11–20 of 53 posts
Who exactly is Michael Shellenberger and what is his game? It's pretty clear that he is not a trained scientist or a journalist. What qualifies him to speak for those of us who are concerned about climate change and issue an apology on our behalf? Seems rather grandiose to me. I'm thinking pundit with political ambitions.
Can someone help me with this? I just moved and have both a fireplace and natural gas furnace. I had intended to supplement the furnace with wood heat in the winter. In what ways is wood worse than natural gas?
I can imagine a few but I’m not sure they are right:
Wood disadvantages:
Local air quality
Removal of trees
Wood advantages:
Renewable
Neutral greenhouse gas emissions (?)
Abundant (in my area)
Natural gas disadvantages:
Finite resource
Greenhouse gas emissions(?)
Natural gas advantages:
Better local air quality than wood(?)
Is there even a shred of credible evidence for any of the following: > Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction” > The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world” > Climate change is not making natural disasters worse > Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003 > The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska > The build-up of wood…
Some of these seem true(ish) but misleading - isn't habitat loss often driven by climate change? And as far as I know no one is advocating a switch from fossil fuels to wood fuels; the fact that wood is worse is orthogonal to the fact that fossil fuels are problematic and nuclear, wind, and/or solar are often a better solution.
Is there even a shred of credible evidence for any of the following: > Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction” > The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world” > Climate change is not making natural disasters worse > Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003 > The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska > The build-up of wood…
> The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska
With global population trends, even if average meat consumption is starting to decrease, the amount of livestock raised will still increase. I actually found it difficult to find a good measurement, but this site seemed to be credible https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
> Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
This seems to be untrue, at least in the US - https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
> Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
> Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
Which is it? Are we not causing any issues, or are we destroying native habitats?
In the end, I don't really know who this guy is, but for all the fundraising he did as a teenager, I don't think he's doing environmentalists any favors anymore.
Climate alarm-ism has honestly set back the whole movement in my opinion. For decades, we've only been 10 years away from extinction and it gave conservatives all the ammo needed to write climate change off as fake. Heck, even The Simpsons mocked this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epKaBv6ALcI
Is there even a shred of credible evidence for any of the following: > Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction” > The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world” > Climate change is not making natural disasters worse > Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003 > The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska > The build-up of wood…
Just from skimming about the Holocene extinction[1], with mountains of documented evidences from every continent, denying its existence seems untenable. I'm not even sure why the author started with this line, because it instantly cuts his reliability by 90%.
> Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels. Can someone help me with this? I just moved and have both a fireplace and natural gas furnace. I had intended to supplement the furnace with wood heat in the winter. In what ways is wood worse than natural gas? I can imagine a few but I’m not sure they are right: Wood disadvantages: Local air quality Removal of trees Wood advantages: Renewable Neutra…
Is there even a shred of credible evidence for any of the following: > Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction” > The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world” > Climate change is not making natural disasters worse > Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003 > The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska > The build-up of wood…
At best they seem to be arguing against some cultural sub-trends, such as those who argue for “organic farming” or are “anti-nuclear”, or those who make some mistakes such as overestimating the contribution of the Amazon to global oxygen production.
Perhaps some of the more breathless claims are overstated, but none of that materially changes the climate change argument.
I wonder what he is trying to achieve.
Is there even a shred of credible evidence for any of the following: > Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction” > The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world” > Climate change is not making natural disasters worse > Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003 > The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska > The build-up of wood…
Edit: Here's an oldish article: "Climate Scientists Agree on Warming, Disagree on Dangers, and Don’t Trust the Media’s Coverage of Climate Change" https://web.archive.org/web/20100111104946/http://stats.org/...
Edit 2: "In 2007, Harris Interactive surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union for the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University. 97% of the scientists surveyed agreed that global temperatures had increased during the past 100 years; 84% said they personally believed human-induced warming was occurring, and 74% agreed that "currently available scientific evidence" substantiated its occurrence. Catastrophic effects in 50–100 years would likely be observed according to 41%, while 44% thought the effects would be moderate and about 13 percent saw relatively little danger. 5% said they thought human activity did not contribute to greenhouse warming." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climat... (Edit²: emphasis added)