adapt to the new global situation then what do we do in a hundred thousand years when the globe naturally warms up, again, and the new port cities that we created are flooded due to the new global warming crisis? We are left high and dry when the planet cools and the polar caps grow, then we will be flooded to death when the next Ice Age ends.

    I have difficulty believing how people are able to feel that government is the solution when it is government that invented the faux problem of global warming. What are these people thinking? Oh, that’s right. They aren’t thinking; they are feeling. Governments do not solve problems but invent them so that they can pretend to solve them, but only if you vote for the “correct” politician (the other guy can’t fix the problem). Then the government fails to solve the non-problem, because there would then be no reason to vote for the guy who didn’t fix the non-problem he had promised to fix. This is how we get 57 different “genders” and people who don’t even know what a woman is, much less what makes someone any of the other 56 “genders.” It is also how we get politicians who confirm to the Supreme Court a woman who doesn’t even know what she is. These are the idiots that we depend upon to know that The Science is settled and to solve the non-problems that they told us we have but also ignore the real problems that we experience every day, such as inflation, recession, and rising crime, due to the defunded police departments — crime that causes our favorite stores to go out of business due to the out of control shoplifting. Yet, the non-thinking, feeling people trust these governments to be smart enough to solve non-existent, faux, non-problems.

    Government funds The Science (which is settled) that they want to see, but don’t fund any science that contradicts what they want. No wonder we see so much of settled The Science viewpoint and so little of any other. How did the world become so insane? The emperor walks naked down the street, and everyone compliments him on his glamorous robes rather than on his blue goosebumps.

    Those of us who see the goosebumps know that an Ice Age is eventually coming, some millennium soon, and that there is nothing we can do to stop it. We will have to adapt to it as it comes. We will have to adapt to its ending, too, and by then we will fear the change, just as the Chicken Littles who know so little about climate fear any global warming or even any change in climate.

    But at least the AGU is making sure that ships sailing the Arctic don’t run into ice that a decade ago they thought wouldn’t be there.
    _____________
    * I live in a chaparral climate. This area has had this climate since long before the American Revolution. I can’t help but wonder how much longer it will take climate change to change this area’s climate to something better.

    ** When I worked in the Space Sciences department of one of my employers, many of the space scientists were members of the AGU. Many of the Space Sciences department’s instruments flew on spacecraft that studied the magnetic field around the Earth and the particles caught in that field. Among other things, I worked on instruments that the scientists used to measure some of the energy coming into Earth and some of the energy leaving the Earth, in an attempt to quantify the net energy increase or decrease from those sources. These space scientists were studying the Earth — but the study was done from space.

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