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You can observe climate change. It's pretty easy. You can't easily attribute it to human activity, however.

by KGIII 9y ago

richardw 9y ago
Incontrovertible is hard, especially when many make a living from not seeing the evidence. That's why the tobacco industry was able to hang on for so long. This is more important but we'll waste decades convincing the holdouts.
- refurb 9y ago
  especially when many make a living from not seeing the evidence Doesn't that cut both ways?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - KGIII 9y ago
    I'll give you a serious response. It can and there is quite a bit of politics involved, unfortunately. Your best bet is to take the time and do some learning in your own, at least that is what I did. I'd suggest not paying much attention to the extremists on either side. Chances are really good that AGW isn't going to result in human extinction. Chances are really good that AGW is real. The journalism is generally terrible and I do have a negative opinion about some of the more vocal scientists. However, I have a stronger opinion about the people who refuse to acknowledge the results. The planet is absolutely warming and we are almost certainly adding to that warming. Our contribution to this warming is due to our adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The greenhouse effect is well studied and can be replicated. Models aren't certainties and can only make broad predictions. Anyone citing them as absolute fact is poorly representing the science. There are multiple models, many data sets, and variable results. More greenhouse gases will increase the rate of warming. Global warming is only one part of global climate change. The exact results aren't entirely known and the models attempt to predict this. The system is very large and very complicated. We don't even know the initial starting state. So, they make approximations, which is what these kind of models do. When I modeled traffic, I couldn't tell you when you'd get to your destination. I could accurately predict the results, however. They would be largely true for everyone. On an individual scale, they could be wrong but they were much more likely to be true. We had a high confidence in the results. Modeling the climate is a bit like that, only bigger and more complicated. It is also politically charged - another similarity with traffic modeling. But, the end result is we are, almost certainly, going to get to our destination unless we change our route. I am not a climate scientist and was a bit skeptical of the claims of accuracy and certainty. I have since put in a lot of effort to learn. I am really, really certain that the climate is changing, we are speeding that up, and that the models are accurate enough to where we should reduce our output of unconstrained greenhouse gases. Make of this what you will. I've tried to be as clear as I can. I'm not suggesting you trust me. I'm suggesting that you'll reach the same results if you put the effort into learning.
notfromhere 9y ago
Kinda hard to take at face value that the industrial activity of 7 billion people has no impact on the climate when industrialization started 200 years ago
- KGIII 9y ago
  Sure, we know we are impacting it. We can't attribute a specific change to humans vs. natural. We can't say that this specific portion of the trend was caused by humans, not with much certainty.

You can observe climate change. It's pretty easy. You can't easily attribute it to human activity, however.

by KGIII 9y ago

You can observe climate change. It's pretty easy. You can't easily attribute it to human activity, however.

Incontrovertible is hard, especially when many make a living from not seeing the evidence. That's why the tobacco industry was able to hang on for so long. This is more important but we'll waste decades convincing the holdouts.

refurb 9y ago
especially when many make a living from not seeing the evidence Doesn't that cut both ways?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- KGIII 9y ago
  I'll give you a serious response. It can and there is quite a bit of politics involved, unfortunately. Your best bet is to take the time and do some learning in your own, at least that is what I did. I'd suggest not paying much attention to the extremists on either side. Chances are really good that AGW isn't going to result in human extinction. Chances are really good that AGW is real. The journalism is generally terrible and I do have a negative opinion about some of the more vocal scientists. However, I have a stronger opinion about the people who refuse to acknowledge the results. The planet is absolutely warming and we are almost certainly adding to that warming. Our contribution to this warming is due to our adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The greenhouse effect is well studied and can be replicated. Models aren't certainties and can only make broad predictions. Anyone citing them as absolute fact is poorly representing the science. There are multiple models, many data sets, and variable results. More greenhouse gases will increase the rate of warming. Global warming is only one part of global climate change. The exact results aren't entirely known and the models attempt to predict this. The system is very large and very complicated. We don't even know the initial starting state. So, they make approximations, which is what these kind of models do. When I modeled traffic, I couldn't tell you when you'd get to your destination. I could accurately predict the results, however. They would be largely true for everyone. On an individual scale, they could be wrong but they were much more likely to be true. We had a high confidence in the results. Modeling the climate is a bit like that, only bigger and more complicated. It is also politically charged - another similarity with traffic modeling. But, the end result is we are, almost certainly, going to get to our destination unless we change our route. I am not a climate scientist and was a bit skeptical of the claims of accuracy and certainty. I have since put in a lot of effort to learn. I am really, really certain that the climate is changing, we are speeding that up, and that the models are accurate enough to where we should reduce our output of unconstrained greenhouse gases. Make of this what you will. I've tried to be as clear as I can. I'm not suggesting you trust me. I'm suggesting that you'll reach the same results if you put the effort into learning.

notfromhere 9y ago

Kinda hard to take at face value that the industrial activity of 7 billion people has no impact on the climate when industrialization started 200 years ago

KGIII 9y ago
Sure, we know we are impacting it. We can't attribute a specific change to humans vs. natural. We can't say that this specific portion of the trend was caused by humans, not with much certainty.