OSSU: A path to a free self-taught education in computer science

You are wrong. I am more than willing to engage in a scientific, evidence-based conversation about this if you are willing to stay within those bounds. In fact, I should be able to prove the greater point by using just one graph, which is the data on ice core atmospheric sampling.

If you are willing to honestly look at the evidence and my conclusion I am equally willing to participate in a Q&A session to try to evaluate it.

There is NOTHING I would like more than someone showing me where my reasoning on this is wrong. I say this because the conclusion I have reached is not what I wanted. I wanted to learn that we could actually do something about this issue. I ended-up reaching the conclusion that the opposite is true.

Are you willing to help me evaluate my conclusion?

This offer is open to anyone reading this.

I am not a climate change skeptic at all. Not even one bit. Skeptics are, to be kind, extremely ill-informed. And so are zealots. This thing has become so incredibly polarized that scientists are afraid to speak up and go against the grain in any way.

The reason I brought up Climate Change and the girl (who is a beautiful smart young woman and should be protected) is I was talking about indoctrination. What adults are doing to kids to further the extremist ideologies surrounding Climate Change is nothing less than child abuse, it's criminal. As a parent I am aghast that other parents allow their kids to be used this way. We have seen kids break down and cry in absolute fear at many of these demonstrations. This is very, very wrong. Again, I was talking about indoctrination and the most current example of how bad this can be just happened to be kids and Climate Change.

Here's my problem with what's going on out there. Two sides:

Skeptics: Well, they don't know what they are talking about and refuse to learn, research and understand. I can see a range of them not having the necessary background in math and science to be able to understand. I can't fault them for that, it's a combination of personal circumstances and the educational system. I don't know.

Zealots. Activists: They are being driven like sheep by forces for whom Climate Change has political value. They repeat what they are told without questioning and understanding any of it and share in the ignorance of the skeptics while existing at the other end of the scale.

In both cases the masses are being driven by a combination of fear-mongering and religious attachment to ideological camps.

Where is the truth then?

Climate change is very real.

We added about 100 ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere in just a few hundred years.

There is nothing whatsoever we can do to "take back" the 100 ppm in anything even remotely resembling a human time scale.

That last one is my conclusion based on looking at relevant, reliable and accurate scientific evidence and running through some very basic math. Understanding this aspect of the problem is very simple.

I realize this is a shocker of a conclusion but I feel it is important to understand that we have to be careful or we might just succeed at killing everything on this planet. Some of the proposals out there are down-right scary. There is no way we re going to reduce atmospheric CO2 by 100 ppm in 50 or 100 years. It will not happen. If someone claims they have a way to accomplish this they are going to collide head on with having to explain how it is that they are going to get around some of the most fundamental laws in science, such as the Law of Conservation of Energy.

Anyhow, if you (or anyone else) is interested in helping me understand if my conclusion is wrong I welcome it. I don't want to be right on this one, but I can't find a way to refute it. I have had conversations with other engineers and scientists, one of them being a PhD in Physics from JPL, and not one of them can find a hole in my reasoning.

Let's assume, for a moment, that I am correct in my conclusion. That we can't fix this for perhaps tens of thousands of years, if at all.

What would that mean?

Well, at a minimum it means we need to refocus the thinking and effort into research that will hopefully result in real short term improvements for humanity while understanding we are not going to fix the overall problem. We need to focus on the "brace for impact" reality. And we sure as hell should criminalize what's going on with kids, where teachers and others are actually convincing them they are going to die soon if nobody does a thing about Climate Change.

If I am right, the conversation needs to change quite radically. Politicians need to be ejected from this domain so that scientists can go to work on the reality of the problem without fear of losing their jobs, grants and careers. If I am right, and I hope I am not, we are wasting precious time stirring up a frenzy that could lead to truly terrible decisions.

I extend my offer again. If you, or anyone else, is willing to critically evaluate my findings I would thrilled. I am happy to start a new thread and present both data and argument. I repeat, I am actually looking for someone to tell me why and how this conclusion is invalid.

Thanks.

I have been thinking about this for several weeks actually. My conclusion at this point is that it might be time to get off the sidelines and present this to a much wider audience. To that end I am organizing my journey, findings and conclusions into a paper. At the moment I am thinking of publishing it through the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of which I am a member. That part isn't set in stone though, there might be better options.

To be candid, one of the serious concerns I have is related to the just how vindictive and violent ideological mobs have become over the last decade or so. Going up against both climate change mobs (believers and skeptics) can have serious and permanent personal consequences for both individuals and their family. This is the real tragedy of our times and something that has turned this particular topic into what it is.

Saying anything against the mobs can make you radioactive, and life is over. I mean, just look at your reaction to a simple statement (not to single you out, I see this all the time). You have a set of conclusions that you are convinced to be correct and reject even as much as having a somewhat public conversation about the possibility these conclusions might be wrong. Now, you don't strike me as a vindictive violent zealot at all. However, those people are out there. Social media amplifies their voices and influence. That is precisely how they are able to cause tremendous damage to anyone who counters challenges the positions they have taken.

It reminds me of a recent case of the guy who raised around a million dollars to donate to children's hospitals. The mob didn't like him. They dug into his social media record and found a stupid thing he said when he was 16 years old. They pushed that hard all over the place. They then went to his sponsors and pounded them just as hard. The end result was that the sponsors pulled out their matching contribution and the entire effort was destroyed. Children's hospitals did not receive the much-needed funding because an angry mob attacked one person with such fervor and violence that they made it impossible for that to happen.

Climate Change is a hundred times, a million times, worse than this. The minute you have children marching on the streets all over the world you have to consider how personally dangerous it could be to speak up. Not because of the children, but rather due to the unavoidable fact that there are people and companies making millions, if not billions of dollars selling an ideology. If you screw with that you are dead, perhaps even literally.

I want to do the right thing, just not entirely sure how to go about doing so without the potential for great harm to those I love most.