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Global warming != Climate change 1.) Global warming increases average temperatures. 2.) Climate change might turn the weather to extremes, which implies great

Global warming != Climate change 1.) Global warming increases average temperatures. 2.) Climate change might turn the weather to extremes, which implies greater temperature _variance_ locally. Now the pattern I see is: people are trying to focus on 1.), disprove it, then (falsly) claim that 2.) would also be wrong! This is not the case. 1.) does NOT relate to 2.) in any way! The climate change IS happening, this does not change by disproving 1.)

xenonite 17y ago
I was asked to source my statements, as I did not do so before. The IPCC Third Report concludes that climate change might either be caused of a changing mean temperature, a changing variance, or both. What the real cause for climate change is, needs to be carefully assessed. This supports my statement that climate change is not necessarily caused by increasing mean temperatures. http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ftar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/088.htm http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ftar/?src=/clim...
TheBranca18 17y ago
Better than I could state it myself. Funny how this comment is ignored even though I tried to make this distinction in another comment :)
jerf 17y ago
The problem is that nobody care whether the "climate is changing". Change is the only constant. The question is whether it is bad and whether we can do something about it. Neither has been very well established in my mind. If in fact our CO2 contribution's effect is far smaller than the IPCC and environmentalists claim, then natural variation is the dominant factor and even completely giving up industrialization entirely next year may not have a very large effect. This means that it is a lot harder to affect the climate than we have been telling ourselves. And climate changes have been happening continuously for billions of years, so it's not at all obvious that they are a priori bad for anything other than human agriculture. (Which is itself bad, but something we can deal with, and broadly speaking is our problem rather than the ecosystem's problem.) If environmentalists think they can turn on a dime after thirty years of "anthropogenic global warming -> disaster", they are in for a well-deserved beating in the court of general opinion. Falling back to "The climate is changing" is basically an admission that we have no clue, and more than that, where we thought human effects dominated it, it doesn't seem to. You can't just turn around and apply panic over AGW to panic over "climate change"; it is neither rational nor human-irrational. If you want to panic over something environmental, how about overfishing, plastic pollution in the pacific, fertilizer runoff, or something else that isn't "debatable" but actually, factually exists? In addition to the fact that it's a bad idea to try to "salvage" climate change as an issue, it isn't even necessary. There are real problems. Unless you personally are driven by using environmentalism as an excuse to destroy democracy and transfer wealth to the poor, if you are really driven by concern for the environment, you don't need to "win" this issue. Trying to build your political case on a lie can only be actively harmful in the long run.
jessriedel 17y ago
So there is allegedly climate change due to carbon dioxide without increasing global temperatures? I've never heard this. What is the mechanism, and what is the evidence?

xenonite 17y ago

I was asked to source my statements, as I did not do so before. The IPCC Third Report concludes that climate change might either be caused of a changing mean temperature, a changing variance, or both. What the real cause for climate change is, needs to be carefully assessed. This supports my statement that climate change is not necessarily caused by increasing mean temperatures. http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ftar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/088.htm http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ftar/?src=/clim...

TheBranca18 17y ago

Better than I could state it myself. Funny how this comment is ignored even though I tried to make this distinction in another comment :)

jerf 17y ago

The problem is that nobody care whether the "climate is changing". Change is the only constant. The question is whether it is bad and whether we can do something about it. Neither has been very well established in my mind. If in fact our CO2 contribution's effect is far smaller than the IPCC and environmentalists claim, then natural variation is the dominant factor and even completely giving up industrialization entirely next year may not have a very large effect. This means that it is a lot harder to affect the climate than we have been telling ourselves. And climate changes have been happening continuously for billions of years, so it's not at all obvious that they are a priori bad for anything other than human agriculture. (Which is itself bad, but something we can deal with, and broadly speaking is our problem rather than the ecosystem's problem.) If environmentalists think they can turn on a dime after thirty years of "anthropogenic global warming -> disaster", they are in for a well-deserved beating in the court of general opinion. Falling back to "The climate is changing" is basically an admission that we have no clue, and more than that, where we thought human effects dominated it, it doesn't seem to. You can't just turn around and apply panic over AGW to panic over "climate change"; it is neither rational nor human-irrational. If you want to panic over something environmental, how about overfishing, plastic pollution in the pacific, fertilizer runoff, or something else that isn't "debatable" but actually, factually exists? In addition to the fact that it's a bad idea to try to "salvage" climate change as an issue, it isn't even necessary. There are real problems. Unless you personally are driven by using environmentalism as an excuse to destroy democracy and transfer wealth to the poor, if you are really driven by concern for the environment, you don't need to "win" this issue. Trying to build your political case on a lie can only be actively harmful in the long run.

jessriedel 17y ago

So there is allegedly climate change due to carbon dioxide without increasing global temperatures? I've never heard this. What is the mechanism, and what is the evidence?