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This is the problem I have with climate change. I am a very rational, science oriented person (actively promoting science, atheist, PhD in physics, actively ha

This is the problem I have with climate change. I am a very rational, science oriented person (actively promoting science, atheist, PhD in physics, actively hating homeopathy pseudo-science, you name it). I wanted to understand: - why there is a problem with climete chnage - how we know there is one - my winter was cold, where is the warming (exaggerating that of course) - etc. I am not an expert, nor want to become one. I just want someone to tell me: this is the evidence, these are the consequences as seen historically, we are "here" in the timeline. The only thing I hear is "you dumb believers!" and "you dumb non-believers" (or a disgusted stare). The only pertinent information that does not come with 200 pages of explanations are, as usual, in xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1379/ https://xkcd.com/1379/ and https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/. And also https://thefederalist.com/2016/09/30/xkcd-succumbs-to-climate-change-denial/ https://thefederalist.com/2016/09/30/xkcd-succumbs-to-climat... and https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/20/josh-takes-on-xkcds-climate-timeline/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/20/josh-takes-on-xkcds-c... - as a counterpoint.

elias94 6y ago
see David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet is better than 200 pages
jfengel 6y ago
This is, in essence, the crux of the problem. With your level of education it shouldn't be at all difficult to find a resource that answers your questions. Instead you've sought out two comic strips and two extremely ideological sources. The basics of climate change can be taught standing on one foot. Carbon dioxide absorbs IR radiation, while oxygen and nitrogen are transparent to it. There was an equilibrium between visible light hitting the earth, being absorbed, and being reemitted as IR. We've doubled the amount of CO2, so you would expect twice as much of that heat to be retained. Compare it to the surface of the moon, which is at the same distance from the sun as us, but is on average well below freezing. CO2 isn't the only factor, but we've changed the equilibrium by doubling it. That's it. It's very, very simple. The reason it produces only yelling is because it's been said so many trillions of times that if you haven't seen it, it's because you're not looking. There's no sane counter-argument: more CO2 produces more heat. It couldn't not do so. The economics of why that's a problem is more complicated, but we've spent so much effort fighting anti-science attempts to deny really basic, obvious, trivial chemistry that we don't get to the even slightly non-trivial parts. The slightly non-trivial parts are "Yes, if you raise the temperature 4 degrees F it's going to make a lot of marginally livable places unlivable, and many millions of people will die. Also, some of that carbon dioxide becomes carbonic acid when absorbed by the oceans, which isn't good for sea life. Also, you know that weather is a chaotic system, and changing the energy balance of it causes changes to what meta-stable parts do exist, requiring substantial changes to the lifestyles of people there." Again, this has all been said thousands of times. If it helps to have somebody explain it to you, great. But you also know that I'm about to be overrun with Gish Gallopers trotting out repeated-refuted objections, and to a casual observer it's going to look like I can't keep up and therefore must be wrong. And the only way to decide for yourself is the one thing you don't want to do: as you say, you're not an expert and don't want to become one. So I'm really not sure what to do, and I'm pretty sure I've just wasted my virtual breath. I really think that my second paragraph should have put an end to this, and you can imagine my frustration that it doesn't.
- bboylen 6y ago
  Part of the problem is some climate change deniers openly accept that having more CO2 will heat the earth but also say that having more CO2 in the air will "green" the Earth. This is true in a sense - plants need CO2 - but it doesn't account for the horrible side effects of rapidly shifting the planets atmosphere.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Sure. As if CO2 were the limiting factor in photosynthesis, which it isn't. But that's OK, because they don't really care about being right. They'll just shift on to the next argument, even if it's contradictory to the ones they're already using. That's how a Gish Gallop works. You can just point them at https://skepticalscience.com/oneliners.php https://skepticalscience.com/oneliners.php for a lengthy list of the arguments they're going to use and the trivial reasons why they're wrong, but it doesn't get at the core of the problem: you can't reason somebody out of a place they didn't reason themselves into.
    - Johnjonjoan 6y ago
      But increased CO2 is strongly linked to the greening effect. >Studies have shown that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide increase photosynthesis, spurring plant growth. >Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect, said co-author Ranga Myneni, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. “The second most important driver is nitrogen, at 9 percent. So we see what an outsized role CO2 plays in this process.” https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/ https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-green...
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  OK, I see that the "you are dumb" argument is towards me now. I know that cigarettes are bad for my lungs and for my heart. How do I know that? Because I can read ONE COMMON OPINION everywhere. All the time. Nobody claims it is good. Global warming? I hear everything pro and con and then more. Your answer is essentially: go learn something because it is true. The funny part? I know very well this is true. How? Where to look for the ELI5 version? No idea. Suppose one moment you are not an expert in quantum mechanics, especially the multiverse model. Out of your head, where are you going to go to learn about that? Wikipedia? OK, let's see the "Scientific consensus and society" part for global warming. Lines and lines of explanation that all scientists say it is true. Do you see something like that elsewhere? No? So it means that the topic is far, far from being obvious and that we should have a good campaign, oriented to normal people such as myself (and not erudits such as you) to explain it clearly. I live in France and I have not seen one such campaign. So much for awareness. Your position is exactly what drives people away from science: "With your level of education it shouldn't be at all difficult to find a resource that answers your questions. Instead you've sought out two comic strips and two extremely ideological sources.", "Again, this has all been said thousands of times. If it helps to have somebody explain it to you, great." etc. Have you ever taught others? Well I did for years and telling them "you dumb people, you should know this so move your ass and learn" is not going to help. Of course I (as in me personally) know how global warming works. My neighbours do not. Because what they hear is "you should know because it is simple" You say you are frustrated. I spent 30 years pushing science into the head of people, either willingly or not (-I mean the receivers of the science :)). I fought pseudo science. I tried to teach what I knew. I am not a specialist in climate and my understanding is a bit above your "this is very simple" part (I would add the physics and the complexity of simulations in the "I get that" part). But I am not equipped to evangelize the topic. And I see that other are not either because I did not hear about it eanough so that it is obvious fore everyone listening.
nicoburns 6y ago
It's quite simple, and I'm surprised you have not heard this before (it's taught to school children where I live in the UK), but: - We were alerted to a potential climate change issue by the melting of glaciers and sea ice amongst other things. - If this continues such that large quantities of ice melts then this will cause large problems as low-lying cities (such as New Orleans) and even whole countries (such the Netherlands and Bangladesh) would be flooded. - It is also predicted that such changes will disrupt global weather patterns and produce more extreme weather. I'm not 100% on the science behind this, but I think it has something to do with weather gradients. - Thus scientists began to look for an explanation (such that they could predict if such warming would indeed continue). An increase in carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere were determined to be a likely cause as they are known to have an insulating effect (can be demonstrated in simple small scale experiments), and we have also been able to measure increasing levels in the atmosphere. And this was backed up by modelling (presumably of known solar influx with different concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere). - There is also a secondary effect: Ice being whiteish reflects a lot of the Sun's energy back away from the earth back out into space. But water and soil tend to absorb a lot more of that energy. Thus there is concern that a small global temperature rise which causes the amount of sea ice / glaciers lost to pass a threshold point could cause a runaway effect where global temperatures continue to rise despite no more CO2 being released. - Hence the focus on reducing CO2 emissions, and doing so ASAP. - Re: "my winter was cold, where is the warming (exaggerating that of course)" Pretty much everywhere except the North American continent. See https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/30/this-is-why-global-warming-is-responsible-for-freezing-temperatures-across-the-usa/?sh=6b52fc43d8cf https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/30/this...
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  Thanks, I should have been more explicit making my point. Please see my other comment in that thread.
UncleMeat 6y ago
We observe climate change today via direct measurement. We have extremely accurate temperature sensors placed around the world and see the temperature rising. We can measure temperatures from the past with proxies. The explanation for the change in temperature that has by far the best evidence is the increase in greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere. We can derive this from physics principles and test it by examining CO2 concentration and temperature over long periods of time. CO2 concentration increases are coming from human emissions. This can be proven by examining isotope ratios in the CO2 in the atmosphere. Once we have this connection established, we can estimate future CO2 emissions and run models to predict future temperatures. Rising temperatures are bad for a number of reasons 1. Certain staple crops are fragile and rising temperatures may turn highly populated regions into places where it is difficult to grow enough food to feed the population. 2. Sea ice melt increases water levels, threatening coastal cities and reducing global albedo. 3. Certain macro weather patterns like the gulf stream are found to be unstable in models if we increase the temperature. This has big problems for places like Europe, which are made warmer than their latitude would suggest by these macro weather patterns. A similar situation occurs in California where the RRR breakup allows for wet winters and if it fails to break up (more common in higher temperatures) then we get bad droughts in CA. This effect also contributes to the polar vortex that causes major cold snaps over the central US. Changes in these macro patterns are what enable the sort of "my winter was cold, where is the warming" effects. Human beings could adjust where we live and grow crops to account for rising temperatures. But this is massively expensive and disruptive and does not work well in a world where state borders are fixed on a map. This "solution" is not especially viable. 4. There are some hypotheses that increasing temperatures can cause an unstoppable positive feedback loop, as lower albedo means we absorb more sunlight and releasing gasses trapped in ice means that greenhouse gas concentration will increase even if human emissions drop to zero once we are past some tipping point. These are not proven hypotheses, but they are worth considering.

elias94 6y ago

see David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet is better than 200 pages

jfengel 6y ago

This is, in essence, the crux of the problem. With your level of education it shouldn't be at all difficult to find a resource that answers your questions. Instead you've sought out two comic strips and two extremely ideological sources. The basics of climate change can be taught standing on one foot. Carbon dioxide absorbs IR radiation, while oxygen and nitrogen are transparent to it. There was an equilibrium between visible light hitting the earth, being absorbed, and being reemitted as IR. We've doubled the amount of CO2, so you would expect twice as much of that heat to be retained. Compare it to the surface of the moon, which is at the same distance from the sun as us, but is on average well below freezing. CO2 isn't the only factor, but we've changed the equilibrium by doubling it. That's it. It's very, very simple. The reason it produces only yelling is because it's been said so many trillions of times that if you haven't seen it, it's because you're not looking. There's no sane counter-argument: more CO2 produces more heat. It couldn't not do so. The economics of why that's a problem is more complicated, but we've spent so much effort fighting anti-science attempts to deny really basic, obvious, trivial chemistry that we don't get to the even slightly non-trivial parts. The slightly non-trivial parts are "Yes, if you raise the temperature 4 degrees F it's going to make a lot of marginally livable places unlivable, and many millions of people will die. Also, some of that carbon dioxide becomes carbonic acid when absorbed by the oceans, which isn't good for sea life. Also, you know that weather is a chaotic system, and changing the energy balance of it causes changes to what meta-stable parts do exist, requiring substantial changes to the lifestyles of people there." Again, this has all been said thousands of times. If it helps to have somebody explain it to you, great. But you also know that I'm about to be overrun with Gish Gallopers trotting out repeated-refuted objections, and to a casual observer it's going to look like I can't keep up and therefore must be wrong. And the only way to decide for yourself is the one thing you don't want to do: as you say, you're not an expert and don't want to become one. So I'm really not sure what to do, and I'm pretty sure I've just wasted my virtual breath. I really think that my second paragraph should have put an end to this, and you can imagine my frustration that it doesn't.

bboylen 6y ago
Part of the problem is some climate change deniers openly accept that having more CO2 will heat the earth but also say that having more CO2 in the air will "green" the Earth. This is true in a sense - plants need CO2 - but it doesn't account for the horrible side effects of rapidly shifting the planets atmosphere.
- jfengel 6y ago
  Sure. As if CO2 were the limiting factor in photosynthesis, which it isn't. But that's OK, because they don't really care about being right. They'll just shift on to the next argument, even if it's contradictory to the ones they're already using. That's how a Gish Gallop works. You can just point them at https://skepticalscience.com/oneliners.php https://skepticalscience.com/oneliners.php for a lengthy list of the arguments they're going to use and the trivial reasons why they're wrong, but it doesn't get at the core of the problem: you can't reason somebody out of a place they didn't reason themselves into.
  - Johnjonjoan 6y ago
    But increased CO2 is strongly linked to the greening effect. >Studies have shown that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide increase photosynthesis, spurring plant growth. >Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect, said co-author Ranga Myneni, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. “The second most important driver is nitrogen, at 9 percent. So we see what an outsized role CO2 plays in this process.” https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/ https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-green...
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
OK, I see that the "you are dumb" argument is towards me now. I know that cigarettes are bad for my lungs and for my heart. How do I know that? Because I can read ONE COMMON OPINION everywhere. All the time. Nobody claims it is good. Global warming? I hear everything pro and con and then more. Your answer is essentially: go learn something because it is true. The funny part? I know very well this is true. How? Where to look for the ELI5 version? No idea. Suppose one moment you are not an expert in quantum mechanics, especially the multiverse model. Out of your head, where are you going to go to learn about that? Wikipedia? OK, let's see the "Scientific consensus and society" part for global warming. Lines and lines of explanation that all scientists say it is true. Do you see something like that elsewhere? No? So it means that the topic is far, far from being obvious and that we should have a good campaign, oriented to normal people such as myself (and not erudits such as you) to explain it clearly. I live in France and I have not seen one such campaign. So much for awareness. Your position is exactly what drives people away from science: "With your level of education it shouldn't be at all difficult to find a resource that answers your questions. Instead you've sought out two comic strips and two extremely ideological sources.", "Again, this has all been said thousands of times. If it helps to have somebody explain it to you, great." etc. Have you ever taught others? Well I did for years and telling them "you dumb people, you should know this so move your ass and learn" is not going to help. Of course I (as in me personally) know how global warming works. My neighbours do not. Because what they hear is "you should know because it is simple" You say you are frustrated. I spent 30 years pushing science into the head of people, either willingly or not (-I mean the receivers of the science :)). I fought pseudo science. I tried to teach what I knew. I am not a specialist in climate and my understanding is a bit above your "this is very simple" part (I would add the physics and the complexity of simulations in the "I get that" part). But I am not equipped to evangelize the topic. And I see that other are not either because I did not hear about it eanough so that it is obvious fore everyone listening.

nicoburns 6y ago

It's quite simple, and I'm surprised you have not heard this before (it's taught to school children where I live in the UK), but: - We were alerted to a potential climate change issue by the melting of glaciers and sea ice amongst other things. - If this continues such that large quantities of ice melts then this will cause large problems as low-lying cities (such as New Orleans) and even whole countries (such the Netherlands and Bangladesh) would be flooded. - It is also predicted that such changes will disrupt global weather patterns and produce more extreme weather. I'm not 100% on the science behind this, but I think it has something to do with weather gradients. - Thus scientists began to look for an explanation (such that they could predict if such warming would indeed continue). An increase in carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere were determined to be a likely cause as they are known to have an insulating effect (can be demonstrated in simple small scale experiments), and we have also been able to measure increasing levels in the atmosphere. And this was backed up by modelling (presumably of known solar influx with different concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere). - There is also a secondary effect: Ice being whiteish reflects a lot of the Sun's energy back away from the earth back out into space. But water and soil tend to absorb a lot more of that energy. Thus there is concern that a small global temperature rise which causes the amount of sea ice / glaciers lost to pass a threshold point could cause a runaway effect where global temperatures continue to rise despite no more CO2 being released. - Hence the focus on reducing CO2 emissions, and doing so ASAP. - Re: "my winter was cold, where is the warming (exaggerating that of course)" Pretty much everywhere except the North American continent. See https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/30/this-is-why-global-warming-is-responsible-for-freezing-temperatures-across-the-usa/?sh=6b52fc43d8cf https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/30/this...

BrandoElFollito 6y ago
Thanks, I should have been more explicit making my point. Please see my other comment in that thread.

UncleMeat 6y ago

We observe climate change today via direct measurement. We have extremely accurate temperature sensors placed around the world and see the temperature rising. We can measure temperatures from the past with proxies. The explanation for the change in temperature that has by far the best evidence is the increase in greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere. We can derive this from physics principles and test it by examining CO2 concentration and temperature over long periods of time. CO2 concentration increases are coming from human emissions. This can be proven by examining isotope ratios in the CO2 in the atmosphere. Once we have this connection established, we can estimate future CO2 emissions and run models to predict future temperatures. Rising temperatures are bad for a number of reasons 1. Certain staple crops are fragile and rising temperatures may turn highly populated regions into places where it is difficult to grow enough food to feed the population. 2. Sea ice melt increases water levels, threatening coastal cities and reducing global albedo. 3. Certain macro weather patterns like the gulf stream are found to be unstable in models if we increase the temperature. This has big problems for places like Europe, which are made warmer than their latitude would suggest by these macro weather patterns. A similar situation occurs in California where the RRR breakup allows for wet winters and if it fails to break up (more common in higher temperatures) then we get bad droughts in CA. This effect also contributes to the polar vortex that causes major cold snaps over the central US. Changes in these macro patterns are what enable the sort of "my winter was cold, where is the warming" effects. Human beings could adjust where we live and grow crops to account for rising temperatures. But this is massively expensive and disruptive and does not work well in a world where state borders are fixed on a map. This "solution" is not especially viable. 4. There are some hypotheses that increasing temperatures can cause an unstoppable positive feedback loop, as lower albedo means we absorb more sunlight and releasing gasses trapped in ice means that greenhouse gas concentration will increase even if human emissions drop to zero once we are past some tipping point. These are not proven hypotheses, but they are worth considering.