6 ms·

The lecture that finally convinced David Attenborough about global warming (2018)

34 points by 1970-01-01 4y ago

pcthrowaway 4y ago
(2018) Also, worth watching Attenborough's "A Life On Our Planet" released on Netflix a few years ago. It gives an overview of the threats earth faces in the next couple decades, and a testimony of the changes he's already witnessed.
LatteLazy 4y ago
Now we just need to convince 100m Americans and 2Bn combined Chinese and Indians. Plus others.
- potamic 4y ago
  Chinese and Indians don't need convincing, they are well aware. They just don't care. Or perhaps, feel less inclined to action when their first world contemporaries are still enjoying an orders of magnitude greater per-capita emissions.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    That's true. Though the exact same thing is true of most westerners too. The story of the global warming catastrophe is everyone wanting someone else to fix it. The third world blames the first, people now blame people in the past, everyone is very willing to cut emissions just not here or now or me. Actually fixing it would have required everyone to act. At this point I actually think the most interesting thing is the collective delusion that we will fix it (that time is long gone) or that someone somewhere IS acting (they're not). Everyone thinks that are on the right side when basically no one actually is. It's fascinating.
    - potamic 4y ago
      I think it's a fallacy to think everyone must act. The West, being major consumers in the world, has a lot more leverage in this area and also more funds to do so. One of the major contributors to third world emissions is that the west outsources a lot of their emissions to these countries. One simple step forward is for the west to take a stance and pick "clean" manufacturers rather than "cheap" manufacturers. Tax corporations higher when they outsource or buy from lax countries. That will put a positive pressure on these countries to adopt clean energy instead of being continuously spurred to ignore emissions and keep costs down for exports.
      - LatteLazy 4y ago
        Let's assume we could solve the whole problem just by making changes in the west. I don't actually believe that. But let's just agree. So now what? You need to get 1.2Bn people to radically reduce their standards of living. You need them to do it immediately. You need to change EVERY aspect of people's lives, from transport to housing to jobs. And you need them to volunteer and like it and do it despite the fact others continue to increase their emissions. Whole regions, countries even, will have to radically change their whole economies (Norway will have to back to being a fish and mobile phone based economy?!). Does anyone think that will happen? Anyone? Really? Developed countries won't do it. Under-Developed countries wont do it. The Rich won't and neither will the poor. The young won't and neither will the old. And that's without getting into the fact you need Many If Not All of those groups, not just some.
  - zirgs 4y ago
    But they are the ones that will suffer more from climate change than those who live in, say, Scandinavia.
  - jrpt 4y ago
    Per capita CO2 emissions of most European countries (like the UK and France) are lower than China at this point. The US might be lower than China by the end of this decade too.
fidgewidge 4y ago
It's interesting to speculate what Attenborough would say if he realized the lecture he saw was built on a lie. The article makes it clear that what converted Attenborough was the NASA GISTEMP graph. It would never have occurred to him to ask whether this data was being manipulated. The graph he saw is this one: https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/attenborough-global-temp-graph.jpg https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/atten... Go to the NASA GISTEMP website (https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/ https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/) and look at the same graph as it is today. There are differences between the two. For example in the graph he saw, the temperature anomaly in 1981 is about 0.21 degree C. In the current graph it's 0.32 degree C. It's a little known fact that the organizations producing graphs of global temperatures continually rewrite the historical record and often do so silently. These rewrites create warming trends in the data where in the past no such trends were visible. This article proves the case beyond doubt: https://realclimatescience.com/rewriting-the-climate-at-nasa/ https://realclimatescience.com/rewriting-the-climate-at-nasa... It shows two different graphs claiming to be the same version of the same temperature dataset, both on the NASA website. One is no longer linked from anywhere and can only be reached because the blog author preserved the link in his records. They have different data in them - the newer one shows more warming during the 20th century than the older one. The head of climatology at NASA was challenged on Twitter to explain why historical data was being silently rewritten. His only response was a clown face emoji. As you go further back into the past the edits become ever more extreme. The lecture notes admit that there was a "slight cooling" between 1940 and the end of the 1970s. The NASA temperature graphs show that global temperatures went sideways during this time - something that makes no sense given that the climatology of the era was dominated by fear of global cooling, nor if all the increase is caused by CO2 because CO2 levels increased steadily during this era (the lecture says it's a mystery). Newspaper archives show that in the past, scientists had a very different view of what temperature was doing. Back then the National Center for Atmospheric Research showed global temperatures experiencing a strong multi-decade decline from the 1940s to the 1970s, with the temperature in 1973 being no different to the temperature 1910. Nowadays climatologists claim that the early 20th century were some of the coldest years on record with 1913 being a full half a degree colder globally than in 1973. Climatologists don't deny that they do this, but as NASA's reaction shows they don't like people knowing about it. Over the last 20 years the field's approach to data integrity has collapsed completely and with predictable results - nothing can now be said about global temperatures with any certainty. Even basic things like announcing record breaking temperatures is no longer possible because the past is always being rewritten: https://retractionwatch.com/2021/08/16/will-the-real-hottest-month-on-record-please-stand-up/ https://retractionwatch.com/2021/08/16/will-the-real-hottest... > "NOAAGlobalTempv5 is a reconstructed dataset, meaning that the entire period of record is recalculated each month with new data." Changing past "observations" every time new data is recorded is scientifically nonsensical. The future cannot change the past.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

34 points by 1970-01-01 4y ago

(2018) Also, worth watching Attenborough's "A Life On Our Planet" released on Netflix a few years ago. It gives an overview of the threats earth faces in the next couple decades, and a testimony of the changes he's already witnessed.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Now we just need to convince 100m Americans and 2Bn combined Chinese and Indians. Plus others.

potamic 4y ago
Chinese and Indians don't need convincing, they are well aware. They just don't care. Or perhaps, feel less inclined to action when their first world contemporaries are still enjoying an orders of magnitude greater per-capita emissions.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  That's true. Though the exact same thing is true of most westerners too. The story of the global warming catastrophe is everyone wanting someone else to fix it. The third world blames the first, people now blame people in the past, everyone is very willing to cut emissions just not here or now or me. Actually fixing it would have required everyone to act. At this point I actually think the most interesting thing is the collective delusion that we will fix it (that time is long gone) or that someone somewhere IS acting (they're not). Everyone thinks that are on the right side when basically no one actually is. It's fascinating.
  - potamic 4y ago
    I think it's a fallacy to think everyone must act. The West, being major consumers in the world, has a lot more leverage in this area and also more funds to do so. One of the major contributors to third world emissions is that the west outsources a lot of their emissions to these countries. One simple step forward is for the west to take a stance and pick "clean" manufacturers rather than "cheap" manufacturers. Tax corporations higher when they outsource or buy from lax countries. That will put a positive pressure on these countries to adopt clean energy instead of being continuously spurred to ignore emissions and keep costs down for exports.
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      Let's assume we could solve the whole problem just by making changes in the west. I don't actually believe that. But let's just agree. So now what? You need to get 1.2Bn people to radically reduce their standards of living. You need them to do it immediately. You need to change EVERY aspect of people's lives, from transport to housing to jobs. And you need them to volunteer and like it and do it despite the fact others continue to increase their emissions. Whole regions, countries even, will have to radically change their whole economies (Norway will have to back to being a fish and mobile phone based economy?!). Does anyone think that will happen? Anyone? Really? Developed countries won't do it. Under-Developed countries wont do it. The Rich won't and neither will the poor. The young won't and neither will the old. And that's without getting into the fact you need Many If Not All of those groups, not just some.
- zirgs 4y ago
  But they are the ones that will suffer more from climate change than those who live in, say, Scandinavia.
- jrpt 4y ago
  Per capita CO2 emissions of most European countries (like the UK and France) are lower than China at this point. The US might be lower than China by the end of this decade too.

fidgewidge 4y ago

It's interesting to speculate what Attenborough would say if he realized the lecture he saw was built on a lie. The article makes it clear that what converted Attenborough was the NASA GISTEMP graph. It would never have occurred to him to ask whether this data was being manipulated. The graph he saw is this one: https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/attenborough-global-temp-graph.jpg https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/atten... Go to the NASA GISTEMP website (https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/ https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/) and look at the same graph as it is today. There are differences between the two. For example in the graph he saw, the temperature anomaly in 1981 is about 0.21 degree C. In the current graph it's 0.32 degree C. It's a little known fact that the organizations producing graphs of global temperatures continually rewrite the historical record and often do so silently. These rewrites create warming trends in the data where in the past no such trends were visible. This article proves the case beyond doubt: https://realclimatescience.com/rewriting-the-climate-at-nasa/ https://realclimatescience.com/rewriting-the-climate-at-nasa... It shows two different graphs claiming to be the same version of the same temperature dataset, both on the NASA website. One is no longer linked from anywhere and can only be reached because the blog author preserved the link in his records. They have different data in them - the newer one shows more warming during the 20th century than the older one. The head of climatology at NASA was challenged on Twitter to explain why historical data was being silently rewritten. His only response was a clown face emoji. As you go further back into the past the edits become ever more extreme. The lecture notes admit that there was a "slight cooling" between 1940 and the end of the 1970s. The NASA temperature graphs show that global temperatures went sideways during this time - something that makes no sense given that the climatology of the era was dominated by fear of global cooling, nor if all the increase is caused by CO2 because CO2 levels increased steadily during this era (the lecture says it's a mystery). Newspaper archives show that in the past, scientists had a very different view of what temperature was doing. Back then the National Center for Atmospheric Research showed global temperatures experiencing a strong multi-decade decline from the 1940s to the 1970s, with the temperature in 1973 being no different to the temperature 1910. Nowadays climatologists claim that the early 20th century were some of the coldest years on record with 1913 being a full half a degree colder globally than in 1973. Climatologists don't deny that they do this, but as NASA's reaction shows they don't like people knowing about it. Over the last 20 years the field's approach to data integrity has collapsed completely and with predictable results - nothing can now be said about global temperatures with any certainty. Even basic things like announcing record breaking temperatures is no longer possible because the past is always being rewritten: https://retractionwatch.com/2021/08/16/will-the-real-hottest-month-on-record-please-stand-up/ https://retractionwatch.com/2021/08/16/will-the-real-hottest... > "NOAAGlobalTempv5 is a reconstructed dataset, meaning that the entire period of record is recalculated each month with new data." Changing past "observations" every time new data is recorded is scientifically nonsensical. The future cannot change the past.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]