When speaking with people who do not agree with me on the correctness or urgency of global warming, this is the argument I traditionally make: let's examine the worst-case scenarios. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the science, taking it seriously is a logical choice. The plausible worst-case scenario of charging ahead with measures to combat climate change isn't actually that bad, not to mention the anci…
Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
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Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
#72The global warming brigade hijacked the pollution issue. There always will be a debate on global warming. So keeping global warming as the prime focus of fossil fuel usage kept people divided. If pollution was the prime focus from day one, then more push would have been given to renewable. Maybe, Arnold is able to bring more people to think in this direction.
"The global warming brigade hijacked the pollution issue." This is why I hate environmental discussions with a passion, because at some point if one expresses less than total agreement with the AGW crowd you apparently are in the pocket of Smokey McCoalstove and enjoy smog, dead fish, and coughing babies. Martin Luther received a warmer response from the Catholic Church than some "deniers" who dare question the estab…
Yes, because unless you have actual, critical arguments beyond the conspiranoid baseless claims that climate scientists are all in collusion, all the science points one way, and the entire civilized world with the exception of some US politicians who are suspiciously befriended with certain economic interests oppose it.
Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain your lack of belief when 97% of climate scientists (there's conflicting data on this; some reports show as high as 99%) agree that human activity is causing global warming? EDIT: That's not rhetorical. I'll entertain any logical reasoning you have as to why your reasoning is superior to those educated and practicing the subject daily.
Maybe he has a basic understanding of time series analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
Notice that the last value in that graph is around 280 ppm, and that it doesn't exceed about 300 in the entire graph (about half a million years).
Current CO2 levels recently broke 400 ppm and still rising.
To represent the current situation, you'd need to add a spike at the end roughly double the height of that graph.
Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
#74There are two doors. Behind Door Number One is a completely sealed room, with a regular, gasoline-fueled car. Behind Door Number Two is an identical, completely sealed room, with an electric car. Both engines are running full blast. I want you to pick a door to open, and enter the room and shut the door behind you. You have to stay in the room you choose for one hour. You cannot turn off the engine. You do not get a…
The point here is it's easier to control emissions at large-scale power generation plants than it is on millions of individual vehicles. How many cars would fail an inspection if exposed to one?
The same cannot be said about power plants.
There's also the renewable angle. Surplus wind power, as experienced in Spain, would basically provide free power for recharging vehicles overnight. You cannot do this with gasoline.
The sealed room is also a way of presenting what we're doing to our climate, that the automobile emissions don't just go "into the air", but become part of the environment.
Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
#75I absolutely don't believe that human-created CO2 emissions cause global warming. However, I consider myself a staunch environmentalist. I believe we should be doing whatever we can to control pollution. It sickens me that factories pump out pollution, that we can barely eat fish anymore because of all the garbage and poisons we pump into our oceans. I think we need very strict controls on every form of pollution as…
Can you explain your lack of belief when 97% of climate scientists (there's conflicting data on this; some reports show as high as 99%) agree that human activity is causing global warming? EDIT: That's not rhetorical. I'll entertain any logical reasoning you have as to why your reasoning is superior to those educated and practicing the subject daily.
I thought the 97% of climate scientists claim (based on Cook et al) was shown to be a really flawed study.
In any event, Consensus does not equal science.
I think given the broad definition of "human activity is causing global warming", you'd be hard pressed to find disagreement. If you refine it to "human activity is causing a majority of global warming and that warming is bad" there is a lot less agreement.
Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be very interested in an all-electric minivan with enough range for my frequent 600-mile trips to my wife's home town. Sadly, this does not yet exist.
You make a 10-hour-each-way trip frequently? Man, stop throwing away your life like that. Downsize your house, take a pay cut, do whatever it is you have to to move somewhere closer. I struggle to even begin to imagine the misery of what you're doing.
Many people choose their car based on their peak requirements, rather than their average requirements.
I've seen people commute in a minivan every day because the space was useful taking their kids' stuff back and forth to college a handful of times a year. I've seen people buy SUVs because they tow a boat or a horse box once every six months. I've seen people buying larger cars so they can transport five adults in greater comfort - even though they only need to do that a handful of times a year.
Now, it's possible that these people would be better served by one car for their everyday needs, hiring different cars for these occasional needs - but most car buyers aren't used to behaving that way at the moment.
Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain your lack of belief when 97% of climate scientists (there's conflicting data on this; some reports show as high as 99%) agree that human activity is causing global warming? EDIT: That's not rhetorical. I'll entertain any logical reasoning you have as to why your reasoning is superior to those educated and practicing the subject daily.
Maybe he has a basic understanding of time series analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
The point of that chart is that the temperature appears to go up before the CO2 levels, leading to the theory that higher temperatures (due to natural cycles, perhaps solar activity cycles) heat up the ocean and other CO2 sinks, leading to a rise in atmospheric CO2.
Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
#78The global warming brigade hijacked the pollution issue. There always will be a debate on global warming. So keeping global warming as the prime focus of fossil fuel usage kept people divided. If pollution was the prime focus from day one, then more push would have been given to renewable. Maybe, Arnold is able to bring more people to think in this direction.
> There always will be a debate on global warming. So keeping global warming as the prime focus of fossil fuel usage kept people divided. Bullshit. Whatever the focus was, vested interests would have funded opposition and that's what kept people divided.
Hear, hear. The fossil-fuel industry fought long and hard to sow doubt that ambient lead levels in the atmosphere were increasing due to the burning of leaded gasoline. Losing on that point, they then attempted to prove that low levels of lead are not harmful to humans; this has since been shown to be wildly inaccurate.
It blows my fucking mind that people accuse scientists of being untrustworthy due to having a financial interest in proving global warming to be true; this is in spite of the fact that the fossil-fuel industry has already been caught putting out junk science that justified poisoning humans to protect their profit.
Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because you're reflexively dismissing people on the other side. They're still there, though.
What "other side"?? The only people who are questioning the science are the ones who don't have the necessary knowledge to evaluate the claims scientifically and who have an economic stake in continuing fossil fuel usage. No climate scientists oppose it. I have not seen a single, reliable and useful model which goes against the fundamentals of climate change. There are no alternative hypothesis that explain the clima…
The only people who are questioning the science are the ones who don't have the necessary knowledge to evaluate the claims scientifically and who have an economic stake in continuing fossil fuel usage.
That's dismissive: you're claiming that the people who disagree with you are only disagreeing because they're idiots who should be ignored, and/or are being paid to disagree.
Re: Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
#80The global warming brigade hijacked the pollution issue. There always will be a debate on global warming. So keeping global warming as the prime focus of fossil fuel usage kept people divided. If pollution was the prime focus from day one, then more push would have been given to renewable. Maybe, Arnold is able to bring more people to think in this direction.
Revisionist history much?
We added lead to gasoline in the 1920s and it remained legal in most countries (including the US) until 1990s. In other words, it took us seventy years to stop actively adding toxic heavy metal to gasoline so that it spreads everywhere cars can go.
After all, we're talking about an industry that can spread FUD about a whole branch of science. I see no reason why they wouldn't do the same to other pollution problems.