4 ms·

I suspect the real issue is the "It could be good for Ontario" problem. There is no global climate change catastrophe, rather there are a lot of local changes s

by neffy 10y ago

I suspect the real issue is the "It could be good for Ontario" problem. There is no global climate change catastrophe, rather there are a lot of local changes some of which are completely catastrophic, as in good bye Bangladesh, and some of which are improvements - shorter northern hemisphere winters, longer growing seasons etc. Flip the switch, because if the fresh water influx in the North Atlantic shuts down the global conveyer currents, it won´t be warming we´re looking at, and it´s great news for India, and Bangladesh, and a catastrophe in the Northern Hemisphere, Europe in particular. A great empire is always about to fall...

aetherson 10y ago
That's not necessarily a crazy opinion, but it's not a mainstream one. The mainstream opinions seem to be: 1. Climate change isn't real or isn't a big deal. 2. Climate change will be a global catastrophe or even lead to human extinction. Now, it would be reasonable for the people in group 1 to complain about geoengineering experiments, but actually they don't seem to care. And the people in group 2 are pretty much to a man saying, "Climate change is a huge problem and the only solution that we are willing to entertain at all is cuts to carbon production with no offsetting energy production except through solar and wind -- even though these are clearly not politically feasible in large enough amounts to make the difference, and indeed even though there's growing evidence that even unrealistically massive cuts won't solve the problem." This suggests that there are some unstated facets to the beliefs of people in group 2.
- neffy 10y ago
  Well, it used to be called global warming, and now it´s called climate change - did you ever wonder why? The truly catastrophic climate change - human extinction - outcome is the runaway greenhouse scenario. That´s been floated, but it runs into the evidence that the earth has been considerably warmer before (both poles melted) without that happening. But I suspect it will get another look after this year. The slightly less catastrophic climate change outcome is the next ice age being triggered. We know what causes them, but there´s a fair amount of variance as to when, and we don´t know what the exact trigger is. The next ice age though, isn´t a catastrophe everywhere, in particular there´s a lot of reasons to believe India benefits for example. A general warming accompanied by a significant sea level rise is a catastrophe for Bangladesh (most of which is below 10metres above sea level), the Pacific Atolls, India, South America and Africa (heat extremes) extremely expensive for the USA, and Europe, and good news for Scandinavia, Canada and Russia. However, the general tone of the climate change debate for the last couple of decades, is not such that it would encourage a nuanced debate about the possibility that it could go either way. Nor is the planet really ready for a reasoned debate between its two hemispheres as to which outcome would be preferable, and for whom. However, the rise this year though has even the alarmists scared - especially with the suspicion that it´s entirely probable that there´s been a tendency for scientists to favour the less extreme predictions when modelling the problem, and even those have been bad enough. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/climate_scientists_despair_most_devastating_parts_of_esquire_s_jason_box.html?wpisrc=obinsite http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.ht...

by neffy 10y ago

aetherson 10y ago

That's not necessarily a crazy opinion, but it's not a mainstream one. The mainstream opinions seem to be: 1. Climate change isn't real or isn't a big deal. 2. Climate change will be a global catastrophe or even lead to human extinction. Now, it would be reasonable for the people in group 1 to complain about geoengineering experiments, but actually they don't seem to care. And the people in group 2 are pretty much to a man saying, "Climate change is a huge problem and the only solution that we are willing to entertain at all is cuts to carbon production with no offsetting energy production except through solar and wind -- even though these are clearly not politically feasible in large enough amounts to make the difference, and indeed even though there's growing evidence that even unrealistically massive cuts won't solve the problem." This suggests that there are some unstated facets to the beliefs of people in group 2.

neffy 10y ago
Well, it used to be called global warming, and now it´s called climate change - did you ever wonder why? The truly catastrophic climate change - human extinction - outcome is the runaway greenhouse scenario. That´s been floated, but it runs into the evidence that the earth has been considerably warmer before (both poles melted) without that happening. But I suspect it will get another look after this year. The slightly less catastrophic climate change outcome is the next ice age being triggered. We know what causes them, but there´s a fair amount of variance as to when, and we don´t know what the exact trigger is. The next ice age though, isn´t a catastrophe everywhere, in particular there´s a lot of reasons to believe India benefits for example. A general warming accompanied by a significant sea level rise is a catastrophe for Bangladesh (most of which is below 10metres above sea level), the Pacific Atolls, India, South America and Africa (heat extremes) extremely expensive for the USA, and Europe, and good news for Scandinavia, Canada and Russia. However, the general tone of the climate change debate for the last couple of decades, is not such that it would encourage a nuanced debate about the possibility that it could go either way. Nor is the planet really ready for a reasoned debate between its two hemispheres as to which outcome would be preferable, and for whom. However, the rise this year though has even the alarmists scared - especially with the suspicion that it´s entirely probable that there´s been a tendency for scientists to favour the less extreme predictions when modelling the problem, and even those have been bad enough. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/climate_scientists_despair_most_devastating_parts_of_esquire_s_jason_box.html?wpisrc=obinsite http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.ht...