6 ms·

> It just seems to be one of those areas that's impenetrable to laymen. Bull-hooey. If you're genuinely interested you only have to understand the difference

> It just seems to be one of those areas that's impenetrable to laymen. Bull-hooey. If you're genuinely interested you only have to understand the difference between climate and weather, the time scales involved (decades, not years), the limitations of models vis-a-vis spot-predictions, and wrap your head around the nuance between "change" and "rate of change" (ie speed vs acceleration). That is not hard, but 99% of "skeptics" can't be bothered... If you're mentally flexible enough to get that the problem isn't that pendulums swing, but that a fast swinging pendulum could be Very Bad for our civilization, climate change rests on three straightforward principles and observations: 1) The absorption spectrum of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses: test-able with an aquarium and a UV light 2) That aggregate 24/7 human industrial activity (ie all: cars, boats, planes, construction, smelting, BTC mining, etc), is somehow increasing greenhouse gasses: this is tested by checking the air, if seeing smog clouds or logic isn't proof enough 3) That Venus exists, our telescopes are not lying, and we don't want to take vacations there Of the 8 planets in this solar system, 1 of them has had its climate go into overdrive and now resembles biblical Hell. Human activity will never push things that far, but we'd talking about the end of mankind well before that point... Climate change is not impenetrable to laymen. Climate change has been on the end of a 50 year FUD campaign meant to confuse the issue so that laymen only hear the arguing. Totally coincidental: oil company marketing triangulation has pointed out for years that they don't have to convince anyone on climate change, they just have to extend the debate past the point of action. It worked.

southern_cross 8y ago
> That is not hard, but 99% of "skeptics" can't be bothered... Actually, most of the "skeptics" that I've seen online are right on top of this kind of stuff! It's the other side that just wants to hand-wave away far too many things. > 1) The absorption spectrum of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses: test-able with an aquarium and a UV light If you want to have some "fun", go track down a full spectrum chart of sunlight and how carbon dioxide and water vapor and such absorb that sunlight. Pay particular attention to the infrared band, which is very large. What do you see? As to your aquarium example, some years back a "skeptic" once very publicly tried to replicate a similar experiment - one that was claimed to have been done many times and which clearly showed the greenhouse effect of CO2. Only it didn't replicate as described, as I recall, implying that the example itself may very well be bogus. Also, IIRC, another group ran a similar experiment sometime later and claimed a positive result. Except that even a layman like myself could clearly see that their experiment was very poorly controlled, and not nearly as cleanly run as the first one. So while they happily claimed a successful replication, in fact they never actually proved nor disproved anything, as far as I could tell. > 2) That aggregate 24/7 human industrial activity (ie all: cars, boats, planes, construction, smelting, BTC mining, etc), is somehow increasing greenhouse gasses: this is tested by checking the air, if seeing smog clouds or logic isn't proof enough This includes water vapor, perhaps the most powerful and important of all the greenhouse gases on Earth. Yet for some reason this is almost completely ignored by the anti-CO2 crowd. > 3) That Venus exists, our telescopes are not lying, and we don't want to take vacations there If you want to have some more "fun", go look at the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere of Venus, which is very hot. And while you're at it, go look at the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere of Mars, which is quite cold - cold enough that the CO2 actually freezes out of the air there on a regular basis. Tell me what you find. > Climate change has been on the end of a 50 year FUD campaign meant to confuse the issue so that laymen only hear the arguing. So it's 50 years now, is it? Seems a little long to me but whatever. What's important here is that this is another claim of "FUD", no doubt directed at the fossil-fuel industry. But IMO claims that this are often made less to point out "the truth of the matter" (in their opinion) and are instead usually more of a cheap-shot attempt to convince folks not to listen to the points being made by the other side (or to try and justify their own refusal to listen), which often call out glaring weaknesses in the overall argument.
- telchar 8y ago
  You are disputing the most basic fact of CO2 being a greenhouse gas. This is why we say "skeptics" can't be bothered to understand the science. If CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas then go write a paper about it and claim your Nobel. Note that we put "skeptics" in quotes because cranks aren't skeptics. A skeptic would consider that the one guy who failed to replicate an experiment may be wrong, as well as the possibility that all the other people who ran the experiment were wrong.
  - southern_cross 8y ago
    No, I clearly said no such thing! (You're putting words into my mouth, which is a form of lying.) In fact what I said was that a particular experiment - one which was apparently falsely claimed to be easily replicable and had been done successfully dozens of times - was in fact not replicable when done in a careful and public way. This is very different from claiming that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas. That phrase though - "greenhouse gas" - is a misnomer. Actual greenhouses don't operate the same way that atmospheric greenhouse gases do, but the phrase has stuck so now we have to live with it. And yes, there was much discussion among "skeptics" of the actual experiment and the supposed others like it at the time, and of the fact that problems with it may have traced back to what I just said above. But in the end I don't think anyone was convinced that these experiments necessarily proved or disproved anything, much less that they had been successfully replicated dozens of times.
- bonesss 8y ago
  > So it's 50 years now, is it? Seems a little long to me but whatever. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... And before that there was efforts to stimy acedemia as the models are so painfully obvious and unambiguous... Yeah, 50. > What's important here is that this is another claim of "FUD", Yeah, because it's a literal campaign of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (see link above). Less a "claim" as an "obvious, proven, well established fact". And the trolls are obvious and everywhere, even here. > go look at the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere of Venus ... Mars... Too bad I didn't say anything that would have any connection to this irrelevent, obtuse, comparison. Did Venus experience a runaway greenhouse effect? Are you seriously implying greenhouse gases don't have greenhouse effects? Also: what does NASA say about terraforming Mars and CO2? The top minds over there seemingly know something you do not. Climates can get hot from the greenhouse effect -- those who disagree are disagreeing with obvservable reality. > go track down a full spectrum chart of sunlight and how carbon dioxide and water vapor and such absorb that sunlight I'm completely befuddled by this attempt at a point. Greenhouse gasses absorb infrared radiation, CO2 is one of them. Are you implying the IPCC and top brains at Oak Ridge has missed something in a straight-forward chart about the absorbtion of sunlight? For decades? Sheesh. More energy in a system, what could possibly happen. Wow. Hard. I dunno. Only we all do. The physics of it are crystal clear, even if the predictive models were tricky to make. It makes absurd gesticulating to minor percieved issues look flacid, weak, and hallow. > some years back a "skeptic" once very publicly tried to replicate a [greenhouse gas] similar experiment ... it didn't replicate as described, as I recall, implying... ... implying very little as the experiments I was referring to are painfully simple and have been carried out repeatedly, not just twice. I'm sure you've alerted the relevant journals and conferences, though, to this travesty of scinece. I bet they're sweating with this straightforward and easily proven assault on the foundations of their field... Mmmmm Hmmmm. Time to worry about black helicopters, false flags, and you getting disappeared! Or... is this backed by The Deep State? Tinfoil! Tinfoil! > most of the "skeptics" that I've seen online are right on top of this kind of stuf No they aren't. This is a(nother) blatant falsehood. They are dishonest liars with no credibility and an armory of logical fallacies and hostile attitude that they use to export their moronic, uninformed, world-view. A world-view that is blatantly supported by monied interests pushing junk science and FUD. . -------- . Here's the thing: as yet another in a lOOooooooooooooooong line of climate trolls on the internet, you gotta step it up. These obvious attempts at spreading debunked factoids was played out in the early 00's. So, yeah: "skeptic", because genuine skeptics would read and learn, instead of regurgitating talking points like a Russian Twitter troll. 2/10, needs more effort.
lopmotr 8y ago
You misunderstand me. These are all the same type of qualitative arguments that aren't convincing. They do explain the principles, which is a good start, and they can convince someone of the mechanism that it could work by but you can't make predictions from them so they have no value in convincing anyone who isn't already convinced or willing to trust authority once they've got the gist of how it could be possible. Quick proof that they are unconvincing. Animals have been emitting CO2 since they appeared on Earth but the Earth is still - or even more - suitable for animal life than it ever was. Where's the "obvious" effect of all those millions of years of CO2 production? See, sometimes the effect is too small or it's counteracted by something else that we can't easily predict the effect of.
- kaybe 8y ago
  Of course it's counteracted by the plants.. You can see this signal strongly in the CO2 timeline as seasonal variation since most plants are on the land masses of the northern hemisphere and metabolize less in winter, leading to a temporary CO2 buildup.
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    Sure, but what about sea organisms turning into limestone and trapping carbon in the ground? What about cloud cover changing the rate of heat absorbed from the sun? What about the plants that created the fossil fuels in the first place? How much time does it take for the effect to appear? The fossil record doesn't have a resolution of 100s of years that's important for us because if change is slow enough, we'll probably be able to reactively adapt through technology. My point is that it's too complicated for the layman to be able to calculate the average temperature change 100 year in the future. Not even to the level of whether it'll be positive or negative, let alone what effect that change might have on the ecosystem. Even the IPCC isn't sure if sea levels will rise in that time frame significantly more than they would have without fossil fuel use. It's right on the edge of uncertainty for even the consensus of climate scientists. So laymen who aren't running their own models and keeping up with all the newly discovered effects have no hope whatsoever. Here's another way to look at it. If it's so easy to understand, why didn't anyone notice it 50-100 years ago? Well, they did but they weren't able to make predictions accurate enough to scare anyone into change. How can a non-scientist today do better than the best scientists of the last century? Do we have some easy new theory they can apply? Do we have some new data they can plug into their simple formulas to make those predictions?

southern_cross 8y ago

> That is not hard, but 99% of "skeptics" can't be bothered... Actually, most of the "skeptics" that I've seen online are right on top of this kind of stuff! It's the other side that just wants to hand-wave away far too many things. > 1) The absorption spectrum of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses: test-able with an aquarium and a UV light If you want to have some "fun", go track down a full spectrum chart of sunlight and how carbon dioxide and water vapor and such absorb that sunlight. Pay particular attention to the infrared band, which is very large. What do you see? As to your aquarium example, some years back a "skeptic" once very publicly tried to replicate a similar experiment - one that was claimed to have been done many times and which clearly showed the greenhouse effect of CO2. Only it didn't replicate as described, as I recall, implying that the example itself may very well be bogus. Also, IIRC, another group ran a similar experiment sometime later and claimed a positive result. Except that even a layman like myself could clearly see that their experiment was very poorly controlled, and not nearly as cleanly run as the first one. So while they happily claimed a successful replication, in fact they never actually proved nor disproved anything, as far as I could tell. > 2) That aggregate 24/7 human industrial activity (ie all: cars, boats, planes, construction, smelting, BTC mining, etc), is somehow increasing greenhouse gasses: this is tested by checking the air, if seeing smog clouds or logic isn't proof enough This includes water vapor, perhaps the most powerful and important of all the greenhouse gases on Earth. Yet for some reason this is almost completely ignored by the anti-CO2 crowd. > 3) That Venus exists, our telescopes are not lying, and we don't want to take vacations there If you want to have some more "fun", go look at the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere of Venus, which is very hot. And while you're at it, go look at the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere of Mars, which is quite cold - cold enough that the CO2 actually freezes out of the air there on a regular basis. Tell me what you find. > Climate change has been on the end of a 50 year FUD campaign meant to confuse the issue so that laymen only hear the arguing. So it's 50 years now, is it? Seems a little long to me but whatever. What's important here is that this is another claim of "FUD", no doubt directed at the fossil-fuel industry. But IMO claims that this are often made less to point out "the truth of the matter" (in their opinion) and are instead usually more of a cheap-shot attempt to convince folks not to listen to the points being made by the other side (or to try and justify their own refusal to listen), which often call out glaring weaknesses in the overall argument.

telchar 8y ago
You are disputing the most basic fact of CO2 being a greenhouse gas. This is why we say "skeptics" can't be bothered to understand the science. If CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas then go write a paper about it and claim your Nobel. Note that we put "skeptics" in quotes because cranks aren't skeptics. A skeptic would consider that the one guy who failed to replicate an experiment may be wrong, as well as the possibility that all the other people who ran the experiment were wrong.
- southern_cross 8y ago
  No, I clearly said no such thing! (You're putting words into my mouth, which is a form of lying.) In fact what I said was that a particular experiment - one which was apparently falsely claimed to be easily replicable and had been done successfully dozens of times - was in fact not replicable when done in a careful and public way. This is very different from claiming that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas. That phrase though - "greenhouse gas" - is a misnomer. Actual greenhouses don't operate the same way that atmospheric greenhouse gases do, but the phrase has stuck so now we have to live with it. And yes, there was much discussion among "skeptics" of the actual experiment and the supposed others like it at the time, and of the fact that problems with it may have traced back to what I just said above. But in the end I don't think anyone was convinced that these experiments necessarily proved or disproved anything, much less that they had been successfully replicated dozens of times.
bonesss 8y ago
> So it's 50 years now, is it? Seems a little long to me but whatever. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... And before that there was efforts to stimy acedemia as the models are so painfully obvious and unambiguous... Yeah, 50. > What's important here is that this is another claim of "FUD", Yeah, because it's a literal campaign of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (see link above). Less a "claim" as an "obvious, proven, well established fact". And the trolls are obvious and everywhere, even here. > go look at the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere of Venus ... Mars... Too bad I didn't say anything that would have any connection to this irrelevent, obtuse, comparison. Did Venus experience a runaway greenhouse effect? Are you seriously implying greenhouse gases don't have greenhouse effects? Also: what does NASA say about terraforming Mars and CO2? The top minds over there seemingly know something you do not. Climates can get hot from the greenhouse effect -- those who disagree are disagreeing with obvservable reality. > go track down a full spectrum chart of sunlight and how carbon dioxide and water vapor and such absorb that sunlight I'm completely befuddled by this attempt at a point. Greenhouse gasses absorb infrared radiation, CO2 is one of them. Are you implying the IPCC and top brains at Oak Ridge has missed something in a straight-forward chart about the absorbtion of sunlight? For decades? Sheesh. More energy in a system, what could possibly happen. Wow. Hard. I dunno. Only we all do. The physics of it are crystal clear, even if the predictive models were tricky to make. It makes absurd gesticulating to minor percieved issues look flacid, weak, and hallow. > some years back a "skeptic" once very publicly tried to replicate a [greenhouse gas] similar experiment ... it didn't replicate as described, as I recall, implying... ... implying very little as the experiments I was referring to are painfully simple and have been carried out repeatedly, not just twice. I'm sure you've alerted the relevant journals and conferences, though, to this travesty of scinece. I bet they're sweating with this straightforward and easily proven assault on the foundations of their field... Mmmmm Hmmmm. Time to worry about black helicopters, false flags, and you getting disappeared! Or... is this backed by The Deep State? Tinfoil! Tinfoil! > most of the "skeptics" that I've seen online are right on top of this kind of stuf No they aren't. This is a(nother) blatant falsehood. They are dishonest liars with no credibility and an armory of logical fallacies and hostile attitude that they use to export their moronic, uninformed, world-view. A world-view that is blatantly supported by monied interests pushing junk science and FUD. . -------- . Here's the thing: as yet another in a lOOooooooooooooooong line of climate trolls on the internet, you gotta step it up. These obvious attempts at spreading debunked factoids was played out in the early 00's. So, yeah: "skeptic", because genuine skeptics would read and learn, instead of regurgitating talking points like a Russian Twitter troll. 2/10, needs more effort.

lopmotr 8y ago

You misunderstand me. These are all the same type of qualitative arguments that aren't convincing. They do explain the principles, which is a good start, and they can convince someone of the mechanism that it could work by but you can't make predictions from them so they have no value in convincing anyone who isn't already convinced or willing to trust authority once they've got the gist of how it could be possible. Quick proof that they are unconvincing. Animals have been emitting CO2 since they appeared on Earth but the Earth is still - or even more - suitable for animal life than it ever was. Where's the "obvious" effect of all those millions of years of CO2 production? See, sometimes the effect is too small or it's counteracted by something else that we can't easily predict the effect of.

kaybe 8y ago
Of course it's counteracted by the plants.. You can see this signal strongly in the CO2 timeline as seasonal variation since most plants are on the land masses of the northern hemisphere and metabolize less in winter, leading to a temporary CO2 buildup.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  Sure, but what about sea organisms turning into limestone and trapping carbon in the ground? What about cloud cover changing the rate of heat absorbed from the sun? What about the plants that created the fossil fuels in the first place? How much time does it take for the effect to appear? The fossil record doesn't have a resolution of 100s of years that's important for us because if change is slow enough, we'll probably be able to reactively adapt through technology. My point is that it's too complicated for the layman to be able to calculate the average temperature change 100 year in the future. Not even to the level of whether it'll be positive or negative, let alone what effect that change might have on the ecosystem. Even the IPCC isn't sure if sea levels will rise in that time frame significantly more than they would have without fossil fuel use. It's right on the edge of uncertainty for even the consensus of climate scientists. So laymen who aren't running their own models and keeping up with all the newly discovered effects have no hope whatsoever. Here's another way to look at it. If it's so easy to understand, why didn't anyone notice it 50-100 years ago? Well, they did but they weren't able to make predictions accurate enough to scare anyone into change. How can a non-scientist today do better than the best scientists of the last century? Do we have some easy new theory they can apply? Do we have some new data they can plug into their simple formulas to make those predictions?