Trump II

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Facts are necessary, but not sufficient for a complex explanation or theory. More like building blocks. What matters is how you combine them. Needless to say, most people know by now that correlation is not necessarily causation. So, the fact that there is a warming, and the fact that greenhouse gases are increasing is a correlation. It might or might not mean causation. The earth is five billion years old, with periodic cooling and warming, most of the time without human "help."

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Waiting for Jeff to ridicule and pour scorn on the guy who paid $38 millions in taxes. 

[Damon Lynch]

For you guys who claim it's impossible to know the essentials of climate change:

Do you expose your family to chemical pollution of this kind because science cannot tell us absolutely every single thing there is to know about their harms?

When people die early deaths from exposure to such chemicals, from your perspective who is the victim: the people who died, or the companies who make them?

[Alan Goldhammer]

Facts are necessary, but not sufficient for a complex explanation or theory. More like building blocks.

Give a man enough bricks and he can build a house!  There is this story that I just read:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/15/stopping-global-warming-is-only-way-to-save-great-barrier-reef-scientists-warn  You are right in that one or two facts don't necessarily build an explanation or theory unless it's an apple falling on Newton's head.  However, there are so many facts emerging from all parts of the globe that argue that this is not "business as usual."

[JNB_Rare]

RE: Climate Change

For me, the debate is all too reminiscent of the "smoking is bad for your health" fight. Time and time again my father would point to a "study" that dismissed the causal relationship. The damage was already done in his case, and his end was not something I'd wish for anyone. In 1954 the tobacco industry set up its own Tobacco Industry Research Committee, promising to help in the research of tobacco use and health. We know now how helpful that group turned out to be.    A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Like so many things these days, climate change has become a politically-charged issue. As the detailed science and statistics all become overwhelming for me, I start to look at motivations.

[Alan Klein]

To answer someone's question, I think it is warming up but it's not clear to me how much is natural and how much is caused by man.  Everyone has been assuming, for example, that the melting and warming in the Arctic has been caused by man.  Here's a study, just published two days ago, that indicates that scientists now believe 30-50% of the melting of arctic ice is by natural causes.  I doubt if this news will ever be published in the regular press or shown on cable.  The news is always that man is causing all the warming.  I believe that there are natural factors at work as well
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/14/520104348/natural-environmental-swings-cause-up-to-half-of-arctic-sea-ice-loss

But the main question I had was what will be the actual damage caused by warming, regardless of the reason for warming?  I want to move the debate past whether it is warming.  Again, the media only focus on the negative because it sells newspapers and it's the current popular political thinking.  Part of the reason for the opposition to the premise that man causes warming and its bad for you is almost counter-intuitive.  When winters are mild as they have been for a few years, most people like it.  They think it's a positive.  So while they see it's getting warming, the effect seems positive.  So these people ask why do climate change believers want to spend a lot of money to change something that seems positive so they deny it's even happening?

This twist of their logic would be more difficult for them to espouse if the scientists and the media did their job.  They seem like they're piling on rather than being fair in their assessments, kind of like what is happening with Trump.  If they provided lists of positive and negative effects, and presented the results in a fair and honest approach, then deniers might come around.  We may also find that the believers might lower their demands if the positive effects are more common then previously realized.  All I'm requesting is honest analysis and publishing.

My argument is that beside being nice having warmer winters, there are a lot of other positive reasons warming is good for the environment.  At a minimum, evidence of both positive and negative effects should be published so we can make educated decision about what we should do.  Right now it seems like one side is trying to jam it down the other side's throat.

[LesPalenik]

Facts are necessary, but not sufficient for a complex explanation or theory. More like building blocks. What matters is how you combine them. Needless to say, most people know by now that correlation is not necessarily causation. So, the fact that there is a warming, and the fact that greenhouse gases are increasing is a correlation. It might or might not mean causation. The earth is five billion years old, with periodic cooling and warming, most of the time without human "help."

Cooling and warming are only two things which can be relatively easily measured. Quite alarming, but pollutions of all kinds which are intrinsically linked to the former two are even more serious.
SOLUTIONS? Manage growth and limit overpopulation.


It has been estimated that the ocean contains 5 trillion particles, totaling 250,000 tons, while a study last year concluded that 100,000 microbeads entered the ocean with each use of a personal cosmetic product that contained them.
Microplastics in oceans

A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife.
Livestock Pollution

Nausea, headaches and nosebleeds, invasive chemical smells, constant drilling, slumping property prices – welcome to Ponder, Texas, where fracking has overtaken the town.
Fracking Hell

We do have huge population growth in places where we don’t want it
Bill Gates wants to reduce world population

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... limit overpopulation...

Hey, I am all for it... just how?

P.S. Cheney tried sending AIDS to Africa, didn't turn out so well (or at least according to Obama's spiritual adviser)

[Alan Klein]

...Great, that will put locals out of business (exploiting ski slopes) and reduce tourism (=less travel). Too bad if you are a local resident though.

See, there are usually several (conflicting) aspects to those (contrived) benefits. Human intervention in natural processes more often than not have a negative effect on a larger/global scale. So minimizing our influence on those processes, reducing our Carbon footprint, is usually to be preferred if we have a choice.

And a choice we have. Reducing emissions, opens up lots of new job opportunities as well....

Cheers,
Bart

Getting rid of coal puts coal miners out of work.  Getting rid of oil puts oil workers out of work.  I suppose if we keep the environment colder by reducing our carbon footprint, the out-of-work coal miners can get jobs as ski instructors.   I really don't think we should look at jobs for either side as the basis for making changes.  There are always displacements in work as societies change and production is modernized and invention drives the economies into other areas. 

[Rob C]

Well done, Alan, completely disregard desertification, starvation, flooding, any inconvenient fact at all. A really intelligent, considered response "To answer someone's question" to you.

If you deserve a prize, it's for world-beating powers to keep your blinkers firmly in place. A conversation with a rubber wall would have delivered a greater, relevant response.

You win: no point remains in holding things up right in front of you - you simply refuse to believe your own eyes. I have never, in my life, come acoss a similar mindset outwith a religious meeting.  I avoid political ones (meetings) but about those I have choice; with the former I did not...

But you have inadvertently explained how ISIS is psychologically possible.

Rob C

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... We do have huge population growth in places where we don’t want it
Bill Gates wants to reduce world population

Ok, so he said (bold mine):

In an interview with media, Gates explained: “Capitalism did not eradicate smallpox. It just doesn’t know how. Polio eradication is a work in progress, but it’s not being done by markets. So the childhood death reduction, the nutrition improvements, those are overwhelmingly aid-driven.”

So, capitalism didn't... he did (Gates, via aid). And how has he ended in the position to provide aid? Thanks to... capitalism. Yes, the ruthless game of profit, in which he was so good (and ruthless).

[LesPalenik]

Hey, I am all for it... just how?

P.S. Cheney tried sending AIDS to Africa, didn't turn out so well (or at least according to Obama's spiritual adviser)

Just ask the big thinkers. Bill Gates wants to do with vaccines and Elon Musk is ready to start evacuation to Mars.

[Alan Klein]

Cooling and warming are only two things which can be relatively easily measured. Quite alarming, but pollutions of all kinds which are intrinsically linked to the former two are even more serious.
SOLUTIONS? Manage growth and limit overpopulation.


It has been estimated that the ocean contains 5 trillion particles, totaling 250,000 tons, while a study last year concluded that 100,000 microbeads entered the ocean with each use of a personal cosmetic product that contained them.
Microplastics in oceans

A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife.
Livestock Pollution

Nausea, headaches and nosebleeds, invasive chemical smells, constant drilling, slumping property prices – welcome to Ponder, Texas, where fracking has overtaken the town.
Fracking Hell

We do have huge population growth in places where we don’t want it
Bill Gates wants to reduce world population

No one wants pollution.  But throwing around big numbers to scare people who can't imagine what they mean in a real sense is just a scare tactic.  250,000 tons represents 0.000000025 of 1% of the oceans.  I think 0.000000025% is 2.5 billionths of 1% but the math majors here can help me.  The point is it's a pretty small percentage.

 My solution for the herds of cattle is Gas-X.

Bill Gates would do the world a lot better if he stopped giving his wealth away and invested it instead.  The work, jobs and wealth created by investments would help more people and keep on giving in the future.  Giving money as he wants to do only dissipates his immense fortune.  It fritters it away.  Look at all the jobs and wealth his Microsoft has created.  Can you imagine how many more people and countries he could help if his investments created ten more Microsofts? 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I believe that there are natural factors at work as well
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/14/520104348/natural-environmental-swings-cause-up-to-half-of-arctic-sea-ice-loss

Shocking, the rate of melting is at least doubled by the human factor alone, and part of the 'natural' is also caused by man over a longer period.

My argument is that beside being nice having warmer winters, there are a lot of other positive reasons warming is good for the environment.

What might seem nice at superficial glance, such warmer winters (assuming yours are cold), it also means that many insects will survive winter and their explosive growth in numbers next year will cause increased infections with more and more exotic viruses, e.g. Zika and Malaria if we only consider certain mosquitoes, in regions where people and animals have no natural resistance or where no cures exist.

These temperature changes also change the flow of warmer and colder water through the oceans in their annual circulation patterns. That in turn, will affect e.g. plankton, algae and micro organism growth in the oceans, sources of absorption of CO2 and production of oxygen.

I'm not versed enough in chemistry myself to predict related chemical reactions such as the effect of acidity on the release of the stored CO2 in those bicarbonates. Currently, the oceans still absorb a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere, but that process is already changing/slowing down as the acidification progresses. Scientists who are versed in such matters are not optimistic.

"Ocean acidification has been called the 'evil twin of global warming' and 'the other CO2 problem' ".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

Global warming will accelerate all sorts of chemical processes, but most in the wrong direction, and towards an acceleration that may be unstoppable.

Cheers,
Bart

[Alan Klein]

Well done, Alan, completely disregard desertification, starvation, flooding, any inconvenient fact at all. A really intelligent, considered response "To answer someone's question" to you.

If you deserve a prize, it's for world-beating powers to keep your blinkers firmly in place. A conversation with a rubber wall would have delivered a greater, relevant response.

You win: no point remains in holding things up right in front of you - you simply refuse to believe your own eyes. I have never, in my life, come acoss a similar mindset outwith a religious meeting.  I avoid political ones (meetings) but about those I have choice; with the former I did not...

But you have inadvertently explained how ISIS is psychologically possible.

Rob C

Thanks Rob.  I didn't think my beliefs could have such a powerful effect on someone. 

I do believe my own eyes.  I notice that it's been warmer in the winter which has been nice for the most part.  I've saved on cleaning bills as I haven't needed to wear some of my heavier winter garb.  The last time I was down at the beach, the water didn't seem any higher.  I haven't really seen the effect of global warming although we're being told it will happen at any moment, or maybe later in 50 years, so I should believe that so Al Gore can make another $100 million on warming and buy another jet to burn 1000 gallons of fuel an hour.  Whew.  It must be pretty bad.  You said so. 

I suppose the things that prove what you want proved to me I can see.  But only if I look at all the propaganda by supporters of the damage from warmer climate.  However, since these people don't show the other side, I am suspect, because it seems weighted to prove their arguments.    Sorry, I'm not a robot.

[Alan Klein]

Shocking, the rate of melting is at least doubled by the human factor alone, and part of the 'natural' is also caused by man over a longer period.

What might seem nice at superficial glance, such warmer winters (assuming yours are cold), it also means that many insects will survive winter and their explosive growth in numbers next year will cause increased infections with more and more exotic viruses, e.g. Zika and Malaria if we only consider certain mosquitoes, in regions where people and animals have no natural resistance or where no cures exist.

These temperature changes also change the flow of warmer and colder water through the oceans in their annual circulation patterns. That in turn, will affect e.g. plankton, algae and micro organism growth in the oceans, sources of absorption of CO2 and production of oxygen.

I'm not versed enough in chemistry myself to predict related chemical reactions such as the effect of acidity on the release of the stored CO2 in those bicarbonates. Currently, the oceans still absorb a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere, but that process is already changing/slowing down as the acidification progresses. Scientists who are versed in such matters are not optimistic.

"Ocean acidification has been called the 'evil twin of global warming' and 'the other CO2 problem' ".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

Global warming will accelerate all sorts of chemical processes, but most in the wrong direction, and towards an acceleration that may be unstoppable.

Cheers,
Bart

Bart:  I do not dispute any of your predictions.  But you missed my point.  What I'm asking for is the other side.  Something like this, "Dr. Smith and Dr. Wolf have published a study showing that warming climate over the next 5 years will increase the amount of damaging insects that will annually infect 200 people with Zika, killing 10 of them.  The same warming will create another 200,000 hectares of arable land to produce food that will feed 500,000 people."

What we're getting now is "Warming is bad.  People are going to die.  Cities will be flooded.  The end of the world is near, well, in 50 years anyway."  All bad news and all one sided.  In order for societies to make good judgments on where government should spend their money, we need good facts that are not tainted with one-side hyperbole.  That's all I'm asking for.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...The end of the world is near, well, in 50 years anyway...

About time when the whole world will be under Sharia. Sound like a pretty good deal to me 


P.S. Calm down, people, just kidding!

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Bart:  I do not dispute any of your predictions.  But you missed my point.  What I'm asking for is the other side.  Something like this, "Dr. Smith and Dr. Wolf have published a study showing that warming climate over the next 5 years will increase the amount of damaging insects that will annually infect 200 people with Zika, killing 10 of them.  The same warming will create another 200,000 hectares of arable land to produce food that will feed 500,000 people."

Alan, I understand that and would like that as well, but I'm realistic enough to understand that that is difficult because there are cascades of effects.

What we're getting now is "Warming is bad.  People are going to die.  Cities will be flooded.  The end of the world is near, well, in 50 years anyway."  All bad news and all one sided.  In order for societies to make good judgments on where government should spend their money, we need good facts that are not tainted with one-side hyperbole.  That's all I'm asking for.

Well, the grim truth is that almost all news is actually bad. And what is worse, Trump's policies are not going to help (not in the right direction that is). By appointing a known global warming denier as head of the EPA, by installing people in his administration that wanted to destroy all records of previous research that doesn't fit his agenda, etc., etc, only to make a quick buck for his cronies, he will only make matters worse, so much is sure. How much worse could be debated, but it is unwanted whatever way one twists it. Worse is worse. We need better, not worse, not even a bit if possible. Slowing down the deterioration is the best we can reasonably hope for, if everything that was e.g. agreed in the Paris agreements is actually achieved. Not enough but the best we can hope for.

Cheers,
Bart

[Alan Klein]

Getting back to this thread, I think Trump likes global warming because Don Jr. wants to build resorts in Canada.  I can just picture it. -
"The Trump Klondike Resort and Golf Club.  We Got Rid of the Ice."  Ivanka could sell cashmere T-shirts with maple leafs emblazoned on the front.   Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will become a club member and Trump can fly Air Force 1 there to smooze with his other club members instead of flying south to Mar-a-lago where it's become too hot to stay. 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Getting back to this thread, I think Trump likes global warming because Don Jr. wants to build resorts in Canada.  I can just picture it. -
"The Trump Klondike Resort and Golf Club.  We Got Rid of the Ice."  Ivanka could sell cashmere T-shirts with maple leafs emblazoned on the front.   Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will become a club member and Trump can fly Air Force 1 there to smooze with his other club members instead of flying south to Mar-a-lago where it's become too hot to stay.

I'm afraid I largely agree.

Cheers,
Bart