please explain this

I find this debate easy to ignore.
Global Warming, our impact on the our global environment. This SHOULD be one of the most important debates of our times. Whatever you believe.

But unfortunately I find the debate to be mostly inane.

The whole picture has been turned into a scientific, political and even social debate. With polarization on the issue stamped in bumper sticker permanence.

And in simply staying out of the debate and reading and listening? I have never once witnessed a person swayed by the arguments of the other side to change or adapt their opinion. There's enough information, real or chimerical on both sides of the fence to keep people firmly planted in what they WANT to believe as opposed to perhaps what they SHOULD believe.

Therefore any search for a solution get's prematurely aborted by the debate about the problem. So despite what I think is the undeniable importance of the issue, I ignore the debate.

If we should undeniably damage our global echo-sphere to the point of species ending permanence it won't be the actual problem that killed us. It will be the inability of humanity to move beyond the debate to look for solution.

We've reached a point where the exclamation "Please Explain This" isn't a query for knowledge, but a battle cry for the status quo.

 

i think they enjoy the debate itself. and, those on each side learn from each other. in the end, it will be politically decided by the party with the most influence.

 

Unfortunately, I don't see that happening much.

 

clarification: they learn from those on their side, not the other.

 

I took it as a query for knowledge. Some of the responses seemed to take it as something else. I don't think the OP was asking because they were interested in keeping the status quo. IMHO global climate models do a poor job of modeling regional climates, and it is a good question to ask can you explain greenland, or antarctica or X region in a climate model. These are interesting future questions that I hope science can answer.

The media have fired most of their scientists, and the 24 hour news channels seem to want to phrase it as a debate. It wasn't so long ago - 2008 that leaders of both political parties listened to the scientists, but ... disagreed about what to do about it.

Now the politics seems to get in the way of the science, with name calling a leading tactic of the democratic politicians, and misleading data a leading tactic of the lobbyists.

 

I am a lifelong Democrat and former Al Gore supporter.
I believed "An Inconvenient Truth".My entire belief on the global warming matter was 180 degree changed by reading some discussions on this forum.
7-8 years ago there used to be a few very informative deniers who no longer post here.Seeing this graph changed my stance.I knew Gore was lying.

 

As with many other environmental discussions here, I have learned from this one. At a basic level, I learned that temperature, CO2, and many other measurements from the Greenland summit station can be readily downloaded from ESRL. Deeper, that Greenland climate has a lot to do with nearby ocean currents. I would not have gone to read such things before. Finally I learned how much the summit appears to have warmed in the last 100 years or so. More than the earth as a whole apparently, but this brings us back to Greenland's singular climate.

Now if no one else has learned anything here, that is sad. There have been much more than 500 views of this thread, and I doubt that heavy posters like me account for the majority.

In general Envtl threads get a lot of views. I have always assumed this means that people are learning something. If not that, then they are finding support for the views they arrived with. Either way, I prefer this situation to not having such discussions at all. If someone does get their outlook changed by reading things here, they are not obligated to inform us. I shan't presume it does not happen.

We do get a bit feisty sometimes, but I don't think it's that bad. Comes from people perplexed as to why others don't share their opinions, or seem unwilling to examine and evaluate evidence. In other words, quite human.

Mojo, Treb, Spidy and others already know that I am grateful for them posting matters of interest, and now friendly_jacek knows also. And that's just the people I typically disagree with!

I bring up other matters of interest (to me) but it is hard for John Q to get very excited about biology, ecology and carbon cycling. Try to spice them up with pee or poop (if it can be made to fit), but still, all those get fewer views than the pillowfights.

Can't please everybody.

 

46 posts and 552 views means that a few people think they know what they are talking about, and 506 find it entertaining.

 

By all means ignore the fan sites, but that is hardly a reason not to read the science. You are just finding it convenient to succumb to the noise, which is exactly what the noise makers want.

Try realclimate.org
The scientists running around that site can be intimidating but a lot is written for non-scientists too.

While we are on the topic, would you mind explaining why you do not just take the word of any and every prestigious western science academy on the matter ?

 

And what side of the issue is the Noise Makers? And what side is the quiet truth? It's ALL NOISE. That's the problem. We never move on to solution, because we are too busy debating the validity and definition of the problem.

I don't ignore the opinions, science, or the issue itself. What I avoid is the stretch of hot useless coals that is the "debate" about all those things.

 

Glacial transitions in the long term, and marine heat fluxes in the short term, remain beyond climate models. These are real problems. Shall we conclude from that there is no use to model climate and consider possible futures? If so, we'll just have to trust to luck that doubling CO2 won't impair the human enterprise. It is not something we have lived through before.

Hope for good luck then y'all

 

The non-scientists. I'm surprised to have to answer that question for you.

A repeat of an earlier question: While we are on the topic, would you mind explaining why you do not just take the word of any and every prestigious western science academy on the matter ?

 

Hate to tell ya...but there are scientists on BOTH sides of the issue.

And again...I don't ignore the topic, I ignore the debate. There's a subtle but important distinction there.

You're making the assumption I don't listen to the opinions of prestigious western science academies.
Since I haven't commented on my personal opinion on the matter I don't know why you jump to that conclusion.

 

There are in a sense, but in a very lopsided ratio and the skeptics do not argue about global warming, or a human cause. That is the domain of denialists who are not scientists. They used to argue over the relative contribution of human vs other forcing, but now they are reduced to arguments over climate sensitivity.

At least know the outline of uncertainty. The scientific uncertainty.

 

Dude you already know that the climate models the IPCC uses are wrong for the past 18 years.
You know that the IPCC prediction of a rise in Temp of 2-6 degree C is wrong.
Why do you still quote the 2-6 degree prediction as valid when you know its a disproven lie?
The computer models have failed for the past 18 years .
Yet you continue to quote model predictions of 2-6 degees warming.
Are you that ignorant?
Or what?
Co2 doubling should cause a 1C rise in temps.
Which is very beneficial to society.

 

Just above "Co2 doubling should cause a 1C rise in temps" A clearer assessment of the radiative line transfer models would have led you to 1 to 2 degrees, but this is great progress already

If that thing cannot be amplified by any terrestrial processes, and is only 'as such' or reduced by feedbacks, we'd not have glacial cycles. So after a great first step, you put yourself in a difficult position.I wish for better, but the general trend looks good.

The whole 18 years thing hangs on strong 97-98 El Nino. If the one maybe coming on now is also strong, I am confident that mojo will be will be first among us to add that T data and proclaim "+T is strong".

Even without, every decade has been warmer then the previous and now we may be down to one poster still denying that. Such progress. So happy.

Do current climate models predict ENSO extremes and their T consequences? No, they do not. I don't know how to fix that, but if oceans simply remain beyond modelers' skill, it would be well to consider what can be learned from such models with such an obvious flaw. A better model will come from where? and it will predict what?

+1 oC is already behind us. We have agricultural responses and other ecosystem responses that have been widely studied and published. I would not call those bad, on balance. The next +1 oC will come along within decades. I am much less optimistic about its benefits. +T after that does not look beneficial at all. Accompanied by a distinct lack of '+CO2 and +T are great' studies by anybody, anywhere. Even if the journals can't deal with your quantitative results, the whole internet beckons. Put it out there, man, and let us have a look.

After all these decades of discussion, there are still no quantitative claims of why and how much +CO2 and +T will help us all. This is an obvious problem.

Returning to the initial semantic element here, please explain this to me. Thanks.

 

Dear 'liar liar' mojo,

I've seen enough when you posted this about Doug:

<nonsense>
Are you that ignorant?
Or what?
<nonsense>​

Doug has expressed sympathy for listening to your point of view and out of respect for Doug, I've held off. But your recent behavior suggests a trend that can not be helped by anything posted here.

You bring nothing original to the forum and punctuate it with invective. Thanks to 'ignore user', I don't have to put up with it: Ploink!

Bob Wilson

 

I added him this week. I have no idea what took me so long. My ignore list now has grown to two.

 

Source: http://skepticalscience.net/pdf/rebuttal/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period-intermediate.pdf

Bob Wilson