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Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's one scientist pushing against the consensus scientific view, and the people most keen to promote him to the general public are those who want any excuse to deny climate-change. He himself may be honest, but it essentially doesn't matter, such is politics.
> such is politics. Attempting to get people fired is just politics?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's one scientist pushing against the consensus scientific view, and the people most keen to promote him to the general public are those who want any excuse to deny climate-change. He himself may be honest, but it essentially doesn't matter, such is politics.
> such is politics. Attempting to get people fired is just politics?
'Climate change denial' is a pretty broad basket of opinions that ranges from directly ignoring clear evidence through to claiming that no attempt to predict the future at that scale has ever worked. Even if all the direct evidence deniers disappeared for some reason, I personally suspect that would still not necessarily be enough to get green policies implemented. The debate would just be a bit cleaner if people whe…
Wow. That guy attracted serious railroading and pushback by people who didn’t like that his data didn’t align with their talking points. He’s not denying climate change, he’s presenting scientific data that contradicts the narrative thst climate change results in increased losses due to weather events/disasters.
He's one scientist pushing against the consensus scientific view, and the people most keen to promote him to the general public are those who want any excuse to deny climate-change. He himself may be honest, but it essentially doesn't matter, such is politics.
Humans live in Antarctica. We grow tropical plants in greenhouses in Canada. We've invented thousands of ways of harvesting electricity. We have climate control systems for indoor environments. Some humans even live in outer space. Some humans spend months at a time in submarines under the ocean.
We're one of the most adaptable species on the planet and that's the very reason for our success ...but global warming is going to kill us all? Give me a break. None of this is constructive.
Sad that the guy has to start off his presentation by showing how many Democrats he's voted for in his lifetime (and that still wasn't enough to tame the mob). That's the fever pitch, antagonistic world we find ourselves in. What if global warming isn't the dire catastrophe that so many people seem to desperately cling to? I have conversations with people who think we are going to face extinction from global warming.…
Sad that the guy has to start off his presentation by showing how many Democrats he's voted for in his lifetime (and that still wasn't enough to tame the mob). That's the fever pitch, antagonistic world we find ourselves in. What if global warming isn't the dire catastrophe that so many people seem to desperately cling to? I have conversations with people who think we are going to face extinction from global warming.…
Humans are the most adaptable species, but we still depend on the global ecosystem. Sure, our species could probably survive a few tens of thousands of years underground after a meteor strikes, huddled around breeder reactors, but this mode of live doesn't scale to nine billion people. If critical systems like phytoplankton in the oceans get out of whack literally billions will die.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans are the most adaptable species, but we still depend on the global ecosystem. Sure, our species could probably survive a few tens of thousands of years underground after a meteor strikes, huddled around breeder reactors, but this mode of live doesn't scale to nine billion people. If critical systems like phytoplankton in the oceans get out of whack literally billions will die.
Listen, life has thrived on this planet for well over a billion years. It's seen carbon levels much, much higher and primates literally evolved during such periods. It's ludicrous to suggest that billions will die.
He's also only addressing his area of expertise, extreme weather events and their cost, not the overall risks triggered by climate change (such as ecosystems collapse, or triggering additional release of greenhouse gas via thawing). That is, at no point is he denying other areas of this (large) topic.
And yet this is sufficient to get lies (including in this thread) about him being a climate change denier, which clearly he's not, or that he's "against the consensus scientific view". He's against the consensus political view. His work is based on the IPCC. The IPCC has its problems, but it is an international body that's pretty mainstream and recognized as such by many countries. The IPCC assess the validity and importance of papers published around the world, their reports are the opposite of fringe.
To me an important point is that this is just one more example of the supremacy of dogma over facts in US public discourse, and that it impacts both the left and the right. For us non-American it is (I assume) pretty easy to spot crazy republicans and their agenda: they're usually quite shameless about it and not very subtle. And so we are somewhat immune to their ideas. What I'm growing increasingly concerned with is that we tend to consider the democrats as the comparatively "reasonable party", the ones that accept facts and science, the ones that are more humanistic. I don't think they are, I think they're just a hell of a lot more insidious about it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Listen, life has thrived on this planet for well over a billion years. It's seen carbon levels much, much higher and primates literally evolved during such periods. It's ludicrous to suggest that billions will die.
As far as I know it's been a really long time since the climate changed as rapidly as it's changing now. I'm not sure whether it ever warmed up as quickly before. Evolution needs time. We're already in the midst of a major extinction event. Life will most likely go on, but I see no reason to believe that we'll survive the transition at our current numbers.
Also, here's a list at some of the dramatic swings in temperature and sea levels over just the past 2 million years, including many events impacting modern human history, such as the Little ice age: http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7x.html