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> I asked what you believe there because I think those who doubt it are ill-informed and biased, and so I doubt their arguments on renewables. For someone who
by southern_cross 7y ago
> I asked what you believe there because I think those who doubt it are ill-informed and biased, and so I doubt their arguments on renewables.
For someone who has no real skin in the game (I'm a computer nerd, data-handling guy by training and trade), I'm probably one of the most well-informed and unbiased folks (at least of my type) out there on the subject of climate change. I've been following it on and off ever since great "Global Cooling" scare the of the 1970s, back when I was just a kid. And, seeing what I've seen out there and knowing what I know now, on any given day lately I'm tempted to just chuck the whole concept of anthropogenic climate change out the window. But then I back off on that because that's probably taking things too far.
As far as where I my own thoughts fall on the subject, I would probably best be described as a "lukewarmer", to borrow that term. I believe that the climate has warmed lately, but not nearly as much as is being claimed. That this warming is largely natural and cyclical, and that while man may very well be playing a role in it, his influence on it is not nearly as dramatic as is being claimed. And that to the extent that man does play a role here, this goes beyond any effects that CO2 emissions themselves may have on the situation. It's not just all about the CO2, in other words, and it may in fact have very little to do with CO2.
As to where things go wrong, the first problem probably has to do with the fact that an awful lot of the climate-related "data" being bandied about is basically just made up. (I'm not kidding here; you would probably be as appalled as I was to find out the details.) And what isn't just made up is often of remarkably low quality.
So there really isn't enough quality data at all, at least not at the present time, to justify making "the sky is falling" pronouncements. But these keep being made anyway, by people who should probably know better, or who at least fall somewhere on the spectrum between ill-informed and plain old dishonest. And I can tell you that from what I've seen lately, an awful lot of the folks who are falling for this stuff hook, line, and sinker - and at least some of the folks who are saying it, too - can probably best be described as irrational.
Along those lines, James Hansen, one of the Grand Old Men of climate change science, has of late taken to saying and doing things which make even his own acolytes take pause. But that doesn't stop his name from showing up on research papers such as the following. (I have a lot to say about that paper, too; maybe later.)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2018JD029522 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2018...
And then you have Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old autistic Swedish schoolgirl who of late has been held up as something of an activist paragon in the climate change community. But now that her mother has claimed (or so it would appear) that young Greta can "see" CO2 in the air with her naked eyes (I presume this means all 400ppm, or 0.04%, of it), based on the outrageousness of such a statement I expect that we probably won't be hearing or seeing much more from or about young Greta.
As for the future of wind and solar, I don't necessarily expect that they're just going to be abandoned or anything, but I also don't expect that they are ever going to come close to living up to the promises which are being made for them, both physically and economically. Much like coal plants today, I expect that as they reach the end of their useful lives they probably won't just be automatically replaced with like kind, but rather with something else, whatever that may be - probably natural gas, maybe even nuclear. (Once again I can give you local, real-world examples of this type of thing if you want.)
- woodandsteel 7y ago>I believe that the climate has warmed lately, but not nearly as much as is being claimed. That this warming is largely natural and cyclical, and that while man may very well be playing a role in it, his influence on it is not nearly as dramatic as is being claimed. Are there any sorts of future developments, either in temperature or new scientific research, that could persuade you either of those ideas is mistaken and the anthropogenic global climate change danger position is correct?
- southern_cross 7y agoAre there any sorts of future developments, either in temperature or new scientific research, that could persuade YOU either of those ideas is NOT mistaken and the anthropogenic global climate change danger position is NOT correct? I'm flipping your question on its head because almost always in these types of discussions people accuse me of being ill-informed, then start throwing papers and such at me. But in almost all cases I've already read those things. (I do go ahead and read the ones that are new to me.) But when I ask them to do the same - to look at claims being made from the other side of the story - they usually just outright refuse. Apparently doing such a thing is beneath them, and there's no need for them to do so anyway because they've already made up their minds and have no intention of changing their position, no matter what. Often though, the truth of the matter seems to be more like they haven't actually read the stuff they're throwing my way themselves, and probably couldn't really understand it if they did, so of course they're going to refuse anything I suggest. It's amusing to try and discuss the whole situation with them, which they try to pretend they are well-informed on, and then realize that they are generally clueless and that they're mostly just falling in line with whatever is showing up in the news - the clickbait headlines and such. Case in point: Once, during a discussion about satellite observations, I made an educated guess as to how those observations were being made. But then someone called me ill-informed about it and threw a couple of papers my way. And when I read those papers, (surprise surprise) they said pretty much exactly what I'd said myself. When I pointed this out to the person who was giving me grief, it became obvious that they hadn't actually read those papers before hurling them at me. I told them that I would gladly delay further discussion on the matter while they went ahead and did that, but all I got back from that offer was pretty much just dead air. To actually answer your question, though, they could start by using higher quality data, and stop screwing around so much with what data they do have. Unfortunately quality data only really goes back a few decades, if that, and it may be a few more decades yet before there's enough such data to be able to make any decent pronouncements from it. And until that happens I'm not really willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially when they go around claiming "the sky is falling" on quite flimsy evidence. I mean, if they instead said something like "We really don't have enough data to back it up yet, but from what we do have we think we see some potentially disconcerting trends. We're generally going to have to take a wait-and-see attitude, but it wouldn't hurt to start making some contingency plans beginning right now and also maybe some basic changes here and there.", then I consider that an honest statement that I could generally get behind.