Senate Global Climate Change

I came down with H1N1 that October. It was awesome because I watched the original Superman movie while high on medication, and it became an interactive experience.

 

So you're the one responsible for the present state of the film where Superman flies backwards and fixes the universe.

 

Dood, I'm really trying to help you here. You wrote: "So looking at that Graph and the Caption, they want you to see 2011, with it's big red dot that's bigger than all the other dots. Look at it, it's bigger and more menacing. The caption says that it represents conditions far outside... Which it does. The caption then goes on to say that the probability of such an event has doubled? Really, because there was one extreme year?"

My point is that the caption comment "An analysis has shown that the probability of such an event has more than doubled as a result of human-induced climate change" has nothing to do with the chart, per se. It's an explanatory aside, referencing this study (as footnoted):

Duffy, P. B., and C. Tebaldi, 2012: Increasing prevalence of extreme summer temperatures in the U.S. Climatic Change, 111, 487-495, doi:10.1007/s10584-012-0396-6

So the doubling of probability has nothing to do with the color and size of the dot on the chart. If you had limited your comment to a complaint about the alarmism of making the dot big and red, I wouldn't have responded. But even that has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the observed data points.

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...solving-acidification-climate-change-science/

aside from the tragedy of capsizing marine biodiversity, this paints a pretty clear picture of how human-induced climate change has the potential of wrecking the human food supply.

 

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Planet Niburu crashing into us.

 

I liked the Niburuesque opening/ending of Melancholia. Imagines the earth colliding with an object so big that we're an impact event on it. The rest of the movie is like filling out tax forms.

 

I'm sorry. If there is a "bubble" for anything that resist people who deny facts then that so called bubble is simply correct. One view does not equal another and the scientific view is the correct one. And personal attacks? When you refuse under any and all conditions what is left? Nothing but deserved disrespect. And mak eno misatke, I tune in to the right, I listen to what they say, and on top of all their lies rest a mountain of insults and derision. When people cater to it and support it they deserve the same in kind.

 

i do think KW has a point in that there are loads of threads in this forum where we in a way pander or encourage those with somewhat left field ideas (i.e. any ASR thread of late) -- but that's fine, because usually it's about religion or something equally discussed to absolute death. this thread was actually something a little different and interesting so to just let it devolve into just another "everyone against the slightly crazy guy" thread would be a bit of a shame.

 

Do you realize how ridiculous that position is? You say you listen to right wing media. If that's the case, then you know that what you said is precisely how they feel about "liberals". As far as they're concerned it is you guys who are ignoring the facts. It's almost comical seeing all you "enlightened" guys turn into liberal versions of the people you hate. But it's not hypocritical or wrong in your case. Because your position is RIGHT!

You guys crack me up.

Agreed. What's your point?

Except he didn't "refuse under any and all conditions". In point of fact, he came in and made a comment--a comment no more ridiculous or stupid than any of the many other comments that were made before his--and was immediately attacked, culminating in KW telling him he deserves to be banned. Last I checked, we didn't attack people, only their ideas. But we're past that, now, I guess.

 

this is new senate. we just spit on each other until we all feel clean.

 

I said I would ban him if I were able to, which of course has not been the case for a very long time. Please do not speak for me.

The thing is that the overwhelming majority of scientists and science coincides rather cleanly with the "bubble" you speak of, Souderwan.

On this matter, yes, we are enlightened, and you are not.

With regard to attacking only ideas, we've been around here for over a decade now. Well over that, even. The outside world must also factor in, and the fact of the matter is that many of us are tired of dealing with irrational, science-denying people. Fact denying people, more like. I know I've had enough of it and I'm not alone. I don't mind calling people out personally. The last several years of my life have put me in a place to be completely intolerant of anything like what was posted earlier. I fully accept and embrace it. My way of dealing with it would be to banish it, and without any hesitation whatsoever.

 

Saying you "would ban him if [you] were able to" is the same thing as saying he deserves to be banned. Don't be obtuse.

And don't presuppose my knowledge on the subject of climate change. I'm quite educated on it, thank you.

 

i for one applaud kw's intolerance.

 

*Nu Senate

 

In what sense was he "immediately attacked?" Early responders were Even, Vivec, Rogue Ten and myself. The majority of comments simply noted that we didn't think his specific criticism about public perceptions really applied to this climate report. They were no more or less hostile than various other remarks people made in the thread, as when you disapproved of Other Jabba's Malthusian advocacy, or I chided Vivec about framing the environmental debate as a proxy fight for the developed vs developing world. Across the whole first page or so of responses to him, the sum total of vaguely negative remarks were:

1. Even saying that only an "idiot" wouldn't believe the effects of climate change could accumulate to catastrophic levels

2. A single post with randomly capitalized words, mimicking the capitalization patterns of our the poster in question.

Does this really meet the standard of "immediately attacked?" I'll look through the thread later. Things may well have gotten hostile later. But it is ridiculous to act like people were merciless or cruel to him right off the bat. People responded with substantive arguments, citing facts and asking him to do the same. Posts responded to his perspective and were generally respectful in doing so. Let's be a little bit more realistic about how we characterize things. Just because people didn't hail him as a genius doesn't mean we "immediately attacked" him.

 

Hmm...fair point. Perhaps I overstated it. I retract that particular point.

 

Okie dokie - to get back to the "discussion" instead of the characterizations of various posters:

Be careful, there, as it appears you are claiming I support your position, in least in part.

My position:

That flood insurance premiums are going up MEANS NOTHING regarding climate change per se. Sure, it's because of potential (not currently) insufficient income to pay out claims, but that's because the incidence of claims AND SEVERITY is increasing. That may well be a consequence of climate change although it is not proof of climate change as such. I doubt the report meant, "Whoa, not enough income - hence, climate change is occurring."

Why are number of incidents and severity of incidents increasing? It's not because the government necessarily set rates too low. Its because there's more weather incidents.

The other part you may or may not be referring to is that the earth does go through cycles of "climate change." But not this fast nor so severe. We are acerbating the normal process.

 

Anthropogenic carbon forcing may actually only be the latest of many episodes in earth's history that humans have drastically reorganized the ecology of entire continents. When modern humans spread from Africa into Europe, Asia, Australia, the Japanese islands, North America, we likely hunted all the megafauna to extinction. The large herbivores were probably responsible for eating what would otherwise become forest fire brush fuel in large woodland-parkland ecologies that had evolved over millions of years to depend on the role of the megafauna. Once the big beasts were gone, vast forest fires took out these ecologies, rapidly converting the western U.S. , for example, into prairie. So what Europeans found when they arrived in North America was a landscape that had already been altered from an earlier natural state by the arrival and spread of native Americans.

Global warming is ecological engineering on a much bigger scale than what we achieved in the quaternary extinction, but revolutionizing ecosystems is what we do. It's what we've been doing for more than 50,000 years. It's our thing.

 

backtracking a smidge, but this shall be the title of my autobiography

 

So now I am a science denier? I stated many many times in my posts that I believed in climate change, and it was going to be a problem for us in the future. I never ever denied that, ever! What I have a problem with is the FACT that people take these Assessments that are opinions on scientific data and talk of it as if it's the end of the world coming.

 

It essentially is the end of the world as we know it. The particulars are a bit uncertain, but overall, it's a picture of what's to come.

 

I do my part.

 

Darth Guy how does it feel to know that you were more ruthless than me itt?

 

I feel powerful.