[Climate Change] Lake Erie up to 60% Covered in Ice

A Gallup/USA Today poll found 92% of the public thought universal background checks were a good idea in the days after Sandy Hook, but the legislation never made it to a vote because of a filibuster.

 

The American broken political system. I get that. That's why it's promising and not good news.

Heck, the Senate finally actually voted this year to recognize that climate change is real (though they wouldn't said human caused). That's one baby step forward.

 

That may start the climate change of the past years, but other forces amplify the climate change the Milankovitch Cycles set in motion.

I have replied to you that CO2 is NOT the initiator of climate change in the past (we know that), but it is CO2 rising due to the initiator (that cause warming) that amplify the change. It has been found that 90% of the warming is due to CO2 for the past thousands of year of glacial to interglacial warming.

You can think of it this way.... the Sun is an outside source of energy. It send a "fix" amount of energy to the Earth (and that can change, but slowly over a long period of time). If the Earth has absolutely no atmosphere, than the Sun would be the only factor in Earth temperature. However, that's not the case. The Earth has a clear plastic covering it (CO2 and other factors such as water vapors). As the sun get hotter, more CO2 get released and the plastic cover gets thicker. That increase in thickness is what cause the most warming by allowing less of the energy from the Sun to escape Earth.

Today, the plastic is thickening at a very high rate due to human releasing CO2. As it increases, more and more of the sun energy is retained causing warming.

So, yes, there are many factors, we know that. But Scientist know enough to said with very high confident that CO2 is the primary driver of today warming.

 

This is a problem of the republican system of governance. Even if a majority of people support something that doesn't mean change will happen. There are definitely good points about that as we don't want the majority running rough shod over the minority but it does create some big headaches when it comes to addressing large and complex issues.


Also great point about the feedback mechanism of climate regarding CO2.

 

Except that has already been accounted for in climate models and is NOT the reason for the warming as a factor - I posted the data from that earlier in this thread.

You are grasping for straws to find some reason other than co2.

 

I think the disconnect here is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so there's no question it adds to warming and so I could see a case for saying that CO2 was driving any ADDITIONAL warming, meaning any warming that wasn't natural. Of course then you get into a debate about how much of the warming is natural and how much of it is human contribution and you'd find opinions all over the map within the scientific community.

 

No Bobby. Your statement might be accurate if you replace scientific with non-scientific. It's likely much more accurate when you replace it with Republican.

TBH, you show very little knowledge of GW. Your past statements show much ignorance (perhaps willful) on the topic.

link

 

I think it's a gamble if all eggs are in one basket. It seems you think it's a golden egg. Even if I have an 80% confident on fusion, I would still want to move a few eggs out. Spread it out and reduce the risk. I'm all for fusion and it's look very promising, but I would not be in favor of doing nothing until fusion is ready. I think at least doing what we can now would buy us more time. I'm not against fission nuclear plants either, or even gas for that matter in the short term. Hydro maybe an option too. It doesn't have to be all solar and wind, the two most expensive alternative. If those were the only two options, than I probably agree with you that it's almost no chance.

 

What part of my statement do you think is inaccurate?

Also, from your own link

Basically to come up with the 97.2% "consensus" all you have to do is throw out 66.4% of the total, the majority don't even draw conclusions. I don't doubt that you could find a majority, or even super majority of a minority to agree....but that's not really a "consensus".

 

I presented the data that shows CO2 is forcing and that the other variables you mentioned are not. That's a statistical model - it's not merely correlation. I'm sorry you don't understand how statistics work. I can't teach you all of that in a BBS.

 

What happens when all other attributable factors - changes in solar output, the earths wobble, change in overall heat input vs radiated heat out, etc and etc, are put into a model and show NO correlation to global warming?

And what happens if there is one variable that does?

If you only have one variable that can account for a statistical anomaly and you've accounted for all other possible variables - that variable is causative (forcing).

Not only that, but the kind of warming we'd experience from a co2 driven warming has been exact. Other types of warming would do it in a different way and have different impacts.

These two things put together are very sound science and why the scientific community is nearly unanimously behind man-made global warming.

You guys need to dispute this but you can't because you aren't scientists and aren't familiar with that actual models. You're critiquing based on what? Nothing. Some link that says it could be x,y, or z - without realizing those variables have already been eliminated.

 

1) Only the most arrogant and naive of scientists would think that they know all of the variables.

2) When you talk about "man-made global warming" how much of the warming are you talking about? There's no question that man has some effect on the planet.....you could get a legitimate consensus to agree to that, but how significant an impact? No chance at a real consensus. If 99.9% of the warming is natural and 0.1% man-made, that means there is man made global warming but it's certainly not the same as someone who thinks that it's 50-50 or whatever.

The earth has gone through warm and cool times since well before man existed so we know it warms and cools on it's own, the question that people don't agree with is how much do humans add to the natural warming and cooling of the earth and if there is anything we can do to "stop" it.

 

"People" may not agree but climate scientists do.

 

Some do, some don't. 32% is not what I consider a "consensus"

 

I think you are misunderstanding the difference between the results of the abstract and the opinion of the scientist. From the article:

Of note is the large proportion of abstracts that state no position on AGW. This result is expected in consensus situations where scientists '...generally focus their discussions on questions that are still disputed or unanswered rather than on matters about which everyone agrees' ... the fundamental science of AGW is no longer controversial among the publishing science community and the remaining debate in the field has moved to other topics.

 

The science is indeed settled: No one knows what’s going on with the climate, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something … or angling for a government grant.

 

I'm confused just where some of us agree and disagree.

So a few questions, where one can answer "Probably Yes", "No Position", or "Probably No".

(1) Is "global warming" happening?

(2) If you answer 'probably yes' to (1), is it a serious threat to our future?

(3) If you answer 'probably yes' to (2), is there something we can do about it?


Based on these questions, here is how I'd categorize people:

1. Answered "probably no" to (1)
2. Answered "no position" to (1)
3. Answered "probably yes" to (1), and "probably no" to (2).
4. Answered "probably yes" to (1), and "no position" to (2).
5. Answered "probably yes" to (1), "probably yes" to (2), and "probably no" to (3).
6. Answered "probably yes" to (1), "probably yes" to (2), and "no position" to (3)
7. Answered "probably yes" to (1), "probably yes" to (2), and "probably yes" to (3)


Where on this scale are you?

 

Climate change deniers to me appear like smokers who didn't believe cigarettes were bad for them back in the day. There are too many studies that show climate change is real, idiots point out evidence on one aspect of the vast evidence to support their argument. It may be true, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't hold up. At this point only backward ignorant fools would deny climate change, why waste your time on convincing someone like that.