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Thank you, I’m quite interested, I read as much as I can about it as obviously if it is real it’s quite serious. The first graph in the first link exemplifies

by _3u10 5y ago

Thank you, I’m quite interested, I read as much as I can about it as obviously if it is real it’s quite serious. The first graph in the first link exemplifies the problems I have with CC evidence, the data presented goes back a long time but not far enough to when we know CO2 was higher. While it does not outright lie it tailors the data to create the impression that it hasn’t been higher. It’s like when graphs don’t have the axis at zero to exaggerate the differences. For such a serious topic I would expect less disengenous presentation of the data. Overall, not your links, but the totality of what I’ve read over the years, I get the feeling of being asked to make a decision based on reading advocacy pieces rather than a summary of the available information regardless of what conclusion it points to. edit: upon re checking the first link I see the graph is also not centered on zero, again to exaggerate the differences between pre-industrial Revolution and now.

dahart 5y ago
Why do you need more that 1 million years? Why is that “disingenuous” to stop before 10 million years? I agree with your concern about the graph’s Y axis not being zeroed, it should be. Still, the jump in the last century is quite large, right? So why does it matter if CO2 levels were higher before humans existed? Isn’t it concerning you to that CO2 levels have jumped extremely suddenly and with very large magnitude to 30% higher (and growing) than the earth has seen in the last million years? Is your contention that CO2 doesn’t necessarily imply climate change? This page covers a larger time period: https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ It shows a correlation between temperature and CO2 for 10+ million years ago, that would seem to justify concern with today’s skyrocketing CO2 levels, no? BTW, I think your comment above demonstrates a misunderstanding of what “scientific consensus” means. It doesn’t meant that scientists have gotten together to agree on what the collective will believe. It means that many independent studies and investigations have reached compatible conclusions, that multiple different kinds of hypotheses and evidence are all pointing at the same result. I will add & admit that using “consensus” is an argument by authority. Personally I think the consensus is worth noting, but that point may be having the opposite effect on you by making you feel pressured to accept it. You’re right that the links I posted are advocacy and lay-person summaries, not scientific sources. The answer to this is to follow the citations and read the actual sources.
- _3u10 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_... I like this article, it’s the stuff I really dig into. I like your idea of reading the sources, perhaps I will go to that for this one as Wikipedia has lots of sources at the bottom. As for why it’s important to go back is because I’m interested in how the previous levels were achieved either the high levels so we can mitigate those natural sources or more relevant to today is how the low levels were achieved. I think the data should go back as far as we know, ideally all the way to the creation of the earth. Or at least the great oxidation event. My understanding is that the all time global low was achieved by trees ending up in swamps in a high oxygen environment (35%) that essentially caused trees to suck all the CO2 out of the atmosphere. Like here’s the thing, when we had 800ppm CO2 we had coral reefs in the North Pole (the plates have shifted and those fossils are currently in Alberta). I think society should be given informed consent, we can eliminate CO2 and have the current climate, or we can go to 800ppm and have coral reefs on North Pole. Also I think if the public knew it would empower our leaders to go toe to toe with China and India. Like if they don’t want to cut, then we go to 800ppm, call us when it gets too hot / the monsoons too severe and we can talk. You’re definitely correct regarding consensus, I find it to be an appeal to authority and politicians use it to convey that the science favors a particular policy over another.
  - dahart 5y ago
    Society should be given informed consent, I agree. But doesn’t that mean everyone should know and understand that most of the actual science being done is all independently and from many different angles coming to the same conclusion that our industrial activities seem to be increasing the CO2 levels and potentially warming the earth much faster than any time in history, and much faster than any of the natural cycles, save for a couple of extreme volcanic eruptions and large meteors? Doesn’t informed consent in fact mean letting the public know that our policy decisions today might affect whether our grandkids can expect to ever see snow? Your argument here seems totally reasonable, I’m just curious how it meshes with your top comment. Is it really hard to believe, surprising, or even debatable, that running several billion combustion engines all day every day globally that all emit CO2 would increase atmospheric CO2? Is it really in question whether adding a lot of CO2 to the air for a hundred years might raise the temperature? Be aware that bringing up CO2 levels from 30 million years ago as some kind of demonstration that today’s CO2 levels might be “normal” is also cherry-picking and exaggerating, similar to NASA’s not using zero as the graph’s baseline, it’s also attempting to frame the debate in a way that downplays what’s happening today. The problem isn’t necessarily the CO2 level at all, it’s the magnitude and velocity of the anomaly today relative to recent history. It doesn’t take data from all time to see that the last century’s bump in CO2 levels might be something to worry about. The problem in the US is we have a political party that denies climate change exists largely on the grounds that doing anything about it will be disruptive to the economy (without worrying whether doing nothing could be even more disruptive, nor what our long term goals are). The primary climate change skeptic argument in this country isn’t based on investigating the science, it’s currently based on denying science. When you said “climate change is a global flood myth” without providing any evidence of why our current published science is wrong, I interpreted that to be a political stance and not one based on science. You do seem genuinely interested in the science though, so it may be important to stop reading material from politicians and focus on investigating primary sources, and understanding what exactly the scientific consensus really is. What if the politics of climate change denial undermines our ability to have informed consent? What if climate skeptics are winning the debate despite the science, and convincing policy makers to not take action? What exactly are the risks of taking action to reduce emissions, in the cases where the effects have been overstated vs understated? What are the best case and worst case scenarios? Why not reduce emissions anyway just because breathing pollution is causing health problems? The earth is going to survive whatever happens, with or without humans. Life will go on even if we kill ourselves. All the questions and debate are only about what’s good for us humans, and mainly in the short term. We’re fighting over how much money to spend this week and not really talking about what life will be like in a hundred or thousand years. BTW, your top comment also complained about calling any and all weather anomalies evidence of climate change. FWIW, there is a plausible scientific argument called “global weirding” that centers on the fact that higher temperatures is literally more energy in the system that causes more strange things to happen that haven’t been happening historically. Any single event, single storm, single season, regional weather in a single year, you’re right that none of these by themselves indicate climate change. However, taken as a whole, the increasing frequency of odd/extreme weather events over many recent years is an indicator of change. I like how it’s described here: https://news.northeastern.edu/2012/03/20/globalweirding/ https://news.northeastern.edu/2012/03/20/globalweirding/

by _3u10 5y ago

dahart 5y ago

Why do you need more that 1 million years? Why is that “disingenuous” to stop before 10 million years? I agree with your concern about the graph’s Y axis not being zeroed, it should be. Still, the jump in the last century is quite large, right? So why does it matter if CO2 levels were higher before humans existed? Isn’t it concerning you to that CO2 levels have jumped extremely suddenly and with very large magnitude to 30% higher (and growing) than the earth has seen in the last million years? Is your contention that CO2 doesn’t necessarily imply climate change? This page covers a larger time period: https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ It shows a correlation between temperature and CO2 for 10+ million years ago, that would seem to justify concern with today’s skyrocketing CO2 levels, no? BTW, I think your comment above demonstrates a misunderstanding of what “scientific consensus” means. It doesn’t meant that scientists have gotten together to agree on what the collective will believe. It means that many independent studies and investigations have reached compatible conclusions, that multiple different kinds of hypotheses and evidence are all pointing at the same result. I will add & admit that using “consensus” is an argument by authority. Personally I think the consensus is worth noting, but that point may be having the opposite effect on you by making you feel pressured to accept it. You’re right that the links I posted are advocacy and lay-person summaries, not scientific sources. The answer to this is to follow the citations and read the actual sources.

_3u10 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_... I like this article, it’s the stuff I really dig into. I like your idea of reading the sources, perhaps I will go to that for this one as Wikipedia has lots of sources at the bottom. As for why it’s important to go back is because I’m interested in how the previous levels were achieved either the high levels so we can mitigate those natural sources or more relevant to today is how the low levels were achieved. I think the data should go back as far as we know, ideally all the way to the creation of the earth. Or at least the great oxidation event. My understanding is that the all time global low was achieved by trees ending up in swamps in a high oxygen environment (35%) that essentially caused trees to suck all the CO2 out of the atmosphere. Like here’s the thing, when we had 800ppm CO2 we had coral reefs in the North Pole (the plates have shifted and those fossils are currently in Alberta). I think society should be given informed consent, we can eliminate CO2 and have the current climate, or we can go to 800ppm and have coral reefs on North Pole. Also I think if the public knew it would empower our leaders to go toe to toe with China and India. Like if they don’t want to cut, then we go to 800ppm, call us when it gets too hot / the monsoons too severe and we can talk. You’re definitely correct regarding consensus, I find it to be an appeal to authority and politicians use it to convey that the science favors a particular policy over another.
- dahart 5y ago
  Society should be given informed consent, I agree. But doesn’t that mean everyone should know and understand that most of the actual science being done is all independently and from many different angles coming to the same conclusion that our industrial activities seem to be increasing the CO2 levels and potentially warming the earth much faster than any time in history, and much faster than any of the natural cycles, save for a couple of extreme volcanic eruptions and large meteors? Doesn’t informed consent in fact mean letting the public know that our policy decisions today might affect whether our grandkids can expect to ever see snow? Your argument here seems totally reasonable, I’m just curious how it meshes with your top comment. Is it really hard to believe, surprising, or even debatable, that running several billion combustion engines all day every day globally that all emit CO2 would increase atmospheric CO2? Is it really in question whether adding a lot of CO2 to the air for a hundred years might raise the temperature? Be aware that bringing up CO2 levels from 30 million years ago as some kind of demonstration that today’s CO2 levels might be “normal” is also cherry-picking and exaggerating, similar to NASA’s not using zero as the graph’s baseline, it’s also attempting to frame the debate in a way that downplays what’s happening today. The problem isn’t necessarily the CO2 level at all, it’s the magnitude and velocity of the anomaly today relative to recent history. It doesn’t take data from all time to see that the last century’s bump in CO2 levels might be something to worry about. The problem in the US is we have a political party that denies climate change exists largely on the grounds that doing anything about it will be disruptive to the economy (without worrying whether doing nothing could be even more disruptive, nor what our long term goals are). The primary climate change skeptic argument in this country isn’t based on investigating the science, it’s currently based on denying science. When you said “climate change is a global flood myth” without providing any evidence of why our current published science is wrong, I interpreted that to be a political stance and not one based on science. You do seem genuinely interested in the science though, so it may be important to stop reading material from politicians and focus on investigating primary sources, and understanding what exactly the scientific consensus really is. What if the politics of climate change denial undermines our ability to have informed consent? What if climate skeptics are winning the debate despite the science, and convincing policy makers to not take action? What exactly are the risks of taking action to reduce emissions, in the cases where the effects have been overstated vs understated? What are the best case and worst case scenarios? Why not reduce emissions anyway just because breathing pollution is causing health problems? The earth is going to survive whatever happens, with or without humans. Life will go on even if we kill ourselves. All the questions and debate are only about what’s good for us humans, and mainly in the short term. We’re fighting over how much money to spend this week and not really talking about what life will be like in a hundred or thousand years. BTW, your top comment also complained about calling any and all weather anomalies evidence of climate change. FWIW, there is a plausible scientific argument called “global weirding” that centers on the fact that higher temperatures is literally more energy in the system that causes more strange things to happen that haven’t been happening historically. Any single event, single storm, single season, regional weather in a single year, you’re right that none of these by themselves indicate climate change. However, taken as a whole, the increasing frequency of odd/extreme weather events over many recent years is an indicator of change. I like how it’s described here: https://news.northeastern.edu/2012/03/20/globalweirding/ https://news.northeastern.edu/2012/03/20/globalweirding/