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The globe does seem to be warming. I agree that the ultimate cause may be impossible to nail down in the same way that testable scientific theories have been. S

by robg 17y ago

The globe does seem to be warming. I agree that the ultimate cause may be impossible to nail down in the same way that testable scientific theories have been. Still, given the warming globe, and the strong possibility that man is somewhat to blame (see the correlation between industrialization and climate change), isn't the risk of doing nothing far greater than the risk of trying to do something? In the former, we end up with unpredictable changes to the planet. In the latter, we might still end up with those changes, but at least funding has been invested in trying to understand and ameliorate them. For me, then, it's not about deniers or supporters. It's about making determinations for behaviors today based on the best possible evidence. That doesn't mean the evidence adds up to Truth. It just means that we take it seriously enough to understand the problem space. If we're wrong, we've lost, maybe, one year of defense funding as the Arctic freezes more fully in 100 years. If we're right, then maybe we got a head start on the order of twenty or thirty years. My point is: Why wait? Scientists will adjust if they're wrong. And we'll adjust if they're right. Isn't it better to keep collecting data especially while we try to change human behavior?

DanielBMarkham 17y ago
I hear this one a lot -- why wait? Also the cousin: if there is such a huge possible downside, shouldn't we do something? I guess I'd have to say "no". There are so many problems I have with this -- even assuming we're changing the climate -- that it's difficult to know where to begin. First, is there some badness that is going to happen in the next 20 or 30 years? Or are we talking about 60+ years? Because if people seriously think they know anything about what the next century is going to look like, they're smoking crack. We could all end up as smoking radioactive rubble, in which case a couple degrees of warming would be the least of our risks. There is simply no way to compare various scenarios, likelihoods, and risk exposures to make an intelligent guess about things so far off in the future. It has nothing to do with "this won't effect me, so I don't care" -- although that's a perfectly natural point of view too. It's simply that freaking anything could happen in a hundred years. To sit around and worry about a few degrees temperature change leads me to believe a lot of people don't have anything better to do with their time. That's the thing: without hard numbers this is a religious discussion -- a discussion about how most people "feel" about what's happening. I just don't "feel" the danger is anywhere near the level of being worried or changing the way our economies work. To me that sounds like crazy talk based on fear-mongering. It reminds me of every other religious movement I've seen -- mankind has sinned, we will pay the price, we must change our ways, punishment may come anyway, etc. I'm sorry. Given the archaeological climate data, the current state of the models, and the distant future impact, it just doesn't seem very rational to me to be that concerned about it. That doesn't mean I'm not open to compromise. Heck -- build a few thousand nuclear reactors over the next 20 years. It'll make the air cleaner, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and make the greenhouse gas people happy. There's lots of room for working together, even with different worldviews.
- robg 17y ago
  There are numbers. They may be too correlational for your liking, but there is significant data. I think you have to be careful here. Saying the data are inconclusive, because controlled tests are difficult if not impossible, is one thing. But dismissing the data embraces the same fanaticism that you seem uncomfortable with. Science demands skeptics but deniers get thrown out of the tent. The difference might seem like a religious dispute but it really comes down to productive criticism versus unproductive needling. The emotion probably comes from seeing something that seemed permanent, like permafrost and Arctic ice, melting away. Humans don't tend to like instability. And instability on a global scale is a relatively new phenomenon. Sunspots might be the next worry but what could we possibly do about that? It's an interesting point on the cycle of religious movements (and it reminds me of deathbed confessions - what do you have to lose?). But what's an alternative explanation for rising temperatures? That's science. There's an existing and prevailing hypothesis that attempts to explain that data. You need another hypothesis that explains the data just as well. It could be that the Earth is simply repeating normal warming trends. The problem is, that's not a testable hypothesis. There is no experiment that could reject that hypothesis. By contrast, if man is playing some role, then if we change our behaviors we should see a change in temperatures. If we see some reduction in global temperatures coincident with climate change interventions, that's another data point in favor of the hypothesis that man has some role to play. To me, that's another clear reason to pump research dollars into the problem. And sure, nuclear plants should be a part of the solution. My point on not waiting is what can be gained by running interventions. Sure, it might be a wasted effort, but either way you gain knowledge you didn't have previously from simple observation. I really don't know what the alternative is. The planet appears to be changing. We're unsure of the cause - some more so than others. What's the problem with trying to figure out things through the scientific method? Wasted resources? Unnecessary hysteria? So what? Research and development is like insurance. You may not need it, but if you do, you'll be happy you put in the effort years ahead of time.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    Nobody is throwing out all of the data. The data, last I checked showed no warming over the past decade or more, even though greenhouse emissions continue to rise. The data, last I checked showed temperatures much warmer and much colder at many times in our past (assuming we can extrapolate, which is a big assumption). The data, last I checked, is inconclusive over whether CO2 is a leading or trailing indicator of warming -- we've just assumed it's a leading indicator because of what we know about greenhouse gases. Nobody is talking about not using the scientific method and continuing to take measurements and observations. Almost all of the types of data we are recording now have never been recorded in history, which means we have absolutely nothing to go on except some guesswork about cores and such. Nothing wrong with that either, but one has to put these observations of melting arctic ice in their place -- nobody knows what arctic ice was like back when Iceland was lush with farms in the during the Maurader minimum. Nobody had any idea of what arctic ice looked like from a low orbit view until we started launching satellites! And as for Antarctica, we haven't even been there that long, much less established any kind of track record to make comparisons. Cores can only take you so far. I'm not a big fan of running interventions for half-baked fear-mongering masquerading as science. But let's assume for a moment that I were. How would you know what to measure, what to control, and whether or not anything was working? You pull on rope A and bell D rings, does that mean that rope A is connected to bell D? Or just that bell D was going to ring anyway? I'm telling you it's no better than bearskins and sky gods.

by robg 17y ago

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

I hear this one a lot -- why wait? Also the cousin: if there is such a huge possible downside, shouldn't we do something? I guess I'd have to say "no". There are so many problems I have with this -- even assuming we're changing the climate -- that it's difficult to know where to begin. First, is there some badness that is going to happen in the next 20 or 30 years? Or are we talking about 60+ years? Because if people seriously think they know anything about what the next century is going to look like, they're smoking crack. We could all end up as smoking radioactive rubble, in which case a couple degrees of warming would be the least of our risks. There is simply no way to compare various scenarios, likelihoods, and risk exposures to make an intelligent guess about things so far off in the future. It has nothing to do with "this won't effect me, so I don't care" -- although that's a perfectly natural point of view too. It's simply that freaking anything could happen in a hundred years. To sit around and worry about a few degrees temperature change leads me to believe a lot of people don't have anything better to do with their time. That's the thing: without hard numbers this is a religious discussion -- a discussion about how most people "feel" about what's happening. I just don't "feel" the danger is anywhere near the level of being worried or changing the way our economies work. To me that sounds like crazy talk based on fear-mongering. It reminds me of every other religious movement I've seen -- mankind has sinned, we will pay the price, we must change our ways, punishment may come anyway, etc. I'm sorry. Given the archaeological climate data, the current state of the models, and the distant future impact, it just doesn't seem very rational to me to be that concerned about it. That doesn't mean I'm not open to compromise. Heck -- build a few thousand nuclear reactors over the next 20 years. It'll make the air cleaner, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and make the greenhouse gas people happy. There's lots of room for working together, even with different worldviews.

robg 17y ago
There are numbers. They may be too correlational for your liking, but there is significant data. I think you have to be careful here. Saying the data are inconclusive, because controlled tests are difficult if not impossible, is one thing. But dismissing the data embraces the same fanaticism that you seem uncomfortable with. Science demands skeptics but deniers get thrown out of the tent. The difference might seem like a religious dispute but it really comes down to productive criticism versus unproductive needling. The emotion probably comes from seeing something that seemed permanent, like permafrost and Arctic ice, melting away. Humans don't tend to like instability. And instability on a global scale is a relatively new phenomenon. Sunspots might be the next worry but what could we possibly do about that? It's an interesting point on the cycle of religious movements (and it reminds me of deathbed confessions - what do you have to lose?). But what's an alternative explanation for rising temperatures? That's science. There's an existing and prevailing hypothesis that attempts to explain that data. You need another hypothesis that explains the data just as well. It could be that the Earth is simply repeating normal warming trends. The problem is, that's not a testable hypothesis. There is no experiment that could reject that hypothesis. By contrast, if man is playing some role, then if we change our behaviors we should see a change in temperatures. If we see some reduction in global temperatures coincident with climate change interventions, that's another data point in favor of the hypothesis that man has some role to play. To me, that's another clear reason to pump research dollars into the problem. And sure, nuclear plants should be a part of the solution. My point on not waiting is what can be gained by running interventions. Sure, it might be a wasted effort, but either way you gain knowledge you didn't have previously from simple observation. I really don't know what the alternative is. The planet appears to be changing. We're unsure of the cause - some more so than others. What's the problem with trying to figure out things through the scientific method? Wasted resources? Unnecessary hysteria? So what? Research and development is like insurance. You may not need it, but if you do, you'll be happy you put in the effort years ahead of time.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  Nobody is throwing out all of the data. The data, last I checked showed no warming over the past decade or more, even though greenhouse emissions continue to rise. The data, last I checked showed temperatures much warmer and much colder at many times in our past (assuming we can extrapolate, which is a big assumption). The data, last I checked, is inconclusive over whether CO2 is a leading or trailing indicator of warming -- we've just assumed it's a leading indicator because of what we know about greenhouse gases. Nobody is talking about not using the scientific method and continuing to take measurements and observations. Almost all of the types of data we are recording now have never been recorded in history, which means we have absolutely nothing to go on except some guesswork about cores and such. Nothing wrong with that either, but one has to put these observations of melting arctic ice in their place -- nobody knows what arctic ice was like back when Iceland was lush with farms in the during the Maurader minimum. Nobody had any idea of what arctic ice looked like from a low orbit view until we started launching satellites! And as for Antarctica, we haven't even been there that long, much less established any kind of track record to make comparisons. Cores can only take you so far. I'm not a big fan of running interventions for half-baked fear-mongering masquerading as science. But let's assume for a moment that I were. How would you know what to measure, what to control, and whether or not anything was working? You pull on rope A and bell D rings, does that mean that rope A is connected to bell D? Or just that bell D was going to ring anyway? I'm telling you it's no better than bearskins and sky gods.