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There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)

science.nasa.gov

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Re: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)

#131

Post by nradov »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #92
CoastalCoder wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a different kind of crotchety. I think it's real and potentially catastrophic. But I see very little chance of (sufficient) coordinated action to mitigate it. I.e., I think there's too much temptation for individual countries to pursue a competitive economic or military advantage by letting everyone but themselves make sacrifices. I hope I'm wrong.

Luckily the effect is much larger in the opposite direction: weaning oneself off of foreign oil is a huge advantage both economically and militarily.

Is it though? For developing countries, having a large supply of fossil fuels has always been a huge accelerator for industrialization and overall economic growth even if that fuel has to be imported. There really is no substitute, especially when you consider that it's not used only for transportation and power generation but also for manufacturing as an industrial heat source and chemical feed stock.

Re: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)

#132

Post by krapp »

randusername wrote: post #118
legitster wrote: post #45

Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either disagree on the cause or proportion. Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic and grounded: "The longer we put off doing something, the harder a…

I can understand people having their own reasons for dismissing the facts or the rhetoric. What I can't wrap my head around is the conspiracy thinking around environmentalism. What's so nefarious about clean air and water? I'll never forget when my grandmother walked out of WALL-E because she said it was government propaganda. She is a regular person, not a coal magnate or anything.

You need to understand the political and cultural history. Environmentalism has been associated with leftist, feminist and communist ideology going back to the hippies and the antiwar movement (which makes it easy for many Americans to mistrust by default.) When Trump said he believed global warming was a Chinese hoax (remember that?) he was echoing a belief amongst the right that environmentalism and "global warming" was a plot to undermine American business and sovereignty, and that climate science supporting anthropogenic climate change was manufactured by "cultural Marxist academics" to push that agenda.

This conspiracy thinking has been pushed by Republicans, right-wing think tanks, coal, oil, manufacturing and like industries attempting to undermine public trust in climate science since at least the 1970s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

Re: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)

#133

Post by perrygeo »

legitster wrote: post #45

Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either disagree on the cause or proportion. Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic and grounded: "The longer we put off doing something, the harder a…

> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now

Same. Empirical evidence is just too hard to ignore.

It's quite amazing watching the "climate change isn't real" folks transition to "climate change is no big deal", then to "climate change is too hard/expensive to deal with".

Re: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)

#134

Post by mithr »

alt227 wrote: post #125
mithr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't; that's kind of a first-glance reading of the phrase without really thinking about it. Something can said to change from a certain standard even if it wasn't perfectly constant to begin with. For example, if I always kept my house at 65-75 degrees for the past year, and now it's 85 degrees inside, I could certainly say that the temperature in my house recently changed and gotten warmer. That might lead me…

Your analogy doesnt work, becaue the earth has been warmer than it is now several times in the past. so the increased temperature is within the range of normal temperatures. The problem is not that the earth is warming, it is that it is warming at an artificially increased rate.

It's not meant as a perfect analogy for global warming, but rather an illustration of how a constant state isn't necessary for something to be said to be "changing", which was OP's claim.

Re: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)

#135

Post by rayiner »

guelo wrote: post #114
CoastalCoder wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a different kind of crotchety. I think it's real and potentially catastrophic. But I see very little chance of (sufficient) coordinated action to mitigate it. I.e., I think there's too much temptation for individual countries to pursue a competitive economic or military advantage by letting everyone but themselves make sacrifices. I hope I'm wrong.

Trump is implementing multi decade right wing fantasies in many fronts. The idea that we can't achieve anything is limiting yourself when you're in a political arena. To win, like Trump, when you get power you have to attack on many fronts, cultural, capital, legal, and approach it as a zero sum scorched earth war where norms are another obstacle in your way.

You weren’t already doing that? You guys literally changed a dictionary definition to make a conservative appointee look bad: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/merriam-webster-changed-def...

Trump, a democrat himself, is simply using the multi-front strategy he already knew.

Re: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)

#136

Post by nradov »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #77
legitster wrote: post #45

Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either disagree on the cause or proportion. Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic and grounded: "The longer we put off doing something, the harder a…

Another reframing that may be useful is energy security/redundancy. If you have a cheap source of solar panels and batteries, the only downside to installing them all over the country is up-front cost (which pays itself off quickly). The upside you gain is a substantially more robust, less centralized power grid that can continue to operate if something happens to impede your supply of fossil fuels or part of the gri…

Where is this mythical cheap source of batteries? I mean you can go on Alibaba and order cheap 18650 cells in limited quantities but there's an enormous difference between doing that and having enough reliable battery power to keep a nationwide grid supplying a modern industrial economy through several days of bad weather.

Re: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)

#137

Post by burnte »

legitster wrote: post #45

Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either disagree on the cause or proportion. Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic and grounded: "The longer we put off doing something, the harder a…

> They just either disagree on the cause or proportion.

And for very specific reasons, too.

One reason is unwillingness to feel like they have to take responsibility.

Another is conceding that would mean they might have to make changes, and laziness is powerful.

The worst reason is that to acknowledge it would be to grant that an alternative political perspective is right about something, and one's own political identity is tied to that other political perspective being always wrong.

"It is easier to con a man than to convince him he has been conned." Too much emotional investment in being right and too much fear of social repercussions simply for changing one's mind. The reality is changing one's mind to new data is the hallmark of integrity.

Re: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)

#138

Post by wat10000 »

izzydata wrote: post #20
webdood90 wrote: post #11

I've shifted my mindset to abandon this idea that humanity will survive forever, or that we should strive to live as long as we can. Intelligence is a scarcity and it cannot overcome the majority of people that are incredibly stupid or ignorant. So accepting that we are doomed relieves some of the stress. I won't have children to worry about their future, either. I still live my life in such a way that minimizes my i…

Ultimately I think it will be a self correcting problem, but there is going to be an extremely long period of absolute hell. Global warming is eventually going to cause food and water scarcity on a level that will wipe out a huge percentage of the Earths population. Then the Earth will recover from there being fewer humans. If in 3000 years we discover humans were completely wiped out to the last person I would be pr…

I agree that human extinction is very unlikely on anything like historical timespans. Maybe in a few million years, like any other species.

I do think there's a decent chance of civilizational collapse in the near to medium term. It seems like everything is getting very fragile. So much economic activity revolves around extremely sophisticated machines with many critical components that are manufactured in just a few locations, sometimes a single location. A major war could shatter that, or climate change could push us over a tipping point where those capabilities can no longer be maintained, or it might just be a cascading random breakdown due to the modern economy being so complicated.

If it happens, then I'm very pessimistic about the ability to ever come back from it. With all the easily accessible fossil fuels gone, getting industry going again is going to be a really tall order. So humanity might survive a long time, but it may consist of life the way it was in prehistory.

Re: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)

#140

Post by Hikikomori »

rayiner wrote: post #65
renjimen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not per capita. The US is still the worst large country. If you account for offshoring manufacturing then the US looks even worse. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions

The climate doesn’t care about per capita obviously.

The rest of the world produces more than china. Checkmate.
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