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I used to think that global warming was an absolute true fact of life but with age, I've become more skeptical. I've worked with and listened to enough scienti

I used to think that global warming was an absolute true fact of life but with age, I've become more skeptical. I've worked with and listened to enough scientists that I've become skeptical of certain branches of science; particularly those that try to make general predictions based on incredibly complex data which encompasses an almost infinite number of variables. Several things which make me doubt: - Having worked on extremely complex software projects, I don't believe that any human being is capable of understanding or simulating something as complex as the earth, they will almost certainly exclude the vast majority of variables; many of which may not seem relevant to our primitive human minds but which may in fact be critical once you factor them in combinations with all other variables. - The earth was hotter at several points in the not-so-distant history. The Earth's climate has been constantly fluctuating. - Humans only produce 3% of the total CO2 released in the atmosphere each year. I wouldn't be surprised if the annual average fluctuation in CO2 produced by geothermal activity alone is higher than 3%. - Scientists acknowledge that more CO2 means a greener earth because plants strive on CO2 but they fail to acknowledge the possibility that more plants would take out more CO2 from the atmosphere so even with these primitive models it's looking more like some kind of equilibrium will be reached rather than a 'point of no return' as climate scientists keep advertising. - Life on earth has always been evolving and can continue to evolve to handle changes in temperatures. The species which don't adapt will die out and this is fine, it has always been like this. - If the Earth can go from being a burning ball of magma (as it was millions of years ago) to what it is today, then surely it can recover from a few degrees higher than normal. Without hindsight, nobody could have predicted that this burning ball of magma would become the lush planet that we have today and yet scientists are claiming that they can make predictions from an initial state which is much more complex and less predictable than that relatively simple ball of magma. - Climate scientists need jobs and they wouldn't have any if they didn't continuously create fear to keep public funding coming their way. At some point in the past, for reasons unknown to us, some powerful people decided to give climate scientists a platform and a voice on the world stage and now they make heavy use of it.

ncmncm 7y ago
Climate models of decades ago have turned out to be dead on. Denialism is fundamentally dishonest. Uncertainty does not favor inaction. The more the uncertainty, the more action is justified.
- cryptica 7y ago
  >> Climate models of decades ago have turned out to be dead on. Of course, with hindsight, out of thousands of models, we cherry-picked the most accurate ones, gave those scientists medals and completely ignored the majority of other models which turned out of be wrong. I think that renewable energy is good and will yield cheaper electricity in the future and won't produce smog so we should invest in it but there is no need to rush the implementation stage. Sometimes it's better to wait for better technology to come along and implement it once rather than keep re-implementing it every few years each time a slightly better solution comes along. Like every time someone invents a new, less expensive, cheaper to maintain wind turbine, what do you do with all the existing wind turbines? The more you have, the more expensive it's going to be to migrate.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    You use the turbines you have, and build better new ones. When they wear out, you dismantle them and replace with the latest model. What is your alternative? Do nothing and wait for some future generation to do something? There always were excuses to do nothing, and there always will be. What is different now is there are not any future generations left.
    - ThomPete 7y ago
      We are doing a lot already. Not sure why we should spend money and lives to save a much more advanced future generation who will be better equipped at dealing with the always changing climate.
- fabatka 7y ago
  > The more the uncertainty, the more action is justified. I'm all for taking action against climate change, but I'm not sure this is an airtight argument (although I too have used it before). If there is uncertainty, how can you decide what action should you take? The scale from immediately shutting down all coal plants (to the point of blackouts) to doing nothing is really big.
discordance 7y ago
"The Planet is fine, the people are fucked" - George Carlin, 1992: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
sdoering 7y ago
just one reply to question one of your statements: The last time the earth was hotter is somewhat between 180k to 240k years ago. So "not-so-distant-history" is at least somewhat misleading, if not outright lying.
- cryptica 7y ago
  Even this NASA map here seems to be showing that the earth was on average getting colder every year for almost 100 years (from 1884 to around 1970): https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine ^ Note that the blue and red areas represent not the temperature in absolute terms, but the change of temperature each year. The amount of blue between 1884 and 1970 would look alarming and frightening if it was replaced with the color red... It's not surprising that some scientists were concerned with global cooling. If the cold trend had continued, today we'd be worried about the 'Fridge effect' instead of the 'Greenhouse effect'. People will always speculate to create fear to get attention and power and money. Also popular charts like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Com... don't show the temperature, but the change of temperature (draw a horizontal line where the 0 point is). So yes, for 1900 years until only about 100 years ago, the earth has been getting cooler every single year. So the earth has never been so cold as it has been in the past few decades. In our increasingly secular society, certain lesser fields of science have taken the place to religion when it comes to the business of manufacturing fear and selling solutions. There has always been a market for this and probably always will be.
Oletros 7y ago
> I used to think that global warming was an absolute true fact Looking all the points you have written, you never believed in climate change because all of them are the same debunked denialist propaganda. I suppose you have just one proof of scientists doing illegal things and falsifyng data. Beccause you're not accusing them just ebc ause you dewny
cryptica 7y ago
Also, to support my point that these vocal scientists cannot be fully trusted, look at this article as an example: https://metro.co.uk/2018/08/29/this-is-how-much-the-earth-has-warmed-up-over-the-last-200-years-7892549/ https://metro.co.uk/2018/08/29/this-is-how-much-the-earth-ha... If you scroll down a bit, it has an alarming animated graphic which seems to show a short period of minor cooling/stability followed by a more recent longer period of extreme heating. The deception of this animation is two-fold: - Look at how fast the years are ticking when it shows the cooling period vs the heating period. The animation fast forwards through 20 years of cooling and then plays 6 years of heating in slow motion; this makes the animation seem more alarming. - They cut out the longest, most significant period of cooling between 1900 and 1910. Proof: https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine Another interesting distortion from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Com... That looks scary except when you consider that this is not the temperature but the change of temperature - When you look at it this way, you can see that the earth has been getting colder every year for 1800 years, it's only in the past 50 to 100 years that the trend finally reversed... After 1800 years, it was going to reverse eventually so this is not alarming at all. I would have been more alarmed if the cooling trend had continued. In the context of this global cooling, some of the rapid temperature drops which led to the little ice age 400 years ago are much more alarming than short-term rises in temperature that we are currently experiencing. Whether or not climate is changing, it's clear that the information is being distorted to make the data seem more alarming and this is deceptive. There are many such examples of data manipulation all over the internet.

ncmncm 7y ago

Climate models of decades ago have turned out to be dead on. Denialism is fundamentally dishonest. Uncertainty does not favor inaction. The more the uncertainty, the more action is justified.

cryptica 7y ago
>> Climate models of decades ago have turned out to be dead on. Of course, with hindsight, out of thousands of models, we cherry-picked the most accurate ones, gave those scientists medals and completely ignored the majority of other models which turned out of be wrong. I think that renewable energy is good and will yield cheaper electricity in the future and won't produce smog so we should invest in it but there is no need to rush the implementation stage. Sometimes it's better to wait for better technology to come along and implement it once rather than keep re-implementing it every few years each time a slightly better solution comes along. Like every time someone invents a new, less expensive, cheaper to maintain wind turbine, what do you do with all the existing wind turbines? The more you have, the more expensive it's going to be to migrate.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  You use the turbines you have, and build better new ones. When they wear out, you dismantle them and replace with the latest model. What is your alternative? Do nothing and wait for some future generation to do something? There always were excuses to do nothing, and there always will be. What is different now is there are not any future generations left.
  - ThomPete 7y ago
    We are doing a lot already. Not sure why we should spend money and lives to save a much more advanced future generation who will be better equipped at dealing with the always changing climate.
fabatka 7y ago
> The more the uncertainty, the more action is justified. I'm all for taking action against climate change, but I'm not sure this is an airtight argument (although I too have used it before). If there is uncertainty, how can you decide what action should you take? The scale from immediately shutting down all coal plants (to the point of blackouts) to doing nothing is really big.

discordance 7y ago

"The Planet is fine, the people are fucked" - George Carlin, 1992: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

sdoering 7y ago

just one reply to question one of your statements: The last time the earth was hotter is somewhat between 180k to 240k years ago. So "not-so-distant-history" is at least somewhat misleading, if not outright lying.

cryptica 7y ago
Even this NASA map here seems to be showing that the earth was on average getting colder every year for almost 100 years (from 1884 to around 1970): https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine ^ Note that the blue and red areas represent not the temperature in absolute terms, but the change of temperature each year. The amount of blue between 1884 and 1970 would look alarming and frightening if it was replaced with the color red... It's not surprising that some scientists were concerned with global cooling. If the cold trend had continued, today we'd be worried about the 'Fridge effect' instead of the 'Greenhouse effect'. People will always speculate to create fear to get attention and power and money. Also popular charts like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Com... don't show the temperature, but the change of temperature (draw a horizontal line where the 0 point is). So yes, for 1900 years until only about 100 years ago, the earth has been getting cooler every single year. So the earth has never been so cold as it has been in the past few decades. In our increasingly secular society, certain lesser fields of science have taken the place to religion when it comes to the business of manufacturing fear and selling solutions. There has always been a market for this and probably always will be.

Oletros 7y ago

> I used to think that global warming was an absolute true fact Looking all the points you have written, you never believed in climate change because all of them are the same debunked denialist propaganda. I suppose you have just one proof of scientists doing illegal things and falsifyng data. Beccause you're not accusing them just ebc ause you dewny

cryptica 7y ago

Also, to support my point that these vocal scientists cannot be fully trusted, look at this article as an example: https://metro.co.uk/2018/08/29/this-is-how-much-the-earth-has-warmed-up-over-the-last-200-years-7892549/ https://metro.co.uk/2018/08/29/this-is-how-much-the-earth-ha... If you scroll down a bit, it has an alarming animated graphic which seems to show a short period of minor cooling/stability followed by a more recent longer period of extreme heating. The deception of this animation is two-fold: - Look at how fast the years are ticking when it shows the cooling period vs the heating period. The animation fast forwards through 20 years of cooling and then plays 6 years of heating in slow motion; this makes the animation seem more alarming. - They cut out the longest, most significant period of cooling between 1900 and 1910. Proof: https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine Another interesting distortion from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Com... That looks scary except when you consider that this is not the temperature but the change of temperature - When you look at it this way, you can see that the earth has been getting colder every year for 1800 years, it's only in the past 50 to 100 years that the trend finally reversed... After 1800 years, it was going to reverse eventually so this is not alarming at all. I would have been more alarmed if the cooling trend had continued. In the context of this global cooling, some of the rapid temperature drops which led to the little ice age 400 years ago are much more alarming than short-term rises in temperature that we are currently experiencing. Whether or not climate is changing, it's clear that the information is being distorted to make the data seem more alarming and this is deceptive. There are many such examples of data manipulation all over the internet.