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I hope that the global conversation on ecological protection can evolve from climate change to tangible effects, like pollution and ocean acidification, just as

I hope that the global conversation on ecological protection can evolve from climate change to tangible effects, like pollution and ocean acidification, just as climate change evolved from the use of the term global warming. Ocean acidification in particular ought to be an issue even climate skeptics can acknowledge is a problem. Unlike climate change, which can be difficult to communicate due to its abstract nature (we had heat last summer and snow last winter so what's changing?), you can plainly test acidification with two cups of water - tap and sparkling - and a pair of litmus slips to show the difference. Then expand on how all the carbon in the atmosphere does that to the oceans, and then demonstrate what that does to life in the oceans, from the algae and plankton to the fish people eat. Overall I think that focusing on precise tangible issues that people can observe for themselves is a better way to communicate the need for ecological protection than to be completely correct in a large and abstract assessment that people might have trouble following. Only problem is it's hard to sex up the term "ocean acidification." For something like that we'd need an attention-grabbing shorthand, like "melty fishy death water."

ch4s3 10y ago
*edit: anecdote ahead My experience working as a clean air and water advocate in my early 20s was that people who don't buy into climate change also tend to rationalize away things like potable water, wildlife, and preservation of natural resources. The venn diagram of people who don't "believe in" climate change and would support CO2 cuts to stop ocean acidification is tiny. However, I'd love to be proven wrong.
- macintux 10y ago
  Jesus is coming soon so why bother? (James Watt claims he never said it, but a family member of mine did.)
  - unit91 10y ago
    Well for starters the Apostle Paul wrote the 2nd Thessalonian letter condemning this very attitude. Hence, in my experience, comments like this are generally offered by (1) nominal Christians who don't seem familiar with what Jesus and the apostles actually taught; or (2) atheists who use it as a straw-man argument against Christianity proper, instead of an admonishment to the nominals to actually know what they claim to believe.
    - betenoire 10y ago
      Or 3) people whose every interaction with said group of people seems to confirm the bias. At what point am I allowed to criticize the culture as a whole?
      - ch4s3 10y ago
        This sort of thing always seems to descend into some sort of odd "no true Scotsman" argument where people end up debate sincere vs insincere adherents of "X" belief. A lot of people are real pricks, may there is a correlation with belief system "X", but I've yet to see strong evidence that its causal. Now ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and global average temperature rise; thats a good causal relationship!
        betenoire 10y ago
        Are you saying my observation isn't valid because it may descend into a non-sensical debate? If we are throwing around fallacies, I have one too then. My observation remains though. The Christians who literally follow the scriptures number far far fewer than those that don't. That is NOT a comment about "sincere" vs "insincere" christians. The "insincere" ones seem just as sincere to me.
        ch4s3 10y ago
        > Are you saying my observation isn't valid No. I'm just saying that it's hard to have a constructive conversation about in this forum based on my previous experience. I might also make the argument that to "literally follow the scriptures" is fundamentalism, and isn't necessarily a mark of a "true" adherent of the faith in question. But that is a bit of a tangent, and none of this has much to do with ocean trash so I don't have a lot more to add.
      - unit91 10y ago
        I'm not sure why you're being down-voted here. This a legitimate case of the problem of induction, "the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy" [1]. That said, it seems like the flaw in your reasoning (and ch4s3's) is the lack of an objective standard. Holding sincere beliefs and referring to oneself as a Christian don't in themselves make a person a Christian. For example, suppose you met a person who said "I'm a Christian. I don't believe in God and I think the Bible is fiction." Instead of "well ok, he's very sincere, he just doesn't follow the scriptures literally", I think we would rightly conclude "despite his sincere beliefs and identity claim, this person is not a Christian." That is, his identity claim is false. In order for a person's Christian identity claim to be true, he must hold and practice true (or approximately true) beliefs about the person, work, and teaching of Christ. So doesn't this deteriorate into a "no true Scotsman" argument? I don't think so. The hallmark of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy is its ad hocness [2]. Otherwise, no taxonomy of any kind would be possible. But surely it isn't ad hoc to say "Christians follow Christ's teachings, and non-Christians don't." So what are Christ's teachings? That can only be adjudicated by examining scripture to find out what Jesus said. Some statements (e.g. "you shall love your neighbor as yourself") are pretty straightforward. Some are less so. But we shouldn't take the fact that people disagree about some of the interpretations to mean that Jesus had no meaning, or that his meaning in unknowable. Rather, this should prompt us to ask "what are your reasons for thinking that's what Jesus meant?". Getting back to your question, we're inductive creatures, and to an extent I don't think you can (or should) avoid drawing generic conclusions about cultures as a whole, given a large enough sample. But make sure that you're sampling persons whom you believe to be actual Christians, and not merely nominal Christians. For comparison, here are a couple of Jesus's metrics: "by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" [3] and "if you love me, you will keep my commandments" [4]. Sources: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman 3. John 13:35 4. John 14:15
- brennen 10y ago
  Yeah. I think that, while there are people who value some classes of conservation without believing in climate change, climate change is in general a subset of what people don't believe in. Which is to say: Almost anything espoused by environmentalists, any program of environmental regulation, any restraint on resource extraction, etc.
- fil_a_del_fee_a 10y ago
  I always agreed that pollution should be a higher priority than climate change. The onus is on me to drive a hybrid to reduce my co2 output, but nothing is being done to curb polluting our waterways.
  - debacle 10y ago
    Packaging is a great evil. Most of our waste is packaging. My family recycles a lot, buys glass/aluminum when possible, and still we generate 2-3 bags of garbage each week, mostly food packaging.
    - akovaski 10y ago
      Just for reference, what is the size of your family and what we the sizes of the garbage bags?
      - debacle 10y ago
        2 adults 1 teen and 1 child. Just normal sized garbage bags.
        vacri 10y ago
        And the garbage bags themselves are packaging. It's hard to escape.
    - CalRobert 10y ago
      The supermarkets discovered they can get you to buy more tomatoes when there are six of them in shiny cellophane, so that's what they do. It's maddening. Not only that, it's nearly impossible not to use plastic packaging if you're not handily located near a co-op (or Unverpackt, if you're in Germany). In many cases I've been looked at suspiciously when I said I didn't need a bag for my two items at the checkout, as though there were something wrong with me. Saying "it just winds up in the back of my car" usually convinced them (never mind that I cycled there...)
- yourapostasy 10y ago
  > ...people who don't buy into climate change also tend to rationalize away things like potable water, wildlife, and preservation of natural resources... This is emergent behavior from a lifetime inculcating conditioned responses to acute challenges in narrow fields of interest, combined with a lack of frame of reference to externalities. People who never plan beyond a horizon of a few decades, and only in very constrained domains, spending the vast majority of their time addressing perceived here-and-now challenges to their social/economic/personal domains are going to find it very difficult to connect with these long-term incubation period threats. It doesn't help that Upton Sinclair, Jr.'s The Jungle is not widely-read, or reading critical analysis non-fiction is not widespread. Nor does it help that our economic system doesn't account with a high fidelity for where we establish our entropy sinks (at our current technological level, aiming as close to the outer reaches of the solar system as we can is sufficient for now, and we move the aim point higher as we acquire more energy manipulation capabilities). Impactful stories and imagery can sometimes pierce this veil. Connecting to an imminent threat to personal, individual health seemed to galvanize the food safety and pollution control issues, which again points us back to presenting say, ocean acidification via the lens of an acute challenge to individuals.
schoen 10y ago
> you can plainly test acidification with two cups of water - tap and sparkling How are the acidities of tap and sparkling water related to the acidity of the ocean? Don't the people who processed the drinking water exercise basic (no pun intended) control over its pH?
- panzagl 10y ago
  He meant that the concept is easy to explain and demonstrate.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  Presumably showing them that these little pieces of paper are cheap and effective tests make it easier to believe that people elsewhere are performing tests reliably. If I showed someone how to use these paper tests and showed how reliable they were, then showed a video of someone testing ocean water they, just might, just barely, hopefully might be more likely to believe me.
- simonsarris 10y ago
  You can look at tap water and sparkling (tap water + CO2 injection) and note that the sparkling water is more acidic. (Because CO2 dissolves in water into carbonic acid) CO2 + H2O ⇌ H2CO3 CO2 injection to make sparkling water is a lot like CO2 being absorbed by the oceans.
  - djrogers 10y ago
    > CO2 injection to make sparkling water is a lot like CO2 being absorbed by the oceans. So the purpose of the demonstration is to show that we're making the oceans yummier? Awesome!
  - schoen 10y ago
    Oh, I completely missed the point of the demonstration! I though there was going to be some way in which one of the kinds of water had changed from its historical pH due to indirect effects of human activity (which didn't make sense to me).
- 10y ago
irrational 10y ago
"just as climate change evolved from the use of the term global warming". Maybe officially, but I hear most people (even those who know better) still calling it global warming (and then making jokes about how its so cold they would appreciate some more global warming). At one point I thought maybe the next generation would call it climate change, but I have teenagers and they and all their friends call it global warming still (and its not due to ignorance - they full know it should be called climate change).
- tunap 10y ago
  A highly paid political scriptwriter(& a small army of researchers) coined the phrase "climate change" and worked it into all the politicos' speeches of the day to make it stick. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/interviews/luntz.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/int...
  - philipkglass 10y ago
    It looks like he promoted use of the phrase "climate change" during the GWB administration but that's not when the phrase was coined: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=climate+change%2C+global+warming&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cclimate%20change%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cglobal%20warming%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=climate+change... The term "climate change" appeared in research literature long before (resistance to acknowledging) anthropogenic climate change became a significant political issue. See for example this short 1970 communication in PNAS "Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change" http://www.pnas.org/content/67/2/898.short http://www.pnas.org/content/67/2/898.short I think that the term "climate change" is better than "global warming" since it also encompasses localized cooling events that might be caused by anthropogenic emissions, e.g. the hypothesized collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation that could lead to colder winters in Western Europe.
    - tunap 10y ago
      I apologize, "coined the phrase" is indeed incorrect. It was a scientific term before it's mainstream usage. He intentionally initiated the substitution from GW to CC in all dialogues from the White House(the entire GOP?) which ultimately led to the mainstream usage in the public forum. After noting the change in language(and the Dems callng foul) I found his interview and how the public dialogue is orchestrated to be quite interesting. Cannot recommend the Frontline video enough. I don't disagree, Climate Change seens more appropriate/accurate.
snarf21 10y ago
I like it!! Or "toxic plastic death water", let's start a poll!!
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marcus_holmes 10y ago
I gotta say, that experiment would not convince me. I own a sodastream. To get fizzy water, I need to inject CO2 under pressure into water to get it to become fizzy. Wafting some pure CO2 over a glass of water would not make it fizzy or change its PH Wafting some pure CO2 over a kilometre-deep flask of water would definitely not change it Considering we're talking about increasing the level of CO2 from 0.000002% to 0.000004%, and then wafting it around the surface of a vast ocean, I don't think the experiments can be compared at all...
- phaemon 10y ago
  > increasing the level of CO2 from 0.000002% to 0.000004% What is that a percentage of? (if it's atmosphere you meant, you've gone the wrong way with your zeros)
  - marcus_holmes 10y ago
    well we've gone from 200ppm to 400ppm. I might be a couple of zeroes off because it's a percentage, but the point is that this is trace gas, not pure CO2 which is what my sodastream uses
    - phaemon 10y ago
      That would be 0.02% to 0.04%.
      - marcus_holmes 10y ago
        no, 0.02% = 0.0002 = 2 parts per ten thousand, so another two zeros on that. 0.0002% I make it
- ac29 10y ago
  >Wafting some pure CO2 over a glass of water would not make it fizzy or change its PH Yes, it would change the pH [0]. CO2 dissolves in water to form carbonic acid [1]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid

ch4s3 10y ago

*edit: anecdote ahead My experience working as a clean air and water advocate in my early 20s was that people who don't buy into climate change also tend to rationalize away things like potable water, wildlife, and preservation of natural resources. The venn diagram of people who don't "believe in" climate change and would support CO2 cuts to stop ocean acidification is tiny. However, I'd love to be proven wrong.

macintux 10y ago
Jesus is coming soon so why bother? (James Watt claims he never said it, but a family member of mine did.)
- unit91 10y ago
  Well for starters the Apostle Paul wrote the 2nd Thessalonian letter condemning this very attitude. Hence, in my experience, comments like this are generally offered by (1) nominal Christians who don't seem familiar with what Jesus and the apostles actually taught; or (2) atheists who use it as a straw-man argument against Christianity proper, instead of an admonishment to the nominals to actually know what they claim to believe.
  - betenoire 10y ago
    Or 3) people whose every interaction with said group of people seems to confirm the bias. At what point am I allowed to criticize the culture as a whole?
    - ch4s3 10y ago
      This sort of thing always seems to descend into some sort of odd "no true Scotsman" argument where people end up debate sincere vs insincere adherents of "X" belief. A lot of people are real pricks, may there is a correlation with belief system "X", but I've yet to see strong evidence that its causal. Now ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and global average temperature rise; thats a good causal relationship!
      - betenoire 10y ago
        Are you saying my observation isn't valid because it may descend into a non-sensical debate? If we are throwing around fallacies, I have one too then. My observation remains though. The Christians who literally follow the scriptures number far far fewer than those that don't. That is NOT a comment about "sincere" vs "insincere" christians. The "insincere" ones seem just as sincere to me.
        ch4s3 10y ago
        > Are you saying my observation isn't valid No. I'm just saying that it's hard to have a constructive conversation about in this forum based on my previous experience. I might also make the argument that to "literally follow the scriptures" is fundamentalism, and isn't necessarily a mark of a "true" adherent of the faith in question. But that is a bit of a tangent, and none of this has much to do with ocean trash so I don't have a lot more to add.
    - unit91 10y ago
      I'm not sure why you're being down-voted here. This a legitimate case of the problem of induction, "the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy" [1]. That said, it seems like the flaw in your reasoning (and ch4s3's) is the lack of an objective standard. Holding sincere beliefs and referring to oneself as a Christian don't in themselves make a person a Christian. For example, suppose you met a person who said "I'm a Christian. I don't believe in God and I think the Bible is fiction." Instead of "well ok, he's very sincere, he just doesn't follow the scriptures literally", I think we would rightly conclude "despite his sincere beliefs and identity claim, this person is not a Christian." That is, his identity claim is false. In order for a person's Christian identity claim to be true, he must hold and practice true (or approximately true) beliefs about the person, work, and teaching of Christ. So doesn't this deteriorate into a "no true Scotsman" argument? I don't think so. The hallmark of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy is its ad hocness [2]. Otherwise, no taxonomy of any kind would be possible. But surely it isn't ad hoc to say "Christians follow Christ's teachings, and non-Christians don't." So what are Christ's teachings? That can only be adjudicated by examining scripture to find out what Jesus said. Some statements (e.g. "you shall love your neighbor as yourself") are pretty straightforward. Some are less so. But we shouldn't take the fact that people disagree about some of the interpretations to mean that Jesus had no meaning, or that his meaning in unknowable. Rather, this should prompt us to ask "what are your reasons for thinking that's what Jesus meant?". Getting back to your question, we're inductive creatures, and to an extent I don't think you can (or should) avoid drawing generic conclusions about cultures as a whole, given a large enough sample. But make sure that you're sampling persons whom you believe to be actual Christians, and not merely nominal Christians. For comparison, here are a couple of Jesus's metrics: "by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" [3] and "if you love me, you will keep my commandments" [4]. Sources: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman 3. John 13:35 4. John 14:15
brennen 10y ago
Yeah. I think that, while there are people who value some classes of conservation without believing in climate change, climate change is in general a subset of what people don't believe in. Which is to say: Almost anything espoused by environmentalists, any program of environmental regulation, any restraint on resource extraction, etc.
fil_a_del_fee_a 10y ago
I always agreed that pollution should be a higher priority than climate change. The onus is on me to drive a hybrid to reduce my co2 output, but nothing is being done to curb polluting our waterways.
- debacle 10y ago
  Packaging is a great evil. Most of our waste is packaging. My family recycles a lot, buys glass/aluminum when possible, and still we generate 2-3 bags of garbage each week, mostly food packaging.
  - akovaski 10y ago
    Just for reference, what is the size of your family and what we the sizes of the garbage bags?
    - debacle 10y ago
      2 adults 1 teen and 1 child. Just normal sized garbage bags.
      - vacri 10y ago
        And the garbage bags themselves are packaging. It's hard to escape.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    The supermarkets discovered they can get you to buy more tomatoes when there are six of them in shiny cellophane, so that's what they do. It's maddening. Not only that, it's nearly impossible not to use plastic packaging if you're not handily located near a co-op (or Unverpackt, if you're in Germany). In many cases I've been looked at suspiciously when I said I didn't need a bag for my two items at the checkout, as though there were something wrong with me. Saying "it just winds up in the back of my car" usually convinced them (never mind that I cycled there...)
yourapostasy 10y ago
> ...people who don't buy into climate change also tend to rationalize away things like potable water, wildlife, and preservation of natural resources... This is emergent behavior from a lifetime inculcating conditioned responses to acute challenges in narrow fields of interest, combined with a lack of frame of reference to externalities. People who never plan beyond a horizon of a few decades, and only in very constrained domains, spending the vast majority of their time addressing perceived here-and-now challenges to their social/economic/personal domains are going to find it very difficult to connect with these long-term incubation period threats. It doesn't help that Upton Sinclair, Jr.'s The Jungle is not widely-read, or reading critical analysis non-fiction is not widespread. Nor does it help that our economic system doesn't account with a high fidelity for where we establish our entropy sinks (at our current technological level, aiming as close to the outer reaches of the solar system as we can is sufficient for now, and we move the aim point higher as we acquire more energy manipulation capabilities). Impactful stories and imagery can sometimes pierce this veil. Connecting to an imminent threat to personal, individual health seemed to galvanize the food safety and pollution control issues, which again points us back to presenting say, ocean acidification via the lens of an acute challenge to individuals.

schoen 10y ago

> you can plainly test acidification with two cups of water - tap and sparkling How are the acidities of tap and sparkling water related to the acidity of the ocean? Don't the people who processed the drinking water exercise basic (no pun intended) control over its pH?

panzagl 10y ago
He meant that the concept is easy to explain and demonstrate.
sqeaky 10y ago
Presumably showing them that these little pieces of paper are cheap and effective tests make it easier to believe that people elsewhere are performing tests reliably. If I showed someone how to use these paper tests and showed how reliable they were, then showed a video of someone testing ocean water they, just might, just barely, hopefully might be more likely to believe me.
simonsarris 10y ago
You can look at tap water and sparkling (tap water + CO2 injection) and note that the sparkling water is more acidic. (Because CO2 dissolves in water into carbonic acid) CO2 + H2O ⇌ H2CO3 CO2 injection to make sparkling water is a lot like CO2 being absorbed by the oceans.
- djrogers 10y ago
  > CO2 injection to make sparkling water is a lot like CO2 being absorbed by the oceans. So the purpose of the demonstration is to show that we're making the oceans yummier? Awesome!
- schoen 10y ago
  Oh, I completely missed the point of the demonstration! I though there was going to be some way in which one of the kinds of water had changed from its historical pH due to indirect effects of human activity (which didn't make sense to me).
10y ago

irrational 10y ago

"just as climate change evolved from the use of the term global warming". Maybe officially, but I hear most people (even those who know better) still calling it global warming (and then making jokes about how its so cold they would appreciate some more global warming). At one point I thought maybe the next generation would call it climate change, but I have teenagers and they and all their friends call it global warming still (and its not due to ignorance - they full know it should be called climate change).

tunap 10y ago
A highly paid political scriptwriter(& a small army of researchers) coined the phrase "climate change" and worked it into all the politicos' speeches of the day to make it stick. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/interviews/luntz.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/int...
- philipkglass 10y ago
  It looks like he promoted use of the phrase "climate change" during the GWB administration but that's not when the phrase was coined: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=climate+change%2C+global+warming&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cclimate%20change%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cglobal%20warming%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=climate+change... The term "climate change" appeared in research literature long before (resistance to acknowledging) anthropogenic climate change became a significant political issue. See for example this short 1970 communication in PNAS "Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change" http://www.pnas.org/content/67/2/898.short http://www.pnas.org/content/67/2/898.short I think that the term "climate change" is better than "global warming" since it also encompasses localized cooling events that might be caused by anthropogenic emissions, e.g. the hypothesized collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation that could lead to colder winters in Western Europe.
  - tunap 10y ago
    I apologize, "coined the phrase" is indeed incorrect. It was a scientific term before it's mainstream usage. He intentionally initiated the substitution from GW to CC in all dialogues from the White House(the entire GOP?) which ultimately led to the mainstream usage in the public forum. After noting the change in language(and the Dems callng foul) I found his interview and how the public dialogue is orchestrated to be quite interesting. Cannot recommend the Frontline video enough. I don't disagree, Climate Change seens more appropriate/accurate.

snarf21 10y ago

I like it!! Or "toxic plastic death water", let's start a poll!!

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marcus_holmes 10y ago

I gotta say, that experiment would not convince me. I own a sodastream. To get fizzy water, I need to inject CO2 under pressure into water to get it to become fizzy. Wafting some pure CO2 over a glass of water would not make it fizzy or change its PH Wafting some pure CO2 over a kilometre-deep flask of water would definitely not change it Considering we're talking about increasing the level of CO2 from 0.000002% to 0.000004%, and then wafting it around the surface of a vast ocean, I don't think the experiments can be compared at all...

phaemon 10y ago
> increasing the level of CO2 from 0.000002% to 0.000004% What is that a percentage of? (if it's atmosphere you meant, you've gone the wrong way with your zeros)
- marcus_holmes 10y ago
  well we've gone from 200ppm to 400ppm. I might be a couple of zeroes off because it's a percentage, but the point is that this is trace gas, not pure CO2 which is what my sodastream uses
  - phaemon 10y ago
    That would be 0.02% to 0.04%.
    - marcus_holmes 10y ago
      no, 0.02% = 0.0002 = 2 parts per ten thousand, so another two zeros on that. 0.0002% I make it
ac29 10y ago
>Wafting some pure CO2 over a glass of water would not make it fizzy or change its PH Yes, it would change the pH [0]. CO2 dissolves in water to form carbonic acid [1]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid