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michaelmullen · 8 years ago

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Another installment in an endless argument about climate change

Ok, I've been out of the loop for a couple weeks. I had to deal with life. Now, in the post you put out on February 21 at 5:02 pm, you seemed to think I was disregarding or taking lightly Cern's information. Quite the contrary, I was taking issue with the interpretation of Cern's information by Dennis Avery, the author of the article in American Thinker. THAT is what I was referring to when I said "a simplistic reading of the Cern Study". I would generally consider CERN to be one of the more credible sources of scientific information, including on the study you cited. I just disagreed with that guy's conclusions about the study. Because I read the study. And it doesn't look to me like it said what he said it said. Gad, did that last sentence make any sense?

On to the next thing: here's the PNAS paper about the scientific consensus again. Now just to be clear, this is a different consensus study entirely from the much ballyhooed one that you referenced. I suspect you did not read this article the first time around after I posted it in this thread on February 23rd at 2:23am. http://m.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.full. Did you read it? If not, will you please read it? One more time, the study in this PNAS paper has absolutely nothing to do with the IPCC study which climate change skeptics like to lambast. Sure, the consensus for millenia was the earth is flat and it's "turtles all the way down". But that was the consensus amongst the ill informed. Scientific consensus is a different thing. And yes, scientists are subject to the same sorts of pressures as any other humans, but, the Earth was proven to NOT be flat in a number of places and times--ancient China, Persia, Babylon, Egypt, Greece. Independently those wise guys reached a consensus, at least to the extent that they agreed over the final conclusion that the earth is not flat, even though they did not know about each other or each other's work. And it was the consensus among doctors in the middle ages that bleeding someone to treat ulcers was a good idea. Right, consensus ain't everything. BUT, when alot of modern scientists doing good research using solid empirical methods reach similar conclusions, it MEANS SOMETHING. And when you first say that there IS NOT a consensus, then when a study is found that clearly shows there IS a consensus--and at THAT point you say "well consensus doesn't matter anyway"--you start sounding like suddenly you don't want to discuss it because maybe you are losing the argument.

Right, clouds cover more of the earth's surface area, but only clouds above large masses of particularly verdant greenery (like rain forests) are going to have the biogenic elements which that study was refering to. I like looking at Google Earth sometimes.

If atmospheric CO2 does not trap heat much, then why is it then when you are in an unvented room full of people it quickly becomes stuffy, and warm?

"End of the world"? No, perhaps not. But a mere 1 foot rise in sea level would displace millions, and that's a low estimate if enough "permanent" ice melts. It's like good ol' Rush Limbaugh likes to say: "A nuclear war is NOT going to destroy the planet or end all life". Ok, fair enough, but if the only life that survives is rats and cockroaches, well, that's close nough to destroyed for me. So, could melting sea ice "end the world"? No. But we have other things to discuss if the distinction between "end the world" and "catastrophically affect all civilization" REALLY matters to you! Regarding the article you shared about increased sea ice, it seems to argue AGAINST the conclusions you seem to think it supports. Read the entire article. Quoting from the article itself 'Editor’s note: Antarctica and the Arctic are two very different environments: the former is a continent surrounded by ocean, the latter is ocean enclosed by land. As a result, sea ice behaves very differently in the two regions. While the Antarctic sea ice yearly wintertime maximum extent hit record highs from 2012 to 2014 before returning to average levels in 2015, both the Arctic wintertime maximum and its summer minimum extent have been in a sharp decline for the past decades. Studies show that globally, the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice." And "Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s. The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.". Oh, did I mention that there is a NEW NAVIGABLE OCEAN up North that did not used to exist at all period when I was 20? At least not without an ice breaker in the middle of summer. I bet you didn't read the whole article that you shared about Antarctic sea ice. I don't think it at all makes the point you seem to think it does. Beware the pitfalls of confirmation bias. And the article about the undersea geologic event that melted some ice: even in the article itself, they point out that the geological event would melt "some" ice, a "small hole" in the ice. But the ice loss--particularly deasonal ice loss--in the Arctic has been ocean wide, not just above that deep sea vent. Btw, money for valuable research such as is discussed in the article from Nasa's Goddard Research which you shared will likely be completely cut. Very soon.

Regarding confirmation bias, you could also be using confirmation bias. If sharing an article that supports my idea is automatically evidence of confirmation bias, then how are we ever supposed to get beyond that point in any discussion? Sure, I am biased: that is because I am convinced. I did not start life biased toward the idea of human caused climate change (though I might have gotten there sooner than alot of others, because I paid attention way back prior to Al Gore's movie). I have watched the science develop over the last several decades with increasing concern, and my certainty of the problem has slowly mounted. So far, skeptics attempts over the last several years to convince me otherwise have failed for a variety of reasons. That's not because I have an inner need to support--as you put it-- a "political and environmental agenda" which I "seem to feel is a superior ideology". Rather, I think I see an increasing weight of evidence in favor of the idea of anthropogenic climate change, and since I see it as a dangerous trend I want to say something about it, and try to change people's minds. So when I am trying to argue the point with someone, I try to find supporting evidence. Isn't that how we are SUPPOSED to debate and discuss? Isn't that what CITATION means? When I cite an article from Scientific American--or perhaps the Proceedings of the Nat'l Academy of Sciences--I am not indulging in confirmation bias, I am citing evidence that supports the conclusion. When I toss out 5 articles from sources with alot of expertise in covering scientific issues that support the conclusions I am arguing for, that is not confirmation bias, that is, rather, an attempt at assembling something like a bibliography that helps to support my claims. Don't "confirmation bias" me: the exact same argument could be used on you, and YOUR supporting documentation when you and I started this whole discussion was one article from a less than credible source. .

Now, regarding political agendas and superior ideologies, I was a republican and fairly conservative in the 80s and early 90s, of the "fiscal conservative and otherwise center-right leaning pragmatist" school of WF Buckley et al. One of the things that started my drift away from the GOP back then was what looked to me like the Rush Limbaugh Shaped political blinders which the GOP was increasingly donning especially toward questions of the environment. Perhaps the airy fairy Left sometimes wears rose colored glasses about certain issues (or at least, tinkerbell shaped glasses, Lol). Well, by the same token, the Right has been wearing dark "EIB" glasses for a number of years (which is part of the reason we find ourselves, politically, where we are now). Leaving aside what I consider to be all the various areas that the malign influence of Mssrs. Limbaugh, Hannity, and a number of others have had on our political discourse and the direction of our country in general over the last couple decades, [in MY opinion] Rush being so evidently wrong (and philosophically wrong also) on environmental issues led to me re-evaluating alot of other things as well. But I digress again: getting back to the point, Rush Limbaugh has flogged and flaunted his particular political agenda and superior ideology (though he probably would not call it that; sounds too pointie-headed and liberal) very effectively, to the point that his words have become the textus receptus of the GOP, and folks on the Right in general conversation often quote Him without being aware they are even doing so. Steadfast, cleverly phrased, emotionally satisfying, frequently vituperative opposition to most environmental laws and in particular anthropogenic climate change (which Rush found hilarious going all the way back) has been Rush Limbaugh's--and increasingly the GOP's--stance for a long time. Climate change skeptics often come across as superior and dismissive, after all, they are not stupid enough to fall for that BS... Do not accuse me of supporting the idea of anthropogenic climate change due to a need to support a superior ideology. Rather, address your own confirmation bias that insists that your ideology of climate skepticism is superior.

Regarding solar fluctuations and their impact on climate, it seems evident to me that 1] though there have been studies, even so yes you are right it certainly needs to be studied more (good luck getting funding for THAT currently) but 2] what is known seems to indicate strongly that the saturation of CO2 in the atmosphere is a much greater driver, partially because higher carbon content maintains higher temperatures for longer periods of time AND spreads the increased ambient temperatures more evenly throughout the atmosphere. So that even when 1] the Earth is farthest from the sun in the slightly elliptical orbit, or 2] the sun is eclipsed by the moon, or 3] the Northern Hemisphere is leaning away from the sun in winter, still the heating which the sun DOES do even in those circumstances is held onto more effectively, lasts longer, and thus requires less solar energy the next time the sun does it's thing. In other words, the atmspheric carbon is a blanket: the sun might heat things up, but the carbon keeps it cozy, and thicker carbon means a cozier time for all. And not only does atmospheric carbon act as a blanket, it also acts as a lens, focusing and increasing the effects of the sunlight as that sunlight is hitting the atmosphere. http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/06_3.shtml https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sun-spots-and-climate-change/

Warming may be good for flora and fauna in a general sense, but too much can drastically impact what flora grows where (and thus we come to the potential impact of climate change on agriculture). Classic Limbaugh argument: there will be MORE plants growing if climate change occurs, how can that be bad? Because those plants might grow other than in the wheat fields of central Kansas, that's why. And the corn fields of Iowa might not have corn growing there. That's why. And land that is currently forested and which we harvest for timber might stop being able to support timber, and jobs will be lost. And let's say the optimal corn growing climate region ends up being in the middle of, say, downtown Chicago, are we going to convert all that concrete into farm land just because the weather is right for crops? Probably not. If such changes ocur and the causes are NOT anthropogenic, then the changes happen and we deal with it. But if they happen and it was caused by humans, future generations will wonder what we were thinking...

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