5 ms·

Not saying for a moment that this conference is authoritative at all. Let's get that out of the way first. Is it possible for both sides of this matter to be

Not saying for a moment that this conference is authoritative at all. Let's get that out of the way first. Is it possible for both sides of this matter to be right and wrong? Absolutely, and that is mostly the case. This, because of how f'd-up this climate change thing has become. It's a mess of indescribable proportions. Why are deniers right? Well, they are not. There's no denying this. Where they are right is in the outcome they are helping create: Taking action to "save the planet" is going nowhere. How are deniers wrong? Well, their belief system is completely skewed and devoid of scientific support. They believe in a fantasy they have woven over time. OK, then. Why are proponents right? Well, because climate change is real. We have irrefutable data going back 800,000 years to show how things used to be on earth and how we influenced things in the last, say, 200 years. One look at atmospheric CO2 concentration and it is impossible to argue against it. And that's just the start. How are proponents wrong then? Well, because they have turned this thing into an ugly combination of politics and religion. It's as irrational as can be and EVERYONE is lying through their teeth. The greatest lie is that we can actually "save the planet". It's an absolute pile of manure. Politicians are the worst. They are using climate change as a battering ram to drive votes. And 100% of what they say are lies. And 100% of what they want to do is pointless and maybe even dangerous. OK, you might say: That's crazy! What proof do you have to support this? Easy: Exactly the same proof we have to show climate change is real. That is 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 data resulting from ice core sampling. This is the point where people don't bother to do the work and either dismiss or attack the messenger (rather than to think, follow the argument and actually apply a bit of critical thinking). Step 1: Check out the graph for the last 800,000 years of CO2 fluctuation. Here it is: https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical.jpg https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical... Here's the source: https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html Step 2: Print that graph or open it in Photoshop and fit lines to the up and down cycles. Step 3: Measure the slopes for up and down cycles of approximately 100 ppm of CO2 change Step 4: Average the ups and average the downs. What I get, in rough strokes, is (roughly): 25,000 years for a 100 ppm increase 50,000 years for a 100 ppm decrease Step 5: Stop and think about this: That, what you just calculated, is the NATURAL RATE OF CHANGE OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 WITHOUT HUMANITY AND OUR TECHNOLOGY ON THE PLANET. That is crucial, absolutely crucial, in understanding just how ridiculous this has become. It means the following: IF WE LEAVE THE PLANET IT WILL TAKE 50,000 YEAS FOR ATMOSPHERIC CO2 TO DECREASE BY 100ppm What does that mean? It means you are not going to fix it by: - Switching to renewable energy sources everywhere on the planet - Eliminating all fossil fuel-based transportation - Switching the entire planet to electric cars - Carbon tax credits - Eliminating all plastic - Taking humanity --all 7 billion of us-- back to medieval times - Destroying the economies of every developed and developing nations You are not going to fix it even if you do all of the above and more. Why? BECAUSE, EVEN IF YOU DO ALL OF THE ABOVE AND MORE, IT DOES NOT EQUAL ALL OF HUMANITY LEAVING THE PLANET. Please think about this for more than a moment so you can start pushing for real conversations based on the truth rather than the ridiculous fantasies being pushed by both sides. This is beyond silly now. It's tragic. We know that the natural down-slope rate of change is in the order of 50,000 years for 100 ppm without humanity, factories, cars, planes, etc. What politicians and zealots are talking about is achieving somewhere in the order of 1000x better performance while all 7 billion people, our cities, factories, technology, etc. remains on the planet. I mean, you don't need to do any math to understand how silly this is. All you have to do is look at these graphs, look at the rate of change and ask: How are we going to do 1,000 times better? How are we going to do that without using unimaginable amounts of energy and resources to the point that we are far more likely to kill everything on the planet than fix it. These are planetary scale problems that require beyond planetary scale energy and resources to "fix". The sooner we start talking about the realities of climate change --that we can't fix it or "save the planet"-- and stop being hysterical about it, the sooner we can start talking about how to live with it and improve things to the extent possible. Which also means both sides will meet somewhere in the middle. BTW, this does not mean we should not clean-up our act at all. We should. All we have to do is stop lying about the reasons for it. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to live in cleaner cities with renewable power sources, climate change and saving the planet just happen to not be among them, not if we want to talk about reality vs. fantasy. BTW, don't take my word for it. Read this for an insight into how futile some of these crazy ideas actually are. This is from Google Research: https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/43326.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-... Prediction: Nobody is going to take the time to consider the above, much less do the work and understand. And by that I mean not one person from either side of the argument. Nobody seems to care about the truth, particularly not scientists who depend on bullshit grants and don't dare bring up the fact that we are wasting valuable time and resources focusing on nonsense. There's big money and great power to be had by riding the gravy train of lies on both sides. Sad. Truly sad.

magduf 7y ago
Warning: I am not a climate scientist. However, I have to disagree that humanity has to leave the planet, or that it's impossible to fix. I will agree that it's very unlikely to be fixed or mitigated to a decent amount before disaster happens, but that's because of politics and human stupidity, not because it's not possible. More CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't have to equal higher average global temperatures. CO2 holds in energy from the Sun. So the answer is simple: decrease the amount of sunlight. There's already ideas of how to do this, such as "solar shades". Basically, put a bunch of things in orbit that block some of the Sun's light, so less of it strikes the atmosphere. Now, even with the higher levels of CO2, less energy is entering the system that will be retained by the greenhouse effect. Of course, planetary engineering ideas like this are megaprojects and would require huge amounts of money to do, and probably international coordination, which seems unlikely given the terrible state of world politics at the moment.
- zekrioca 7y ago
  In the article mentioned by parent comment, they suggest extracting CO2 from atmosphere and storing it somewhere safe. There is (at time of article's writing) no technology capable of doing so. I guess it is would be "safer" than creating a "solar shade"? I am not a climate scientist either..
  - robomartin 7y ago
    The questions nobody answers when it comes to all of these so-called solutions are: How much energy will this require? How will we generate it? Will generating that energy produce CO2 or other problems? What resources are we going to need (chemicals, etc.)? How are we going to extract or produce them? How much energy is that going to require? How are we going to produce that energy? Will generating that energy produce CO2 or other problems? Conservation of Energy is an ass. It does not care one bit. Which means we can't solve a problem with less energy than what went into creating it in the first place. A common misconception is that humanity added a bunch of CO2 in a couple of hundred years. That's not true. It took millions, if not billions of years. Sure, in therms of use using petroleum, yeah, we did it in a couple of centuries. However, the reality of this fuel is that it took billions of years to create. THAT is what we burned; billions of years of stored energy. That was the other revelation I had during my research. We are looking at this with the wrong time scale. In a couple of hundred years we burned millions or billions of years worth of stored energy. And to clean-up that mess you need far more energy than what it took to produce the mess in the first place. Imagine how many trees, plants, animals and solar energy went into creating the petroleum we burned. That's the start of the scale of the problem we are trying to fix. In other words, we can't fix it. Not without making a much larger mess.

magduf 7y ago

Warning: I am not a climate scientist. However, I have to disagree that humanity has to leave the planet, or that it's impossible to fix. I will agree that it's very unlikely to be fixed or mitigated to a decent amount before disaster happens, but that's because of politics and human stupidity, not because it's not possible. More CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't have to equal higher average global temperatures. CO2 holds in energy from the Sun. So the answer is simple: decrease the amount of sunlight. There's already ideas of how to do this, such as "solar shades". Basically, put a bunch of things in orbit that block some of the Sun's light, so less of it strikes the atmosphere. Now, even with the higher levels of CO2, less energy is entering the system that will be retained by the greenhouse effect. Of course, planetary engineering ideas like this are megaprojects and would require huge amounts of money to do, and probably international coordination, which seems unlikely given the terrible state of world politics at the moment.

zekrioca 7y ago
In the article mentioned by parent comment, they suggest extracting CO2 from atmosphere and storing it somewhere safe. There is (at time of article's writing) no technology capable of doing so. I guess it is would be "safer" than creating a "solar shade"? I am not a climate scientist either..
- robomartin 7y ago
  The questions nobody answers when it comes to all of these so-called solutions are: How much energy will this require? How will we generate it? Will generating that energy produce CO2 or other problems? What resources are we going to need (chemicals, etc.)? How are we going to extract or produce them? How much energy is that going to require? How are we going to produce that energy? Will generating that energy produce CO2 or other problems? Conservation of Energy is an ass. It does not care one bit. Which means we can't solve a problem with less energy than what went into creating it in the first place. A common misconception is that humanity added a bunch of CO2 in a couple of hundred years. That's not true. It took millions, if not billions of years. Sure, in therms of use using petroleum, yeah, we did it in a couple of centuries. However, the reality of this fuel is that it took billions of years to create. THAT is what we burned; billions of years of stored energy. That was the other revelation I had during my research. We are looking at this with the wrong time scale. In a couple of hundred years we burned millions or billions of years worth of stored energy. And to clean-up that mess you need far more energy than what it took to produce the mess in the first place. Imagine how many trees, plants, animals and solar energy went into creating the petroleum we burned. That's the start of the scale of the problem we are trying to fix. In other words, we can't fix it. Not without making a much larger mess.