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I think the comment you're responding to is taking issue with predictions about the specific effects of climate on a particular time table. I think your comment

I think the comment you're responding to is taking issue with predictions about the specific effects of climate on a particular time table. I think your comment is talking about the general concept of greenhouse gases produced by humans causing warming. There is a large chasm between these two things. This is also why it's important to clarify what we mean by "global warming skeptic." Are we talking about someone that denies that human behavior creates greenhouse gases that warms the climate? Or are we talking about someone who views predictions about the specific effects of that warming on our environment on a particular time scale with great skepticism? These are two very different positions to take.

sjwalter 5y ago
You and GP both have spherical cow ideas about how GHGs impact the climate. Yes, we can create an ideal lab "climate" and demonstrate some GHGs cause warming. The global climate is much, much more complicated. What is the impact of GHG-caused warming on cloud formation? What is the impact of same on jetstreams? Chaos Theory was started as a result of the complexity of weather prediction, which is simply short-term climate forecasting. The two variables I mentioned are just two, and they are dizzingly complex to model. It is not as simple as "GHG++ == HEAT++". Further, taking a step back: If we could agree on exactly how GHGs impact the global climate, then can we get a number on how much humans impact the climate at all? The way climate change alarmists seem to think, the climate would be absolutely static were it not for our industrial revolution. So what is it? If humans got GHGs to zero, how much less would the climate change? Are we responsible for 1% of overall change? 50%? 100%? Pretending these are simple or obvious questions is absurd. I've read hundreds of papers on climate change. These topics never seem to come up. Rarely do climate scientists mention the sun, which seems to be treated like a static heat bulb in the sky that gives off an steady, constant flow of energy, which couldn't be further from the truth! Even the name of the topic, Climate Change, describing it as some kind of problem in itself--if the climate were static it'd be a HUGE alarm! The climate has always changed. Then a step back even further: The climate has changed throughout civilization and it appears that large-scale civilizations grow in population during periods of warming, and shrink (sometimes drastically), during periods of cooling. So how much warming is acceptable? It seems the goal is to get to zero change (lol) or to cooling. Why is that the necessarily best way? The entire field is super-complex, and because of the political environment, even asking questions such as the above make it impossible to actually do science--only one view is acceptable.
- eutropia 5y ago
  Appealing to complexity doesn’t make basics like conservation of matter go away. The Climate is extremely complex, and will not be entirely understood in our lifetimes; but I’m not interested in litigating my way to a perfect climate model. I’ll leave that to climatologists or whatever. I’ll state my policy position (the end result of whatever one’s understanding of the problem is anyway) and leave it at that: My position is that mankind ought to follow what I was taught in scouts: “leave no trace”. Return GHGs to preindustrial levels, control all other pollutants in a similarly strict sense. Work towards solving the problems we have with deforestation and destruction of habitats, etc. All while maintaining freedom of reproduction for everyone, and continuing to improve quality of life for humans everywhere. Not exactly an easy feat. That world (the preindustrial world) changed according to its own whims and patterns, but it was beautiful and humans thrived in it. Knowing that a much warmer planet would look different and likely be less hospitable makes me want to avoid that outcome; however I’ve made my peace with the high likelihood that I wont see “garden earth”. We’re working with a system we don’t understand against a timetable we can’t see while people make money every time they slow us down.
  - burntsushi 5y ago
    > My position is that mankind ought to follow what I was taught in scouts: “leave no trace”. This position isn't really coherent on its own, because with enough time, it doesn't matter what we do: there won't be a trace of us left. So really, you need to say what you mean by "trace" and on what time scale. Your time scale can't be zero, because then we couldn't build anything. But it can't be arbitrarily long either, because then it ceases to be any kind of restraint at all.
    - eutropia 5y ago
      I thought I laid out what I meant by that in the following paragraphs -- it was intended as a finger pointed at the moon, not a prescriptive maxim to be taken literally. A goal to work towards instead of "everyone do whatever is profitable for them in the near term"... In the very long term it would be awesome if our industrial systems emitted only manageable waste heat and the produced good, with all waste streams recycled or otherwise kept from contaminating the environment; but this is pure sci-fi utopian optimism on my part.

sjwalter 5y ago

You and GP both have spherical cow ideas about how GHGs impact the climate. Yes, we can create an ideal lab "climate" and demonstrate some GHGs cause warming. The global climate is much, much more complicated. What is the impact of GHG-caused warming on cloud formation? What is the impact of same on jetstreams? Chaos Theory was started as a result of the complexity of weather prediction, which is simply short-term climate forecasting. The two variables I mentioned are just two, and they are dizzingly complex to model. It is not as simple as "GHG++ == HEAT++". Further, taking a step back: If we could agree on exactly how GHGs impact the global climate, then can we get a number on how much humans impact the climate at all? The way climate change alarmists seem to think, the climate would be absolutely static were it not for our industrial revolution. So what is it? If humans got GHGs to zero, how much less would the climate change? Are we responsible for 1% of overall change? 50%? 100%? Pretending these are simple or obvious questions is absurd. I've read hundreds of papers on climate change. These topics never seem to come up. Rarely do climate scientists mention the sun, which seems to be treated like a static heat bulb in the sky that gives off an steady, constant flow of energy, which couldn't be further from the truth! Even the name of the topic, Climate Change, describing it as some kind of problem in itself--if the climate were static it'd be a HUGE alarm! The climate has always changed. Then a step back even further: The climate has changed throughout civilization and it appears that large-scale civilizations grow in population during periods of warming, and shrink (sometimes drastically), during periods of cooling. So how much warming is acceptable? It seems the goal is to get to zero change (lol) or to cooling. Why is that the necessarily best way? The entire field is super-complex, and because of the political environment, even asking questions such as the above make it impossible to actually do science--only one view is acceptable.

eutropia 5y ago
Appealing to complexity doesn’t make basics like conservation of matter go away. The Climate is extremely complex, and will not be entirely understood in our lifetimes; but I’m not interested in litigating my way to a perfect climate model. I’ll leave that to climatologists or whatever. I’ll state my policy position (the end result of whatever one’s understanding of the problem is anyway) and leave it at that: My position is that mankind ought to follow what I was taught in scouts: “leave no trace”. Return GHGs to preindustrial levels, control all other pollutants in a similarly strict sense. Work towards solving the problems we have with deforestation and destruction of habitats, etc. All while maintaining freedom of reproduction for everyone, and continuing to improve quality of life for humans everywhere. Not exactly an easy feat. That world (the preindustrial world) changed according to its own whims and patterns, but it was beautiful and humans thrived in it. Knowing that a much warmer planet would look different and likely be less hospitable makes me want to avoid that outcome; however I’ve made my peace with the high likelihood that I wont see “garden earth”. We’re working with a system we don’t understand against a timetable we can’t see while people make money every time they slow us down.
- burntsushi 5y ago
  > My position is that mankind ought to follow what I was taught in scouts: “leave no trace”. This position isn't really coherent on its own, because with enough time, it doesn't matter what we do: there won't be a trace of us left. So really, you need to say what you mean by "trace" and on what time scale. Your time scale can't be zero, because then we couldn't build anything. But it can't be arbitrarily long either, because then it ceases to be any kind of restraint at all.
  - eutropia 5y ago
    I thought I laid out what I meant by that in the following paragraphs -- it was intended as a finger pointed at the moon, not a prescriptive maxim to be taken literally. A goal to work towards instead of "everyone do whatever is profitable for them in the near term"... In the very long term it would be awesome if our industrial systems emitted only manageable waste heat and the produced good, with all waste streams recycled or otherwise kept from contaminating the environment; but this is pure sci-fi utopian optimism on my part.