Topic: What is environmentalism, really? - page 8. (Read 7932 times)

I must advise you that Ad-Hominem and condescension are tools I rarely see used successfully, and they never work for an educated audience.

TheBitcoinChemist,

Thank you for your post. However, there are some serious issues with it, and I can't give it the attention it deserves right now. But I will address it soon, I can assure you. As a preview, one of the serious issues with your statement is related to the inability for habitat relocation to occur due to barriers as species migrate northward. The consequences are grave, and it will affect the viability of some of the positives you see in global warming.

Digging your hole even deeper in an effort to save face? Nobody's buying it. Nobody gives a crap about Mr. Hodgin.

Note to everyone: here's the article myrkul linked to. Decide for yourself whether Mr. Hodgin or Willie Soon's work is what the article is about: http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/42006-harvard-astrophysicist-sunspot-activity-correlates-to-global-climate

Myrkul, run along. At least TheBitcoinChemist can put together something a little more sincere and thoughful.

Wait, now you've got the author wrong. The article was written by Rick C. Hodgin. It says it right under the title. What is your problem tonight? You can't seem to keep anything straight.

Myrkul,

I'll tell you what is so hilarious. I never clicked on your link when I raised my first objection to your post. I confidently stated my position, predicting with 100 percent accuracy what I would find.

I'm laughing because when I finally checked out your link after your attempted defense of it and googled the author, I got exactly what I predicted, matching nearly word for word what I surmised.

I, for one, do not deny that the climate is changing.  Nor do I deny that the trend is towards a warmer climate.  I won't even contest that human activity contributes in that general direction.  What I will deny, because I actually understand the sciences involved and how complex they are, is that we actually understand enough about the biosphere or the global climate to make the claims that some people will do.  I most certainly oppose the efforts to use the force of governments to compel people to alter their behavior under the claims that "the science is settled".  The science is not only not settled, the best & brightest openly admit that they don't really understand it all well enough to make a solid determination.  It's the politically minded hacks that compare climate change skeptics to holocaust deniers.  And even if the science were actually settled, there is very little evidence that we could actually slow that warming trend to any significant degree without killing off a large percentage of the population of the planet either by starvation or warfare.  

And all that before we even consider the possibility that a moderate rate of change (which is what we have actually been getting despite decades of climate change histeria, yes I'm old enough to remember the early 80's and the claims that Mexico and some of the Southernmost US states would actually be inhabitable by now) might actually be a net positive for humanity at large, even if it does prove to be a net burden on people who live in sub-tropical coastal regions.  There are massive tracts of arable land that could be opened up to productive agriculture and human settlement in the northern-most latitudes, predominately in Canada, Greenland & Russia.  See, there is one thing about global warming predictions that are not often talked about by those who warn against climate changes; and that is that the rising temp trends are not going to be evenly distributed across the latitudes.  Because of the way that greenhouse gases work (i.e. shortwave infrared light from the sun passes through mostly unattenuated to strike the Earth's surface, while longer wave IR tends to be 'refracted' back towards the Earth like shortwave radio waves are reflected by the E-level of the ionosphere, thus functioning like one of those mylar emergency blankets) the retained heat tends towards spreading across great distances.  So while the equater does get most of the sunlight and would warm somewhat, higher latitudes would tend to receive more IR heat from warmer latitutes than they radiate back.  Thus, most of the warming is going to occur in regions where a slightly warmer climate could make the difference between only growing winter wheat, or growing corn instead.  The climate is always, always changing.  As recently as 400 years ago there was still an inland sea in the Western US states, where the salt flats are today, that contributed to a wetter climate in that region than exists today.  Things change and populations migrate.  There is no reason to expect that it will be different after the Industrial Revolution, in that regard, than it was prior.

Also, keep in mind that the Earth is a closed system, and any externally gained carbon is less than trivial even over millinia.  At some point in Earth's history, it was a molten ball of rock surrounded by a mixed gas atmostphere.  There were no trees, and oxygen is never found free under such conditions unless all of the available carbon was already consumed.  So, at one point in Earth's history, all of the carbon (or nearly all) that we worry today about being released into the atmostphere was actually in that old Earth atmostphere.  So the idea that there is some point at which the amount of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere starts a positive feedback loop within this closed system to destroy life on Earth is both rediculous and provablely false on that data point alone.  For if it were true, how in the hell could live ever have evolved to start with?  I'm not saying that humans  are going to want to live that way but we are little more than a minor infection to the Earth's biosphere.

EDIT: I got the short & long wave IR's reversed in the above description, but other than that it is correct.

Arguing silly semantics again because you don't have a leg to stand on? Funny.

I'm attacking your posts, as you're linking to articles written by Willie Soon, libertarian anti-science crackpot, speaker for libertarian think tanks, funded by Big Oil, promoted by libertarian think tanks (his only real venue).

I'll just post what I said in that other thread in June, because it sums up your actions and the analysis of your "science" so well. Here's what I wrote back in June:


The sooner you tuck your tail between your legs and extricate yourself from this, the better you'll look.

Wait, I'm confused. I thought it was the website you were attacking, not the researcher.

Sure. You'll even find that Richard Lindzen is an MIT professor. There are bad apples in every organization.

As for your paper, let's analyze Dr. Willie Soon:

- He's associated with the Marshall Institute, a libertarian think tank founded by Frederick Seitz (I mentioned him above).
- He has largely been funded by the oil industry
- All grants to him since 2002 have been from oil and coal interests
- He's a speaker for the Heartland Institute

I have made a statement in several threads over the past year that every time (and I mean every single time) someone posts an article relating to denying anthropogenic climate change, it's a trivial matter to tie the author to libertarian think tanks and Big Oil. Please read this post I made in June very carefully: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.981373

Oh, and regarding Willie Soon, all you need do is google his name. Really, I thought you'd be more careful before posting such material.

Carry on.

http://www.tgdaily.com/about
Just 'cause I link to it, don't make it libertarian.

And you'll note, that was a Harvard Scientist. Not a C4SS staffer.

Hey guys,

This thread is about environmentalism, and that certainly includes climate change. However, as I've pointed out in an earlier post, the bulk of environmentalism is scientific study and proactive conservation (as opposed to turning in plastic bottles behind the supermarket), and as such, denying anthropogenic climate change with material sourced from the latest libertarian websites really doesn't qualify as climate science, and by extension, doesn't qualify as science in any respectable way.

If you guys truly want to debate this issue, feel free to start a thread about it. Before doing so, I would earnestly suggest both of you get up to speed on the following topics so we have a baseline to start with:

- Climate change induced precipitation patterns and how it will affect agriculture
- Milankovitch cycles and ice age patterns
- Ice albedo feedback loops
- The Oregon Petition, Frederick Seitz, and various libertarian documents masquerading as science

For this thread, I'd prefer we stick to real science. Thanks.

I'm not sure if arguing with you is productive. Certainly others have done so already, and your refusal to change your point of view indicates that you'll probably deflect any arguments I might make. I tried debating a creationist on evolution once, and it's really the same problem. If you genuinely don't believe in anthropogenic climate change, that's your opinion. I believe such an opinion to be excessively ignorant.

Back on topic: Cessation of those activities might be going too far. What we really need is for governments to stop subsidizing oil. Between 2002 and 2008, 36+ billion dollars were directly used to increase oil (okay, total fossil fuel) profits and production. Even worse, if taxpayers didn't pay that money in the first place, it would more than offset the tiny increase in energy prices. Plus, think about the resulting bonus to alternative energy if the government stops sponsoring the companies that try to kill it.

Dude, the Sun's output varies over an 11 year cycle, and a longer ~300 year cycle; and those are the two that we are aware of.  The Sun occilates, and it takes less than a 1% variance to swing the entire planet from an ice age into the Medieval Warm Period.  You have heard of that, correct?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

While the claims on Wikipedia are that the MWP were not as warm as the modern era, the facts say something different.  For example, it's a known fact that there were grape vineyards & wineries north of London in Britain, with legacy streets still named "Vine Street" that harken back to that age, while grapes won't grow in those same regions today.  Also, north of Canada is a wide expanse of islands hidden in the permanent ice beyond the arctic circle; the roots of trees have been found on many of those islands, hundreds of miles from where trees grow today.  The Norse settled Greenland during the MWP, and for decades children were taught in school that it was named as a fraud in order to get settlers to join the founders.  In reality, it would have been pretty green in the southern end of Greenland during the MWP, and we now know that those settlers fared pretty well for generations on grassfed sheep before the Little Ice Age slowly killed off their grasslands & sheep and drove them into the sea in order to survive.

http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/42006-harvard-astrophysicist-sunspot-activity-correlates-to-global-climate

This wouldn't cause it to "continue to hotter" for centuries, though. Maybe it will in millions of years when it becomes significantly more intense, but not in centuries.

You know what is?

Expecially since those activities are not the predominate causes of climate changes. 

I fear our biggest challenge is to get a commitment from the world. The changes we must make to live another 500 years on Earth may be more than people are willing to do. Recycling, buying a hybrid car, those things are like dripping water on a house fire. We would need to stop burning anything for at least a few hundred years. No cars, no heating your home, no cooking.  Even then it would continue to hotter for centuries.

This looks to be a great book on ecosystem services:

http://www.amazon.com/Natures-Services-Societal-Dependence-Ecosystems/dp/1559634766/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324452097&sr=1-1

I haven't read it (yet). It was recommended by MAHB: http://mahb.stanford.edu/

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