4 ms·

Well, the trouble is, even the "center" positions are pretty scary. Conservative projections of sea level rise leave Florida inundated. So is all life on the

by zzalpha 12y ago

Well, the trouble is, even the "center" positions are pretty scary. Conservative projections of sea level rise leave Florida inundated. So is all life on the planet going to be destroyed as a result of global warming? No, of course not. Life is far too resilient for that. Are humans going to wipe themselves out? Doubtful. We're remarkably adaptable animals. But it's gonna be pretty frickin' miserable for a lot of people, particularly the 40% of people who live within 37 miles of a coastline.

happyscrappy 12y ago
You make my point for me, 40% of the people will suffer, no citation necessary. This is not science.
- zzalpha 12y ago
  I suppose I wasn't disagreeing with you, save that I disagree that the centrist position is "not as exciting". My only point is that even the modest, "non-alarmist" positions are pretty alarming to any reasonable individual. That ain't hyperbole. It's just basic statistics. Unfortunately it's the case that the extreme hyperbole on both ends drowns out the genuine alarm people should be experiencing at the very realistic effects of a warming climate. Basically, by recalibrating everyone's expectations to "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE", when you tell them "well, not everyone is gonna die, but a lot of people are gonna get screwed", the response is either "oh, you lied before, I don't believe anything you say now", or "well that doesn't so bad... I'm gonna go rollin' coal."
phkahler 12y ago
>> Conservative projections of sea level rise leave Florida inundated. The projections for warming over the last 15 years have not panned out. There was no rise. So the earliest projections from the alarmists have proven to be wrong.
- icebraining 12y ago
  EDIT: Nevermind, I mixed up sea levels and temperature. Are you saying that sea levels in general haven't risen? Or that Florida in particular is somehow immune? If the former, this[¹] seems to contradict you, are you saying it's wrong, or am I reading it in a different way? ¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise#/media/File:Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level,_1870-2008_%28US_EPA%29.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise#/media/F...
  - zzalpha 12y ago
    No, he's cherrypicking a start date for measuring global temperature rise--selecting 1998, which was an exceptionally strong El Nino year, resulting in an anomalously high yearly average global temperature--and then comparing subsequent yearly average temperatures based on that epoch. In essence he's comparing a trendline to a single outlier, and using that to come to an invalid conclusion. Using that sort of reasoning, it's pretty trivial to show no "warming". But it's nothing more than statistical trickery. When you look at the overall trend, it's pretty clear that global warming has continued apace, right in line with predictions made decades ago. It's actually pretty impressive how closely reality has hewed to those predictions: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/27/climate-change-model-global-warming http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/27/climate-c...
- duwease 12y ago
  The argument that climate scientists claim x% of warming every decade is a straw man.. that is not a claim they have made and then failed at. They have claimed longer-term warming with short-term fluctuations (considering that carbon emissions are only one factor among many), and if you pull out to a 100-year view, that claim has been maintained. In fact, when carbon emissions as a factor is removed from model predictions for the last 15 years or so, they predict cooling.. so the "flatness" in comparison indicates that carbon emissions brought the average temperature up. In addition, the "flat temperature" argument itself only uses atmospheric temperature and not ocean temperature (which is another huge heat sink). Combined ocean and atmospheric temperatures still show a heat rise, even with the other natural environmental factors pushing a cooldown.
  - phkahler 12y ago
    >> The argument that climate scientists claim x% of warming every decade is a straw man.. that is not a claim they have made and then failed at. Thanks for playing. You lose: https://www.google.com/search?q=global+warming+prediction+from+1999&biw=1285&bih=763&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=pXAIVYzKL8SGyASs5oCwDw&ved=0CB0QsAQ https://www.google.com/search?q=global+warming+prediction+fr...
    - duwease 12y ago
      I'm not sure how a Google search for a series of loosely related graphs addresses either of my arguments. I assume you are thinking that their existence refutes them somehow, but I don't see anything on the first page that contradicts anything I said.
      - phkahler 12y ago
        >> I'm not sure how a Google search for a series of loosely related graphs addresses either of my arguments. Your argument was that my argument was a strawman. Those graphs all show projections that have not panned out. To be definitive, either of us would need to locate the original claims from a reliable source.
xrange 12y ago
Interesting factoid. There are the old remains of coral reefs in the middle of Florida, so we know that the entire state was underwater in the past.

by zzalpha 12y ago

happyscrappy 12y ago

You make my point for me, 40% of the people will suffer, no citation necessary. This is not science.

zzalpha 12y ago
I suppose I wasn't disagreeing with you, save that I disagree that the centrist position is "not as exciting". My only point is that even the modest, "non-alarmist" positions are pretty alarming to any reasonable individual. That ain't hyperbole. It's just basic statistics. Unfortunately it's the case that the extreme hyperbole on both ends drowns out the genuine alarm people should be experiencing at the very realistic effects of a warming climate. Basically, by recalibrating everyone's expectations to "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE", when you tell them "well, not everyone is gonna die, but a lot of people are gonna get screwed", the response is either "oh, you lied before, I don't believe anything you say now", or "well that doesn't so bad... I'm gonna go rollin' coal."

phkahler 12y ago

>> Conservative projections of sea level rise leave Florida inundated. The projections for warming over the last 15 years have not panned out. There was no rise. So the earliest projections from the alarmists have proven to be wrong.

icebraining 12y ago
EDIT: Nevermind, I mixed up sea levels and temperature. Are you saying that sea levels in general haven't risen? Or that Florida in particular is somehow immune? If the former, this[¹] seems to contradict you, are you saying it's wrong, or am I reading it in a different way? ¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise#/media/File:Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level,_1870-2008_%28US_EPA%29.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise#/media/F...
- zzalpha 12y ago
  No, he's cherrypicking a start date for measuring global temperature rise--selecting 1998, which was an exceptionally strong El Nino year, resulting in an anomalously high yearly average global temperature--and then comparing subsequent yearly average temperatures based on that epoch. In essence he's comparing a trendline to a single outlier, and using that to come to an invalid conclusion. Using that sort of reasoning, it's pretty trivial to show no "warming". But it's nothing more than statistical trickery. When you look at the overall trend, it's pretty clear that global warming has continued apace, right in line with predictions made decades ago. It's actually pretty impressive how closely reality has hewed to those predictions: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/27/climate-change-model-global-warming http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/27/climate-c...
duwease 12y ago
The argument that climate scientists claim x% of warming every decade is a straw man.. that is not a claim they have made and then failed at. They have claimed longer-term warming with short-term fluctuations (considering that carbon emissions are only one factor among many), and if you pull out to a 100-year view, that claim has been maintained. In fact, when carbon emissions as a factor is removed from model predictions for the last 15 years or so, they predict cooling.. so the "flatness" in comparison indicates that carbon emissions brought the average temperature up. In addition, the "flat temperature" argument itself only uses atmospheric temperature and not ocean temperature (which is another huge heat sink). Combined ocean and atmospheric temperatures still show a heat rise, even with the other natural environmental factors pushing a cooldown.
- phkahler 12y ago
  >> The argument that climate scientists claim x% of warming every decade is a straw man.. that is not a claim they have made and then failed at. Thanks for playing. You lose: https://www.google.com/search?q=global+warming+prediction+from+1999&biw=1285&bih=763&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=pXAIVYzKL8SGyASs5oCwDw&ved=0CB0QsAQ https://www.google.com/search?q=global+warming+prediction+fr...
  - duwease 12y ago
    I'm not sure how a Google search for a series of loosely related graphs addresses either of my arguments. I assume you are thinking that their existence refutes them somehow, but I don't see anything on the first page that contradicts anything I said.
    - phkahler 12y ago
      >> I'm not sure how a Google search for a series of loosely related graphs addresses either of my arguments. Your argument was that my argument was a strawman. Those graphs all show projections that have not panned out. To be definitive, either of us would need to locate the original claims from a reliable source.

xrange 12y ago

Interesting factoid. There are the old remains of coral reefs in the middle of Florida, so we know that the entire state was underwater in the past.