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> I have been to Greenland a year ago and saw it for myself. And that’s where the warming is most extreme. And it’s spectacular, no doubt about it. And glaciers
by cryptoz 7y ago
> I have been to Greenland a year ago and saw it for myself. And that’s where the warming is most extreme. And it’s spectacular, no doubt about it. And glaciers are shrinking and so on.
> But, there are all sorts of things that are not said, which decreases my feeling of alarm. First of all, the people in Greenland love it. They tell you it’s made their lives a lot easier. They hope it continues. I am not saying none of these consequences are happening. I am just questioning whether they are harmful.
His arguments on the topic are bizarrely anecdotal and unscientific. He suggests that the happiness of locals over the past few years of warming is sufficient reason to doubt that it could get worse for Greenland in the future? Making dramatic changes to human environments is not good, people react poorly and things like resource wars can start / have started.
Super weird to see such anecdotal experiences extrapolated to "locals love it, so what's the problem?" while dismissing decades of intensive scientific research (not even including modals) that suggest a global chaotic event is happening presently.
Also, this:
> There’s been a very strong warming, in fact, ever since the Little Ice Age, which was most intense in the 17th century. That certainly was not due to human activity.
What does this mean? I went to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age and it lists multiple possible / probable causes of the little ice age that are directly human-related. He dismisses yet another field of scientific research as "certainly not due to human activity" without any evidence to back that up. He makes stuff up, dismisses decades of real science, and claims that major problems aren't real simply because local people don't understand large-scale chaotic events are are 'happy' with warming local climates for now. Bizarre.
- elorenz 7y agoI also went to that Wikipedia page. The “multiple possible / probable causes” listed are: “orbital cycles; decreased solar activity; increased volcanic activity; altered ocean current flows; fluctuations in the human population in different parts of the world causing reforestation, or deforestation; and the inherent variability of global climate change” Only one of those is human related. Bizarre.
- akvadrako 7y agoGreenland is one of the few places we have reasonably accurate temperature reconstructions for the recent past. And they show that during the past few thousand years, when human co2 output was negligible, the temperature changed over decades by 5C.