4 ms·

The best part of watching global warming unfold is watching the deniers move straight from "it doesn't exist and isn't a problem, so we should do nothing" to "o

The best part of watching global warming unfold is watching the deniers move straight from "it doesn't exist and isn't a problem, so we should do nothing" to "of course it exists and is a huge problem, I've never denied that, but it's far too late to do anything now, so we should do nothing".

Charliemack 13y ago
The best part is watching al giores cult members change the name from global warming to climate change so that anything that happens can be blamed on man and watch the believers use the word deniers in that creepy you don t believe in our religion way
at-fates-hands 13y ago
While I'm in "even if its not happening, shouldn't we do something just in case it is" camp, I see a LOT of hypocrisy on the part of people fervently saying it does exist. Al Gore? The guy who's the poster boy for climate change owns a huge mansion that's incredibly inefficient in its energy use: http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp "In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home" This doesn't even take into account the amount of fuel the guy burns on all of his globe trotting talking about the evils of Global Warming. So yeah, there's the deniers, but it's hard to take these people seriously who are talking about the end of the world, yet are greatly adding to its demise. I'm all for alternative energy sources, but when do you think you're going to get solar to a point where's its more economically feasible? I just got an estimate from a company last summer and to get a few panels installed and up and running, it was around 40K up-front and then I would break even with the energy savings in about 10 years. Now think about low income families, you think they'd ever be able to afford something like that? Add in the fact renewable resource companies keep going bankrupt and I keep wondering when, if ever there will be a decent alternative to actually mitigate the ongoing damage.
- jaredhansen 13y ago
  It's the same with almost anything else. Austerity for thee, but not for me.
- chc 13y ago
  Natural gas is relatively clean-burning AFAIK -- not perfect, but better than other fossil fuels -- so that seems like a bit of a red herring. He's an advocate for awareness of climate change, not a Mennonite. You can't attack him for using electricity.
  - shiftpgdn 13y ago
    More importantly it actually comes out alongside crude oil so the cost of getting it out of ground is minimal. Many oil rigs simply burn it on site instead of containing it due to the difficulty in containment and transport. There is actually a big issue in North Dakota at the moment where all the natural gas that comes up along with the oil is simply burned as there are no pipelines out there yet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare
Charliemack 13y ago
It's creepy how you people use that word denier. Kind of like how cult members use it
- Shivetya 13y ago
  name calling/branding is the resort fanatics take when they cannot rationally discuss an issue or the facts do not fit their argument. The Pro GW crowd went off the fanatic end long ago and lost any creditability, but they do have two things that many who stand up to them do not, money and political power
  - epi8 13y ago
    I'm not sure that either side is exactly lacking in money or political power. One of the characteristics that many of the tea party members share is a skepticism with regards to climate change (or global warming), and the tea party has a lot of money and political power. That doesn't affect who is right, of course. But everyone on both sides of this debate seems to have this notion that their side is the scrappy underdog going against a political and corporate behemoth manipulating the truth for profit.
  - Charliemack 13y ago
    They also had to change the name from global warming to climate change so that whatever happens they can blame it on man. Cold weather is now blamed. I noticed the Sunday morning political shows had to explain the cold weather
Wonderdonkey 13y ago
I've seen this kind of sentiment a lot. But it seems like if you want to bring people into the fold, you might stop calling them names and pointing out the wrongness of their previous beliefs over and over. Show some human understanding. Let them save face. Invite them in and make them want to join you. Find points of agreement. For example, it isn't incorrect to question science, especially when just tens of decades of data are being used to predict the outcomes of epochal processes. But now it's not just predictions. You can see the effects with your own eyes. Something immediate is happening now. And whether you believe(d) the cause was human or not, what is certainly true is that humans have the ability and urgent need to improve the situation. The more important goal (more important than trumpeting your rightness) is solving the problem. Any one of us could have been a "denier" in different circumstances. World views take time to adjust, and getting insulted by your philosophical opponents over and over doesn't speed up the process.
vixen99 13y ago
Wouldn't want to spoil your enjoyment but why isn't it a problem in the Antarctic? As a scientist brought up to value Karl Popper's writings on the practice of science, it's disturbing to see a hypothesis (CAGW) making a whole series of failed predictions and each time some new excuse brought out to explain that failure together (from some) with choice epithets for those who remark on that failure. Feynmann made the point here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw "If it (theory/hypothesis) disagrees with experiment - it's wrong"
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  > Wouldn't want to spoil your enjoyment but why isn't it a problem in the Antarctic? Wouldn't the fact that the arctic and antarctic are geographically quite different have an effect here? The arctic ice in question is largely ice sitting atop water. Thus the feedback mechanism described in the article. Light colored ice thins, darker water is exposed to sunlight to warm and thin more ice or not freeze as rapidly the next winter. See a similar effect in Greenland as pollution (mostly from North America?) is covering the ice sheet with a darker soot, leading to heating of the ice sheet and faster than normal melts. The Antarctic is sitting away from pollution and the ice sheet is largely atop a landmass, not just water. In particular, the central ice sheet is on land. So any water warming affect would be going outside-in, not inside-out. No internal feedback loop to destroy itself. Regarding pollution, as a contrast to Greenland, its air currents aren't pulling in heavily polluted air from industrial centers and setting it down on the ice sheet. Why it's grown? I haven't got a clue, but why it hasn't shrunk like the Arctic? It's not the same configuration, it shouldn't be expected to react the same way.
glenra 13y ago
That is how science works - you have to prove each axiom or your theorem doesn't hold together. The CAGW claim is that warming exists AND is human caused AND is going to continue AND is something we can do something about AND the cost of action is less than dealing with the consequences of inaction. A skeptic could quite reasonably have been skeptical about any or all of those assertions at various points in time. If you manage to establish some of them to a satisfactory degree, that doesn't give you a free pass to assume away all the others.

Charliemack 13y ago

The best part is watching al giores cult members change the name from global warming to climate change so that anything that happens can be blamed on man and watch the believers use the word deniers in that creepy you don t believe in our religion way

at-fates-hands 13y ago

While I'm in "even if its not happening, shouldn't we do something just in case it is" camp, I see a LOT of hypocrisy on the part of people fervently saying it does exist. Al Gore? The guy who's the poster boy for climate change owns a huge mansion that's incredibly inefficient in its energy use: http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp "In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home" This doesn't even take into account the amount of fuel the guy burns on all of his globe trotting talking about the evils of Global Warming. So yeah, there's the deniers, but it's hard to take these people seriously who are talking about the end of the world, yet are greatly adding to its demise. I'm all for alternative energy sources, but when do you think you're going to get solar to a point where's its more economically feasible? I just got an estimate from a company last summer and to get a few panels installed and up and running, it was around 40K up-front and then I would break even with the energy savings in about 10 years. Now think about low income families, you think they'd ever be able to afford something like that? Add in the fact renewable resource companies keep going bankrupt and I keep wondering when, if ever there will be a decent alternative to actually mitigate the ongoing damage.

jaredhansen 13y ago
It's the same with almost anything else. Austerity for thee, but not for me.
chc 13y ago
Natural gas is relatively clean-burning AFAIK -- not perfect, but better than other fossil fuels -- so that seems like a bit of a red herring. He's an advocate for awareness of climate change, not a Mennonite. You can't attack him for using electricity.
- shiftpgdn 13y ago
  More importantly it actually comes out alongside crude oil so the cost of getting it out of ground is minimal. Many oil rigs simply burn it on site instead of containing it due to the difficulty in containment and transport. There is actually a big issue in North Dakota at the moment where all the natural gas that comes up along with the oil is simply burned as there are no pipelines out there yet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare

Charliemack 13y ago

It's creepy how you people use that word denier. Kind of like how cult members use it

Shivetya 13y ago
name calling/branding is the resort fanatics take when they cannot rationally discuss an issue or the facts do not fit their argument. The Pro GW crowd went off the fanatic end long ago and lost any creditability, but they do have two things that many who stand up to them do not, money and political power
- epi8 13y ago
  I'm not sure that either side is exactly lacking in money or political power. One of the characteristics that many of the tea party members share is a skepticism with regards to climate change (or global warming), and the tea party has a lot of money and political power. That doesn't affect who is right, of course. But everyone on both sides of this debate seems to have this notion that their side is the scrappy underdog going against a political and corporate behemoth manipulating the truth for profit.
- Charliemack 13y ago
  They also had to change the name from global warming to climate change so that whatever happens they can blame it on man. Cold weather is now blamed. I noticed the Sunday morning political shows had to explain the cold weather

Wonderdonkey 13y ago

I've seen this kind of sentiment a lot. But it seems like if you want to bring people into the fold, you might stop calling them names and pointing out the wrongness of their previous beliefs over and over. Show some human understanding. Let them save face. Invite them in and make them want to join you. Find points of agreement. For example, it isn't incorrect to question science, especially when just tens of decades of data are being used to predict the outcomes of epochal processes. But now it's not just predictions. You can see the effects with your own eyes. Something immediate is happening now. And whether you believe(d) the cause was human or not, what is certainly true is that humans have the ability and urgent need to improve the situation. The more important goal (more important than trumpeting your rightness) is solving the problem. Any one of us could have been a "denier" in different circumstances. World views take time to adjust, and getting insulted by your philosophical opponents over and over doesn't speed up the process.

vixen99 13y ago

Wouldn't want to spoil your enjoyment but why isn't it a problem in the Antarctic? As a scientist brought up to value Karl Popper's writings on the practice of science, it's disturbing to see a hypothesis (CAGW) making a whole series of failed predictions and each time some new excuse brought out to explain that failure together (from some) with choice epithets for those who remark on that failure. Feynmann made the point here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw "If it (theory/hypothesis) disagrees with experiment - it's wrong"

Jtsummers 13y ago
> Wouldn't want to spoil your enjoyment but why isn't it a problem in the Antarctic? Wouldn't the fact that the arctic and antarctic are geographically quite different have an effect here? The arctic ice in question is largely ice sitting atop water. Thus the feedback mechanism described in the article. Light colored ice thins, darker water is exposed to sunlight to warm and thin more ice or not freeze as rapidly the next winter. See a similar effect in Greenland as pollution (mostly from North America?) is covering the ice sheet with a darker soot, leading to heating of the ice sheet and faster than normal melts. The Antarctic is sitting away from pollution and the ice sheet is largely atop a landmass, not just water. In particular, the central ice sheet is on land. So any water warming affect would be going outside-in, not inside-out. No internal feedback loop to destroy itself. Regarding pollution, as a contrast to Greenland, its air currents aren't pulling in heavily polluted air from industrial centers and setting it down on the ice sheet. Why it's grown? I haven't got a clue, but why it hasn't shrunk like the Arctic? It's not the same configuration, it shouldn't be expected to react the same way.

glenra 13y ago

That is how science works - you have to prove each axiom or your theorem doesn't hold together. The CAGW claim is that warming exists AND is human caused AND is going to continue AND is something we can do something about AND the cost of action is less than dealing with the consequences of inaction. A skeptic could quite reasonably have been skeptical about any or all of those assertions at various points in time. If you manage to establish some of them to a satisfactory degree, that doesn't give you a free pass to assume away all the others.